“Di-didn’t you say the magic circle’s explosion would be very small, Klad?”
Jake stammered as he tried to approach the inside of the hall. However, because Klad grabbed his shoulder and stopped him, he couldn’t get a single step closer.
“I can feel demonic energy from inside. Don’t move rashly.”
“Could this phenomenon be an effect produced by your magic circle?”
“As if.”
The entire inside of the hall was saturated with demonic energy.
Even if a gigantic large-scale demonic beast came and died scattering blood, demonic energy wouldn’t spread this much. Perhaps the enormous amount of demonic energy spread and all the trap magic circles in the area reacted—all the magic circles in the castle were also destroyed.
“Even if you told me it wasn’t a priest who came from the temple but the Demon King, I’d believe you?”
“The Demon King is dead, so that’s impossible. Even if the Demon King were alive, that couldn’t have been possible. His limits are the same as my limits, and since I’ve never had enough magical power to fill such a huge space, the same would go for him.”
“I didn’t really think the Demon King came and went.”
Jake nodded as if that were obvious.
“The priest who triggered the trap magic… Perhaps it might not even be a priest. We need to find them.”
“I’d normally want to stop you saying it’s dangerous, but certainly this time there’s nothing we can find out without checking directly.”
“Hmm.”
Jake looked down at his own palm that was tingling and stinging.
“Klad. My body still reacts to demonic energy. Although God took back His power, I’m speculating that its remnants remain and are affecting me.”
“There are occasional cases like that.”
“The sandworm’s demonic energy disappearing when I touched it was probably the same phenomenon. Then couldn’t I eliminate the demonic energy here too?”
“Even if it’s possible, no.”
“Why!”
“Because it’s dangerous.”
Just because you suddenly lose power doesn’t mean what’s in your body completely disappears. You just lose the ability to newly generate the same power. If you can still use it even though the power disappeared, it’s because everything that was already generated and remains in your body hasn’t been completely exhausted yet. Simply put, it’s the same principle as water you’ve already collected not disappearing even if the faucet that used to produce water stops working due to a water outage.
Jake barely lived an ordinary life with God’s power, then lost that power and became so weak that even walking and breathing became difficult. But what if the current state was ‘a state where some of God’s power remains and is helping’? What if Jake’s state of receiving no help from the power at all was actually more serious than this? If that were the case, when the remaining divine power ran out, Jake might become unable to even move a finger, or in serious cases, might even die. In preparation for that time, divine power had to be consumed only during training as much as possible.
‘I shouldn’t have let him purify the sandworm’s demonic energy…’
Klad only realized this possibility after leaving the breakwater village and arriving at the next destination. If he’d known in advance, he would never have let Jake expend his power. It was regrettable that he couldn’t immediately grasp it since he hadn’t seen a case of completely losing power rather than replacing the possessed power with something else.
“We’ll go around to avoid contact with demonic energy as much as possible. Follow me.”
“…Understood.”
Since he was saying this out of concern for him, Jake couldn’t complain either. Jake followed Klad out of the lord’s castle as he cleared away debris fallen on the floor and pushed aside rock masses blocking the passage to open a path.
Perhaps it became known that an additional explosion incident occurred inside the lord’s castle—there was no one around. Even after leaving the castle, it wasn’t difficult to find the priest’s whereabouts due to the dense magical energy that could be felt without even trying. Klad walked along the path following the traces of demonic energy.
“This way is toward the temple, Klad.”
“To think they’d consider bringing someone harboring demonic energy to the temple while calling them a priest—seems there was no one among those together who knew about this fact.”
Thanks to there being so many people hiding in the temple after the lord’s castle explosion incident, it wasn’t difficult to hide inside. No one paid attention to Jake and Klad, who had changed their hair color.
If this were the Grand Temple, they would have moved the injured priest to a safe space, but this was a tiny temple bustling with territorial residents. The priest was receiving treatment in a small room in a corner of the temple. Even calling it treatment, since they didn’t know the cause, they could only help the sleeping priest drink recovery potions and wait until he woke up.
Jake glanced toward the door of the room where the priest was.
“There are people guarding the door.”
It was natural. Not because the injured person was a priest, but because the person who came from the capital to resolve the territory’s incident collapsed from an explosion of unknown cause. Moreover, it was a priest from the Grand Temple that the Duke personally took the lead in dispatching to resolve the incident. If this person couldn’t get up and died, the city’s priests who entered the lord’s castle with him would be in a difficult position. If things went wrong, they might be branded as the culprits who caused this incident and dragged away.
