They were just exchanging words, but this standoff was a powder keg of lethal violence. Cion was acting calm and at ease, but sweat was beading on her forehead. As for me, my hand had already begun moving involuntarily to reach for my bible. That thing—that devil standing in front of us—filled me with a different sort of dread than I’d felt when I’d faced General Heavenfang. This wasn’t some primal survival instinct. It was the sensation of gazing up at a being of my own species, but one unreachably high above me nevertheless—a bleak and terrible awe.
First the White Wolf, then the former Crimson Witch, and now this freak—there were just too many damn monsters out there.
As we squared off, the archbishop leaped forward before we could make a move.
“Ohhhh! Ohhh, almighty God! How blessed are we, that You should deign to appear before us here!” He knelt down in front of Raven and bowed his head reverently, trembling with joy. “O God! O great and merciful God! Please, I beseech You, guide these poor lost lambs back into the fold!”
This is asinine.
“Turn off the blind faith for one damn second! What part of that looks like a God to you?! He’s obviously shady as all hell!”
Raven was dressed in a tacky tuxedo and a robe that somehow fluttered in a nonexistent breeze. He looked like an archdevil straight out of a ham-fisted morality play—the kind where little kids would boo the moment he showed up onstage.
“What are you saying?!” the archbishop shouted. “Do you not feel His presence?! His overwhelming power?! He is unmistakably a God!”
“You’re a damn priest! Are you seriously just going along with this?!”
“Shut up! Shut your mouth, you stupid bride!”
He turned around and cast a barrier orison shining with brilliant light—a miracle of the Gods.
“This is where you start acting like a real archbishop?!” I groaned. “Listen to me, Your Excellency. That man is our enemy. He’s been feeding you false prophecies and directing the demons to attack us. He’s a bad guy. Please, open your eyes!”
“Enough of your foolish prattle! His wisdom and His guidance are what brought me where I am today! Even if His revelations are false, He nevertheless wields power to equal the Gods Themselves!”
“That’s worse! You understand that, don’t you?!”
We’re about to have to fight it out with that guy, dammit. If you’re on his side too, this is going to be an absolute nightmare.
“This is your final warning!” I called out. “Is this really the hill you want to die on, you stupid bishop?! Think about your damn job!”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up, you little whore!”
“I suppose he must have cracked from sheer terror and lost his mind...”
That probably wasn’t it, but I prayed to the Gods for it to be true.
“Ohhhh! O God! I shall do whatever You command of me!” the dumbass said, practically wagging his tail at the devil who’d attacked the Church—the enemy of the Gods. “I, Yosephon, shall pledge my eternal service to Youuuuu!”
“And I shall accept your obedience,” Raven replied. “Come to my side.”
“Yes, my God!”
He’s not your damn God, you idiot.
To top it all off, the stupid bishop placed a kiss on the devil’s extended right hand, gazing up at him with envious awe.
Kissing the hand of the Demon Lord’s right hand basically means you’ve kissed the Demon Lord’s hand, doesn’t it?
“Forget it. Let’s just beat up both of them, Cion.”
“Yeah... Let’s do it.”
We glared across the barrier at them—but as they stood there, calm and composed, the gap in power between us and them was obvious. Idiot or not, Yosephon was an archbishop; if nothing else, his skill with orisons was probably better than mine. And judging by Cion’s reaction, Raven was really bad news as well.
“If you will not come at us, then stand there and watch,” Raven said. “I must reward those who fulfill their duty to me. What do you wish for, Bishop? Money? Power? Women? Whatever you desire, simply name it.”
“My— My God! All I could ever wish is to serve You at Your side...”
“Very well. Then I shall grant you power suitable to serve me.”
Raven calmly grabbed the archbishop’s head. Without so much as a flinch, he buried his fingertips in the man’s skull.
“Hghhhh?! Wh-What are You—?!”
“I am giving you your reward, just as promised.”
As he spoke, the archbishop’s veins bulged, and his body jolted and twitched.
“Aghaah— Hgawawawawa!”
“What’d I just tell you?!” I groaned angrily.
I had no idea what he was pumping into the archbishop, but Yosephon was frantically clawing at himself all over; he’d lost all control of his body.
“We’re breaking through!” I shouted to Cion. “At this rate, he’ll—”
That was when it happened.
“Ah— Ba?”
The archbishop swelled up like a balloon, then burst. Blood and viscera flew out all around him, soiling the miraculous barrier with scarlet.
“Wha...” Cion was left speechless.
As for me... In an instant, I realized exactly what had happened.
“This is why devil-touched are born among humans—why humans are weaker than demons...”
The barrier vanished, and the blood and guts that had stuck to it splattered to the ground.
“I see the defective product has kept up with her studies, at least,” Raven said coldly.
“Who are you calling defective?!”
I willed myself to calm down. The archbishop had just been subjected to the same thing he’d been doing to all those captured demons—that was all it was. When a person’s body received a large influx of mana, it had to find a place to store it. Some people, like me and Veil Croitzen, had a certain degree of physiological tolerance; and some people had demonic blood in their ancestry and were born as devil-touched. For anyone else, though, it quickly became a lethal dose. Just like a balloon would pop if you filled it with too much air, a normal human’s body would explode, unable to withstand the excess mana. That stupid bishop had just gotten unlucky.