Chapter 115

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The Hartmann Ricard had come to know was a quiet, dependable man. As a father, and as a husband.

Of course, he could not have been perfect. Ricard did not know why he had killed a priest, but that act had set his entire family on a path of hardship.

So if asked whether every decision and choice Hartmann had made was perfect, the answer would be no.

One thing, however, was certain: he had been more than a woodcutter. He had been a fine father with a warrior’s heart.

And so Ricard respected and mourned him as both a father and a warrior.

Did that mean all that remained was revenge? To honor his memory? No.

To be honest, he simply found the Rubens clan so revolting, so loathsome, that he wanted to kill them.

He did not want to justify himself with pretexts like revenge or mourning. He wanted to kill. That was all. That was what made him a demon.

The killing urge in its purest form arose not from rage or hatred, but from sheer pleasure.

Excitement and rapture at the prospect of slaughter welled up inside him. The more he thought about it, the more restless he became, like a salivating dog. Ricard quietly contemplated that dangerous blade in its purest form.

By doing so, he could draw out its strength without being swept away by the emotion.

Head bowed, Ricard gazed into the abyss, then opened his eyes. Golden energy shimmered within them.

He remembered the old days. The days when he had wandered the Empire alone as a wanted man, slaughtering as he went.

Pasina, in the southeastern Empire, was a region of forests and strangely shaped crags. The Rubens clan’s headquarters, too, stood atop a sheer stretch of rock.

It was not particularly large, but the surrounding terrain was so rugged that it formed a natural fortress, seemingly impossible to capture no matter how many troops marched against it.

Near the castle lay a small village surrounded by forest, with a surprisingly sizable population.

The clan left the villagers alone because having people nearby made it easier to obtain goods and supplies from the outside world.

Their lives were not prosperous, but they did not appear to suffer any particular exploitation or plunder.

Still, the villagers knew that something eerie and terrible was happening in that castle. Fear kept their mouths shut, and they lived each day in anxiety.

It was late afternoon. The sun had not yet turned red. A man in a red cloak walked through the village with his hood up.

An old man was passing with a basket of carrots freshly pulled from his vegetable patch when he dropped one. It rolled to a stop at the stranger’s feet.

The stranger picked up the carrot and held it out to him. As the old man took it, he caught sight of the blazing golden eyes beneath the hood and froze.

Paying him no heed, the stranger walked straight toward the castle. The old man stared after him for a long time.

At a certain point, the road began to slope gently upward. From there, a single narrow path led all the way to the castle, with no railing between it and the deep precipice below.

The man crossed it without fear and reached the gate. It stood open, with only two sentries on duty.

The two sentries watched the lone man approach. It never occurred to them that he might have come to do them harm.

His cloak made it difficult to get a proper look at his attire, but he clearly wore a sword at his waist.

“Hey, this isn’t somewhere you can just wander into.”

“Here to join?”

Wandering swordsmen sometimes came hoping to join the clan. However skilled they were, surviving alone in the wild without a pack was difficult.

But the man continued toward them without a word and stopped before them. Deep shadows made the gateway as dark as evening. It would soon be time to light the brazier.

“Sir, don’t cause any trouble. Consider this a warning.”

The stranger’s utterly unhesitating approach had unsettled and frightened the sentries a little. There was no knowing what might happen. Their change in tone was the first sign.

The man, whose hood was pulled so low that only his lower face showed, spoke quietly. It was Ricard’s voice.

“Blow the alarm whistle.”

“...?”

“I won’t tell you twice.”

A flash of light blazed. The sentry squeezed his eyes shut. He heard something heavy drop, then opened them again.

Dumbfounded, he looked at his companion. His head was gone. He lay on the ground, blood pumping from the severed neck. A chill shot down the sentry’s spine, and he froze.

Without a word, Ricard slowly raised his burning sword and pointed its tip at the whistle hanging around the man’s neck.

What sort of situation was this? The sentry had no wits left to make sense of what was happening. Dazed, he blew hard on the whistle.

FWEEEE!

