“She looks like a perfectly ordinary girl. Still, I can sense tremendous mana from this sealing magic, though it feels...dark. It’s the same kind of mana you possess, Sir Loki,” Simon said as he studied Aria.
“That’s correct. She is a colossal mass of demon mana.” Loki, too, was watching her. “If that mana is released, mana much like the underworld’s will spread across the entirety of the human world. As a result, demons beyond the demon lord will be able to open gates to travel between our worlds.”
“Indeed. Even if the Seven Heroes had defeated her, this biological weapon would have spread demon mana across the entire world, so they were forced to seal her away.”
According to Loki, the teleportation method the demon army currently used—the Character Gate—required the demon lord for the preparatory procedure. If the demon lord was defeated in this war and disappeared for good this time, there would be no more demon invasions, at least not until a shenmo of Beelzebub’s caliber appeared again. Even the underworld didn’t often give rise to an outlandish, unmatched genius like him.
Therein lay the problem. Chief Simon wanted it to be trivial for demons to come to the human world, because without an enemy, the Humanity Defense Coalition would become obsolete. A large-scale invasion like the current demon invasion was a real problem for him, but more restrained attacks with only some harm brought to humanity would be ideal.
Simon chuckled at the thought. “With this, our status will remain secure.”
“And I’ll be able to easily sell goods from the underworld across the entire human world,” Loki said.
“We shall cooperate with you, Sir Loki. You’re a very practical individual.”
While the two of them counted their chickens before they hatched, the blue piece of the crystal broke.
“It appears the detached unit is doing its job properly,” Simon said with a grin.
The Third Kingdom was shorthanded because of its fight against the demon army, so Simon had sent a unit of coalition soldiers to its castle. The crack on the crystal was a sign that they’d just destroyed the underground seal stone.
“Not even the Seven Heroes know this, but the Seventh Kingdom’s seal stone isn’t underneath its royal castle. The Seventh Kingdom’s king placed a fake one there. ‘To fool your enemies you must first fool your friends,’ and all that. The real one is right here,” Loki said. He poured mana into one of the walls of the room Aria was sealed in, and the wall slid to the side to reveal a secret storage space. A silver-colored stone was inside—the Seventh Kingdom’s seal stone.
“I see! So, this is a complete blind spot,” Simon said. “The seal stones need to regularly send mana through the ley lines to maintain the seal, but nothing prevents you from placing a stone next to the seal itself.”
“I’m going to break the stone now. Get ready,” Loki said.
Simon gave a signal to his men, who aimed their anti-demon guns at the girl.
“Will these weapons really be sufficient?” Simon asked.
“Yes. I might have called her a mass of mana, but her body remains that of a regular human girl’s. She’s similar to our Master Unicorn in that regard. If you execute her while she’s still unconscious, right after the seal has lifted, she won’t have the time to struggle,” Loki replied.
“And the only thing left will be the underworld mana flowing from her corpse. Then I see no cause for alarm.”
“Exactly. All right, here I go. Take that!” Loki raised his right fist and smashed the silver-colored seal stone to bits.
A moment later, the silver part of the crystal around Aria broke. Large cracks soon forked like lightning across the rest of the crystal, until the whole thing shattered with an earsplitting noise.
A girl who looked around thirteen years old emerged from the now-broken seal. Outside of the crystal, it was easier to examine her. She had long black hair, and though she was yet plain and immature, it was easy to imagine her growing up into a beauty. However, she was so thin—or more accurately, emaciated—that her limbs seemed like they could break as easily as twigs.
Even Simon had his apprehensions about watching such a young girl be disposed of, but he did everything for the everlasting prosperity of the Humanity Defense Coalition.
“Fire!” he commanded.
Several gunshots echoed in unison and the bullets rained down on the unconscious girl, but right as they were about to hit her, they were obstructed by some invisible force.
“Wh-What the hell is that?!” Simon shouted in shock.
It was challenging to describe the true nature of the thing stopping the bullets. If Simon were to try and express it in a single word, it would be “noise.” It was a mysterious energy, as if the world itself was some kind of picture muddled by black paint. It was impossible to identify what kind of mana it was. It didn’t fit under any of the six human elements that Simon was familiar with, nor any of the six colors of demon magic. If he had to choose, it might be most comparable to Alan’s mana of light, a unique element, but it was too ominous, too dissimilar.
Either way, Simon couldn’t afford to remain surprised forever. They had to kill her before she woke up.
“Fire again!” His men obeyed, but no matter how many times they tried, the bullets were blocked by the noise and vanished before they could reach her. “Wh-What’s going on here?! Sir Loki! Didn’t you say it would be simple to kill her while she’s unconscious?!”
Loki simply chuckled. He’d laughed uproariously several times on their way there, but this time was different. It was like his deepest desire had finally been satisfied.
“That is her Miasma of Rejection, an ability that surpasses all others! It’s a flawless wall that protects her body by indiscriminately eliminating anything that comes into contact with it,” Loki said.
The girl finally cracked her eyes open. They were like a bottomless swamp that reflected something other than this world.