Chapter 157
Fortunately, the two people's hostility toward Mariang faded quickly. One of them seemed not even to know who Mariang was in the first place, but in any case, the atmosphere that made it seem as if they would tear her to pieces on the spot disappeared.
More than that, the fact that merely showing her face had stirred up this much hostility meant Mariang's notoriety was apparently greater than he'd expected.
Or perhaps she personally harbored ill feelings toward Mariang.
Rather than leave it as a question, Ian left Mariang sitting quietly on the bench and opened his mouth as he walked toward the city hall building with the two of them.
“You’re more sensitive than I expected. Do you have bad blood or something?”
Whoooosh.
The blowing wind was thick with the scent of hyacinths. The giant petals covering the outer walls of city hall crumbled into tiny pieces, scattering pure white snowflakes in all directions. Eunha snatched at the leaves tickling her nose and answered at once.
“Bad blood... I can’t say there isn’t any. Mariang killed someone I knew.”
“...Someone you knew?”
An acquaintance, for a shut-in who never left her room?
Ian guessed it might be an online friend, and that guess was exactly right.
“Yes. A friend I met on the internet. They're French, and we mostly talked about magic... Why are you making that face?”
“No, not at all. Please continue.”
Ian said, rubbing a hand over his mouth. Yuna stood beside him, gaping with her mouth open as she touched the flowers, while Eunha went on, eyeing Ian suspiciously.
“Hmm... well, to continue.”
Her gaze swept across the city hall's main hall. The scales of the reptilians strewn everywhere sparkled like jewels.
“Honestly, we weren’t that close. We’d only contact each other maybe once a month, and our conversations were at most ten minutes long? That was it. I don’t think our familiarity was all that strong either...”
“So just acquaintances, then.”
“Yes. I think that’s accurate.”
Eunha picked up one scale with a blank expression. The emerald-like scale shimmered beautifully in the sunlight.
“Even so, a friend is still a friend. I was quite surprised when I suddenly heard that Mariang had killed them. I didn’t feel sadness or anger, but I was disappointed in my own way. An already scarce conversation partner had died, after all.”
“W-were you a total nerd? A big one...?”
“Maybe only as much as Han Yuna.”
Eunha lightly brushed off Yuna's jab and turned to look at Ian.
“Anyway, even if I don't feel like avenging them, she did kill a friend, so I suppose you could call it bad blood. Her actions were pretty brutal to begin with, so there’s no shortage of reasons to be hostile toward her.”
“...Her actions?”
The only information he knew about 'Mariang' was that she had once been Eddie's lover and partner. He had no idea what she had done in the past, or what she had gone through to get here.
Even if he asked her now, with her memories already altered, there was no way she'd give a proper answer. She'd probably just spout one useless reply after another.
So if he was going to ask someone, Eunha would be better. Thinking that, Ian slipped a hand into his coat pocket and opened his mouth.
“Do you know anything about Mariang’s past?”
“She was a pure-blood mage born in France. The daughter of a fairly famous family. Their family specialized in alchemy, but she alone showed unusual talent for magic related to mysticism. So she received a great deal of support.”
Swish, swish.
Eunha drew a demon summoning circle on the bare floor.
The summoning circle, engraved with Amdusias's seal, rippled in dark red as if alive. A goat's heart throbbed briefly at the center of the circle, and the Lemegeton scattered a faint light.
“Even after entering the Clock Tower, she kept up high grades. I heard she was also fairly favored by the nobles and professors there.”
“...”
“But with a year left before graduation, she suddenly teamed up with Eddie and murdered their supervising professor. Then she fled the Clock Tower. In the process, she single-handedly slaughtered dozens of students and personnel from the Clock Tower.”
“...I heard Eddie only killed one professor...”
“Yes. Eddie chose a very discreet escape route. Mariang, on the other hand, didn’t. She just chose to break through head-on. The reason their routes were different was to confuse any pursuit. It was actually effective.”
Maiden-spun threads and flowers rose over the magic circle. Eunha gently sprinkled the beast horn she had ground earlier over the demon's seal, as if salting it.
“The fleeing Mariang returned to her family home and devoured everyone in her family. After that, she joined Laplace. That’s all I know.”
“...C-consumed?”
Yuna, who had been listening quietly, asked with a slight furrow between her brows. Eunha nodded.
“Yes, consumed. It’s probably what you’re thinking.”
“...Eh?”
“Mariang tore through and ate her entire family and all her relatives while they were still alive. She turned her stomach into something mystic. Thanks to that, she achieved explosive growth, and even her basic physical abilities came to far surpass a human’s.”
She added, 'It wasn’t for nothing that the Clock Tower branded her a criminal,' then opened her grimoire and stepped back. Ian stepped back as well.