The piercing sound rang through the castle, and the man who had blown the whistle died that very instant. With the thud of his falling body, two corpses now lay sprawled in the gateway.

Sword in hand, Ricard entered the courtyard.

Though the whistle had rung out clearly, the standby squad took quite some time to appear.

Five or six men emerged at first, only to recoil at the sight of the bodies by the gate and hurry back to their quarters. Then they returned with more men.

Roughly twenty men rushed into the courtyard and surrounded Ricard. Inside the manor-like keep, people merely peered out through the windows.

“Who are you? State your name!”

“Riki.”

Some knew the name and others did not, setting off a stir. Was he that man from back then? You know, the genius swordsman. Red Cloak. But why now? Such words drifted past Ricard.

Amid the murmurs, a man who appeared to command the standby squad shouted, putting on a fearsome expression.

“What is your business here? This is a blatant act of provocation against the Rubens clan!”

Ricard raised his head, revealing eyes that blazed gold beneath the shadow of his low hood.

The instant they met those eyes, the murmuring stopped dead.

“I’ve come to kill you all. Every last one.”

As those words fell like a death sentence, even the mountains and trees surrounding the already silent castle seemed to hold their breath.

By any ordinary measure, the situation made no sense. A lone man had come to fight a clan that had survived this brutal world.

He was not even trying to sabotage the clan’s business. He had simply barged straight in. It was unheard of.

They were dumbfounded by the absurdity of it, yet at the same time, they felt a fearful doubt. What if?

Then several people emerged from the keep. They wore coifs and had the lower halves of their faces covered with something like scarves.

Clans divided their ranks into probationers, trainees, formal pupils, full-fledged clan members, and so on. These people from the keep were the ones who seriously practiced the Rubens clan’s unique Mana Drive.

Perhaps they knew shame after all, for their clothing concealed their somewhat twisted bone structures.

One of them addressed Ricard.

“I still remember what happened four years ago. The enormous losses you inflicted on our clan, and the humiliation you dealt us. Not for a single moment since then have we forgotten our grudge.”

“I don’t particularly care to argue about who was right or wrong now, but weren’t you the ones who ambushed me with some strange poison during the swordsmanship tournament?”

“You killed our Clan Master first, back when you were a student. Lorenz. Remember him?”

Their self-centeredness was absurd. Lorenz and his men had ambushed Ricard and the other students as they traveled through the forest to provide support on an adventurer commission.

Yet they bore a grudge because he had fought back and killed them? How could such fucking bastards exist?

But Ricard had no desire to discuss this any further.

“No. Why would I remember trash like that?”

With those words, he struck first, darting forward like an arrow.

He skimmed past in a low stance, gliding like flowing water, and sliced with the sword in one hand. His opponent tried to dodge, but lost a leg.

As events unfolded in an instant, a crowd of men rushed Ricard. Naturally, more of them tangled with one another than reached him.

Ricard whirled like a storm and swung his sword at the fools. In a sight that hardly seemed real, three or four men were cut through the torso at once.

It was an unbelievable sword strike. And such attacks kept coming without pause.

Like a skilled cook cleaning fish, he swung his sword a few times, and bodies piled up in an instant.

Some collapsed where they stood at the shocking sight. Those who fared a little better turned and fled into various parts of the castle. In that way, those who were hopelessly outmatched were disposed of all at once.

But the scarf-wearing men could not flee, even if they wanted to. Everything they had was in this castle. Not just money, but research materials and specially processed mana hearts.

So they fought Ricard desperately, though they had no real answer to him either.

It was as though an invisible curtain of death surrounded him. Anyone who stepped within range was certain to lose a limb or die.

Neither surrounding him with hit-and-run attacks nor the Rubens clan’s distinctive nimble movements worked.

He was on a level far beyond any Sword Master they knew. How could this be possible?

Ricard’s eyes were not on his opponent. They were always on the next one. His sword could not be stopped, cutting through everything.

Speed, strength, technique, judgment—genius and experience combined to unleash terrifying might. He followed no fixed form, and was even improving with every moment. Because he enjoyed all of it.

