A strained cry rang out from somewhere. One after another, black-charred lumps fell away from Raven’s body, swelled, and grew—
“What the hell are those?!”
—taking on the forms of women.
“For God created a being of his own flesh to become his mate, and life flourished upon the earth...” Raven muttered deliriously. “All of you... Return to your mothers’ bellies...”
The reddish-black humanoid figures with wings sprouting from their backs—monsters in the shape of women—all bared their fangs at once.
“Fight them off!”
The innkeeper shouted to the mercenaries, and the Golden Lion roared out a battle cry. Cion sliced through one of the gynoid creatures that had appeared in front of me, and Veiss pulverized another. But the halved lumps of meat recombined and reformed, and the monster latched on to the wolfman’s arm.
“Ugh, that’s creepy as fuck!”
Once they’d been smashed, crushed, and ground down into small enough pieces, they seemed to stop regenerating. But not everyone could fight the way that champion did.
“G-Gaaaah?!” someone screamed.
Mercenaries grappled the monsters from behind, and demons bit into the things’ necks, but they seemed to be incapable of feeling pain; they ignored our attacks and ceaselessly continued their assault.
“Alicia!”
Turning back to Cion’s voice, I saw Raven closing in on us, eyes ablaze with fury. His skin was burned raw, and his red-charred arms were dyed in blood. But he kept on charging at us without a care for his own destruction.
“You... All of you!”
“Please, calm down—!”
His arm grew gigantic as he raised it over his head, and he began swinging it down hard enough to crush us to a pulp.
“Alicia!”
Cion shoved me away, urging me to flee—
“Hgah...?” But Raven froze in place. “Ah... Aauhaaa... Aaaaaaggghh?!”
He flinched back, clutching at his stomach. Something came splattering out of his mouth, and all of the creepy arms, eyes, and gaping maws across his body began to peel off and fall away.
“No, no, no! I... I shall be... Demon Lord—!”
Demonification required taking in an excess of mana, and that overdose produced a recoil effect. Whenever I went through it myself, it always left me in bad shape for a little while afterward. I wasn’t sure whether it was the strain of my body trying to return to its original form, or exhaustion from reawakening traits that had originally lain dormant within me, but was Raven experiencing that same effect?
What’s more, the amount of blood I’d been given didn’t even compare to what he’d taken in. If he’d been continually absorbing mana since last night’s battle, then—
“Spit it all out right this second! You’re going to die!” I shouted.
Raven’s response was dazed. “I... Iiii...”
His body was swelling out of control, heedless of his own will, and he groaned and writhed as he tried to hold it back. All the while, the monsters he’d created were still attacking humans and devouring demons.
First the divine soldiers, now these imitation humans—what the hell were all these freaks?!
“If these things are Gods, then I want a damn divorce!”
Cion and I were both lying in the rubble; I locked eyes with her, but she was pretty much at her limit too. I’d sucked out some of Raven’s mana, even if only for a moment—was that why I could still move?
“How long do you plan on playing around, Sir Veiss?!”
I yelled at the wolfman turning monsters into mincemeat, and his ears twitched uncomfortably.
“Do I look like the kinda freak who gets off on smashing women to bits, brat?!”
“You look like the kind of wolf who’d eat a woman up, at least!”
I turned to the innkeeper—no use. He was too busy coordinating the mercenaries. The Golden Lion was doing his best to help out as well, but he’d been exhausted to begin with, and he was still running around protecting badly injured humans. The only ones I could use were these two here...
“Can you hear me, Raven?! I’m going to repeat it one last time: Spit out all the mana you’ve collected, right this instant! It’s not too late—I’ll take it in and heal your injuries for you! You don’t want to explode in a shower of guts, do you?!”
I kept my guard up as I shouted, bracing myself for whatever he might launch back at me, but what I got in response was indignant rage.
“So you’re going to look down on me too...? Call me a lower life-form?!”
“You—”
Sharp claws came thrusting out at me, and I immediately raised my bible to block them, parrying and dodging strike after strike.
“Why is that what you’re assuming?!” I shouted.
“Blood... Give me your blood!”
Raven’s eyes were bloodshot as he advanced on me. Right now, rather than a devil, he looked like just a human being who’d lost his way. Just a weakling who’d lost his Lord, sought out power, wailed and lamented that the world had rejected him, and made it everyone else’s problem.
I wasn’t enough of a well-adjusted human to empathize with him—but I could at least relate to his plight, born as a slave and forced to seek out power in order to survive. I could understand. I hated this shitheap world that wouldn’t let us live any other way, and if there really were any Gods out there, I wanted them to do something about this mess.
“But all the same, what you’re trying to do is wrong!”
Even if he killed everyone with power and created a world of only the weak, conflict would still break out sooner or later. And moreover, the God—the Demon Lord—who’d created that world would become an avatar of terror.
“Your Lord refrained from wielding his power because he wanted to break that chain, didn’t he?!”
“You are unworthy to speak of my Lord!!!”
His anger grew, and the fierceness of his attacks with it. Just as I was starting to have trouble handling him on my own, Cion jumped in to help me. But Raven kept single-mindedly rushing at me, not caring whether he got injured.
“What do you know of my Lord?! Why do you stand with the one who killed him—who killed your own father?! How can you entrust your back to that murderer?!”
Every one of his blows had the weight of pure rage behind it, and even though I was parrying them, they still reverberated through my bones.
“Because I believe that we can join hands—that we can understand one another!”
“That is merely a whim of the mighty! Or would you have me lower myself to a mere pet?! Do you truly expect me to believe that you are content with where you stand?! You, who serve your Church that preaches the word of Gods you have never believed in?!”
I could tell that if I took even a single one of those strikes head-on, it’d blow me away instantly. I focused on dodging rather than parrying, only using my bible and my orisons to haphazardly fend off the blows I absolutely couldn’t avoid in time.
“Only those who have power have a say in the world!” he shouted. “Only they can decide what to save and what to abandon! You understand that perfectly—that is why you cling to your title of bride! Why you use the names of the Gods!!!”
“No, I—!”
We were the same, somewhere deep down. I understood that much. And that was exactly why I had to stand against him.
“What about you?! You’ve met people who’ve mattered to you too, haven’t you?!” I called out.
I’d been abandoned in that field of snow, and I’d been taken in by the orphanage. I’d been desperate to survive—if the Church hadn’t sheltered me, maybe I would’ve turned to a life of crime. But that wasn’t what had happened. I’d met a teacher who I admired and respected, and I’d been blessed with a boss who annoyed the hell out of me. The Hero who’d slain the Demon Lord had gotten attached to me, and the Champion of the Kingdom had entrusted her to my care.
“I believe there’s more to our nature than merely taking from one another!” I tore out a few pages from my bible and tossed them in the air to create smoke bombs. “We should be able to help one another—to understand one another!”
“Then understand me!!! Accept me!!!” More mana poured into his rampaging flesh, sending it further out of control. “FEED MEEEEE!!!”
The bloated, shambling thing before me almost looked like one of the divine soldiers. It felt too crude and pathetic to call a monster. A gigantic mouth opened, splitting Raven’s face from one ear to the other, and I...
“If that’ll settle this peacefully...”