“M-me? A daemonist? Preposterous! I am a proud conjuror! The insolence!” The so-called adjutant ranted at us in a screaming rage.
Next to him, Diane stared in wide-eyed silence. She started to slowly scoot away. Apparently, she hadn’t trusted this adjutant much to begin with.
“I am from the warrior clan,” Lade intoned. “I can always sniff out a daemonist.”
“Th-the warrior clan?!” The adjutant snarled. “You dirty, ignorant hunter!”
Diane blinked. “That clan…? This guy?”
The warrior clan were a nomadic people destined to hunt daemons and daemonists. The Schultz seemed to know them by name. Both the worried expression on the adjutant’s face and the fear in Diane’s eyes held weight, if in subtly different ways.
“You would talk of smell? What you mean is you’re merely guessing. You can’t judge someone based on looks alone. Don’t you need to carry out one of your ‘examinations’?”
I had once undergone an examination by the warrior clan myself. In fact, we were technically still waiting for a judgment. The procedure consisted of using a tool called the “Daemon’s Sight,” a vessel containing daemon blood, and making a judgment based on the reaction of the fluid contained within. As someone who’d suffered the cloud of suspicion that came with an accusation of daemonism, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of sympathy for the adjutant.
“There’s no need for us to convene a formal tribunal,” Lade said, holding a tool that resembled a crystal ball in his hand. There was a red-and-black lump of daemon blood enclosed in the middle of the sphere. To conduct the examination, the adjutant needed only to touch the surface of the ball, and we would look at the reaction of the blood inside.
“I don’t like it, but he is an expert,” said Clara. “We should probably perform the examination, just in case.” She wore a complicated expression on her face. I felt certain she was recalling the commotion that had transpired when the warrior clan suddenly showed up at Castle Getaeus.
“Yeah…” I nodded, but I wasn’t ready for what the adjutant would do next.
“M-Margilus?! Is it really you, Lord?! Are you truly Geo Margilus?!” His distorted expression suddenly turned outright daemonic as he pressed me with questions. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t introduced myself, so what was he going on about?
“W-well, yes, but…”
“Then die!” The bald man glared at me with eyes opened so wide they looked like perfect circles. I could see a sinister flame flickering in their depths.
“He’s conjuring!” Clara stood steadfast in front of me.
“Adjutant!” Diane called out. “Stop this at once!”
What kind of attack was he attempting? My body went tense. Specifically, I felt a thump against the left side of my chest. It was light, like getting punched with a baby’s fist. “What was that?”
“Why didn’t that kill you?! Your heart is supposed to stop! M-my Evil Eye…it didn’t work?!”
Diane was aghast. “Y-you really tried to kill him?”
Both the trembling, bound adjutant and Diane were dumbstruck. Was his “Evil Eye” that thump I’d felt?
In previous experiments, I’d found that the magic of this world was considered a physical attack by most of my own spells. My wizardry couldn’t normally protect against sorcery. I didn’t really understand, but the inherent resistance of my body as a Level 36 wizard must have won out against his magical strike.
“Hyaaaaagh!” The adjutant’s mouth opened so wide I thought it would tear. His cry was fraught with so much hatred that it sent chills down my spine. His eyes turned yellow and clouded over. I remembered the daemonists of Relis City. Lade had been right.
“You monster!” Reyha wrapped her arms around the still-screaming adjutant’s neck, trying to hold him down, but…
“Graaagh!” The bald man’s neck stretched like the body of a snake. His mouth, open to its limit, was now lined with sharp fangs. His long neck recoiled like a loaded spring, completely unaffected by Reyha’s grip.
He turned toward me. “Geo!”
“Eeek!” Clara and Elisabel both screamed.
“Whoa.” I never would have imagined this. I desperately wanted to protect Clara, standing before me, but I couldn’t think to do anything except push her out of the way.
The monstrous, snake-like head of the adjutant stopped just short of eating my face. That was thanks to the sudden sweep of Lade’s hand, striking like a falcon from the side.
Flustered, I took that opportunity to retreat with the women. Ild was also backing up, but he kept his eyes on the threat, shuffling one step at a time.
“Hmph.” Lade snorted, as if the whole thing was only a slight irritation. Clad in his strange armor, clenching the head of the adjutant within his fist, he looked like nothing less than an angry god.
“Gyaaaaaah!”
Squish.
Lade crushed the adjutant’s head in one hand. It was the most grotesque sound I’d ever heard, in this world or my own. If I hadn’t stepped back, I would have been covered with the bodily fluids that escaped his remains.
“Man…thanks,” I said to Lade. “You really saved me.”
“That was awfully impressive,” Clara agreed.
Lade didn’t reply. He just nodded, expressionless. He casually tossed the remains of the adjutant aside.
“Lord, this means…” Reyha looked understandably ill.
“T-to think that humans can become such monstrosities…” Elisabel and the others seemed to be fighting nausea.
“Master Margilus! Are you all right?” Ted and his team, previously busy preparing the camp, had noticed the commotion and started gathering around.
“Well…” So, even daemonists are involved in the Filsand and Schultz clan dispute. This is going to be even more of a pain than I thought. I rubbed my brow with my fingers. “First, let’s do something about the poor girl. Then, let’s restart the discussions.”
Diane, daughter of the barbarian clan’s patriarch, had screamed bloody murder and then fainted after seeing a fellow clan member get his head crushed right in front of her eyes. Where she lay upon the ground, she was speckled with his remains.