5 – The Unvanishing Shadow (3)
The demon hunters arrived near the village.
However,
Despite moving according to the leader’s intentions, Charlotte still couldn’t hide her uneasy feeling.
“Is it really going to be okay?… If our master were here, he would never allow this situation.”
It was the duty of a demon hunter to protect people against demons.
But,
Nevertheless, Galard’s position was always firm in situations like this.
– Reckless rescue attempts are strictly prohibited in situations where safety is not guaranteed. –
Even if there were survivors, Gelert’s policy was always to prioritize the safety of the Devil Hunters.
Though it may appear harsh and excessively cruel,
In reality, both Fiona and Charlotte sometimes felt a sense of resistance regarding this matter.
However, when objectively considering the situation, Gelert’s actions were correct.
In this situation where demons were rampaging, each Devil Hunter was a valuable asset.
If one Devil Hunter were to fall while trying to save a few ordinary citizens, it would not be easy to fill the resulting gap in power.
It could even lead to the entire village being wiped out in the future while trying to save one or two lives.
Furthermore, despite their beast-like appearances, the slyness of the demons should never be underestimated.
As creatures who think reasonably close to human level, acting impulsively could lead to danger rather than rescue.
In addition, while it was Shalote’s personal opinion as someone who had always been by the side of the master,
It was conjectured that the emotion of the master, who wanted to prevent his disciples from shedding blood, was the basis for Gelert’s rational behavior policy.
In fact, when he was the leader, the survival rate of Devil Hunters was incomparable to the present.
There were almost no deaths, and even the number of injured could be counted on one hand.
There may have been issues in terms of humanity, but in terms of the stability of the Devil Hunters and the efficiency of their work, the right answer had already been shown.
“Even Fiona should know this fact, why does she continue to engage in such reckless behavior…”
Lately, she had been showing a sharper side, and even now, Fiona seemed to be forcefully pushing the situation as if being chased by something.
With doubts and concerns about her attitude, Shalote had no choice but to be cautious and follow behind her as much as possible.
*
They finally arrived at the ruined village, descending the hill.
The devil hunters, with their weapons tightly clenched, slowly entered the village, their impressions wrinkling at the stench that was even worse than before.
Immediately after that, they began to see the corpses of numerous people from the entrance.
Starting with the headless body of a young man, holding a weapon,
followed by a woman whose lower half was missing.
An old man with his organs devoured,
and
the sight of a young boy with his limbs torn off, dead with a face full of horror and despair.
The common point is that they are all in a state as if torn apart by something sharp, large or small.
While looking at this horrific sight,
instinctively, a strong feeling of anger began to emerge in the hearts of the devil hunters.
“How… how can it be like this…”
“These filthy demons… as soon as I meet them, I’ll blow their heads off!”
Instead of the fear and tension from earlier,
Zig and Laurent expressed their disgust for the demon’s atrocities that were clearly in front of their eyes.
Especially Zig, his anger was so intense that blood was flowing from his bitten lips.
Watching that sight,
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Charlotte let out a small sigh and cautiously approached Fiona, who was standing in front.
“How is it? Did you find anything?”
“…No. Not yet.”
Fiona, spreading her magical power in all directions, searching for survivors or hidden demons.
However, with her ability to detect things within a radius of 30m, there was nothing immediately noticeable.
“Judging by the level of decay of the corpses, quite some time has passed. Perhaps the demon that attacked this place has already left the village.”
Still, Charlot cautiously decided to go back in the midst of lingering unease.
However,
Fiona slowly raised her head and spoke.
“…Let’s go further inside for now. After all, the village itself is quite large.”
“But… Won’t it be dangerous?”
“Well, we’ve already accepted the risk by coming here. We have to find at least one survivor, or even capture a demon if we can…!”
In that moment.
“Why… Why is that?”
“This is…”
Suddenly, something could be felt in Fiona’s detection range.
At a precarious and uncertain location, the movement of that thing being detected,
Fiona urgently spoke to the others in a panicked voice.
“There’s something here. Everyone, follow me! It could be a demon!”
“Oh… Yes!”
“Understood.”
“Wait a… Ugh…”
Upon hearing her words that there could be a demon, the two juniors, who were just angry a moment ago, started moving.
Looking at their impulsive and emotion-driven actions, rather than calm judgement.
Charlotte became caught in the conflict of whether she should forcibly stop them in the growing sense of unease.
“This is not good. This situation… It’s exactly the kind of situation that the teacher always warned me to be cautious of…”
While thinking such thoughts, Charlotte reluctantly followed them for the time being.
Due to her usual timid nature, it was not easy for her to make decisions despite her anxious heart.
At that moment.
“I found it!”
Fiona’s voice contained a hint of joy.
As a result of their frantic movement, they had suddenly arrived at the center of the village.
And there, on top of the broken fountain,
There sat a demon.
With a large horn on its forehead, it looked as if it had enlarged a bat to the size of a person.
Known as Helvet, a low-ranking demon, it was slowly chewing and swallowing an arm that seemed to have been torn from a corpse.
And right after discovering such a creature.
