This wasn’t the original plan. I’d had absolutely no intention of revealing that I was a demon in front of the children. The plan was to knock out all the scum first, free the children, and then quickly carry out the soul offerings once there were no eyes watching. The empty shells left behind after the souls were extracted would be dumped somewhere deserted.
Done that way, the incident would wrap up cleanly. This was supposed to be the good deed of an unidentified stranger — not something traced back to a legion commander.
That was why I had deliberately avoided using my flame abilities during the fight. I’d also dialed down my combat performance considerably. In the eyes of the witnesses, I needed to appear as something suspicious, yet human nonetheless.
The plan had been going reasonably well. All the trouble started the moment one piece of scum pressed a blade to an innocent child’s throat. I could have subdued him with swordsmanship. But if the timing slipped even slightly, there was a chance the child would get hurt.
I had no choice but to subdue him by other means. Soul offering. I chose the fastest, most certain, and simultaneously most terrible option available.
The outcome was as expected. My identity as a demon was exposed immediately, and the situation descended into chaos. Even so, thanks to that, the criminals’ mental fortitude collapsed rapidly, and the soul offerings became easier to carry out rather than harder.
The dangerous drugs were all stored away using the game’s inventory function. It was truly fortunate that the storage feature from the game worked identically here in reality. These drugs would never find their way back into the world.
The children, apparently believing their souls were about to be offered up next, were crying and calling for their mothers or crying out the names of gods. I hadn’t wanted to leave the children with trauma.
I examined each child’s condition one by one. The burst blood vessels in the whites of their eyes, the deep shadows settled beneath them. Hands stained with drug residue, legs trembling faintly from withdrawal. This was a problem that had to be resolved right now.
I opened the shop and searched for an item that could treat patients.
Addiction Recovery Candy × 13 (Apple Flavor)
200p
Don’t eat too many just because they taste good!
One per person — no more, no less.
I spent some of the points earned from the soul offerings just now and purchased the item. A cascade of candies wrapped in aurora-shimmered foil poured out from thin air. The effect was a little excessive, but it was more than enough to catch the children’s attention.
“It’s alright. Here — eat one each.”
I smiled gently as I said it.
The children picked up the candies with trembling hands. Eyes swirling with wariness and fear, they unwrapped them and cautiously put them in their mouths. It was plain as day that they were eating only because they’d been told to.
The effect was immediate. Color returned to their faces and the stains on their hands disappeared. The threadbare breathing that had seemed on the verge of snapping stabilized. The children startled and stared at their now-clean hands over and over again.
Urgent footsteps echoed from upstairs. They belonged to the Sanctuary Guard. Shasha’s voice could be heard among them.
“It’s down here! I’m certain of it.”
I added nothing further, and concealed myself with a stealth technique to observe the situation from the shadows.
I hope this day doesn’t remain in your memories as a nightmare you can never overcome.
Carrying that small, quiet hope.
Shasha — an apothecary with curly brown hair and leaf-green eyes. Her narrative arc in the game went as follows.
Shasha had been running a small potion workshop with her parents, and in whatever spare time she had, she’d also been participating in Sanctuary Guard activities to help keep the village safe. It was in the middle of that work that she uncovered the drug organization behind the string of child disappearances, and from that turning point, she threw herself fully into researching a cure.
Later, she would go on to manufacture potions for soldiers right in the heart of the battlefield, fighting against the Demon King’s army. The epithet she earned through that work was none other than “Saint of the Battlefield.” Just as the outstanding healer Lihen was called a “Saint,” Shasha was more than deserving of the same title.
But that was a story for a much later time. Right now, she stood frozen stiff with shock. Even having listened to everything the children said, she couldn’t organize the situation in her mind. No — it was closer to refusing to organize it.
That the Legion Commander had appeared and taken every last one of the drugs. That fact alone was shocking enough — and yet he had also given the victims a cure.
And then Shasha finally arrived at the understanding of what his actions meant. It was a scheme cruel enough that she wished she’d never figured it out.
The Legion Commander was a master of stealth. For someone like him, slipping into a high-ranking official’s estate would be no more than an evening stroll.
He would lace their food with the drugs and wait for his targets to fall apart from addiction. And then he would appear before them again — once they had lost everything to withdrawal — and whisper in that serpentine, treacherous voice of his.
Do as I say, and I’ll give you the cure.
