Chapter 31: Volume 2 - CH 14

“Rest assured, I do not plan on hurting any of you.” The female demon faced Lieze and Urza, speaking with an annoyed tone.

“What did you say?” Urza asked, dubious.

“Just hurry up and run away, I won’t chase you.”

“…Do you really think we’d fall for such an obvious trap? You probably want to attack our backs while we’re running away.” Lieze argued.

“A trap? Why would I use that against mere humanfolk like you?” The female demon seemed genuinely confused. “As much as it pains me to admit it, continuing the mission will be impossible. Thus, I will abide by the Demon Lord-sama’s orders and retreat.”

“Do you think we’ll let you just return to the demon territory?”

Hearing Urza’s words, a faint glimmer of scorn appeared on the female demon’s face.

“I am only allowed to fight when there is danger of information about us demons being leaked, and when I myself am in danger. Since it is apparent that we demons were at work here, trying to hide it is futile. And, you people cannot hurt me, unlike that man…” The female demon reminisced about her encounter with Kyle, and glanced at him. “That is why there is no need for me to fight here…So, disappear from my sight.” She sounded like she didn’t want to waste her energy on any of this.

However, as you would expect, the two girls weren’t about that.

“Hey, Urza, I’m really pissed right now.”

“What a coincidence, so am I.”

Basically, those two aren’t even being treated as enemies. Since they were confident in their skill to some degree, that must have stung. Thus, Lieze lowered her hip, entering a fighting position, whereas Urza summoned Fire Spirit Salamander. Amidst all her spirits, Salamander had the strongest attack power out of the bunch, looking like a fire lizard of sorts, flames gushing out of its mouth.

Watching those two, the female demon uttered a defeated ‘Fools…’, and took a stance like she was shooing away an insect. As that battle began, Shildonia approached Seran, who watched it unfold from a distance.

“What about Kyle?” Seran asked her without turning around.

“He told me to support you instead. And, how are things?”

“She’s playing with them. That female demon seems to be prioritizing hand-to-hand combat…but as expected of a demon, her physical abilities greatly surpass that of a humanfolk. Even if you’d strengthen yourself with magic, you wouldn’t be able to catch her.” He explained, but never looked away once.

Just as he stated, the battle was quite one-sided. Lieze’s punches and kicks were met with empty air, and Salamander’s fire breath or claws did not scratch the demon. It seemed like an adult was playing with a child, not even taking them seriously. Adding to that, Lieze was not used to fighting an actual demon, and Urza was starting to get pale from controlling the Salamander.

“Are you not going to help them?”

“…Not only does she have superior physical abilities, she’s got sharp senses as well.”

Right now, Seran was periodically sending killing intent her way, showing signs of him possibly attacking, but every time she acted accordingly. She was confident that even if Seran landed an attack, it would not leave behind any fatal wound. She herself was basically just jumping around, focusing fully on evading, not fighting back at all. That’s why both Lieze and Urza were perfectly safe.

“And knowing Kyle, he probably decided to fight the stronger enemy so that those two could gather experience in battle. Not to mention that getting them used to a demon wouldn’t hurt.”

“Oh?”

“You can see that this female demon has no killing intent. There’s no better first fight with a demon they could have, not to mention that he’s kept me here to protect them in an emergency…God he’s so protective.” Seran said, and still did not look away from the fight in front of him.

He probably wanted to burn this battle of a genuine demon into his eyes.

“…By the way, do you know what this is?”

After watching for a while, Seran took out what looked like a rectangular cuboid, with magical letters engraved into it.

“That’s something the mayor desperately clung to. I picked it up when I knocked him out.”

Naturally, without consent.

“Quite the thief you are…Hmm, this is a very special magic tool. It erases all mana reactions coming from objects in its vicinity. Basically, it uses [Detect Magic] to confirm mana around it, then obstructs it.”

“I see…So if this goes off, it means that there’s objects with mana around?” Seran grinned.

The trump card of the contract with the demons—the Holy Sword. If the demons happened to find that beforehand, it would nullify the contract. That’s why Bucks hid it beforehand. However, as he even treated the people closest to him as sacrifices, he had nobody to hand this to. In other words, the safest method of hiding it would be to keep it to himself.

“…In fact, right as the mayor screamed about the Holy Sword, he glanced over here for a moment.”

Seran looked over at an old chair the mayor had been sitting on when they stormed in here.

“Despite being a longfinger, you have awfully great perception. Maybe your guess was correct after all.” Shildonia guessed what Seran was trying to say, and grinned.

Slowly but steadily, without the demon catching on, Seran moved towards the chair.

At the same time, Kyle’s battle with the male demon was equally one-sided.

“Hahaha! Where did all your confidence go!?” The male demon let out a loud roar, firing off fist-sized bullets of mana, with Kyle carefully avoiding them.

The Ancient Language Magic used by humanfolk basically works as a chant where you exchange mana as efficiently as possible, and create various phenomena. At the same time, magic used by demons basically was, on its simplest terms, mana being exchanged for raw power, without needing any chant. Instead, in order to change its firepower and effects, they could simply gather more mana. Although humanfolk could use the same magic spells as demons, the efficiency would drop drastically, with a large burden on their bodies depending on it. With both the amount of mana and physical abilities surpassing those of the humanfolk, only demons could effectively use that kind of magic. And right now, these mana bullets floated around the male demon in great numbers.

