After watching to ensure that Oltea and the others had successfully evacuated the occupants of the mansion into town, I headed for Beelzé’s hut. As a matter of precaution, I refrained from using Light Beam to illuminate my path as I drew closer, relying instead on the glow of the moon to guide my steps. After I’d walked in the darkness for some time, the old lighthouse, perched at the edge of its precipitous cliff, came into view. Age had taken its toll on the building, abandoned as it had been to deteriorate. Like an extinguished candle, it stood there in total darkness. There weren’t even any lights on inside of the living space attached to its base, the windows of which revealed only blackness.
“While I still can...” I said to myself and held my hands apart at the level of my hips. Light began to amass between them.
My enemy was a rank A monster. A head-on clash between the two of us could easily result in the same kind of rapidly escalating strife and destruction as had occurred when I fought with Vlad. It was true that surprise attacks were a dishonest path to victory, but if I got it over with and buried Beelzé now, while he still slept, I could prevent the fallout a proper battle would cause.
The light between my hands had grown into a sphere ten centimeters in diameter. I took aim, prepared to blow the entire building away with Death Beam, and—
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Just before I was about to fire, a cold, inhuman voice fell upon me from above. I immediately looked up and saw something in the shape of a man hovering in the sky ten feet overhead. An elderly man dressed in a long tailcoat, his ashen hair all swept back.
I had heard the same details from Tigaro when she was leaving the mansion: the figure before me matched her description of Beelzé to a T.
“DEATH BEAM!” I cried, letting loose the bluish-white beam without a moment’s delay the very instant I had surmised the man’s identity. Emanating from my hands, pressed together like two sides of a triangle, the beam grew until it was extremely thick and seemed to strike Beelzé directly, devouring him whole.
“Even more beautiful,” he said after a pause. “What a brilliant light—it’s just like the glow of the moon.” The voice, flat and without clear emotion, seemed to be in front of me. I promptly lowered my gaze and saw Beelzé standing about ten meters to my fore.
No monster had ever dodged Death Beam before. I hadn’t taken my eyes off of him for even a split second, and yet...Beelzé must have avoided the attack in the brief moment that my vision was blinded by the flash of light. Only by moving with obscene speed could he have evaded my attack in such a small window.
I was able to alter the trajectory of my beams by moving my hands while firing, but it was clear that even if I did, he would likely dodge my attacks. I would have to restrict Beelzé’s movement before firing my beam.
I stopped shooting Death Beam and, in the same motion, encased Beelzé inside of Shield Beam. He reached out and placed a hand on the inside of his cage, a thin, bluish-white film of light. The moment his fingers made contact, they were repelled with a sharp crackle.
“It’s no use! You won’t be able to get out of there!” I said.
“So it seems,” Beelzé replied nonchalantly. Even the recognition that he had been trapped wasn’t enough to shake his composure.
In the same position, Vlad had lost his cool and shouted, “Stop that at once and remove this stupid, horrid shield!” Why, I wondered, was Beelzé able to remain so calm? Could it be that he had dodged my Death Beam not with incredible speed but, perhaps, with something like teleportation? If that were the case, then Shield Beam would be effectively meaningless. But then again...if Beelzé could escape, he would likely already be doing so. The evidence suggested that he was not, in fact, capable of breaking free on his own, but... If that’s the case, then why isn’t he panicking?
“And why won’t you speak? Haven’t you come here with something to say to me?” he asked dispassionately, his eyes piercing me with a cold gaze. I had, of course, come to kill him, not speak with him. Why, I wondered, had he been outside in the first place? To look at the moon? To enjoy the evening breeze? Or, perhaps...
“Did you see me coming and then come outside?” I asked.
“One of the insects I’d sent to the mansion came back to inform me that a visitor was on his way. I thought it prudent to come meet the guest myself before he set foot inside.”
“One of the insects at the mansion...” I said. Suddenly, the buzzing sound of insect wings passed my ear. The fly that had flown by me thrust itself at the bluish-white light of the dome shield and was promptly repelled. The sight made me realize that I had thought I’d heard a similar noise when leaving the mansion. I had paid it no heed, but it had been one of Beelzé’s underlings all along.
So it isn’t just devil flies that he is able to control!
My strategy of blowing away his house without a fight had failed, but Beelzé was, nonetheless, locked up by Shield Beam. An insect caught in a bug cage, as it were. Circumstances may have been different than expected, but that didn’t change that my opponent was at a disadvantage.
Despite that, he remained unnaturally calm. I began to wonder whether he had something up his sleeve with which to turn the tables. If he did, why wasn’t he using it? Killing Beelzé in this situation would be easy. Just as I had with Vlad, I could fire a massive Death Beam, and as long as I dropped Shield Beam at the right time, he would be engulfed by the attack.
That was well and good, but Beelzé was acting as though he had a trump card yet to be played that would change things entirely. The fact that he hadn’t used it yet, whatever it was, seemed to signal that he was waiting for me to give him an opportune moment.
If I fired Death Beam, the effusion of bright light would create a small window of opportunity while it disoriented me. That, I figured, was what Beelzé was waiting for. It was possible that I was overthinking things, but my opponent was a level A monster. Aside from his ability to control devil flies, there was no telling what other powers he could be hiding.
I needed to get a better feel for Beelzé’s capabilities before firing Death Beam.
“By the way, are you an adventurer?” he asked.
“What’ll you do if I answer yes?”
“Caution you that it is in your interest to let me out of here without delay, that’s what,” Beelzé said, seeming to confess that he was unable to break free on his own. Why, I wondered, would he solidify his disadvantage by giving that away? Was it intended as a ruse to throw me off my guard?
“What are you doing? Let me out. Now. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
“And why will I regret it?”
“You are an adventurer, are you not? The fact that you came here equipped with the knowledge of my being the Lord of the Flies means that Monstro must have cried and begged you to, right?”
“And so what if he did?”
“You attend to the needs of others, listen to their requests, face danger on their behalf... An adventurer like that could not simply stand by and watch as the people of this town meet their end.”
What is he trying to say? Should I fail to capture Beelzé, the devastation wrought upon the city would be much worse.
“You seem to be of the mind that if you defeat me, that will be the end of the matter. Unfortunately for you, things aren’t so simple. If I die, there will be no one to control the devil flies,” he said. If Beelzé were killed, then, the devil flies currently confined to the Great Forest would be scattered about every which way.
“In that case, I’ll just keep you trapped here and exterminate the devil fly swarm first!”
“Impossible. You’ve already proved incapable of dealing with my movements. The devil flies boast speed equal to my own. You’ll never be able to keep up.”