“Cannibalizing her family... even I, who have no family, find that pretty disgusting.”
“...You have no family?”
“Ah, yes. I’m an orphan.”
“Ah.”
A look of embarrassment settled over Eunha's face at the completely unexpected information.
“Um, uh... s-sorry. Did I say something I shouldn’t have?”
“Not at all. I don't really mind.”
Ian gave a faint smile, easing her guilt. Then he turned to Mariang sitting on the bench outside city hall, his eyes gone cold.
‘...Cannibalism, huh.’
Cannibalistic culture itself had existed for quite some time. Even now, there were still cannibal fiends all over South America, deeply inspired by the Inca and Maya civilizations.
He'd heard they were being purged periodically, but since the ruins were still there, those freaks could never be completely wiped out. The only difference between them and Mariang was whether they knew cannibalism was a sin.
Cannibalism among one's own kind wasn't even that common among beasts. Humans were even more so. Unless it was an extreme situation, intelligent humans rarely ate their own kind.
Mariang had done the impossible. She had even eaten her own family.
That sort of thing was impossible for just any state of mind. No matter how crazy one was about magic, there are lines a person born human shouldn't cross. Even deciding 'I'll cross it' and crossing it is, in a way, a talent.
It wasn't an enviable talent, though.
‘If possible, I meant to treat her normally, but looking at this state of affairs, I can't leave her alone. I’ll have to keep her pinned down as much as possible.’
Ian clicked his tongue and moved into a corner so as not to interfere with Eunha's magic.
Strictly speaking, the magic that toyed with Mariang's mind was not mind control but memory manipulation. It was true that Ian's existence had been etched into her head, but that didn't mean her nature had changed. If left alone, she'd definitely cause trouble somewhere.
So if possible, it was necessary to give her proper mental training beforehand. Even if he didn't inflict physical torture, it seemed better to at least give her a minimum sense of caution.
“I’ll start.”
While he was thinking, Eunha stood in front of the summoning circle and shouted. Ian nodded, and Yuna shuddered as she imagined Gamigin standing all alone in front of city hall.
“Ugh... demon s-summoning rituals are really grotesque? I can hear screaming and laughter and stuff all at once... Ah, anyway, it feels disgusting.”
“Looks like you’ve seen one before.”
“Y-yeah. The demon we rode in on. I-I saw it when it was summoned.”
“Ah.”
Ian nodded and leaned against the wall. Yuna crouched down and sat on the floor.
“S-still, they said the demon being summoned this time is relatively intact, so maybe it’ll be f-fine?”
“In any case, if the contract fails, we’ll have to subdue it. I wonder if a demon dies when its head is cut off.”
“T-there won’t be any failure in the contract...”
Yuna hugged her staff to her chest and tilted her head.
“B-because we have the Lemegeton.”
“Amdusias.”
The moment Yuna's voice cut off, Eunha's subdued incantation, laden with mana, pressed down on everyone present. Ian let out a breath of admiration at the heavy mana of Solomon settling onto his shoulders.
The Catholic-style ether left behind by Solomon, the ancient mage favored by God.
Ironically, despite being favored by God, it was an ether incapable of directly dealing with angels; against demons, however, it worked like a sure antidote, filling their vision like mist. The sight of golden dust scattering beautifully was truly spectacular.
And at its center.
Before they knew it, Eunha, her irises and the tips of her hair dyed gold, was pouring horse blood into the center of the summoning circle with an expressionless face.
“One-Horned Duke. Duke of Hell. Adversary of Eiael and composer. Beautiful great demon, master of music and plants.”
The horse blood sprinkled on the summoning circle seeped into the goat's heart. As if it had been given life, the briefly pulsing heart pumped even more fiercely, spraying droplets of blood in all directions. Some of it splashed onto Eunha's cheek.
“In the name of the Father, I command you: show yourself here.”
Originally, summoning Amdusias required a complete horse carcass. But like Solomon, Eunha also did not use the orthodox method for demon summoning. Instead, she made horse blood seep through the entire magic circle, faking it so it was as if a real horse carcass were there.
A demon that hasn't been summoned has no eyes or ears, after all. A simple trick was enough to fool their senses. Of course, without Solomon's overwhelming mana, it would have been impossible. Forced summoning under minimal conditions was a method granted only to the owner of the Lemegeton.
In a way, it was similar to summoning creatures of the Outer Sea. Both were summoning rituals that used fairly unimpressive offerings.
Though which was greater, an Outer Sea creature or a great demon, was hard to rank. Naturally enough, he'd never directly compared them.
‘Probably from the higher species on up, Outer Sea creatures would dominate, and below that they’d be about even.’