A scary amount of mana, alright.

Kyle mentally clicked his tongue. If this was any other humanfolk he was dealing with, this amount of firepower would have used up most of their mana with a single shot. And, the control would have been all over the place, unlike what the demon could pull off. On top of that, the mana bullets the demon fired off had the disposition that they would explode on impact, so Kyle could only keep dodging to the best of his ability, unable to approach the demon.

“Ugh!”

Another mana bullet hit his shoulder, and exploded. After being blown away, Kyle immediately got back up on his feet again, and regained his posture. However, the taste of blood and pain filled his mouth, and with every groan he let out, the demon’s smile would grow more sinister.

The only reason Kyle was able to somehow hold his ground now is because he managed to avoid the attacks, and because of the dragon armor that protected him from severe injuries. Of course, this only contributed to the demon enjoying his time playing with Kyle.

“What a great scream that was. I’ve managed to enjoy myself quite a bit, so maybe I should bring things to an end now.” The male demon said so, and created mana bullets that were two-times bigger than the ones before. “I’ll set it up so that they explode after digging deep into your body. Even as your body is blown to pieces, your head might make it out, so they can properly bury your body, yes? Just like those humans yesterday,” The male demon showed a smile from the bottom of his rotten heart, and then—

The moment Kyle had been waiting for finally arrived.

At the same time, Seran stood in front of an old, moldy chair, as he confirmed the back lean of it. Feeling that something was hidden inside the cotten, Seran felt something inside the cotton, so he swung down his sword in a diagonal downward slice. Naturally, the chair ended up in two parts—and so did Seran’s sword, as the upper part of his blade fell to the ground. From the remains of the chair, he found a blade with a beautiful and awe-inspiring shine.

“Found iiiiiiit~” He flashed a bright smile that almost looked creepy, as Seran raised a cheer of joy.

Hearing that loud roar from Seran, both of the demons reacted a tiny bit. However, Kyle and the others were all too used to that, so they kept their calm just fine. This small difference worked wonders. The female demon glanced over at Seran, seeing him hold what looked like a sword.

“Don’t tell me!?” She subconsciously pushed her body forward, but the two girls fighting her didn’t miss out on that chance.

“Do it! Salamander!”

Listening to Urza’s order, Salamander swallowed a lot of air, and then spewed out a large gush of flames that could wrap up the entire body of the female demon.

“…!” She reflexively tried to dodge, but was too late, as she was hit by the flames.

Although she didn’t receive much damage from the flame itself, she still covered her face with her arms as a last effort to protect herself. At the same time, Lieze jumped through the flame, ramming her armoured fist into the female demon’s face.

“Urk!?” The female demon barely managed to avoid getting hit in a vital part, but the fist wrapped in the gauntlet still grazed her cheek.

The female demon tried to throw back a punch, but Lieze crossed her arms into an X shape, accepting that without any problem, although the impact blew her off.

“Ouch…Oh, what’s wrong? You just fought back against a human, right? I thought we weren’t even worthy of being your enemies?” Although she jumped backwards to dampen the impact, Lieze rubbed her arms as she provoked the female demon.

“Hm, the tips of your hair looked burned. I bet it must hurt, so why don’t you get that treated quickly?” Urza followed up with a confident grin.

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Even the Salamander next to her showed what resembled a smile.

“………” The female demon gently wiped the blood off her cheek.

Despite her expression mostly being indifferent up to that point, one could see a clear mixture of anger and irritation filling her face, and right as she was about to say something—a tremendous scream rang out.

The male demon reacted to Seran’s dubious scream as well, and moved his gaze away from Kyle for a split second. He immediately turned his gaze back at Kyle—or he should have, but Kyle had vanished.

“What?!” Frantically, he looked to his left and right, but could not find him. “Where…Ah, up above!” There, he saw Kyle flying at him.

He thought about intercepting Kyle’s approach with a mana bullet, but because the blast radius would injure him at the same time, so he hesitated. That one moment was enough for Kyle, as he used his speed to accelerate the slash of his sword.

“Guha!?” The male demon let out a scream, and held his head, as he staggered backwards.

“Great reaction. Generally, demons have great reflexes, which makes you such a troublesome bunch.”

If this was any normal humanfolk enemy, they would have been dead with that.

“Y-You bastard!”

Half of his face was drenched in blood, as the male demon howled. A deep wound could be seen on his head and face, and one of his sheep horns had been cut off clean.

“A mere human…dared to steal my horn…hurt my face!”

“Now that look on your face I can appreciate. You have lady-killer potential now.” Kyle stepped on the one horn that had rolled towards him.

The male demon saw this, which only fueled his anger, but Kyle was as calm as before.

“Now now, don’t move, if you get any closer, I’ll be forced to crush this one.”

The moment Kyle said that, the demon abruptly stopped in his tracks, as his glare of contempt and pure hatred grew even stronger. There, the female demon who had been fighting Lieze and Urza came running. She showed worry towards the male demon, but he shooed her away, and instead screamed at Kyle.

