Cion’s getting tortured to death.
I could see it happening right in front of me, but despite it all, my body utterly refused to move. I needed to go save her right this instant. I needed to go punch that devil in the face, kick him to a pulp, and shut him up for good. I understood all of that, but my thoughts couldn’t keep up.
I’m...the Demon Lord’s...? Cion did what...? No, let’s forget my parentage for the moment—the truth about Cion’s actions isn’t anything I didn’t already know.
The Demon Lord had wanted peace. Cion had assassinated him. Those were the facts. But none of the things that had followed, from the Hero assassination plot to the White Wolf’s attack to the current invasion, had been Cion’s design. If anything, those had all been the work of people trying to use her actions as justification.
It isn’t Cion’s fault.
“It isn’t Cion’s fault!”
I repeated it to myself, and I tightened my grip on my bible.
My legs sprang into motion.
I focused my internal mana on healing, and I tried to gather up every bit of aether in the air as I cast an orison to create a barrier between Cion and Raven—
“You look terrible. You ought to take a rest right this minute.”
“Huh?”
I only caught a vague sense of motion; I couldn’t see him coming at all. I stared at Raven’s face in a daze as he appeared right in front of me—
“Gah—!”
—and he landed a hit straight to my stomach, knocking all the air out of my lungs.
“Alishia!” Cion slurred out, covered in blood.
She jumped in to defend me, swinging a short sword, but Raven easily dodged back away from her, humming cheerfully to himself.
“There’s no cause for surprise. You’d already realized how different you were from other humans, hadn’t you?” The devil spoke calmly, but he was clearly laughing at me on the inside. “Or did you truly believe that you were a blessed bride granted talent by the Gods?”
The words rolled off his tongue one after another, and he fixed a sticky, leering gaze on me.
“I’ve never thought that even once!” I gritted out.
I’d studied and analyzed orisons and I’d picked up skills, all to supplement my weak body and my lacking brain—all for the sake of survival. I’d needed that power just to keep on living.
“Me, the Demon Lord’s daughter? That’s absolutely ridiculous. I’m a human being. I’m nothing like them!”
I argued back, but I already understood that my reasoning was off the mark. After all—
“Humans are merely a degenerate form of demons—you’ve realized that much, haven’t you?” the devil responded matter-of-factly. “You are a defective product. You carry the blood of the First, yet you failed to awaken to its power. That is why you were cast out, and why you were able to blend in among the world of humankind.”
I couldn’t say it didn’t ring any bells. The devil smiled as he pointed out the answers to my half-formed thoughts and hypotheses.
“That was our Lord’s mercy—the salvation he granted you.”
All of it was the Demon Lord’s will, the devil proclaimed. And it was probably all true. Why had just a blood transfusion from the White Wolf given me the symptoms of a devil-touched? Why was my mana capacity higher than other people’s? Why had I miraculously made it back from the brink of death time after time, with no lingering injuries, and survived to stand here today? If I was a former demon like the saint, then it all started to make some degree of sense. But that would mean becoming an “enemy” in the eyes of the Church—I couldn’t accept that past, not while I was living under their protection.
The saint had been a demon once as well; if she could live as a human, then I wanted to do just the same. For now, I wanted to hold on to my life as a bride of the Gods, so I was averting my eyes from reality.
“Our Lord was murdered by this miscreant,” the devil said, glaring at Cion. For the first time, he was letting undisguised anger show through. “If the blood of our great Lord truly flows in your veins, then fulfill your duty.”
The first to react to those words wasn’t me, but Cion. Her back was to me, but I saw a faint tremble in her shoulders, and I could tell she was fighting the urge to turn around.
“I’m...” —a bride of the Gods, an inquisitor, an enforcer, a murderer—
“—the Hero-Killing Bride. Aren’t you?”
I could feel my blood run cold as the devil whispered.
“No, I—”
Maybe that frantic denial was just a self-defense instinct. I’d spent all this time putting up a front around Cion, and I’d built up a habit of dodging and deflecting whenever the truth was about to come out.
In the name of the Gods, the Hero must die. Those were the divine orders I’d been given originally. That was the biggest reason I’d approached Cion.
I wanted to deny the devil’s words. A counterargument—or just an excuse—was on the tip of my tongue. But—
“Cion...?”
Cion’s reaction was much smaller, much softer than I’d expected. Just a smile, gentle and frail, with a hint of something like resignation.
“I trust you, Alicia. No matter what.”
Cion’s declaration of her resolve stabbed me through the heart.
My knife felt cold and hard in my hand.
“I— I’m...”
Am I here to kill Cion...?
