“Lihen, let’s go to the Dawn Temple. I want to receive the priest’s blessing again.”
At Theo’s words, I was momentarily at a loss for what to say. Because that temple — I had personally burned it to the ground just last night.
If we went now, all we’d find would be charred ruins and soot-stained stone pillars. But the established story was that I had been home with Theo from last night all the way through this morning. It made sense that I wouldn’t know yet that the temple had burned down.
“Sure. Let’s go.”
I had no choice but to nod.
When we arrived at the temple, Theo saw the scorched remains and his eyes went wide. A faint shadow of despair passed over his youthful face. But the expression didn’t last long. The temple had clearly been burned to the ground, yet people were still there. Rows of large tents had been set up alongside the collapsed building, and inside them, people were praying, holding services, and receiving blessings.
Seeing that, Theo seemed visibly moved.
Just then, Luna spotted us and waved cheerfully. The moment she saw Theo, her eyes went wide.
“They always say kids grow up fast — you’ve grown so much in just a few days, I almost didn’t recognize you!”
That apprentice priest had a surprisingly quirky side to her. Theo straightened his posture and answered with quiet composure.
“I was cursed and reverted to a younger age. Right now, the curse is gradually lifting.”
“Ah, I see.”
Luna nodded, then said warmly,
“Should I ask the High Priest about what kind of curse it is? It might be possible to lift it sooner.”
Theo shook his head right away.
“No, it’s fine. It doesn’t really inconvenience my daily life that much. Lihen takes good care of me, so I’m alright. And the temple is in this state — the High Priest needs to focus on more important matters.”
It was truly a heroic answer. I was deeply impressed.
“Even though the temple burned, the people’s faith did not.”
I said, gazing at the people praying inside the tents. Luna looked at them with deep, steady eyes, then nodded.
“The statue may have been destroyed, but God still exists.”
Those words, strangely, lingered in my chest for a long time.
“By the way — who set the fire?”
At Theo’s question, Luna’s expression visibly darkened.
“It was the Demon King’s legion commander. Most people think it was the 13th Legion Commander. From the 1st through the 12th, the temple side has a rough grasp of their appearances — but this 13th Legion Commander is completely unknown to them. It seems they’re using some ability that prevents people from recognizing their face.”
“The Demon King’s…”
Theo gritted his teeth. Fury was written plainly across his golden eyes.
“They did this to make soul offerings easier, right? To drive people into fear and weaken their mental fortitude. The weaker the mind, the easier it is to extract the soul.”
Ah — no, that wasn’t exactly my intention…
“That’s surely what it is.”
Luna nodded.
“They’re an incredibly rational, and at the same time, cruel enemy. The type that avoids meaningless slaughter for the sake of the future. Even for a demon, people say they’re unusually calculated.”
At that, I couldn’t react at all. I thought to myself — so this is what they mean by reading too much into things.
Luna soon softened her expression and looked around. People praying beneath the tents, priests quietly bowing their heads, worshippers standing hand in hand. She smiled brightly.
“But that one was wrong. Look — the faith still stands, and the people have overcome their fear.”
I quietly swallowed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness the worshippers’ spirits were strong.
Just then, a sudden commotion broke out on one side of the temple grounds. A woman who appeared to be in her mid-thirties, with her hair neatly braided, came running toward Luna in tears. She seemed too out of breath to speak properly, swallowing her words several times between sobs.
“Silvia? What’s wrong?”
Luna was the one who called her name first. At that, Silvia’s composure finally broke completely, and the words came pouring out.
“Sister, something terrible has happened. My son is missing. He hasn’t come home since yesterday. I’d heard that kidnappings have been happening frequently lately, and now my son too — something so horrible—”
Luna’s expression hardened noticeably. She took Silvia’s hands firmly in hers and spoke in a calm, steady voice.
“First, I’ll report this to the priest. And I’ll request a search from the Sanctuary Guard. If there’s anything you remember — even the smallest detail — please tell me everything.”
It wasn’t a pressing tone. But it was also clear she had no intention of taking this lightly. Silvia wiped her tears and nodded.
“The children who were playing with my son said a man asked him to help carry some luggage. He had his hat pulled down low, so they couldn’t see his face well.”
The moment I heard that, I understood. This was an event I recognized. The Sanctuary Guard — a sort of village vigilante group. One of its members, a character aligned with the good side: Shasha. When playing as her, the very first quest given was this string of kidnappings.
Behind it was an organization that kidnapped vulnerable children and destitute vagrants to force them into producing drugs. Repeated exposure to the process led to addiction from the harmful substances; they would spit up blood, fall gravely ill, and die. Then the bodies would be discarded, and new victims would be found to fill the void. They were scum who saw human beings as nothing but tools.
If those are the kinds of souls they have…
There would be no real problem offering them up.
Their hideout was in the basement of a respectable-looking building disguised as a legitimate business. From the outside, it appeared entirely unremarkable — but descend the hidden staircase, and everything changed.
The entire underground floor was warded with a sound-dampening spell. Crying, screaming, the crack of breaking bones — none of it leaked outside. It was a space optimized for imprisoning people.
