Chapter 228 — 아자젤
Chapter 228
Azazel
“More than that… the Great Demon King, huh. I figured we’d cross paths again someday. Never thought it’d be here of all places. Heh heh heh.”
Chepesh was so gaunt he brought a scarecrow to mind without trying.
On the back of the robe he’d thrown over himself, a big skull emblem was stamped bold as you please.
He was leaking such a sinister air that anyone would peg him for a black mage at a glance.
Black magic had always been branded a forbidden field humans must not touch, in this age and the last alike.
He, however, clearly couldn’t care less.
No—Chepesh seemed eager to broadcast that he was a black mage.
He flung about a force so muddled you couldn’t tell if it was miasma or mana, scattering it in every direction.
The skull on his robe blazed all the brighter for it.
“He’s our descendant, sure, but what an absolute handful. Just like someone I know. Very much so.”
There was a deep, old longing threaded through Chepesh’s mutter.
And then—
Chepesh pulled something from his breast and held it high in the air.
It was a tiny skull—human, perhaps, or a monkey’s.
“【My children, rise】!”
Chepesh’s trigger words were close to spell-speech or mantra, yet distinct in their own way.
If Word Magic twisted the mana stream with the pure concepts inside language, his words felt like he was ramming will into the world by force.
Kukukuku…!
A vast magic circle dropped alongside Chepesh, the ground shuddered, and something began to claw its way up through the crust.
A giant.
A giant made of bone.
When that towering bulk—easily over ten meters—rose to its full height, the air visibly shoved outward on all sides.
GROOOOAAAR!
The skeletal giant threw its head back and howled at the sky.
The massive axe and sword in its hands quivered.
“Is that…!”
Elric gaped at a skeleton unlike anything he’d seen.
He wasn’t one to fear forbidden arts; he’d personally dabbled in the Body-Forging Art that had been outlawed.
So while he’d never plunged deeply into black magic, he’d kept a certain interest.
It was part of why he’d handled the Authority ‘North Wind’ without fumbling too badly once he obtained it.
But he had certainly never heard of undead of that sort being in their repertoire.
Usually, it was skeletons, ghouls, zombies—things of that caliber.
The truly capable might command a lich, but that was often the ceiling.
Not because the theory was difficult to learn.
Summoning undead was easy; handling them was hard.
Even low-grade undead like skeletons retained scraps of the dead’s lingering will, leaving them impulsive and prone to fly off in any direction.
Liches, whose egos had honed over lifespans far beyond the human, went without saying.
So the ends that awaited black mages were twofold.
They either went mad trying to control undead and destroyed themselves.
Or they got tricked and devoured by their own dead.
Most met misfortune.
And yet…
This wasn’t something a lich could even be compared to.
Chepesh’s black magic seemed beyond that tier entirely.
Thoom!
Thoom!
The earth shook with each step the skeletal giant took. The wind that had been blowing smashed against its frame and scattered in scraps.
Had it once been a giant of this land, long vanished in life?
Its aura alone hinted at Demon King-class.
No. Different. Not a giant-kin.
The build was similar overall, but different.
More sinister, more primal…
“Chepesh was always an exceptional summoner. He mainly commands monsters he’s contracted with—most of them dredged up from the Demon Sea.”
Watching Chepesh’s back, Mia offered a brief explanation.
Elric tilted his head at the unfamiliar term.
“The Demon Sea? What’s that?”
“Ah, you wouldn’t know. It’s just a name we gave it. Ordinary folk wouldn’t even try to find it.”
“…?”
“The Black Snowfield. Deep, deep inside. Think of ‘the third Spring’ or ‘the fourth Spring’ as our slang for certain depths.”
“You—you went that deep into the Black Snowfield?”
Elric couldn’t help widening his eyes.
Because of certain arrangements, he’d personally been to the Black Snowfield, and even the first Spring where the beastkin lived had been a place where General Winter parked year-round, harsh in every season.
And they’d gone deeper than that?
Wait. If it’s the third Spring…
A thought hit Elric, and he hurriedly asked Mia,
“Then do you know about demon-beasts as well?”
“Huh? How do you kn—!”
KRRR-THOOM!
Grrrrooo…!
Before Elric and Mia could go on, the skeletal giant, which had been striding forward, suddenly lurched and was shoved brutally backward.
Tsssssss—
Thick steam roiled up from the giant’s chest where miasma had detonated.
Azazel had already noticed what was happening here and moved.
“Ha-ha-ha! All the gnats that used to pester me have shown up at once. Merbinger, Merbinger! I’ll devour the lot of you right here today…!”
From the lofty sky, Azazel looked down at them and laughed hideously.
