[414] The Second Purgatory (1)
The Arun Mountain Range in the northeast of the Tormia Kingdom.
In this place, long steeped in a gloomy aura since ancient times, lay the sealing array that had once bound Belkhir.
Just as magic existed before people understood it, it was mages who used the Law to seal the demon god.
But after thousands of years, the will of good had dimmed, and Belkhir's evil began to pry at that gap bit by bit, eroding the Law from within.
That was the whole resurrection story of the demon god Belkhir.
Breaking through twenty meters of bedrock, Belkhir's majestic form loomed in a cavern deep inside the range.
Fifteen meters tall and weighing thirty-two tons, its massive body resembled an octopus; its skin was dingy and rotten-looking.
Its two arms looked human at a glance, but up close they were actually a tangle of colorful serpents intertwined.
On its reptilian, brutal face the eye sockets were hollow; only crimson flames marked where pupils should have been.
Those points of flame flared as Belkhir undulated its twenty-four octopus legs like waves.
—I will destroy the world! I will make all life bow beneath my feet!
That single Law comprised Belkhir.
But the great being from millennia past had to learn the futility of time.
Civilized humans were no longer so easily extinguished by the arrival of a single demon god.
A sect of mages that had identified the demons' locations from ancient records sent a cooperative notice to the kingdom's intelligence office.
With the king's approval, a Cage-class party was assembled, and twenty-one mages entered the Arun Range's cave.
Now, eight hours and thirty-seven minutes later.
Cage Team B, composed of certified Rank 4 to Rank 6 mages, had severed all of Belkhir's legs and was mounting the final offensive to annihilate it completely.
"Kraaaaaaah!"
Belkhir thrashed its serpent-entwined arms and crawled against the cave walls.
Despite possessing every kind of regeneration, the force twenty-one humans unleashed was beyond what this ancient demon god could endure.
"Pathetic humans! How dare you—! Gaaaargh!"
Belkhir's body split in an X-shaped gash; flesh tore and a mucus-like fluid spurted out.
A fat, bald man leapt into the wound and began swinging two cleavers with furious speed.
"Is the X-shape just decoration? Huh? Decoration? Huh? Decoration? Huh? Decoration?"
That man currently had twenty-eight types of super-powerful buffs stacked on him.
His arms showed no signs of stopping; he tore flesh open in X patterns without end, burrowing toward where a heart would be.
A lavender-hued lump of muscle brought a hungry gleam to his face.
Then he sank his teeth into the demon god's heart.
"Waaaah! Delicious! So delicious!"
He tugged the heart with his teeth, snapped the connected tissue with his cleaver, and a chunk of flesh fell away.
When he swallowed it, the intense savor of raw meat exploded in his head like fireworks.
"Uoooo! Uooooo!"
The carnivore Benifis.
A certified Rank 5 combat mage.
He amplified his potency through the ecstasy of eating his prey's flesh.
Notes: Operates a butcher shop.
"Grrr...!"
Belkhir held on to the end.
An ordinary creature would have died by now.
One could see how tenacious and obsessive the demon kind could be.
"I—I cannot be destroyed like this...."
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
A woman with a pale face and white hair hanging to her waist embraced Belkhir and wept.
Every time her hand stroked the demon god's body, the quivering flesh that had been trying to regenerate stilled.
"How much it must hurt. How much it must ache. Heehee! I'm sorry. I can't help it... ehehehe!"
Beneath her sobs leaked an unbearable laugh.
The contrast between her large tearful eyes and the grotesquely twisted smile at her mouth made the skin crawl.
Saint Moriak.
A certified Rank 6 healing mage.
Specializes in wide-area healing magic with a hundred-meter diameter.
Notes: Severely manic.
For a demon god in the human realm, Belkhir would rank as a second-tier Mara by Heaven's standards, but now he was nothing more than a demon on the verge of being obliterated the moment he descended before twenty-one humans.
Belkhir at last realized he was trapped.
The mages' abilities had sealed and pounded him for eight hours; there was no way to hold out.
As the demon god faltered, Cage Team B's captain Rose looked for the main damage dealer.
As expected, he was slacking in a corner, smoking.
"Hey! Aren't you coming in? Do you know how much this party pays per hour? Does the Association hand out money like dirt?"
"Ah, that witch."
Tarban flicked his cigarette out and watched Belkhir.
It was certainly in a soft, perfectly annihilatable state.
'Just die already, you pathetic bastard.'
Tarban dashed at Belkhir and spread both hands; a high-frequency screech that pierced the eardrums radiated from his palms.
Kaiser Blast.
Every mage who heard the ringing dispersed in all directions.
As Tarban thrust his hands forward, Belkhir's ponderous body began to tremble and shudder.
"Remember this, humans! I am—!"
Paoooooom!
With the explosion, Belkhir's form vanished without a trace.
Chunks of flesh splattered everywhere, but even those melted away in the heat.
"Mission complete."
It was the result precisely eight hours and forty-nine minutes after Cage Team B had arrived.
At that moment, the communicator mage who had been dozing with his back against the cave wall snapped awake.
A crystal orb in front of his eyes displayed information.
To relay that single line of text required roughly four hundred lines of encoded data.
"Captain. Captain."