The children were working inside. Seated on the bare floor without chairs, they used their small hands to grind herbs, mix powders, and press everything into round pellets. The backs of their hands were mottled with drug residue, and the skin between their fingers had turned raw and red. No protective gear was given to them. If they made a mistake, they were simply berated and pushed harder.
Jeff, one of the organization’s members, was in a particularly foul mood today. His head was pounding, and his stomach was turning. It was because the drugs he’d inhaled that morning were of worse quality than expected. If the brats had made them properly, this wouldn’t have happened. The blame turned toward the children manufacturing the drugs.
He glared at one child whose movements were especially clumsy.
“Hey — hurry it up, will you?”
The child flinched and shrank back, but their hands remained just as slow.
“Are you out of your mind?”
Jeff raised his hand. Just as he was about to bring it down, someone approached without a sound and grabbed his wrist. Jeff startled and turned his head. A man stood there, wearing a black robe pulled deep over his face.
“What the hell?”
Before the words were even finished, his wrist was twisted. It was tremendous force. The sensation of his joint bending the wrong way came through with unmistakable clarity.
“Aagh — AAARGH!”
Jeff’s scream rang through the basement. Thanks to the sound-dampening spell, that sound circled only within these walls.
“What? What’s going on?”
“Jeff?”
The other organization members scattered throughout the space all rushed toward the source of the noise. They came charging at the intruder with clubs and blades.
The man didn’t even draw a weapon. He drove his fist into their faces, kicked them in the solar plexus with his long legs. Incoming blades were deflected with his bare hands, or snatched by the grip and redirected. His movements were fluid and efficient. It felt less like a fight and more like simple clean-up.
The organization members went down one by one.
The kidnapped captives didn’t fully understand what was happening, but they could at least feel instinctively that the man was on their side.
“The hell — just who the hell is this guy…?”
Jeff clenched his teeth and pushed himself up. He grabbed a chair that had been sitting behind him and raised it toward the back of the man’s head.
“Watch out! Behind you—!”
A child who had been pressing both hands together and praying for the man’s safety cried out. The man, as if he had anticipated that kind of attack all along, shifted his body with effortless ease. The chair split through empty air where his head had been, and Jeff took a kick straight to the abdomen. He flew up and slammed his back into the wall.
“Is this someone from the village guard?”
Another organization member shouted furiously. He had grabbed hold of a scrawny boy, a blade pointed at the boy’s throat.
“Thinking of playing the hero? If you don’t surrender right now, this boy dies.”
Even as everyone swallowed in tension, the man in the black robe was unhurried. For the first time, he opened his mouth. His languid voice was easy on the ears.
“Why would I care about the life of some brat like that?”
The organization member fell into a panic at those few words. The realization that the hostage he’d taken meant nothing shook a nauseating fear into him.
The man gave a casual wave of his hand. At that single gesture, a small crack split open in the air. At first it looked like a hairline fracture. But the gap widened rapidly, transforming into the mouth of an abyss. It yawned open with a tearing sound, like the gaping maw of a starving specter. There was nothing visible inside. A complete void — no light, no depth, no substance.
The dagger dropped from the organization member’s hand. As his mind shattered under extreme terror, something like a white mist seeped out from his chest. A soul. The man moved his hand as if pulling that mist toward him. The soul was drawn in without a single moment of resistance, swallowed into the black rift.
Everyone in that place understood in that instant. The intruder was not human. Soul offerings were an act only demons could perform.
“D-don’t tell me… a demon?”
“Took you long enough.”
The man whispered with a mocking edge and threw off his robe. A black uniform — and a red pendant, the symbol of a legion commander. His face was plainly uncovered, yet it was impossible to perceive what he looked like. There was only one demon with that particular trait.
The Demon King’s 13th Legion Commander.
But — the one who had smashed the statue and burned the temple to the ground — why on earth had they personally descended into the basement of a criminal organization?
“W-why is the legion — the Legion Commander here…?”
“Please spare us, please spare us. We’ll do anything if you just let us live. L-long live the Demon King!”
All eleven organization members had already lost their composure entirely. The Legion Commander let their pleading go in one ear and out the other. Souls were sucked into the wide-open rift. Those who had been weeping and wailing hideously, snot and tears streaming down their faces, crumpled to the ground like puppets with their strings cut.
The situation was resolved in an instant.
The Legion Commander turned and looked toward where the kidnapped victims were. Ten children, and two adults — likely from the slums. Every single one of them had sunk to the floor and was trembling. Among them, the most courageous — a young girl — stepped one pace forward.
“Why… why did you come here? What for?”
The Legion Commander didn’t answer. Instead, they opened the door of a safe tucked in the corner of the basement. All it took was a slight application of force, and the solid iron door crumpled like paper. Inside, a stockpile of deep purple-black drugs was piled high.
What the children had made. The product of their broken bodies, their gnawed-away souls.
He stood before it and gave a quiet gesture. A drawer materialized in the air, and the pile of drugs was absorbed into it one by one. To anyone watching, it looked like advanced storage magic — in reality, it was simply the inventory function that comes standard in the game.
That action was a clearer answer than any words.
Naturally, as was only to be expected — the Legion Commander had not come to rescue the kidnapping victims. His goal from the beginning had been the drugs. A highly addictive substance that clouds the human mind. And now it had fallen into the hands of a demon legion commander.
This was the worst possible outcome.
