Chapter 210 : Meryl, the Second Daughter of Praha (3)
The Eastern Continent was a land of mysteries, something I knew all too well.
My master, the Divine Archer, hailed from there. He spoke of strange and terrible monsters, sentient beings not unlike the Demonkin.
The thing Meryl had become seemed torn from one of his tales.
A frigid gale howled, sharp as shattered glass. Snow scattered like shards of ice, and the storm swelled into a blinding, suffocating squall.
“Dammit! Everyone, to arms!”
“Subdue Lady Meryl!”
They shouted to subdue her, not to kill, but the intent in their blades was unmistakable.
This was a funeral, a place of solemn reverence. For such a violation to occur here… the knights’ rage was palpable.
“Get her away from the coffin!”
“Do not let her disturb Lady Lin’s final rest!”
Though they spoke only of capture, their weapons were heavy with murderous intent.
“…You are all fools,” Meryl said, her voice as cold as the wind.
She was a being of ice and snow now, her face a mask of frozen indifference.
“You could live if you would only abandon this war. Why won’t you?”
She sounded as if she truly could not comprehend, which was exactly what I’d expected her to say.
“I don’t understand.” She sighed, a plume of frost escaping her lips, and waved a hand.
In that instant, the storm erupted. A new gale, laced with invisible blades, swept toward the knights.
Slish!
The wind struck like a thousand razors, tearing through steel plate and leather and driving a lethal chill deep into their flesh.
Screams of agony tore through the blizzard as men clutched severed arms and mangled legs, the cries echoing without end.
“Damn it! Cut off any part the frost has touched!” shouted a man who looked to be a veteran captain.
To sever a limb over a mere scratch? Anyone else would have called him mad.
But not the knights of the North.
“Gagh!”
“Dammit all!”
With grim resolve, they turned their own weapons upon themselves. The sickening crunch of bone and the wet tear of flesh followed.
Faces twisted in agony, but they did not hesitate. They knew what would happen otherwise. The flesh touched by the frigid wind was already beginning to blacken and rot.
My master had a word for it, a term from the East: dongsa. Frost-death.
The Snow Woman, he’d told me, was its living incarnation. Her victims were always found the same way: covered in claw-like wounds, their skin turned a deathly blue, their expressions frozen in terror.
Never confront the monsters of the Eastern Continent, he had warned me.
But how did she obtain such a power?
I wondered, watching Meryl slaughter the knights from the air.
She couldn’t have traveled to the Eastern Continent herself.
That land was a ruin, half-devoured by the Abyssal corruption. Even the Divine Archer had been forced to flee that cursed place, seeking vengeance against the Demonkin for the catastrophe that had befallen his home.
My master had escaped that place. Had Meryl entered it and emerged not only alive, but with a new power?
The idea was absurd. Which meant something else was at play.
My first thought was her birth. What if Meryl had been a Snow Woman all along? That would explain her bizarre behavior, the inherent nature of a monster.
Impossible.
She was the second daughter of the Ducal House of Praha, her lineage meticulously documented. She may have been a fool, but she was human.
That left only one possibility.
…Artezia did this.
I didn’t know how they had acquired a power from the Eastern Continent, but I was certain they would have found a way, no matter the cost.
Four words echoed in my mind: red jewels, the Eastern Continent, demonization, war.
What was the connection? I turned them over and over, but the pattern remained hidden.
Crash! Crack!
In the distance, knights were still dying. Worse, the storm was tearing Lin’s body to shreds.
This can’t continue.
I let out a sharp breath and drew upon my Aura. My Stigmata wept blood. Above my head, the Halo—now a crown of ethereal flowers—began to spin.
<Mindscape: Regression>
The world flowed backward.
People moved in reverse, their actions undoing themselves. A knight who had severed his arm watched, stunned, as it reattached itself. A man being torn apart by the wind was restored, whole and unharmed. Meryl’s gesture reversed.
Time accelerated, rushing faster and faster, until it snapped back into place.
“…That is all. I have said what I came to say. So, come at me.”
We were back in the instant after Meryl’s transformation.
Swoosh.
Meryl raised her arm, preparing to unleash the bladed wind. In that same instant, I shot forward and met her attack head-on.
The impact was deafening. The frigid gale seeped through my coat, but the affected areas instantly rewound, my body regressing to its unharmed state.
