Chapter 17 | The Assassin and the Collapsed City
Something had happened in Bilnore, and we needed to hurry there.
“Reports have stopped coming in.”
I had given orders to my intelligence agents in the town, which was experiencing frequent earthquakes, to contact me regularly. I’d instructed them to do so because I knew that if contact ever ceased, it would mean something big.
“I wish there was time to gather more information, though…”
I especially regretted that I hadn’t been able to get any help from Mina. I did have the minimal insight the Alam Karla had provided us during our visit to the Sanctuary, though. She’d revealed that there were eight demons, and I knew that meant four were still undiscovered.
There was little to go on, but I could still deduce what was going on to an extent. The problem was that all my information was vague and secondhand… Mina would have been able to give me specifics.
I didn’t know if it was simple chance that Mina had vanished or if she was intentionally evading me.
“…That gives me two options.”
The first was to continue observing and not act until I was sure we could win. The second was to rush to Bilnore now and search for the demon.
Both had their pros and cons. If I kept a distance and gathered data, I could increase our chances of victory. If the demon completed the Fruit of Life before I was ready, however, it would run. The advantage of going to Bilnore immediately was that it would guarantee a chance to halt the completion of the Fruit of Life, but challenging an enemy blindly was perilous.
“I need to make a compromise.”
Ultimately, I elected to head for Bilnore. However, I didn’t intend to engage the demon right away. My plan was to scout the situation.
I thought that was the best course of action.
As soon as we finished breakfast, I ordered Tarte and Dia to get ready for travel. They both looked surprised, but they nodded and started on their preparations.
Tarte was bringing a magic spear I’d made instead of her usual foldable one, and Dia was bringing a pistol to be safe. As soon as we were ready, we took off into the sky with our hang gliders.
“We don’t know what kind of demon this is, right?” asked Dia.
“Yeah, that’s why I’m gonna scout first. I want you both to hide somewhere out of sight,” I answered.
“Yes, my lord. That is your area of expertise. I hope the demon is weak this time.”
Tarte was once again using her own hang glider, so we were speaking through communication devices.
I was going to investigate alone because that was the best way to avoid detection, and it would make running easier in case of emergency. I wasn’t necessarily going to fight the demon if it found me; I was keeping in mind the option of running if I didn’t see any chance of winning.
“We actually don’t even know if it’s a demon yet… It would be nice if this turns out to be nothing.”
Truthfully, I was wishing that from the bottom of my heart.
I thought back to the lion demon we’d fought recently. If we had fought him without any prior knowledge, we may not have been able to win. It was only our careful preparation that enabled us to beat him. Mina had said that Liogel was the strongest of all the demons, but that did not mean the others were weak.
“Hmm, we’re almost there. We just passed over the town of Baruya,” said Dia.
“Yeah, our destination should come into view any moment now,” I agreed.
I concentrated mana into my Tuatha Dé eyes to strengthen my vision. I was shocked by what I saw.
I did see Bilnore…but there was no way it could be called a town any longer.
“That’s horrible. How could anyone do this…?”
“This is unbelievable. The whole place is underground.”
Just as Dia said, Bilnore had clearly sunk underground. A large settlement with a population of several thousand had been swallowed completely. It was a tragedy.
The hole was very, very deep. Not even Bilnore’s tallest buildings emerged above the earth. As far as I could tell from above, it was over one hundred meters deep.
From the state of its structures, I understood that the town had fallen in an instant. The entire population had likely died immediately.
How cruel.
“Had I learned of this sooner, I might have been able to prevent it,” I lamented.
“There’s no use dwelling on that. You couldn’t stop it, but let’s at least be thankful that we’re here now,” consoled Dia.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
I only realized what had happened because of my telecommunications network and because I’d ordered my agents to send me regular updates. If not for me, no one would have known about this until much later.
Thanks to that, we had avoided the worst-case scenario.
We landed our hang gliders, and I headed for the mountain of rubble that had been Bilnore alone. I used wind magic to slowly descend into the giant hole.
It smelled terrible. They hadn’t started decomposing yet, but the remains of the crushed citizens were scattered everywhere. The one saving grace for the people was that their deaths had been quick.
I did my best to conceal my presence and walked without making a sound. Even then, the odds of being noticed were still very high.
The majority of creatures that lived below the earth were excellent at sensing vibrations. I could avoid making noise, but it was impossible for me to walk on the ground and not cause some amount of fluctuation, and I was afraid those tremors would give me away. I was being careful by using wind magic to cushion my feet, but that was ultimately just to make myself feel better.
“So this is what making a Fruit of Life involves… The souls themselves are being eaten. This is ridiculous.”
If I increased the power in my Tuatha Dé eyes to their limit, I could view souls.
Normally, when a person died, their spirit returned to the heavens. Then, as the goddess put it, they were bleached and placed into a new vessel. When I was reincarnated, the bleaching step was intentionally skipped, leaving me with my knowledge and experience.
However, these souls were being tied here, and instead of returning to the heavens, they were steadily dissolving and being sucked into something.
“I had the wrong idea when I fought the beetle demon.”
Back then, I’d thought the beetle demon was absorbing the nutrients and mana from the human bodies in the town in order to make a Fruit of Life. It was likely still after a Fruit of Life, but it was not absorbing the nutrients and mana for that purpose. Souls were used to make Fruits of Life, and he’d only been recycling the remains of the citizens to create more tree monsters.
This made me realize anew how much of a harmful presence demons were to humans. Actually, make that the world. Souls usually returned to the heavens after death, meaning the number of them didn’t decrease.
However, those spirits dissolved and processed like this would never be able to reincarnate again, causing the existing number to gradually drop. The goddess and whoever else was in charge were likely going through the trouble of reusing souls because producing new ones was difficult.
“That’s why Fruits of Life are necessary for the Demon King’s revival,” I reasoned.
Mana was a power that souls produced, but it was only partially as strong as the soul itself. The force created from exhausting and condensing thousands of souls would be unimaginably huge. That had to be the reason for the Demon King’s almighty strength.
Ah, I see. That makes sense.
All this thinking led me to a certain hypothesis about the true nature of the hero’s power. The demons I had met had dropped some little hints.
“There’s no way the hero could be human.”
“The hero’s very existence is different.”
“Fighting a monster like that is not possible.”
Even the demons saw the hero as alien, and that wasn’t just due to the hero’s strength. It was the difference in their existential foundation.
In other words, humans and demons were creatures with only one soul, but the hero was born with thousands of compressed souls, making them intrinsically the same as the Demon King. If that was true, it explained why the goddess and her superiors could only produce one hero per era. Making multiple ones would exhaust their supply of souls.
Everything connected in my head. The more I thought about it, the more correct my hypothesis seemed.
“Hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-hyuk!”
A high-pitched laugh interrupted my thoughts. It was an unpleasant sound.
What is that?
“A living thing in my nest, in my nest. Strange, strange. You’re living, but you won’t get away, away.”
I sensed the overflowing, powerful mana and miasma unique to demons.
Countless slimy pink tentacles emerged from the ground. Each one of them was thicker than me. The tentacles opened sweat glands and spewed pink fog, which began to gradually fill the hole.
This was bad. Breathing this vapor would kill me instantly.
“I need to get aboveground right away.”
Scouting was important, but my survival was top priority.
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