T/N: This was a roller coaster of a chapter. Haha
Episode 17 The Price
“Y-you, what are you?!”
There was an ominous aura that Perseta was dragging behind him.
Viscount Felix, wound tight, let his voice tremble.
At that, the two mages who had kept silent until now stepped forward.
“Ho-oh! The young one’s mana is this tremendous?”
“Besides Salinelle, there was a mage like this? Had we not come, the viscount would have been in serious trouble.”
Both were old mages whose hair and beards had turned white.
They wore short gray robes that reached only to mid-thigh, had every sort of magical device hanging from waist and chest, and had their sleeves rolled up.
At that quintessential sight, Baron Plian tensed up hard.
“War mages!”
Monsters who had polished magic solely for combat and war.
“Son, step back. Crossing spells with war mages is never a wise choice.”
Magic might be fading from the age, yet a mage’s incantation still held mighty power.
But to draw out absolute force, many preparations were required.
That was why war mages were special. They had mastered every auxiliary formula that let battle spells finish swiftly, and they carried heaps of special tools that simplified various ritual steps.
Should such war mages fight ordinary mages, the outcome was as plain as day.
Perseta, however, paid no heed to his father’s words.
Pale with anger, he merely fixed Viscount Felix with an unblinking stare.
“Viscount Felix.”
A chill voice slipped out.
With two war mages shielding him, Felix regained confidence and answered haughtily.
“Speak.”
“I request that you leave this land at once.”
A voice pressed down and pressed down again, a quiet tremor welling from deep within.
Felix snorted.
“Why should I? I shall leave when I wish. What will you do?”
Perseta gazed steadily at him.
“Are you aware?”
“Of what?”
“First, you came here uninvited.”
“And?”
“Second, you arrived armed without the lord’s consent. Third, you ignored the order to depart.”
“So what of it?”
“Thus, under kingdom law, every condition for a domain duel is now met.”
“What?”
Felix laughed as though it were absurd. When he looked back at his knights and war mages, they too guffawed.
“So. What can you do? Challenge me to a domain duel?”
“Yes.”
That was the last word Perseta hurled at him.
Step.
Perseta took one step toward Viscount Felix, and at that moment pitch-black darkness rose beneath his feet and swallowed them whole.
Perseta, Viscount Felix, the two war mages, three knights, and twenty soldiers vanished into the gloom.
“W-what in the world—!”
Startled, Baron Plian tried to thrust a hand into the spherical darkness before him, yet it pushed his hand away.
Salinelle, having raced over, planted a palm on the darkness and read the mana, panting.
“This… isn’t Lower Tier 3 power. It’s Upper-Realm level at minimum. Huh? Wait. Don’t tell me this is—.”
Salinelle’s face hardened gravely.
“No way! Demon realm? A demon…?”
He stared at the darkness with a blanched face.
“Perseta…what are you trying to do?”
Remembering the Perseta who seemed to have lost reason in anger, he shivered at the ominous foreboding.
“You wretch! What have you done!?”
Viscount Felix shouted, out of fear.
Perseta had merely taken one step, yet all around was swallowed in black gloom.
Earth was unseen, sky unseen.
What felt stranger still was that his own body and the others’ figures shone clearly, as though lit.
So far as Felix knew, manifesting such magic in an instant without any apparatus was impossible.
Tense, he looked to the war mages, thinking they might have a way.
But—
“What is this this feeling? Could it be a link to the demon realm?”
“Impossible! It’s an illusion spell! It can’t be the demon realm! The connection was cut off over forty years ago!”
They were more shocked by something fundamental than by Perseta casting magic with no tools.
The Demon Realm. Of the Five Realms’ Upper Worlds, it was second only to the Divine Realm.
Even the archmage Ptolemaios had not linked to it at will; it belonged to the realm of miracles.
It should not exist. It must not exist.
And yet—
Step.
From the dense blackness, a being emerged.
Long red hair, curved horns sprouting like a helm.
A blazing whip dragging, scraping the ground.
Armor of burning bone, a fatal beauty that mesmerized all.
Recognizing it, one war mage screamed.
“The demon of Cruelty, Nirdayata!”
It was unbearable.
Even an ordinary demon would be hard to manage; a demon lord was worse like the demon of Cruelty famed for combat.
The war mages’ aged bodies shook uncontrollably.
No thought of illusion remained.
That presence, that mana, the terror of feeling one’s soul drop into an abyss at a glance.