Rose turned as the communicator mage floated the crystal orb above his palm and said, "The Association is calling. They request that all members of Cage Team B assemble."
The Magic Association.
The eighteenth-floor corridor leading to the Association President's office swarmed with mages.
Cage Team B's members, scattered and waiting for their captain, looked sullen.
By design, Cage Team B was made up of the best in their respective fields.
Given that these were some of the kingdom's busiest mages, it was natural they were not pleased about being called back after a mission.
"What now? Don't scare us. I need to get home and watch my kid. You're not going to make us do more here, are you?"
"By the way, where's the captain? Do you know anything, Old Man?"
Tarban asked Horkin.
Horkin, the eldest and the one who gave orders in Cage Team B, might know something, but he only offered an inscrutable smile.
When the Association President's door opened and Rose came out, the mages swarmed her.
Her expression was no happier.
"Captain, what did the Association say?"
Although Lupist was temporarily acting as Association President, they didn't care who sat in the seat as long as reimbursements were handled properly.
"It's an emergency mission. It looks like you'll have to go out again."
No one spoke, but the cold glare they shot down the corridor made the air tense.
Saint Moriak asked, "Why us? There's a Cage Team A."
The skill gap between Cage A and Cage B was minimal.
Tormia's national defense wasn't so weak that forty top-tier talents couldn't exist, but Cage A had long-time cohesion while Cage B's members were assembled as needed.
That small difference bred bruised pride.
If the Association needed a mission done, they assumed Cage A would be chosen, not them.
"I argued too. But Cage A is temporarily inoperable."
Horkin said.
"Because of Gaold, right?"
"Right. There's a person suspected to be Gaold's personal guard in Cage A. Until the truth is uncovered, we're the kingdom's only operable Cage-class party."
Tarban said.
"That still doesn't change things. Didn't you negotiate the contracts, Captain? And Rochelle here still has a daughter who can't even walk yet. She'll be beaten to death by her mother-in-law."
"Please, Captain. Exempt me. I'd rather pay the cancellation fee..."
Rose's eyes narrowed.
"Don't delude yourselves. This isn't a guild. The reimbursements are Association-level compensation. A first-class national mobilization order has been declared. Violation will result not only in Red Line disqualification but legal punishment by the kingdom. You know how things stand right now. You'd be wise to obey."
The mages fell silent.
Putting the Red Line aside, they couldn't ignore their position; in the end, orders from above had to be followed.
Rose's face softened a bit.
"As your captain, I'm sorry. But the Association promises considerable compensation after this mission. Three times your usual contract fee and fame points equivalent to a promotion."
Money aside, the mention of fame points changed their expressions.
From Rank 6 upward, the points required for promotion were enormous; if they succeeded, they'd gain a huge advantage.
Horkin asked, "So… what exactly are we doing?"
Rose hesitated as if worried.
Even for a Cage-class party, wasn't this too much?
"This target is… a human."
"A human? Which human?"
Rose's eyes flashed sharp.
"The target is Micaea Gaold, President of the Tormia Magic Association. Eliminate him."
* * *
Outer Purgatory of Heaven. The Forest of the Profane.
When Shirone emerged from a tunnel where light flowed like rapids, a vast expanse of sky opened before him.
Beyond the waters he could see Heaven's concentric rings, and in one band drones swarmed like a cloud of wasps.
Having already been through this, Shirone took a deep breath and prepared to land.
As expected, the direction shifted sharply and he dropped vertically.
The sea vanished and the forest whooshed by his flank.
He watched with wide eyes until the ground rushed up close, then twisted his body.
"Phew."
It was a much steadier landing than before, but no one came over to congratulate Shirone.
Nine people who had gone through Gaphin's gate first stood scattered, each surveying different directions, lost in thought.
Sein said, "This is the Forest of the Profane. It's the habitat of the one-horned fiends."
"One-horned fiends. A quiet place, then. Shall we go?"
A quiet place.
Shirone remembered being caught in a ring of one-horned fiends before.
Thanks to that, he met Kanya and Rena and gained entry to Heaven, but it was by no means a safe spot.
'Then again, with these people it might indeed be quiet....'
Sein walked and explained.
Purgatory was roughly divided into three areas: the heretics' habitats, the mainland, and the community outskirts.
The community outskirts in particular was a catchall for regions inhabited by non-citizens; they were specially called the Borderfolk.
Sein's destination was the place called the mainland, the only neutral zone where heretics and Borderfolk gathered, so they had to stop there to gather information.
Halfway through the forest, the ground suddenly began to rumble as if an earthquake had struck.
The party, on high alert, waited for what would happen; when the noise gradually subsided, they exchanged glances and pushed through the trees.
"My god..."
On the plain beneath the mountain, hundreds of giants were arrayed in ranks, marching somewhere.
Giants created by Ilhwa's brew.
At the time, merely their existence had shocked everyone into numbness, but Sein explained they were heading to the giants' land of Jotunheim.
There they would reclaim their identities and, if they remained pure, return to Heaven to keep the Law; if they fell, they could not enter Heaven and would be exiled to the land of fire, Muspel.
"Giants are a force not to be ignored. But they're just monsters. Best to ignore them and move on."
Ten faces embedded in the undergrowth vanished silently.