Chapter 45: The Fall
Hieronymusa had to admit that, as an exceptionally ancient demon, it was not the type with an overabundance of pride.
This had earned it a reputation among its Abyssal kin that was somewhat less than “majestic.” Still, after surviving the long ages and once more reaching the far shore of the Abyss—only to be forced into confrontation with the cursed child named Veles—the demon duke found itself grateful for possessing that small virtue.
Otherwise, it likely would not have endured that day’s battle.
In fact, not long after the fight began, Hieronymusa was already feeling a twinge of regret.
Engaging in a harmless bout with the dragon-blooded child of Alfied had been part of the demon’s plan from the very beginning—but in its expectations, Veles should never have been this strong.
Think about it: even if that “human” truly carried within his body the extremely tainted yet extraordinarily powerful blood of a demon dragon, in the end he was still only a “human”—at least, he had been before the curse consumed him completely.
And as long as His Highness the prince still belonged within the category of humanity, then in theory, it should have been impossible for him to inflict any real damage on an ancient and powerful demon duke.
Yet the course of events far exceeded Hieronymusa’s expectations.
When Veles first appeared, the demon duke had felt no real sense of danger at all (even though it had been swatted away before it could so much as greet him). After all, the foolish look the young prince displayed upon seeing his lover was exactly the same as that of his ancient forebears.
Well—foolish genes were always the most stubborn.
At the time, Hieronymusa had even had the leisure to size up Veles’s face—so reminiscent of a silver dragon’s—and snort inwardly with disdain.
What it had not expected was that what Veles inherited from the silver dragon was not merely his looks, nor just that hopelessly love-brained disposition…
But power as well.
—It was power taken to the extreme, a force so overwhelming that humans, gods, and even demons could not help but tremble before it.
The moment Veles caught sight of Hieronymusa, he swept the black-haired mage up in one motion and charged at the demon duke like a raging tempest.
And when the demon duke, caught completely off guard, took that wind-rending blow head-on, it was struck with horrified clarity: Veles was far, far stronger than he appeared.
The man still retained a great many human traits (the fact that he could still communicate normally with others was proof enough that this human male’s soul had not yet been completely devoured by the curse). And yet, the power spilling out of the cursed prince as he fought was already enough to make the instinct known as “danger warning” scream shrilly inside Hieronymusa’s body.
Veles scarcely even used magic when he attacked. More often than not, he relied directly on his mutated yet terrifyingly powerful physical body to assault the demon duke. And even while burdened with a weak, helpless human as dead weight, Veles’s movements remained swift and ferocious—
So much so that the demon duke could not help but recall the agony of its last encounter with a true dragon…
And that bone-deep, unforgettable terror.
“V—”
After several of its tentacles had been shorn away by Veles, Hieronymusa’s expression twisted slightly. It lifted its head and, in the sweetest, weakest voice it could muster in its long existence, called out to the slender figure cutting through the air above.
It should be mentioned that Hieronymusa was known in the Abyss as the “Silver Tongue,” and its greatest feat was having once deceived a god who had carelessly fallen into the Abyssal domain.
It was certain that as long as it could find the chance to speak, it could proceed just as planned—using His Highness the prince’s pitiable bloodline and his inevitably hopeless future to plant a poisonous seed within the man’s soul…
Just as it had once done to another dragon—a true dragon, powerful, unfallen.
But what the demon duke had never imagined was that Veles would strip away even the possibility of letting it speak.
It had only just opened its mouth when a flash of cold light suddenly slashed past.
Smack—
As a peach-pink tongue covered in fine barbs dropped to the ground, a violent surge of pain exploded at the root of Hieronymusa’s tongue.
“—Sss*($#@%!”
Although it took the demon duke no more than a single heartbeat to grow a new tongue, the pain still forced it to spill out a string of garbled Abyssal curses.
Hieronymusa wanted to curse that damned human.
Unfortunately, it never even found the chance to do so.
Fighting Veles felt like being swept, without warning, straight into a raging tsunami: above its head were maddened gales that blotted out the sky and waves as heavy as mountains; beneath its feet churned terrifying, surging whirlpools—and Veles, this prince’s astonishing killing intent and fury were even more overwhelming than a true tsunami.
