Chapter 236 - The Creator's Transgression

At Ureas's anguished cry, Ferda wondered,

'Olivia does?'

He had never once thought of Olivia that way, so he had assumed she felt the same. Every man had showered her with favors—and just as many lecherous looks. Ferda could scarcely comprehend the idea of her loving anyone.

"Even the much-admired Grand Duke Gold! Even Alexander! Even I! We want her so desperately, so why don't you?!"

Ureas continued.

"..."

"If she has inspired desire, then surely she should belong to someone who follows that desire! How can heaven be so indifferent?!"

His mournful weeping lasted only a moment before hatred blazed in his eyes again.

"I'll kill you, and Olivia will be mine. This castle will be mine. Everything will be mine...!"

Ferda was certain.

'He's been exposed to a Trauma.'

Traumas brainwashed humans by turning their regrets into joy, but Ferda remembered what Gokma had said: the Trauma at the place he had visited was special. If that meant it amplified delusions of persecution like these, it made sense.

Ferda reached a conclusion. Changed like this, Ureas was no longer a factor Olivia could control. A tool beyond control had only one fate left.

'I'll eliminate him.'

At the same time, a doubt arose. Could he actually take this thing down?

The black body suggested Demon conversion, but the flames engulfing it were far from ordinary. He had never heard of a Demon like this. Could this really be Ureas's true form, as he claimed? If so, Ferda was facing an unknown entity, and he had no assurance of victory against the unknown.

'If it comes to it, I can use my last resort.'

Ferda was a mage. A mage always kept a final means of turning the tables close to his heart.

Just then, a chill swept in from behind him. But it was not aimed at him, so he stayed where he was. An arrow imbued with silver light flew past his back.

"Graaagh!!"

The bow had such a powerful draw that the arrow drove even the monstrous Ureas backward. Ferda turned toward its origin. Knights bearing the imperial army's insignia stood there, their commander towering among them. The man with the enormous greatsword on his back was Oldin Ruster.

He approached, glanced at Ferda, then walked straight past him and greeted Ureas courteously.

"Good day, Prince Ureas."

"Ruster... You attacked me knowing who I was?!"

As Ureas vented his fury, the flames grew fiercer. Ruster had deliberately ruled out any excuse that he had mistaken the prince for a Demon.

"Grand Duke Gold asked me to convey these words."

Count Ruster drew his greatsword.

"No ill will. Everything is for the Empire."

"RUSTEEER!!!"

"Everyone, attack!"

They launched an all-out assault on Ureas. No longer the focus of attention, Ferda quietly withdrew a few steps.

'So this was the plan all along.'

Attacking the Heinkel Kingdom had been a pretext to gather everyone in one place. They intended to exploit the chaos inside the inner castle to eliminate Ureas. They only needed to choose the moment themselves.

Ureas's attention had been diverted, but something still left Ferda uneasy. They might share an enemy, but was this man really his ally? Keeping that question in mind, Ferda supported Count Ruster. Whatever else happened, Ureas had to be eliminated here.

* * *

In the audience chamber at the deepest part of the inner castle, the king of Heinkel watched everything unfold.

"Everything is going as intended," he said.

"King Heodret did escape under Odograsado's protection... But that has worked out even better. Now I can exact my revenge."

"I'm truly glad things have gone as intended."

Gokma lightly patted the king's shoulder.

"I've done so much for you. I trust you will do something for me in return."

"Of course. Even if my revenge fails, I will sacrifice myself for you first."

"That is good to hear."

Gokma was about to leave when the king belatedly asked,

"May I ask you one question?"

"Please do."

"Ureas... What is that man?"

Ureas Arken. One of the targets of the king's revenge, and the man he most wanted dead after Heodret. Yet unlike with Heodret, Gokma had not let him have his way.

"You said Ureas was an excellent piece to have on the board."

"I did."

"At first... I thought you meant to turn him into a Demon and use him."

The king could see Ureas vividly. Fighting Count Ruster's troops, his form grew more distorted as his anger mounted.

The king knew the sequence of events that had led to Ureas's transformation. A minor illusion spell had been cast on him when he entered the inner castle, and he had readily fallen for it. It had lured him to a Trauma—a room where an improved Trauma waited, one Linne claimed was on an entirely different level from the others. There, Ureas had been exposed to its hypnosis. That was all. His appearance had changed afterward.

"Does that Trauma turn people into Demons?"

"Let me ask you this. Do you think what Ureas has become is a Demon?"

The king recalled what he had sensed and shook his head.

"No. He felt fundamentally different from the Demons being created here."

"Yes. As you suspected, that is not a Demon."

"Then what in the world..."

Gokma spoke.

"The Arken Empire harbors a great secret. An empire so vast naturally has many secrets. One of them is a secret pact with the dragons."

"A secret... pact?"

"All the demonic creatures that recently tried to attack the Empire were killed by Silverwind's descendants and Storeus. You know that, yes?"

"Yes. I've heard."

"Why would the great dragons suddenly intervene in human affairs? They so rarely act. Making promises to humans, who feel the passage of time more keenly than anyone, would amount to no more than a trivial diversion."

Thinking about it, it certainly was strange. Silverwind's people took no interest in anything outside the far north. Storeus was capricious; his helping anyone was as unusual as a thunderbolt from a clear sky. One thing was certain: no fortune, however vast, could buy their services as troubleshooters.

"Because it isn't a promise. It's a chain."

"What sort of chain?"

Gokma smiled as he answered.

"One might call it a creator's transgression against his creation."

"And you're saying that is connected to Ureas's current appearance."

"Yes."

Even merely hearing this, the king sensed that something was deeply amiss. He focused on Ureas's form.

"I see. I understand."

