Chapter 112
#Chapter 112: Demonic Sword Forte (14) - Bait Hunt
Sky Academy.
This bizarre educational institution, where beating a monster to death is said to be more effective for growth than listening to a professor’s careful guidance, naturally has a colorful variety of ‘dungeons’ to match.
A subterranean passage teeming with slimes and tentacles.
A forest where all sorts of mutated plants and animals emerge.
A library lined with books that eat people, and so on.
It was impossible to say which dungeon among them was the best or the most dangerous.
That was because every student evaluated them differently.
But if asked which was the ‘oldest dungeon,’ everyone could give the same answer.
Because that was a question with an objective standard.
The Tower.
The Sky Academy itself already stood at a dizzying height, reaching far into the heavens simply by virtue of its existence.
Even within the academy, it was the ‘highest’ structure—and a dungeon.
Yet despite that symbolism, the Tower was not particularly popular with students, and when asked why, they answered as follows.
-It’s way too high. When am I ever going to climb all 100 floors?
-Once you reach the tenth floor from the first and leave, shouldn’t they at least make a teleportation gate so you can start from the tenth floor next time? But this place makes you go all the way around from the first floor every time.
-There are horribly many traps and lures, and all kinds of monsters appear in mixed-up combinations, making it hard to prepare countermeasures.
-On top of that, the interior keeps changing. Not so drastically that sharing information becomes pointless, but it’s a nuisance anyway.
-There’s no proper source of food, no reliable safe zone, and if a crisis arises midway, having to descend floor by floor all the way back to the first is the worst. Even more so because the monsters have been replenished by the time you return.
-You do get a decent number of points for reaching the 100th floor, but… is it really worth struggling that hard to climb all the way up? Who knows?
Opinions of the Tower varied, but they all boiled down to one thing.
The rewards did not match the effort.
This was a fairly unusual characteristic in Sky Academy, which was obsessively devoted to granting ‘rewards’ for even the smallest actions.
Naive freshmen sometimes challenged the Tower, but once they had adapted to the academy to some extent, they usually moved on to dungeons with better cost-effectiveness.
Thus, the Tower became a place untouched by human footsteps.
And on the 100th floor, which almost no one had reached, a man stood with his back against a wall.
“……”
A man with indistinct features.
His presence was so remarkably faint that he brought a ghost to mind more than a person.
He silently stared at the stairs leading from the 99th floor to the 100th, unmistakably appearing to wait for someone.
-Footstep.
Had that waiting held some meaning?
At last, someone emerged from the stairs.
A remarkably handsome young man with blond hair and blue eyes, and a cute-looking girl with black hair and golden eyes.
“Phew. Huh.”
Perhaps getting this far had been rather arduous.
After letting out a deep sigh, the young man flinched when he saw the man who had been waiting.
But only for a moment. The young man greeted him with a bright smile.
“I’m Kairen, Lady Divana’s contractor.”
The man stared blankly at the hand Kairen had extended for a handshake, then casually muttered,
“What kind of trick is this, Divana?”
Kairen’s face stiffened slightly at having his greeting ignored.
His mouth opened as though relaying someone else’s words.
“《─‘Shador.’ What do you mean, calling this a trick?》”
The third demon, who was called Shador, answered.
“Why did you leave your contractor’s self-awareness intact? Don’t create unnecessary variables.”
Flinch.
Though trembling at Shador’s shocking statement, Kairen did not stop speaking. More precisely, he did not stop relaying the words Divana whispered in his ear.
“《You’re one to talk. Aren’t you the idiot? If you devour your contractor’s consciousness and move the body yourself like that, there’ll be a high risk of the System detecting you.》”
“Don’t lump me together with a mediocre jack-of-all-trades like you. There is no danger of being discovered over something this minor.”
“《You bastard, you really want to go a round? Huh?》”
“If you seek to disrupt my lord’s grand design out of personal feelings, I will gladly oblige.”
“《Oh, is that so? Aren’t you impressive? Anyway, I have my own way, so don’t interfere.》” …That is all, Lord Shador. I understand your concerns, but rest assured, what you fear will not happen. I have decided to become one with Lady Divana.”
Shador did not answer.
His indistinct features had stiffened like a doll, but Kairen somehow felt it was a sneer.
The demon Shador’s gaze shifted to the young man’s side.
To a girl with long black hair tied back.
A descendant of a hero. The key to making their operation succeed.
Pina Valestia.
“……”
At a glance, Pina’s state was clearly abnormal.
Her golden eyes were clouded and devoid of their usual light, and even though Kairen and Shador were having a suspicious conversation beside her, she merely stood there like a doll, showing no reaction whatsoever.
“Has she been bewitched?”
“Yes. Since it is difficult for Lady Divana to use her power directly, I have been accumulating mana little by little. Even if I told her to die right now, she would obey without complaint.”
“How strong is she in battle?”
“I believe she’s at least Tier 5.”
“Good. Since that idiot Valzarez stopped contacting us, we needed a decoy. She’ll do.”