A slightly disappointed expression appeared on Fiona’s face.
“What… After chasing it all this way, it’s just this little guy?”
“I guess… It seems to somewhat match what Shalotte-senpai said. It looks like the main forces have already left, and only some stragglers remain.”
With those words, Zeke loaded his bullets with a slightly exhausted feeling and began to move forward.
At that moment…
“…Huh?”
A sudden, chilling murderous intent began to be felt.
At this, Sieg turned his head involuntarily towards the direction of the menace.
Immediately after.
What began to appear before his eyes.
Large and immense.
It, encompassing the entire field of vision.
A mouth.
Filled with countless teeth sharp as blades.
A dark and red maw.
-Thwack!
*
Maximillia Robes Fiora.
Her face was covered in an intense shock of alarm.
Though it was true that she had been overwhelmed and had run here in a daze,
Still,
She was, after all, one of the most skilled Devil Hunters in the Kingdom of Franz, noted for her abilities.
While her overall command might have been lacking at times, her personal combat prowess was never deficient;
In fact, Fiora had never lost a single direct combat with demons up to this point.
It was because of this that, until this very moment, Fiora had not worried about the possibility of an ambush.
All the way here, she had been continuously monitoring the movements of other beings.
The magical detection network spread out in all directions was sensitive enough to pick up on the movements of even an ant, which had given her a sense of safety.
Until the moment she arrived here, she hadn’t felt the presence of any creature other than Helvet in front of her.
However,
The scene now before her eyes.
A black demon, reminiscent of a twisted shark, suddenly appeared, devoured Zeke’s head, and then disappeared just as abruptly…
It was a shock to Fiora, like a blow to the back of her head.
“What… what is this…”
In a daze, Fiora muttered to herself, unable to comprehend the unexpected turn of events.
At the same time, a tearing scream began to echo in her ears.
“Ze…Zeke!!!!!”
“No…you shouldn’t go! You might be in danger too!”
Laurent, overtaken by confusion and rage, tried to rush to her decapitated friend, but Charlotte urgently grasped her, attempting to prevent her. At this moment, Fiora had no time to care about their distress.
“What is this…what
And then.
-Thwack!!!
*
Fiora did not want to retreat.
No, she could not.
Deep down, she knew it was simply her stubbornness.
Yet, even so,
She could not back down here, not for the sake of safety.
By any means necessary, she had to save him—
The man of noble birth, who always prioritized the safety of Devil Hunters and had forsaken a life that could be saved.
No,
For Fiora now, in this moment when she must deny it, it was an utterly unbearable notion.
However,
In this moment, she came to a brutal realization.
The fact that she was wrong.
Not her, a mere commoner,
But the aristocratic man’s thoughts and ways were correct.
“Ah…ah…”
Fiora, trembling, her face a mask of horror.
But her trembling was not due to her own injuries.
The wounds she had were only superficial scratches.
The problem was the condition of the person she sees in her eyes.
It was Charlotte’s condition, her friend who had always expressed concern for her actions.
“Ugh…”
In a precarious moment,
she forcefully pushed Fiona, who was about to have her head torn off by the demon resembling a shark.
And in return,
Charlotte ended up having one whole arm torn off.
“Charlotte…”
The sight of her friend, who took fatal wounds in her place.
Blood flowing down and trembling in pain.
And,
by her side.
Her junior, whose head had been torn off, becoming a cold corpse.
“Ah… aaa….
The extraordinarily miserable result that occurred in just a moment
began to completely shatter Fiona’s spirit, which had barely been maintained amidst the three years of hardship.
“Is it because of me…? Because… because I misjudged… it ended up like this…? That… that’s… that’s possible…”
Along with the collapse of her shallow pride, there was an overwhelming surge of emotions.
Despair.
Guilt.
And regret.
Even in a situation where she was face to face with the demon named Fiona, she couldn’t bring herself to think constructively about counterattacks or preparations. She could only helplessly gaze at the small disaster she had created herself.
“Ugh… F… Fiona! Pull yourself… together! We have to find a way to fight back…!”
Shallotte screamed in pain towards her friend.
As she used her magic to forcefully suppress her bleeding wounds, she urged Fiona, the leader, to retaliate.
In that moment,
“!”
“Huh?”
Fiona’s face, as she looked at Shallotte, froze stiff.
The black shadow looming behind Shallotte’s back.
Realizing that the thing that had swallowed her arm had reappeared,
Shallotte was seized by a feeling as if her heart had frozen.
The enormous jaws that were coming at her in an instant.
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In a moment that felt like time had slowed down,
She muttered a small word, fully aware that impending death was wrapping around her.
“…Sh*t…”
-“Bam!!”
“!?”
Just as despair was about to swallow her, something hot brushed against her hair and flew past.
Meanwhile, in the direction where an intense sense of death had been lingering.
-Boom!!!
With a loud explosion, an intense heat burst out as if she was suddenly engulfed in flames.
The ominous presence that had disappeared completely.
Then, what entered Charlotte’s eyes was,
Her junior pointing a gun towards her, tears streaming down their face.