Now he understood what Gokma meant. At first, he had thought it was simply a relationship between parent and child, but the more that form twisted, the more fitting the words "creator" and "creation" became.

"The Arken Empire so often uses it in its propaganda. The golden bloodline, was it?"

"That's right."

"The golden bloodline."

Repeating the words, Gokma gave an incredulous laugh.

"How ironic. Those who occupy the noblest station have no idea that the very blood they consider most base and contemptible also runs through their veins."

* * *

Count Ruster's troops rained down attacks without hesitation, intent on killing Ureas. He was unmistakably on the defensive. Whenever he tried to move, they blocked him, and Ruster's greatsword severed his limbs again and again.

"Aaagh! Aaaaagh!!"

His agonized screams never ceased.

"I'll kill you! All of you! I'll kill every last one of you!!"

He spat curses, refusing to break under despair. And astonishingly, the more he cursed, the more it was Ruster's troops who found themselves on the defensive.

A heart pierced over a thousand times. Limbs severed dozens upon dozens of times. As he was cut, slashed, and regenerated over and over, his body gradually lost its humanity and was molded into a particular shape.

"What is that thing...?"

The archers and mages voiced their fear at the sight.

Given its shape, their reaction was entirely understandable. Ferda, too, had initially thought he had merely become some kind of Demon.

'A dragon...?'

His form changed as though shedding its skin, coming to resemble a dragon. The remaining quarter of his face wore away, becoming an elongated snout with lizardlike eyes. Wings sprouted from his back, dripping bright red lava.

'No. That's not it...'

It certainly looked like a dragon, but it was not one. Ureas's form was crude. Any dragon who saw it would call it an insult.

'Desecration.'

Ferda seized on that word. Yes, this form was a desecration of dragons. With that thought, every piece fell into place, and he could identify it.

'Amon.'

One of the seven Great Demons of Hell: Amon, the demon of flame and destruction. He despised the dragons that ruled the surface world and, to desecrate them, shaped all his servants in their likeness. For that desecration, no dragon—Guardian Dragon or Evil Dragon—could ever forgive him.

'Strange.'

Ferda wondered why he had not realized it sooner. Those grotesque horns and the pouring lava should have given it away. But there was a reason he had missed it.

'There's no smell of sulfur.'

Anyone who used Hell's magic would have felt a devil's touch, and anyone touched by a devil would carry a faint scent of sulfur. Yet Ureas bore Amon's form without that scent. It was as incongruous as a freshly caught fish with no fishy smell. That was why.

'But stranger still...'

Was Count Ruster. Judging by his reaction, he seemed to have expected that Ureas would eventually become this. How had Ruster known something even Ferda had not?

'No, he probably didn't know either.'

The one who knew the full circumstances was undoubtedly Grand Duke Gold. If Ferda wanted answers, he would have to demand them from the grand duke.

"Don't stop! The Empire stands behind you!"

Even those who had thought Prince Ureas remained somewhere inside that thing stopped thinking about it. They only wanted the damned devil to die quickly.

Ureas's resistance grew fiercer. After sacred power ate away at him again and again, the battle was finally decided. Count Ruster ended it by driving a sacred relic into Ureas's chest.

The raging flames gradually dwindled into embers, and his movements stiffened with them.

"Ah..."

Ureas lamented bitterly.

"Everything should have been in my hands... In my hands... Why..."

He raised both arms, their bones and muscles exposed, toward the sky.

"Ah... Olivia...!"

Those were Ureas's last words. His body turned to stone, then fragments, then sandy dust. Just like the end of every devil.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as the nightmare that had been Ureas vanished. Ferda was about to join the soldiers in doing so.

Then he felt an instinctive chill. Count Ruster, who had fought Ureas at the very front, turned his head slightly. His eyes moved toward Ferda. No—not Ferda, but the mage beside him.

"Bind!"

At the signal, the mage tried to bind Ferda with restraint magic without a moment's hesitation. But the mana never reached him. He had never considered these men allies in the first place, so he evaded it easily.

Their mage had attacked Regent Ferda. Without stopping to think, the soldiers immediately leveled their weapons at him.

Ferda asked,

"What did Grand Duke Gold tell you to say?"

"Unfortunately, he said nothing concerning you, Regent Ferda. Our orders were to eliminate what would become a calamity that threw the Empire into chaos. Ureas was our only target."

"You've just confessed that he ordered the murder of an imperial prince. Do you think you'll be able to return to the Empire?"

"Of course not. We came here to meet our end today. The grand duke desired victory, and our deaths will complete that victory."

"Then go burn yourselves out. Why drag me into it?"

"Isn't the reason obvious?"

Count Ruster rested the hilt of his greatsword on his shoulder and looked at Ferda. Ferda could feel it. The man who had been so businesslike while killing Ureas was now acting on emotion.

"Because you are the grand duke's enemy."

No sooner had one malice ended than Ferda faced another.

"My final act of loyalty will be to slit your throat, Regent."

Ferda silently weighed his options. How could he get out alive? Their eyes showed no weariness despite the fierce battle with Ureas. Taking a few of them with him seemed the most he could hope for.

Just then—

RUMBLE.

The entire ground shook violently. This space had been created by the king of Heinkel's magic. The sudden tremor signaled its collapse: someone had reached the source of the magic and destroyed it.

Space contracted. But that was not the only strange development. Something began to stir in Ureas's collapsed ashes. At the same time, a strong smell of sulfur filled the air.

"H-how?!"

"He was reduced to ashes...!"

But the flames were not red. They shone a fluorescent green. Those ominously colored flames belonged to Gamigin.

A phrase flashed through the minds of everyone present.

A devil comes when a human is most desperate.

It described Ureas's situation exactly. His desperate attachment to life, his rage—he had clung to them even as his flesh crumbled. And now, transcending death, he was manifesting once more.