Shador’s emotionless eyes pierced Kairen.
“Divana’s contractor. Order the hero’s descendant to destroy the seal, then continue fighting anyone who comes here until the moment she dies.”
Kairen briefly wore an awkward expression, then nodded.
“Miss Pina. After destroying the seal, please fight everyone who comes here.”
Pina quietly nodded with an empty expression.
“…Yes, Mr. Kairen.”
“Will this do?”
Shador did not answer.
Perhaps that itself was the answer.
Kairen shrugged and asked Shador,
“By the way, Lord Shador, are you directly controlling your contractor’s body? What about the contractor, then?”
“Why are you curious?”
“Aren’t we going to be comrades from now on? I was curious since we’re in the same boat.”
“Ha.”
Cold mockery curled at Shador’s lips.
“This foolish contractor has already offered everything he has to me. What remains here is merely an empty shell. In that sense, you’re lucky. You got to associate with a half-baked amateur like Divana.”
“Come now, don’t be so harsh. I’ve heard that some demons are beings who were once human. If I become one too, wouldn’t that make me a comrade of yours, Lord Shador?”
“What pointless drivel.”
“Tsk. Yes, yes. I understand. So, where is the seal? If we have to defeat the 100th-floor boss, please wait a bit. I’m exhausted, probably because I had to expend so much strength climbing here.”
“There’s no need. I defeated that foolish puppet long ago.”
Shador moved forward and opened the boss room door, revealing what looked like fragments of armor scattered all over the floor.
Through information he had heard from his seniors, Kairen recognized it as the boss guarding the top of this tower, the ‘Silver Knight.’
Gulp.
Kairen swallowed unconsciously.
As far as he knew, the Silver Knight was a boss that could only be defeated by a coordinated party attack, and even then only if the party included at least one Tier 5 member.
The fact that such an opponent had been so brutally defeated without putting up much resistance proved that Shador’s skill was anything but ordinary.
And the abilities he would unleash while accepting the risk of being detected by the System had to be even greater.
Thinking about what he had to do from now on against someone like that made his vision swim, but Kairen forcibly pulled himself together.
‘For Lady Divana…!’
“This way. Order her to cut down this statue.”
Shador pointed to a huge stone at the very back of the boss room.
A statue of a stubborn-looking old man equipped with a huge staff and a voluminous robe.
Who could have guessed that this statue, known merely as part of the boss room’s scenery, was a ‘seal’ hiding something?
Considering that there had been no particular rules or restrictions imposed by the academy on the way here, it was highly likely that even the professors did not know of its existence.
“What on earth is that statue sealing? Have you found anything out?”
“I said to cut it. Are you deaf?”
Shador’s already faint presence grew even fainter.
Understanding that this was Shador’s version of ‘battle preparation,’ Kairen squeezed his eyes shut and gave the order.
“Miss Pina, begin!”
“Yes, Mr. Kairen.”
With an emotionless face and a flat voice, Pina raised her sword.
The beautiful blade of her two-handed sword emerged, and a vivid sword aura rose above it.
A blazing embodiment of light that looked capable of cutting through anything came crashing down with all its strength.
Not at the statue, but at Shador.
Squelch!!
Even though he was the shell of someone who had given everything to a demon, the blood that spilled was unmistakably red.
“Th-this…!”
Shador’s eyes widened in shock as his chest was deeply slashed.
He had not simply been caught off guard.
If Kairen had swung his sword in the same situation, Shador would have reacted calmly and subdued him without a scratch.
But doing so against Pina was impossible.
Because Pina, receiving Forte’s full backup, had already completely entered the realm of Tier 6.
Unlike moments ago, Pina’s eyes were not unfocused like a doll’s; they held a clear will.
And there was something strangely awkward about Kairen’s behavior.
It did not take Shador long to grasp the situation completely.
“Divana!! How dare you—how dare you betray our lord!!”
Divana did not answer.
Whether by her own will or not, she knew full well that once she had changed sides, taking a halfhearted stance would be the worst thing she could do.
Sharing Divana’s intentions, Kairen fled toward the dungeon stairs.
Because he had been instructed to do so.
Fwoooooosh!
A vivid black aura spilled forth.
Utterly rigid, unyielding, and merciless.
The aura possessed by ‘Forte’ as a demonic sword.
Shador, an assassin-type, tried somehow to hide or escape from Pina’s line of sight, but Pina, backed by Forte, broke through every one of his attempts and drove him back.
The instant his dagger clashed with the two-handed sword, Shador’s right arm went flying.
The moment the shadow that tried to seize Pina’s ankle was cut apart, blood spurted from both of Shador’s legs.
Had he judged that the situation was becoming unfavorable?
Shador’s very body collapsed, and his shadow scattered throughout the room.
At last, he abandoned the human shell he had been wearing and began to exert his full power as a demon.
《Contractor.》
“Yes, Demonic Sword.”
Pina raised her sword.
Within the pitch-black aura, something blue appeared for the briefest moment, then vanished.
The next moment.
A haze of drifting petals filled the entire boss room.