No one would be able to dismiss his words as empty bluster. Hadn’t he already demonstrated the cure’s existence — on children, no less?
With just a single legion commander at work, high-ranking officials would begin to crack. Military deployments, supply lines, vulnerabilities. Without spilling a single drop of blood, he could extract the finest military secrets one by one. And beyond that, he might maneuver the very state of the world according to his own designs.
The 13th Legion Commander was not a simple killer. He was someone who calculated even the manner in which he wielded evil. The kind of enemy the logic of good could never reach, not in a thousand years.
Shasha clenched her fist tight. She could not bring herself to simply rejoice at having safely rescued the victims. The children had survived. But in exchange for that, the seed of something far more catastrophic had fallen into the enemy’s hands.
It was the beginning of a nightmare.
If even a single dose of the cure had been left intact, she would have called in the apothecaries and begun researching it. Analyzed its composition, attempted to replicate the manufacturing process, and perhaps found an alternative.
But there was no cure left behind. The Legion Commander had distributed them in a number precisely matching the kidnapped victims — not one more, not one less. Given how methodical his nature was, that was only to be expected.
Shasha stood motionless before that grim reality for a long while.
“Shasha, is something wrong?”
A fellow guard member nudged her. She opened her heavy mouth.
“I think — the 13th Legion Commander might be planning to…”
Shasha shared her suspicion with the other guard members, and they all agreed with her assessment.
“Um… excuse me…”
A woman who had been quietly listening to the conversation called out to Shasha with some effort. She was one of the two adults rescued this time. “Adult” was a generous term — she looked barely past twenty. A gaunt body, ragged breathing, shabby clothes. She still appeared frail through and through.
The woman tapped Shasha lightly on the shoulder. And placed something in the palm of her hand. A candy wrapped in shimmering foil.
“It’s the cure. The kids said it tasted like apple.”
The woman said quietly.
“B-but… shouldn’t you be eating that yourself?”
At Shasha’s question, the woman shook her head with quiet calm. And cast her eyes downward as though she were the one who had done something wrong.
“Even though I’m an adult — I wasn’t able to do anything for the children. All I did was tremble in fear.”
She went on, composed and even-toned.
“So… I want to try doing something adult-like for the first time. If research is done using this medicine as a starting point — and if we can figure out how to produce the cure — then we can stop that Legion Commander’s plan too, can’t we? Right?”
Shasha stared at her wordlessly, and then suddenly pulled her into a tight embrace.
“I promise. I’ll make the cure as quickly as I possibly can. So please — hold on just a little longer. You have to.”
Shasha’s voice trembled, but it was clear and unwavering. The woman surrendered herself to that warm body heat and smiled — a smile of relief.
Shasha wrote down her home address on a slip of paper and handed it to the woman. Come any time, she told her, if you ever need help. The woman folded the slip of paper carefully and tucked it into her pocket. And then, unsteadily, she stepped outside for the first time in what felt like an eternity.
It was nighttime. Cold, dark, dangerous — but the simple fact that she could breathe the outside air filled her with uncomplicated joy.
From the opposite direction, a man with his hat pulled down low came walking briskly and bumped into her. The woman lurched and nearly fell, and the man quickly caught and steadied her.
“I’m so sorry. I truly am sorry.”
He bowed his head again and again. The woman smiled and told him it was fine. Then she began walking again, with no particular destination in mind.
Her hands were cold. She slipped them into her pockets.
Rustle. Where there should have been only the texture of the slip of paper, she felt something else. A candy wrapped in shimmering foil. The very cure that the Legion Commander had handed out.
“……!”
The woman looked around frantically, searching for the man she’d bumped into moments ago. But he had already vanished without a trace.
She tore the wrapper off in a rush. As the candy went into her mouth, the fresh, crisp taste of green apple spread across the tip of her tongue. Tears burst forth all at once.
In front of others she had said she was an adult, had pretended not to be afraid to hand over her own dose of the cure. But the truth was — she had genuinely wanted to live. Wanted to heal.
It must have been the Legion Commander who slipped the candy into her pocket. Of course it couldn’t have been out of pure goodwill. It was closer to a warning. A warning that he had been listening to every word of their conversation.
He knew that she had given up her candy without taking it herself. He knew they were planning to struggle and strain to try to make the cure on their own. No matter how hard you flail, you are all in the palm of my hand. The Legion Commander was saying it — concisely, unmistakably.
And yet, despite all of that… the candy was terribly sweet.