Some enemies fled, deciding that survival mattered more than research materials or anything else. The instant Ricard cut one man down, he threw his sword, driving it squarely through a fleeing man’s back.

But that left him empty-handed, and the enemies who spotted that brief opening rushed him.

Golden energy gathered around Ricard’s hand. When he struck their blades with its edge, they snapped in pieces.

CLANG!

Then he seized one man and drove his hand through his heart.

But instead of pulling his hand back out, he ripped it upward. It split the ribs and sliced through the shoulder as it emerged. Mouth gaping, the man dropped heavily to his knees and collapsed.

Ricard held a living heart in his hand. The astonishing thing was not the pulsing heart, but Ricard’s cruel smile as he held it.

“I hear you like these.”

He clenched his fist, crushing the heart, then tossed it onto the ground.

“Come eat it like dogs.”

Even those who had abandoned their humanity for the sake of their training could not contain their shock at the sight. They backed away in faltering steps.

Silence fell once more. Had he just wielded a blade of light with his bare hand? Unbelievable. Impossible.

Brutally dismembered bodies lay strewn across the courtyard, and the blood-soaked ground had turned muddy. The late-afternoon sun was gradually reddening.

As Ricard indulged in slaughter, he felt unbearable pleasure surge through him.

He might govern himself by observing his inner world, but even so, it was difficult to suppress the laughter that kept slipping out.

Perhaps it was skepticism toward this entire farce, himself included. Or perhaps it was disgust. If such things could be called humor.

Amid shattered weapons and gruesome corpses, Ricard laughed, his shoulders shaking. Then he threw back his head and burst into wild laughter.

“Heh heh heh, heh heh... Ahahahahahaha!”

His enemies had completely lost the will to fight. They merely stared blankly at the loudly laughing Ricard, their faces stunned.

It was terror of a death they could neither control nor resist. They all felt as though they were living a nightmare.

A demon needed no reason. No grudge, no desire to gain power.

Such reasons were nothing but excuses. Even if they forsook their humanity, they were merely trash, incapable of becoming so much as monsters.

A true demon had something in common with the innocence of a child.

Ricard walked slowly over to his distant sword and pulled it free. Everyone simply watched. Not one dared make a sound, let alone stop him.

He walked toward the gate and brought his sword down, severing a thick rope. The portcullis dropped, slamming the entrance shut.

Ordinarily, an escape route was sealed to keep an intruder from fleeing. Now it was the opposite. This place was a slaughterhouse.

Ricard turned back toward the Rubens clan, smiling with his white teeth bared.

The reek of blood and iron filled the air. Yet something was still missing. Fire. What was a festival without fire?

Ricard rushed his enemies again. They all fled. Into the keep, into the quarters, as though playing hide-and-seek.

But that was a mistake. Because he was going to burn it all.

Fire and steel, blood and death. No one handled them better than Ricard. And no one had learned more thoroughly how to become a demon to survive in hell.

He had not the slightest interest in the Rubens clan’s accumulated research, their treasures, or anything of the sort. There would be only slaughter and death.

At some point, cries for mercy began ringing out intermittently throughout the castle. Or screams of agony from those burning alive. To someone, it was splendid music.

In the nearby village, the old man tending his vegetable patch watched the castle burn in the distance. All the villagers stood motionless, watching.

At sunset, against the red evening glow, black smoke rose to touch the sky, and the smell of burning reached the village.

Then the hooded stranger came walking from the direction of the castle. Only an hour or two had passed since his arrival. That was also how long it had taken to annihilate a powerful clan.

As he passed quietly through the village, everyone could only watch in silence. But the old man asked a question.

“Are you an angel, or a demon?”

Ricard glanced at the old man and answered. His eyes no longer blazed as they had earlier. They were simply clear hazel eyes.

“Well, sir, I suppose that depends on what you see.”

Then he walked back the way he had come and disappeared.

The Rubens clan’s headquarters burned for two days and two nights. No one survived. The rumors that spread afterward were nothing but incredible tales of an angel of death descending to rain down fire.

Ricard had defined himself as a demon, but it seemed the old man had seen him differently.

Chapter 23 – The Demonic Angel. End.