“You possess the qualifications and the motive.” As an inquisitor, and as the Demon Lord’s daughter. The devil’s eyes were calm as he spoke. “Carry out your mission.”
“I’m...”
I drew my knife and ran my fingers along my bible.
There was no need to think about it. I could just keep on doing as I was told and following my orders, the same as I’d always done. That way I’d never go hungry, and I’d never need to search for a place to sleep. I’d never have anyone out to kill me. I’d never have to live a life being toyed with and tormented.
But—
“I... I don’t...”
I don’t want to go back to my days of piling up regrets one after another. Not anymore.
“I’m going to break this chain!”
I turned to face Raven, brandishing my bible and my knife.
His response was simply a quiet, scornful laugh. “Then our feelings are one and the same.”
“What do you mean?”
The devil didn’t lift a finger.
“Aah— Aughhh?!”
Instead, a scream came from one of the mercenaries whose names I didn’t know. The divine soldiers had been rampaging mindlessly all this time, but now they all began devouring their enemies. No—they weren’t targeting the humans, just the demons.
Are they replenishing their mana? No, strengthening themselves?!
“Stop it!” I shouted.
“You yourself said that you wish to break the chain. This is a necessary step to that end.”
Compared to wholesale slaughter, predation instilled its targets with a slightly different flavor of fear. For demons especially, the terror of being devoured by a higher being was a sensation they’d long forgotten. As unfamiliar survival instincts took hold, they stopped in their tracks.
“D-Don’t back down!” someone called out.
Most of them tried to hold firm and stand their ground. But when the arm raised to strike at you suddenly opened a mouth like a giant snake and swallowed up the buddy standing next to you, the tide was inevitably going to shift.
“Don’t panic! Our goal’s still the same!”
The mercenaries, undaunted, did their best to adapt to the changing situation, but the devil-touched were charging in to attack them.
As the divine soldiers ate demons, their bodies swelled up even larger. They took on twisted shapes as they destroyed buildings and people, swallowing everything in their paths.
It’s like a painting of hell.
“Why?” I gritted out. “What are you even trying to do?!”
“I am exterminating demons. That has long been humankind’s desperate desire, after countless years of subjugation by a superior race. They found unity through dubbing that race their enemy, and as they declared that enmity to be the will of the Gods, they sank into despotism.” Raven looked on disinterestedly at the crazed banquet he himself had brought into being. “Power itself is evil. What wrong is there in destroying it?”
“And that’s why you became the Demon Lord’s right hand?”
“No. This is for the sake of our Lord’s dying wish.” As he spoke, his gaze held a quiet grief. “All of it is for the sake of peace.”
He’s insane...
But his eyes were too serious, too filled with regret, to dismiss it as just that.
“Our Lord might have been able to join hands with the weak, but he never truly understood them. We can unite only in the face of death, and we cannot possess power without wielding it.” He spoke like a missionary preaching the truth of the world, and his words reached my ears as though the clamor around us were utterly silent. “All who hold power must face destruction in equal measure.”
So if everyone with power is gone—if the world is left with only the weak—then there won’t be any fighting, and we’ll be able to join hands and coexist as we work toward a better future...?
The devil spouted his hollow drivel without any hesitation, and he held out his hand to me.
“Come to my side. If you do, then I shall treat you kindly as a descendant of the First.”
It was an invitation to peace and safety. This man was genuinely trying to make his delusions into reality. He’d use his divine soldiers to wipe out the military might of both humans and demons, then bring the two sides to the negotiating table. It was an insane fantasy—but would it really bring an end to the fighting?
If our claws and fangs were pulled out, would people— Would we really—
“So that’s the bullshit logic you wanna force onto people?”
A wolfman came walking through the chaotic battlefield like he owned the place. He carried a huge sword slung over his shoulder, and he casually knocked aside attacking devil-touched and divine soldiers as he made his way over to us.
“Long time no see, Slaven. You look like shit, same as always. How’re those burns doing?”
“Veiss...Volg!!!”
The devil’s face instantly flooded with rage.
“Don’t bother listening to him, brats. He’s just another asshole trying to make everyone go along with whatever crap he spouts.”
“You speak only of yourself, you blood-crazed murderer!”
Raven created a fireball and threw it at Veiss, but one swing of that giant sword effortlessly cleaved it apart.
“Haven’t you heard? Out here on the battlefield, a champion’s just whoever kills the most guys.”
“That is what I despise about you!”
The wolfman and the devil clashed, sending out shock waves that tore up the ground and blew away buildings. As the brutal fight raged on like a storm, all Cion and I could do was stand there and watch.
“Do... Do you hate me, Alicia?” Cion mumbled without looking at me.