There was no time to deliberate. Every second counted. I bolted out of the house and headed straight for the temple without a plan. It was late at night, at least — that much was fortunate. I told myself it would be simple enough: destroy the statue while no one was around, then get back.
But the moment I arrived at the temple, I had to scrap that plan entirely. Of all the nights for a religious ceremony to be held, it had to be tonight. The courtyard where the statue stood was packed wall to wall with worshippers. Because the 3rd Imperial Prince was in attendance, not only ordinary citizens but a full contingent of knights had been deployed as well. A sweet hymn tickled at the night air.
This is going to be a problem.
If I blended into the crowd and passed myself off as an ordinary human, I could wait for an opening and smash the statue quickly. Given that demons possessed far greater grip strength than humans, breaking a statue bare-handed was well within the realm of possibility. And since there were already so many people clustered around the statue, one more person added to the crowd wouldn’t raise any suspicion.
But if I did that, the debris would shower down on the citizens. At this distance, a great many people would inevitably be hurt. In the worst case, there could be deaths. That was a line I had decided never to cross.
“Pull up a window so I can check my stats and skills.”
Before I’d even finished speaking, a familiar system window appeared.
Shane (Half-Demon, Age 125)
Stats (□/10)
Strength: 5
Magic: 3
Resistance: 7
Agility: 8
Accuracy: 5
Skills
Innate Skills:
Flame LV. 1
Stealth LV. 1
Disguise LV. 1
The word “Disguise” caught my eye. Since I was barely at the start of the game, the level was a measly 1. At this level, a perfect transformation wasn’t possible. It wasn’t about changing my appearance so much as simply concealing my original face.
But even as a Level 1 skill, it had its uses. When Disguise was active, people who looked at my face could see it — they could read my expression, watch my eyes and lips move — yet they were unable to register that I was a man with ash-gray hair and red eyes and a somehow unsettling air about him. Even looking at my bare face, they couldn’t identify me. Despite being Level 1, the functionality was excellent — it had been one of my most-used skills when I played the game.
Something clicked into place in my mind.
Ah. Right. I remember now.
A way to draw people away from the statue. A way to safely destroy it without any casualties.
All I had to do was make them run.
Not from the statue — from me.
I reached up and touched the blood-red pendant — the symbol of a Legion Commander.
* * *
The 3rd Imperial Prince, Damian, applauded the choir members with genuine warmth. The sight of small children — so little their heads barely reached his chest — carrying on with their sweet, pure voices was truly beautiful. He felt that every hour spent preparing for this event had been worthwhile.
People were laughing and chatting and praising the god with full sincerity. It wasn’t the solemn, hushed atmosphere one typically associated with a temple, but Damian believed the Goddess of Dawn would have enjoyed a lively celebration like this. A living faith, he thought, must look something like this.
After the hymns concluded, a ritual offering followed. A white ox was placed upon the altar. Not a real one — it was an exquisitely crafted effigy. On the grounds that no innocent life should be sacrificed as an offering to a benevolent deity, the empire had long since adopted the practice of using models in place of actual animals.
Human rites of offering were different from those of demonkind. The moral gap between them and those who casually carried out soul sacrifices to resurrect the Demon King was vast. Damian felt a sense of pride in that distinction.
The High Priest stepped toward the altar, bearing a vermillion torch. He was just about to set the offering alight.
That was the moment.
A wind came from somewhere. In the same instant, every flame went out. The High Priest’s torch. The lanterns illuminating the temple. Every last one of them, extinguished at once. As though someone had cut off the breath of the world in a single stroke, the temple was submerged in total darkness.
A brief silence fell. Then, without warning, the offering ignited. Flames — dark, murky, and ominously deep in color — swallowed the white ox whole. It was nothing like fire as people knew it. Flames tainted with wicked demonic energy were that black. The fire writhed as if screaming and reduced the offering to ash in moments.
The venue descended into chaos in an instant. People shrieked, stumbling and colliding with one another as they groped blindly through the dark for any exit. Children’s crying tangled with adults’ shouting, and fear swelled and fed on itself.
“Everyone, calm down! Mage — light!”
Damian called out as steadily as he could manage. Moments later, a mage chanted a spell and conjured an orb of light. Faint but definite, the light spread across the surroundings.
The first thing it revealed was the altar. The black flames had scorched not only the offering but the marble altar itself. The sight of the pristine white altar charred and disfigured was devastating. A wave of anguished sighs passed through the crowd.
The mage conjured a second orb of light and sent it floating upward. As the light illuminated the space above, the statue of the Goddess of Dawn — which had always looked down upon her faithful with gentle grace — came into view. And upon that great statue’s shoulder, someone was sitting.
The figure was dangling his legs with casual ease, as though all this commotion were nothing more than a dull sideshow of a festival.
His face was not visible. Or more precisely — his face was fully exposed, yet his features could not be made out clearly. The instinctive terror of encountering something unknown seized the crowd: he wore no mask, yet his appearance remained unknowable. It was as though eyes and brain were working at cross purposes. What they could just barely confirm was that he was a tall man with a build not unlike a human’s.
Damian quickly took in the figure’s attire. A black uniform buttoned all the way to the throat, leather gloves of the same color. Everything about him was jet black — everything except the bare sliver of wrist and ankle visible, and his face, which remained entirely unregisterable. A black cloak billowed in the wind, flapping like the wings of a demon.