In the end, the demon duke was forced to take an enormous risk—one that might draw the attention of those detestable women—and pull even more of its true body through the sealed rift on the far side, into the present material plane.
As the power of darkness and decay continued to pour forth, the pressure imposed by the laws of the world upon Hieronymusa suddenly intensified.
The demon duke’s habitual disguise magic began to dissolve under the pressure of some unspeakable force, and its true form gradually revealed itself in the material world. And if Hieronymusa had once resembled an ugly patchwork of rotting sludge, then now it had become so grotesque and deformed as to be almost unwatchable.
Its body swelled to an enormous, bloated mass. The folds and mucous membranes of its softer outer flesh were forced fully open by the rapidly expanding power and slime beneath the skin, exposing shades of dark green and purple that only corpses soaked in filthy water for days would ever display.
Meanwhile, the “trophies” that had once covered its back—the heads of those unfortunate souls whose bodies and spirits it had deceived and stolen—were also mutating at a visible speed. From their eye sockets, ears, and mouths sprouted countless organs that should never have existed: emaciated arms with skeletal proportions that defied all biological sense, tentacles covered from end to end in irregular scales…
Every hideous, bizarre appendage the human imagination could conceive burst endlessly through the holes in those skull-like faces—
And then reached straight toward Veles, and the young mage cradled in his arms.
“Urgh…”
Alan clenched his teeth hard, forcing himself not to retch at this moment.
Being carried through the air by Mr. Veles was a wonderful experience—but also a slightly dizzying one.
Not to mention that after enduring a roller-coaster ride of sharp turns and breakneck speed, the first thing Alan saw when he opened his eyes was a huge mass of something on the ground that absolutely deserved to be censored.
“Don’t look. It’s filthy.”
A cold hand gently covered Alan’s eyes.
Along with Veles’s low whisper came a current of magic tinged with frost and snow, swiftly washing away Alan’s discomfort—like a glass of lemonade in summer, packed with ice, lemon juice, and honey.
“Th-thank you, Mr. Veles.”
“No need to thank me. This is… this is what I should have done.”
Veles warned himself not to let his gaze cling too tightly to Alan (after all, his dragon pupils were not exactly fit to be seen right now), but while he could control his eyes, he could not control his sense of touch.
He felt it with painful clarity—from the palm of his hand came the faint ticklish sensation of Alan’s eyelashes lightly brushing against his skin.
The heartbeat that had remained steady and powerful throughout the battle against the demon stumbled by a single beat.
…And immediately afterward, Hieronymusa noticed that the look Veles cast down at it from above had grown distinctly more impatient.
“Cursed child, fallen dragon—you will regret your present arrogance—”
The demon duke’s venomous tongue hissed within its mouth, releasing a spiteful, resentful murmur.
Veles merely frowned. He suddenly spread the wings on his back, and invisible currents of air—obedient as the most faithful attendants—lifted him swiftly into the sky. At the same instant, he raised his hand, palm aimed straight at Hieronymusa.
The demon heard no incantation, saw no magic circles blazing with light.
But it did see several dazzling clusters of blue radiance take shape around Veles. Each was roughly the size of a human head, their surfaces draped in a layer of shifting, illusory silver “silk.”
Hieronymusa remembered at once: in this world, only dragons could use magic without any incantation at all. And the dragonfire they wielded—because of its extreme temperature—would shed all traces of red and yellow, transforming into a seemingly cold silver-blue.
And almost at the exact moment this realization struck the demon—
That dragonfire came down like a torrential rain.
More precisely, it came crashing down upon the demon duke Hieronymusa standing on the ground below.
The air warped under the searing heat.
The demon duke’s enormous, bloated body instantly turned into a vast mass of molten pitch.
It was burned black—blacker, more utterly charred than Little Green had been back then.
A shrill scream tore out from deep within its body. Extreme rage and agony shredded the small remnant of rational thought inside the demon duke. From the seams of its scorched flesh, countless fresh, tender, threadlike tentacles thrust outward, ripping apart the brittle, carbonized skin.
A massive, malevolent face suddenly forced its way out of a gash torn open across Hieronymusa’s back.