With the illusion magic they knew, such overwhelming being could never be reproduced.
All they had left was to whine like children.
“Y-you knave! Demon summoning is forbidden by continental law! After this you still think to set foot—”
They could not finish the sentence.
“!”
“!”
The two war mages flailed and clutched at their faces.
“!!!”
“!!!”
Hard.
From the nose down to the chin, their faces had turned to stone hewn as neatly as a human jaw.
Viscount Felix, watching, was so shocked he fell from his horse.
No time to feel pain; he shrieked.
“Y-your faces!!!”
“!!!”
“!!!”
Stone noses and mouths could not breathe. As oxygen in their lungs ran out, they clawed at their chests and writhed on the ground.
Perseta looked down at them in irritation.
“So noisy. Not even worthy to be called mages, yet all you have are your mouths.”
Everyone was unlucky.
Truthfully, Perseta, outwardly calm, was seething inside.
Having ended his seclusion at last, he found the world’s magic level pathetically low, useless to his research.
Being human, he could not help feeling annoyed and disappointed.
Why? Why can you not do this?
Why was this all you managed?
What on earth have you done?!
Yet Perseta suppressed the feeling.
He knew well that wielding power at whim in this fragile world would bring dreadful calamity.
But just in this moment, the reins snapped entirely.
Because the insult Viscount Felix had hurled at his father still echoed in his head.
“Know your place and act accordingly.”
“What can you do?”
Ha.
His mind seemed to blaze white.
Know my place?
What can I do?
While I keep holding back…
You would use force?
Fine.
Let us try force then.
Perseta turned his gaze.
Three knights. Twenty soldiers.
Those who had dared flaunt their strength before his father.
Slash!
With a sweep of Perseta’s hand from left to right, a secret magical blade rose and severed all their throats at once.
“Uh… huh?”
Viscount Felix landed on his backside with a thump.
“Huh?”
Blood rained from above, spattering his cheeks and shoulders.
The knights and elite troops he had boasted of lay on the ground as headless corpses.
“U-uh?!”
Toward the trembling viscount, the great and beautiful demon walked with seductive grace.
“Aww. Perseta, I could kill him myself.”
Perseta shook his head.
“No. I didn’t call you to kill him.”
“Not to kill? Then why summon me?”
“Please tear at that man’s soul a bit.”
“His soul?”
“Yes. He may be a noble, so killing him is troublesome. Rip his soul in the most painful way you can. Only, don’t let him die. If I do it myself, it’s too bothersome.”
The demon shrugged.
“Well, nothing hard about that.”
At that exchange Viscount Felix was appalled.
Tear at his soul?
His soul?
That meant ripping away the karma his soul had piled up over countless ages.
Torture him to death would be mercy by comparison.
Alive, he would become a dunce who soiled himself, burdening his family; dead, in the Netherworld, he would be treated as a half-soul and reincarnate as a half-soul again, perhaps even as a bug or livestock.
“N-no! Kill me! Just kill—”
But the demon of Cruelty, Nirdayata, had no interest in a fellow like Felix to begin with.
Crunch!
Like plucking a roadside flower, she reached out, tore out the viscount’s soul, and gulped it down.
“Ghhh—ah! Aaah!”
Felix drooled and collapsed to the floor.
He could not even steady himself; his pupils rolled wherever they pleased. His trousers soaked as urine and excrement spilled.
Perseta looked down at the sight, then turned away.
“It is done. Thank you.”
With a cruel smile Nirdayata stretched long fingers and traced Perseta’s chin.
“The price. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”
Perseta’s face stiffened.
He nodded slowly and answered in a grave tone.
“Please finish quickly.”
“As you command.”
The demon of Cruelty produced a box-shaped magic device.
It was a “camera,” a magical tool Perseta had devised that used light and mana to create an instant portrait.
Lowering herself, the demon aimed the camera at Perseta and motioned.
“Now, pose! First, turn this way, looking as though you’re gazing into the distance!”
Perseta let out a deep sigh and struck poses as she directed, no matter how reluctant—after all, it was the “price.”
“That’s it! Good! Perfect! Just change your expression a little and again!”
“But does this truly have value? I could pay with some magic I’ve made—”
“Oh hush! Do you know how popular your photocards are among the demon lords right now? Once we’re done you also have to sign the back.”
“All right…”
“Now, change pose! Over there! Sit atop that corpse and look as arrogant as possible!”
Amid the corpses strewn in the black gloom, a demon and a human held an enthusiastic photo session.
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