Damian’s gaze stopped at one point. Pinned to the left shoulder of the cloak was a pendant. A gem vivid as blood, and set within it, an eerie eye-shaped crest. The symbol of a Demon Legion Commander.
“A — a demon!”
Someone screamed the words.
The priests moved swiftly to direct the civilians. They lined up the ordinary citizens and shepherded them out of the temple. Those who were crying or screaming were supported and pulled along; prayers were recited aloud to steady their nerves. Within mere minutes, the courtyard was all but empty. What remained were a handful of priests and the knights encircling the goddess’s statue.
The knights drew their swords as one. The air went rigid with tension. Not a single person dared move rashly — all eyes were locked on the figure perched upon the statue’s shoulder.
Even in that razor’s-edge moment, the Legion Commander was unhurried. He rose to his feet, using the statue’s shoulder as a foothold, and looked down at those below. White statue. Black demon. It was a strange tableau — a god and a demon, overlapping.
Damian’s hands trembled. Fear lifted its head inside his chest. Prince or not, he was still a sixteen-year-old boy. What stood before the youngest Imperial Prince was a Demon Legion Commander who had surely swept up countless lives on the battlefield. The instinct screaming at him to run — he crushed it down, jaw clenched.
Damian stepped forward and called out, pouring every ounce of effort into keeping his voice from shaking:
“Who gave you the right to walk in here. This is not a place where a wicked creature like you can simply set foot. And to climb atop the statue — that insolence will be repaid with your life!”
The Legion Commander let out a short, dismissive laugh. There was no fear in it, no tension. He spoke with the unhurried ease of an adult humoring a child.
“If climbing on a statue is a crime worth dying for, what does destroying one earn? Death a hundred times over? What a shame, though — I only have the one life to give.”
“What? Destroy the — the statue…?”
Damian’s face went rigid.
The Legion Commander issued a gentle warning:
“Mind yourself, little one. Try not to get hurt.”
And then he drove his foot into the statue’s shoulder with all his strength. That was the beginning.
The pride of the temple — the statue of the Goddess Repinal, which had stood in that place for hundreds of years watching over the empire — lurched and shuddered dangerously. Cracks split across the face and torso. He kicked it again. Grinning, like a child playing a game.
CRASH. With an ear-splitting roar, the statue came down.
The crown atop her head. The hand raised in elegant blessing. The delicately sculpted folds of her skirt. All that had constituted the goddess shattered in an instant and rained down upon the floor. Fragments of marble fell like a downpour, striking the altar, sharp shards skittering and ricocheting across the ground. In that sacred space, what rang out was not prayer or hymn — but the sound of destruction.
The goddess’s head struck the floor and broke apart. Her eyes split. Her serene face rolled along the ground. A knight gripping a spear choked back a startled cry, and an elderly priest staggered before sinking helplessly to the ground. Years of devotion, crushed underfoot in a single moment.
Fortunately, the ordinary citizens had already been evacuated far enough away. And the knights who remained were seasoned warriors. They were able, somehow, to dodge the shower of debris.
The problem was Damian. A massive fragment — the goddess’s stone hand, carved from marble — plummeted straight toward him. They say the body locks up in the face of overwhelming terror. Damian stood there, unable even to think of moving, staring blankly up at the death descending on him. A knight rushed belatedly to shield the prince, but the stone was falling faster.
In that moment —
“Hey, Your Highness. I did tell you to be careful.”
A strangely gentle voice brushed past his ear. In his first moment of hearing it, he’d been too crushed by fear to notice — but the demon’s voice was remarkably pleasant. A steady, clear tone that was neither too low nor too rough.
Damian was unharmed. The stone had stopped directly above his head — because the Demon Legion Commander had caught the goddess’s enormous hand with one of his own.
“There we go.”
The Legion Commander set the massive chunk of stone aside with effortless ease.
Damian caught his breath and asked in a trembling voice:
“Why — why did you save me?”
The Legion Commander studied Damian quietly for a moment, then burst into laughter — a bright, amused sound. Rather than offering an answer, he turned the question around:
“What do you think?”
That arrogant manner, conveying no intention whatsoever of dignifying a foolish question with a response. Damian quickly found his answer. In a way, it was all too obvious. The reason a demon had saved him — it had to be…
“You’re keeping me alive until I’m fully grown, and then when the time comes, you plan to offer my soul to the Demon King. A mature member of the imperial family would fetch a high price…!”
The Legion Commander, again, did not answer immediately. He let the silence stretch like a practiced storyteller, and only when Damian’s tension had reached its breaking point did he smirk and snap his fingers.
“…Correct.”
The color drained from Damian’s face. The knights urgently closed ranks around the prince and leveled their swords at the enemy. Every blade pointed at him at once.
The Legion Commander flicked his fingers lightly. A jet-black flame opened its maw and swallowed the orb of light the mage had been sustaining. The world plunged back into total darkness. Only the scattered sounds of breath and footsteps overlapped in the chaos.
“God of Light, grant us light —!”
The mage rushed through the incantation. When brightness returned to the surroundings, the Legion Commander was nowhere to be seen. All that remained was the goddess’s statue, shattered to pieces — and a suffocating, iron-dense fear.
“Ah… ah….”
Damian’s legs gave out beneath him, and he crumpled to the ground right where he stood.