“Isn’t there a way to enter the room without them knowing, Klad? Like making our bodies invisible and entering…”
“Even if the bodies are invisible, wouldn’t they think it’s strange if the door suddenly opens and closes?”
“Or passing through the wall. Or making all the people here unable to perceive that we’re entering the room.”
“There’s no need to go that far.”
Instead of casting recognition magic on the territorial residents filling the temple, Klad waved his hand toward outside the temple. It was a gesture Klad often made when using magic.
KWAANG—!
“Kyaaaaaaak!”
“An, an explosion!”
A roar sounded from outside the temple, and people caused a commotion trembling in fear. The priests guarding the door made expressions of despair and stood up from their seats. Some rushed outside to assess the situation while the rest tried hard to calm people down.
In that commotion, Klad opened the door that no one was paying attention to and confidently entered inside.
“If anyone discovers we entered this room, we can just say we hid because we were scared. How’s that, simple?”
“Still, to cause an explosion, isn’t that excessive?”
“Excessive? If I carelessly cast magic that touches the mind like recognition magic, even the slightest mistake could cause brain abnormalities. To cast that on not just one or two people but hundreds—that’s more excessive.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“The explosion was just a tree getting struck by lightning and splitting in two. If I’d only made an explosion sound, the search time would lengthen which would be good for us, but if only the sound is heard and no explosion site is visible, the fear would intensify more, so I created a site that can be seen with the eyes and judged as safe. How about it, did I do well?”
“Splendid. Admirable.”
The priest was asleep on a cot temporarily placed in the middle of the room.
When they approached the priest, Jake’s fingers twitched. It was the same reaction he’d felt at Baron Nolson’s castle.
He wondered if he might have really become able to sense magical power. Though it was merely a trembling of fingers, Jake was pleased by that change.
“The demonic energy is felt this clearly, so why don’t the priests notice?”
“They know but are hushing it up. They’re probably thinking the magic circle didn’t explode in reaction to demonic energy, but that demonic energy poured out while the magic circle exploded and seeped into the priest’s body. That’s why they poured out this much holy water.”
Klad picked up and shook the empty holy water bottle placed beside the bed.
Temples, regardless of size, must always have holy water prepared for emergencies. The reason being that when demons or the Demon King appear, they must coat swords with holy water to face them, but priests were reluctant to use holy water even when demons appeared. Because if they consumed the holy water they possessed, they had to procure the same amount without fail, and since holy water was precious, its price skyrocketed to the heavens.
However, since a demonic energy explosion occurred in none other than the lord’s castle, they had no choice but to reluctantly squeeze out holy water and devote themselves to treatment.
“Because of the holy water, the demonic energy is rather suppressed so the time to wake up is…”
Klad’s expression gradually distorted as he observed and explained about the collapsed priest.
“…This is.”
“What’s the matter, Klad? Why are you like that?”
“……”
Klad placed his hand over the priest’s chest. It was as if he were touching something dirty and terrible, with only his fingertips lightly brought into contact.
Jake found Klad’s appearance very unfamiliar. It was a markedly different attitude from how he would gently grasp with his entire palm whenever there was a need to make contact with him.
“He’s becoming demonized.”
“What?”
“I’m saying he’s becoming a demon.”
“Aren’t you confusing it with severe demonic energy poisoning?”
“The poisoning phenomenon is when demonic energy fills the body so the body can’t endure it and dies. Even if poisoned by demonic energy, the body doesn’t transform accordingly or the heart doesn’t generate demonic energy. But this person…”
Klad sensed the energy emanating from the priest’s heart once more, hoping he had misjudged.
“This person is generating demonic energy from his heart.”
Living, breathing life forms generate magical power from their hearts regardless of species. For clergy, that magical power contains divine power.
And the only species whose magical power harbors demonic energy are demons and demonic beasts.
“Humans can’t become demons!”
“I know. But the case is right before our eyes.”
“…If that’s true… If it’s true that humans, moreover someone who received God’s blessing, are becoming demons, we must inform them. The High Priest…”
Jake, who had been muttering, froze just like that.
They couldn’t inform the temple side of this fact.
The temple had already been taken over by the Duke. Seeing that the priest the temple sent had become like this, they might already know the situation over there.
No, they might be the very perpetrators who did this.
“…We must inform His Majesty the Emperor.”