“You… You killed… Zeke… How dare you, a demon like you…!!!”
“!!! Ha!”
With those words, Laurent opened his coat, drenching it with something.
At the same time, countless guns came into view, and Charlotte, suppressing her pain, exerted all her strength to roll her body to the side.
And…
“aaahhhhh!!!!”
-Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Laurent swiftly swapped guns at an unseen speed, firing bullets one after another.
The barrage, imbued with magical power in each shot, displayed firepower comparable to cannonballs, brutally pounding the body of the shark demon.
“Die! Die! Die! Die! Dieee!!!!”
-Boom!!!
Thick dust settled down from the frenzy of the barrage.
While looking at the scene as if nearly all of the battleship’s cannons had been fired in a short amount of time, Charlotte murmured in a quiet voice.
“I…I got rid of…him?”
With those words, she tightly held the sword in her remaining arm, still not lowering her guard.
And a moment later.
In her eyes, the appearance of the shark demon, motionless with gunshot marks all over its body, was visible.
“Phew…”
It was a close call, but in any case, she succeeded in defeating the demon.
Feeling relieved by this fact, Charlotte felt a slight relaxation in her tension and the pain in her forgotten arm started to become clear once again.
She succeeded in stopping the bleeding, but the injuries were now severe enough that further combat was impossible.
Seeing the demon that had become a corpse, Charlotte furrowed her brow.
“I…was completely…outsmarted. Did they really know how to lure us like this…?”
The shark demon that had lured them deep using the lesser demon Helvet as bait.
Although she didn’t know what method was used, the demon approached them while almost completely concealing its presence and succeeded in delivering a fatal blow in an instant.
“One person dead…one person incapacitated…in the end, this is just a victory that comes with scars…”
Charlotte muttered with her lips trembling from the heavy damage.
At the same time, deep regret surged within her heart, regarding the fact that she had ignored it until now.
“If…if only I…had actively tried to stop Fiona…no…before that…if I had firmly told my master three years ago to have a conversation… If I had done that…maybe this wouldn’t have happened…”
Fiona, who blindly pushed forward with the work only by listening to the Marquis’ words.
Even though Charlotte went along with her for now, doubts remained in her heart about whether or not that action was truly the right thing to do.
If she had been a little more cautious.
If she had been able to grasp the truth that she did not know.
She often had the thought that maybe she wouldn’t have killed her teacher if she had cleared up the misunderstanding.
With that thought in mind, while thinking that her own timidity had ruined everything,
tears of regret began to well up in Sharlotte’s eyes.
At that moment…
“Se… Senior…ity…”
“!”
The next moment,
Laurent approached her with a trembling voice, without the madness from earlier.
And immediately after,
Sharlotte’s face, which had been shedding tears of regret, stiffened.
– “Slas…hed!!!”
– “Slas…hed!!!”
Jick’s body lay on the ground, still bleeding from where his head had been severed.
But in this moment,
around him.
The heads of black sharks were jutting out, devouring his body.
They were smaller than the entity from earlier, but there were at least three or four of them.
While watching that scene,
With Fiona still looking like she had lost half of her sanity and trembling voice, she said, “R…run.”
“W-What? B-But…”
“Run!”
“!!! Y-Yes!”
With her words, Laurent and Charlotte ran with all their might toward the exit of the village.
Fiona’s face, sprinting ahead without a thought, seemed to be filled with nothing but despair as if her soul had left her.
She couldn’t attempt anything else.
Analyzing the demon,
Dealing with the dead body of her deceased junior.
It was impossible now.
At this moment, all she could do was simply escape.
Feeling a deep self-loathing from a clear defeat without any room for excuses, even unable to achieve the forcibly won victories until now,
Fiona began to pour out tears filled with regret and despair.
“A…ah…indeed…indeed, I can’t become someone like Gelard…someone like a master…someone like me…someone like a commoner, an insignificant person like me…I was never meant to fit into something like this from the beginning.”
*
“Hmm…”
Feeling a heavy tension, I once again checked my body’s condition.
Honestly, as a man who inherently had a rough impression, there was no need for me to be too neat, but that didn’t mean I could show a sloppy appearance.
There was a basic filtering of behavior, but I still needed to be mindful of the first impression as much as possible.
“I didn’t even do this much when I went for interviews… Well, you could say it’s even more important than an interview.”
After finishing the final check, I headed to the visit with my own determination, feeling like I was going to my first workplace for my first day.
And right after that.
In front of me, as always, stood her radiant beauty.
I could see Elli.
“Sorry for making you wait a bit.”
“It’s okay. Then shall we go? Everyone is waiting.”
“Alright.”
Elli spoke in a pleasant voice, accompanied by a gentle smile.
Feeling a slight flutter in her presence,
I started walking down the corridor, trying my best not to show it.
Continuing on, we arrived at the destination with Elli.
It was the reception room located inside the mansion.
I had been staying here for several days and had seen it all the time.
And in this moment.
In front of my eyes, in this familiar place, the faces of people I had never seen before began to appear.
Devil Hunters waiting for us in the room.
They were all women.