As if ecstatic.
For him, it was like having Mephisto—his longtime nemesis—before him, and the minions of Merbinger, with whom he had deep, festering grudges, gathered in one place!
From his viewpoint, having marked Elric as his vessel, this was a chance to swallow Elric and the others together and turn them into nourishment.
Do that, and he wouldn’t just regain his old power quickly—he could reach beyond it.
No wonder he was riled up.
The colossal raven around him shrieked in delight and spread its black wings wide.
The sky went dark in an instant.
Sssshhhk—
Suddenly, long black flashes began to pelt down like a squall.
Feathers, by the look of it, and anything they touched shattered or evaporated.
They punched deep holes in rock, brought cliffs down in sheets, and carried a corrosive bite strong enough to melt the earth itself.
An indiscriminate bombardment.
It was far more intense than any miasma storm Elric had faced so far, and even as one of the Winter Six, who’d been about to attack, he had no choice but to switch to defense for now.
Rrraaaagh!
The skeletal giant swung its crude greatsword wildly.
Space ripped raggedly, shockwaves lancing out to swat feathers from the air.
“Time passes, but that bastard still rampages like a mad thing. Same as ever.”
Just then, Damir, who’d been still all this time, finally spoke.
If he’d been muttering a prayer or spell, he hadn’t moved from his spot—yet his whole body was soaked in a deep blue radiance.
Sacred.
The thought came unbidden.
It was the nimbus said to shine only from saints acknowledged by the gods.
“Damir was a paladin. Devout enough he almost became pope.”
Mia added again.
Feeling Damir’s aura, Elric easily inferred which god he served.
“The God of Mercy?”
“Right.”
“…I doubt the Order would have just let him go.”
The Order of the God of Mercy was among the most prosperous religious groups at present.
In the Alliance of the Faith, which rivaled even the Mage Tower in size and influence, they accounted for no less than forty percent.
And of course, the God of Mercy’s very name and doctrine spread easily among the people, so it was said they’d been even more dominant a thousand years ago.
And he’d nearly become pope there?
From the power Elric felt in Damir alone, he could tell just how favored he’d once been by the God of Mercy.
That someone of his stature had become a Merbinger—
Elric couldn’t help but reel.
“Everyone has their reasons.”
“…”
Mia gave a wry smile, and Elric didn’t press further.
Instead he watched Damir’s back as he rose skyward beside the skeletal giant.
White wings, angel-bright, had unfurled from his shoulders.
It was like watching the hero of legend charge alone into a Demon King’s lair.
True, the giant was ripping feathers from the air behind him to clear Damir a path to Azazel—but still.
A paladin and a black mage.
An impossible pairing on paper, yet they meshed perfectly.
It meant they’d fought in step like this more than a few times.
Chepesh and Damir—both names recorded alongside Otto Hahn—yet there were no detailed records of who they truly were. All the more reason Elric’s amazement swelled.
It felt like a war out of myth unfolding right here.
“So, now—close your eyes.”
Elric did as Mia said, settled on the ground, and shut his eyes.
While they bought him time, he had to find a way to retake his mindscape.
His body could only hold out so long. He had to end this within that window.
“Focus your consciousness. Think of pulling this entire world into your senses… no—do it. Take it all in. That’s step one.”
Mia had been the archmage who stood alongside Otto Hahn at the pinnacle of her age.
She possessed a breadth of knowledge so vast her touch lay on most lineage magics still passed down today.
Learning directly from her—this, too, was a providence.
“Now paint what you’ve taken in, inside your head. Start with the grain, the broad scaffolding. Then layer on color, bit by bit. Think of ‘drawing out’ your imaginal landscape.”
Elric, following Mia’s whisper at his side, slowly melted himself into his senses.
* * *
“Sean.”
“Yes, si— Head of the Elder Council.”
At Augustine’s call, Sean quickly corrected the title and turned to face him.
They were no longer within the family’s own domain.
They were acting under the family’s name, beneath the family’s banner.
That meant the proper courtesies even in the field.
Ordinarily, Augustine would have found that praiseworthy—but now his tone was all business.
Because of the intense pulse of miasma that had begun to sweep in a short while ago.
Since the war with House Red Lion broke out and Gregori’s fiends started stepping into the sun, it hadn’t been hard to find demonic traces on the battlefield.
But the miasma they sensed now was on a level beyond all that.
A density only a Demon King could exude.
In this vicinity… something was happening.
Right then—
“Got him!”
Far off, the Beast King Gility shouted, voice alight with jubilation.
“I found the brat—my disciple, brother!”
The Mage Who Devoured Talent