It was an application of my Mindscape—the very technique the Grand Duke had always described.
“…What are you?” Meryl demanded. Her eyebrows shot up when she saw I was unharmed, and her expression soured as if she’d just tasted something rotten.
“Apparently, becoming a Snow Woman has dulled your human senses,” I said, blocking her hand with my spear.
She shoved my spear aside, and the force of the blow sent me flying out of her attack range.
KRA-BOOM!
My body slammed into a massive boulder.
“…This is a problem,” Meryl hissed, creating arrows of pure frost and aiming them at me. “If you keep this up, I’ll have to… kill you all.”
A smile touched my lips despite the pain.
“You want to fight at a distance?”
A foolish choice.
“I may not look it,” I said, pushing myself to my feet, “but the bow was my first weapon.”
A hunt is always easier from a distance. I created an arrow from thin air.
“You will regret sending me here.”
<Full Bloom>
The arrow I loosed tore through the air. Meryl’s frost arrows flew to intercept it, but they were no match.
Shhhhhh!
Like flowers blooming and withering in an endless cycle, my arrow consumed hers one by one. It was a new technique, a fusion of my Mindscape and the Full Bloom skill.
<Eternal Bloom>
An arrow of perpetual bloom and decay shot toward Meryl’s heart.
“…This is not good,” she murmured, her face a mask of dismay.
And then it struck true.
Crack!
The arrow slammed into her heart.
* * *
At that very moment, Crio walked toward the Sealed Ones.
The Demon Emperor and the Demon Prince.
He approached the dais where the two beings—known as the most powerful and depraved Legion Commanders in history—were held.
Their desiccated bodies were suspended on crosses, like grotesque trophies, while swarms of insects and crows pecked at their flesh.
“It has been a long time,” Crio said with a bitter smile, a rosary in one hand and a cup of wine in the other.
He offered a shallow bow to the two corpses. “Decades have passed since you were sealed.”
He tilted the cup, letting the wine trickle onto the blighted ground.
“One for hunting Demonkin indiscriminately, the other for aspiring to godhood. We, the Twelve Nobles, pooled our strength to seal you. To come now and ask to borrow that very power… is a bitter irony.”
Wine began to pool at the base of the crosses.
“But what choice is there? The Twelve Nobles are gone. Few remain to serve the Demon God. You are needed now.”
Crio sighed and slowly began to unwind his rosary. As the beads came undone, a colossal wave of demonic energy erupted from them.
KRA-KOOM-KOOM-KOOM!
The demonic energy exploded outward in a tempest. The sky above the Abyssal Realm itself seemed to curdle, blotting out the perpetual twilight. A blood-red moon looked down.
Crack… Crackle…
The skin of the corpses on the crosses began to split, like a cicada shedding its husk. Slowly, they cracked open, revealing the forms within.
Crio began to chant, the ancient words a low drone against the rising chaos.
Rumble. Crack… Crackle…
The shedding quickened. The sky bled a deeper crimson. The very air trembled, and the howls of distant, terrified monsters echoed through the realm.
The scene would have shattered any sane mind, yet Crio continued his prayer without a hint of hesitation.
His prayer reached its final syllable.
In that instant, the sky tore open, and a pillar of crimson light slammed down upon the crosses.
KRA-KA-THOOOM!
—Gwoooooooh…!
A sound like a beast’s roar burst forth. Crio swallowed, his throat dry.
“I never thought I would be the one to unleash such a thing.”
They were returning. The most depraved of Demonkin, the most powerful of monsters.
With a final, deafening crack, they shattered the crosses and severed every restraint. They stood once more upon the mortal plane.
—Kwooooooooooooooooh!
“It has been a long time.”
The Demon Emperor and the Demon Prince. The two figures looked down at Crio, their faces as cold and still as porcelain masks.
“…I greet the masters of all Demonkin,” Crio said, bowing his head.
He bowed before them: the two fragments of the Demon God. Emotion and Reason, made flesh. The two monsters, now fully conscious, stared down at him.
“Indeed, I am your master and king,” said the Demon Prince, his voice like grinding stone. “And you will now answer for the sins of your past.”
With a flick of his wrist, the Prince extended a razor-sharp nail and lifted Crio’s chin.
“You fiend from the Eastern Continent.”
Hearing the old slur, Crio smiled bitterly.
The fiend from the Eastern Continent…
It was, after all, the name that fit him best.