Just as that thought flashed through Ian's mind, Eunha closed the Lemegeton and activated the remaining protective spells besides the summoning magic.
“May God’s flames burn away the impure. May our pitiful little lambs praise God forever.”
Fwoosh!
Golden flames blossomed over Eunha, Ian, and Yuna's skin. The heatless fire incinerated the dust and germs clinging to their bodies and spread a pleasant warmth.
“Deliver us from evil. Wash their sweet temptations away with clean water, and let us delight more in God's warmth than in the beauty of jewels. We are sinners burdened with sin, so please grant us a vision that can discern good from evil, and under God's will let us burn the wicked.”
Mental barriers able to withstand a demon's voice and temptations were engraved in the minds of the three. The space where the summoning took place and the space where it did not were separated, cutting off sound.
After that, Eunha gathered the golden dust floating in the air and etched a constellation into the ceiling.
Pisces.
It was Pisces.
“Eiael is with me. Chaviah and Rehael watch my back, and Iabamiah and Hayael guide the lambs’ path. Thus, Mumiah repels the demon’s wickedness. A mere great demon would not dare lift its head.”
[Raaaaaah……!]
The moment the chant ended, singing voices rang out from the inscribed constellation. Pure white feathers fell like snowflakes, and Eunha looked down at the convulsing seal of Amdusias and murmured coldly.
“Come. The radiance of God has covered my back.”
[Aaaaaaah!!!]
[Kya-hahahaha!!!]
Grotesque screams and laughter poured out from above and below Amdusias's summoning circle. But soon they were blocked and neutralized by the heavenly song.
…Rustle.
A feather settles lightly on the summoning circle. Immediately after, a snow-white hand suddenly bursts out from the goat's heart, seizes it, and tears it apart.
[Ah... it’s the song of despicable angels.]
A mouth sprouted from the hand. It soon became a head, then a horse with an instrument embedded in its body. The thing that took shape in an instant looked down at Eunha with red eyes, its eyelids half-lowered.
…Pwah!
A black single horn sprouted from the horse's forehead. The rapidly lengthening horn shot toward Eunha's eyes as if to stab them, stopping just in front of her pupils. But Eunha didn't move. Rather, she snapped at him in a cold voice.
“Show some respect, Duke of Hell. God is watching us.”
[Ah, God. It has a lovely ring to it.]
Amdusias.
The great demon of hell and duke who ruled 29 legions played the keyboard embedded in his upper body with a sly smile. The notes that slipped in as dissonance amid the heavenly song burned away a few of the floating feathers.
[Merciful one. Lord of hell. Father of fallen angels and creator of us all!]
“…….”
[He is also one I respect, young mage who rides upon His mercy. Rejoice. I myself submit beneath His light and become the lowest and most beautiful shadow.]
Kuuuuung……!
Amdusias crouched low.
The two now had different eye levels. Now Amdusias had to look up at her, and she looked down at Amdusias. Holding the Lemegeton in her hand, Eunha took a single step toward him.
“I want a contract. Submit to me.”
In a coercive tone, Amdusias voiced it through the trumpet embedded in his neck.
[Heir of Solomon. That alone is enough to meet the basic qualifications. But since you summoned me, you know that additional conditions are required, yes?]
“I know.”
[Then this will be quick. Prove your purity, heir of Solomon.]
Swish.
Amdusias thrust his horn toward her. Eunha did not avoid it. Instead, she brought her finger to the tip of the sharp horn.
Blood flowed from the wound that bloomed with a stinging pain, and droplets slid down Amdusias's horn. Amdusias closed his eyes and twitched the corner of his mouth.
[Purity, by nature, means a pure body. Until now you have never spent a night with the opposite sex, nor even touched them. The purity of your body has been proven.]
“…….”
[Purity, by nature, means sexual innocence. You have never once felt sexual desire toward the opposite sex, so the purity of your spirit has been proven.]
“...I wish you’d shut up—”
[Lastly, purity, by nature, means a pure heart.]
Amdusias cut off Eunha and opened the eyes he had slowly closed.
[Until now, you have held only one man in your heart. And that is recent. A great rock has fallen into a lake that had been calm until now, so even if it has not yet developed into love, you do have some fondness for him.]
“...Shut up—”
[Aside from that, not a single man has stirred ripples in the lake of your heart. Truly devoted and single-minded you are. The purity of your heart has been proven.]
Amdusias smiled smugly, moving only one of his eyes to stare at Ian.
[The conditions for the contract have been met, heir of Solomon.]
He snickered.
[This will be a love full of hardship.]
“...?”
Ian, unable to hear the thing's voice because of the magic, tilted his head to the side.
“...Why the hell is that bastard staring at me like that?”