That face bore only a single cloudy, bloodshot bulging eye, surrounded by innumerable small mouths clustered around it—
That was the demon’s true visage.
It stared fixedly at the slender figure in the sky that belonged to Veles, and at the frail human tightly held in the man’s arms.
“I curse you in the name of the demon duke Hieronymusa.”
Hieronymusa split its mouth open. The voices of men, women, children, the elderly… spilled out of its body all at once, overlapping into a single sentence.
“Prince Veles of Alfied—you will witness the one you love die in your arms. You will fall and become a demon dragon, and your soul—”
Your soul will wander forever in chaos, forever searching for your lost beloved across the silent wastelands of the dead.
Once again, the demon duke failed to finish its curse.
But it felt not the slightest hint of frustration because of it…
Look—just as it had anticipated. The moment Veles heard that the target of the curse was his beloved, he completely lost his head. Without hesitation, he abandoned his advantage in altitude, drew in his wings, raised his greatsword high, and plunged straight down toward it.
‘How… foolish.’ So thought Hieronymusa.
A stench of rot seeped out from its pores. In the next second, its form abruptly surged several meters taller, and it opened its gaping, blood-soaked maw toward Veles.
If nothing went wrong, the demon duke would have no trouble at all disgorging every last drop of venom hidden in the poison sac beneath its tongue, pouring it all over that ignorant, overconfident prince.
But that was only on the condition that… nothing went wrong.
In reality, Hieronymusa’s body never even left the ground. It had barely lifted its head when it felt an unprecedented force trip it up.
Caught completely off guard, the demon duke crashed back down onto the earth—and at the same time, its vision was once again filled with vast swathes of that all-too-familiar, utterly detestable green.
That’s right. Those damn pumpkins, eggplants, tomatoes, and cucumbers again.
“（%@$#%@!^@(!”
The demon duke unleashed the most vicious curse of its entire existence in the Abyssal tongue.
“Ah… it looks pretty angry.”
Alan lowered his head, peering at Hieronymusa, which seemed just about ready to explode with rage, and rubbed the tip of his nose a little uneasily.
“I didn’t cause you trouble, did I?” the black-haired mage asked weakly.
As a former adventurer, Alan knew very well that sometimes, help from the weak wasn’t help at all—it was just getting in the way of the strong.
But just now, the instant he sensed the demon duke’s despicable intent, he had acted purely on reflex.
“No, of course not. You did very well, Mr. Alan… I mean, thank you for protecting me.”
Veles’s face flushed bright red as he hurried to respond.
He did try to make his reply sound calmer and more composed (supposedly, the more cool-headed and self-possessed a man was in the face of danger, the more charming he appeared), but his heart was pounding so loudly that he nearly bit his own tongue.
Being protected by the person one is meant to protect is a strangely wondrous feeling.
Veles knew very well that, to the people of this continent, someone like him—already displaying so many traits of a demon dragon—was less a companion than a ticking time bomb. Those who loved him feared that he would one day fall and become a demon dragon.
Those who hated him, meanwhile, feared the terrifying power he would wield after that fall.
But whether they loved him or hated him… no one worried that someone as powerful as he already was might be hurt.
Much less that anyone might try to protect him.
Except for Alan.
Only Alan.
Alan, whom Veles loved with all his heart.
“I’m very happy.”
Veles lowered his head and said softly to Alan, his voice barely above a whisper.
The rest of the battle ended swiftly.
It could only be said that dragons truly were the natural enemies of demons. Even though Hieronymusa was a demon duke—and one driven into madness by excessive provocation—when all its attacks landed on Veles, they amounted to little more than scratching an itch.
What’s more, after Alan had “involuntarily” “protected” Veles that once, the young prince fought as though he had taken some kind of stimulant, becoming even more ferocious and overwhelming than before.
What tipped the battle even further into a one-sided rout was a vast expanse of white light that followed close on the heels of Veles’s assault.
That white light was like a finely woven net, gentle yet insidious, seizing the moment when the demon duke was battered into helplessness and draping itself over its body. And the seemingly soft glow, the instant it touched the demon’s flesh, forced from it screams far more piercing and agonized than before.