“Move that foot! Give me back my horn!”

“Don’t wanna. I know that a horn is like a symbol of honor for a demon, and that you get pushed away, even thrown out from the ranks of demons, if you’re a ‘Hornless’.”

In fact, in demon society, those who have committed a serious crime are punished to lose their horns, which is regarded as a punishment worse than death.

“I’m shocked you even know about that.” Seran stood next to Kyle, with a sword in hand, clearly in a great mood.

“Just some miscellaneous knowledge…More importantly, that scream of yours just now, is this the Holy Sword?”

He had waited for the male demon to let this down his guard when he wanted to finish off Kyle, but thanks to Seran’s voice, the male demon diverted his attention, which helped Kyle a lot. Of course, saying that out loud would only annoy Kyle, so he kept that to himself.

“Yeah! I found it! He was hiding it right in front of the demons’ eyes, can you imagine the guts of that mayor?” Seran showed the sword he was holding to Kyle.

The Holy Sword Rand—it was a divine creation from the legendary dwarf blacksmith that had reached divine territory, which was used by the Great Hero Randolph to strike down the Demon Lord during the demons’ invasion three hundred years ago…And now that sword was in Seran’s hands.

“I tried swinging it a few times to test, but the weight and balance is perfect. It’s like my hand is being sucked inside its swings.” Seran said, utterly entranced with the sword.

With just a single glance, Kyle could tell that this sword was able to rival even Shildonia in his hands.

“It really is amazing, but…why is the blade black?”

Despite being called a holy sword, the blade shone in a strong black light, which left Kyle confused.

“No clue about that…But, it’s a worthy sword for me, so I don’t care.” Seran rubbed his cheek against the blade, seemingly on cloud nine. “Now then, guess it’s time to test it out right away!” Seran readied the Holy Sword, entering a fighting stance.

However, Kyle stopped him right before that, calling out to the demon.

“I have a proposition…Why don’t we temporarily put this fight on hold?”

“Ehhhh?” Seran didn’t seem too happy about that, but Kyle ignored him.

“What is your plan with this?” The female demon seemed dubious.

“Well, I’m not exactly in a healthy state myself, and I also don’t want to fight in this arena.” Kyle glanced at Gazas and the others. “So…I’d like to have a rematch in three days. If you win, you can have the horn and the Holy Sword. It’d help in cleaning up this mess of a situation, right?”

The male demon’s bloodshot eyes moved from his horn up to Kyle. The moment the female demon heard the keyword Holy Sword, the color of her eyes changed. At the same time, Seran seemed quite displeased with that, and embraced his beloved new sword, but Kyle ignored that once again.

“What is your condition?”

“We do not know much about demons. So, we’ll have you tell us about every other demon who is currently invading humanfolk territory.”

“So I will be fighting the human girl and elf woman, is that correct?”

“…Yeah.” Kyle hesitated for a moment, but nodded, and looked at the male demon again. “How about you? Or, can’t have a proper and equal fight with a human, huh? Don’t you worry, the two of us will be fighting one-on-one.”

“Fine by me…Just you wait!” The male demon fired off a mana bullet to create a hole in the wall.

Through that, another passage appeared. It was probably an escape route prepared by the mayor.

“In three days, right here, yeah? You better come.”

“Bastard…I will slaughter you no matter what it takes…!” He threw a typical villain threat at Kyle, and walked into the darkness.

After a bit of time passed, both Seran and Kyle let out long sighs, as their tension vanished.

“Was there a need to put a stop to this battle?” Seran asked, sounding displeased.

“You just wanted to use that Holy Sword as quickly as possible, right?”

“Won’t deny that, but now was the time to properly finish things off, right? We could have just squeezed the information out of them after we won.”

Leaving aside their physical wounds, the demons clearly weren’t in the best mental condition. Seran was arguing that finishing it now would make things easier for them.

“No, I wouldn’t want them to get desperate.”

“Desperate…Ah, that magic circle.” Seran caught on to Kyle’s intentions, and nodded.

If they had gotten too cornered in the previous fight, they might have resorted to the magic circle, and blown everything up. If that happened, Kyle’s group would have been buried alive, and Callan blown into the sky.

“I backed him into a corner. Surely, he’d do whatever it takes just to take me down…that’s the kind of guy he is.”

Injured by a lowly human, he’d do everything to erase the shame he felt, so he would attempt to slaughter Kyle with his own two hands, and activate the magic circle simply to get his horn back. So, until the rematch, Kyle’s group basically had to erase that circle, and that condition would fall away.

“Leaving aside that female demon, that other guy wasn’t nearly as invested in the Holy Sword.”

“So you were aiming for his horn from the very beginning? You waited for an opening this long just for that?” Seran looked at Kyle’s body, and sounded both impressed but also baffled.

“No, he’s just that strong. If you were to put it in human terms, he’s basically on a similar level to a supreme-grade magic user…Surely.”

“So he’s basically legendary-class…You can win against him?”

“Don’t worry, that’s why I chose to have the rematch in three days.” Kyle grinned.

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