Well, of course it screamed—under that white light, every inch of the demon duke’s flesh hissed as though plunged into strong acid, smoking continuously and exuding a suffocating stench.
That white radiance was the power of the Goddess of Light.
And the ones who finally summoned the goddess’s attention—and exposed Hieronymusa, this “stowaway,” to her gaze—were none other than a group of holy paladins who had returned after retreating.
After escorting the villagers of Green River Village to safety, Lelian immediately led several holy paladins back to the village. They returned prepared to die—but in reality, when they arrived, they happened to catch the scene of Veles single-handedly beating up and outright bullying the demon duke.
An opportunity like this was not to be missed…
Lelian and the other paladins began summoning the goddess on the spot.
And thus came that vast expanse of white light.
Beyond that, reinforcements from the royal capital of Alfied to the river valley region finally arrived as well.
Because of limitations in mana reserves, Antara had opened several teleportation circles in succession, hopping through them one after another, and only then managed to catch up with his frantic prince.
Upon reaching the scene, the elven mage naturally joined in the collective beating of the demon duke Hieronymusa as well…
After suffering all of the above, even a high-ranking demon as formidable as Hieronymusa could no longer hold out.
On the patch of ground where it (or rather, its remains) lay, a pitch-black rift suddenly opened out of thin air.
Countless pairs of misshapen, slender hands stretched out from the darkness within the crack, then clutched tightly onto Hieronymusa’s body.
The demon’s body began to sink—at an almost deceptively slow pace—into the depths of the rift.
The demon duke’s attempt to invade the Material Plane was completely shattered.
The battle could finally be considered over…
At least, it looked that way.
…
“Tch. If it can’t win, all it knows how to do is run back to the Abyss.”
Lelian rested her sword on her shoulder and cursed fiercely at the sight before her.
“There’s nothing we can do. Killing a demon in the Material Plane could cause serious contamination,” Antara said in a timely manner to the red-haired vice-captain of the royal knights.
A few seconds later, his gaze fixed on the frog perched atop Lelian’s head.
“Ah, this one is…?”
“Yes. It’s him.”
…
Amid the whispered murmurs of the human companions, Veles slowly descended to the ground, cradling Alan in his arms. He looked at the demon’s shattered, nearly liquefied remains—so mangled that “minced meat” was almost the only fitting description—and yet his expression remained dark and unyielding.
Judging from the stillness of Hieronymusa as it returned to the Abyss, it seemed that the high-ranking demon had lost consciousness.
And such a weakened demon, once back in the Abyss, would likely face the claws and teeth of other demons—the demon duke hidden under the shadows of the Alfied Kingdom might soon meet the ugly end of its wretched life.
Yet, for some unknown reason, a vague and inexplicable unease lingered in Veles’s chest.
“Prince Veles of Alfied—you will witness the one you love die in your arms. You will fall and become a demon dragon.”
In a daze, Veles even thought he heard Hieronymusa’s sinister, venomous whisper again at his ear.
A curse—meant for both him and Alan.
“Hehehe…”
And as if sensing even the briefest flicker of weakness in Veles’s heart, the demon seemed to stir once more.
Just as Hieronymusa’s head was about to sink entirely into the Abyss, its bloated, iron-blue face quivered.
The demon’s protruding single eye fixed directly on Alan.
“Then I shall wait in the Abyss for your soul, Your Highness of Alfied, corroded utterly by despair and sorrow.”
Most of the demon’s misshapen mouths had already returned to the Abyss, and the duke’s words sounded distant and muffled—but it was precisely this indistinctness that made them all the more ominous.
Veles’s heart shuddered violently.
Acting on instinct, he suddenly spread his dragon wings and wrapped them tightly around Alan at his side—the fine scales covering those wings were like armor. Even the sharpest weapons or the most malicious spells in the world could not pierce them to harm Alan.
Veles’s movements were already as fast as lightning—but the unexpected happened even faster than lightning.
At the very moment Hieronymusa’s words fell, a small, pitch-black snake darted out from the shadows near Alan’s feet.
It bit down on Alan’s ankle.
Although in the next instant, Veles’s pure white dragonfire incinerated the demon’s “venomous snake” into a wisp of blue smoke, Alan’s body still went limp and collapsed in front of Veles.
