Hwaryeong's leg crashes down toward me at high speed.
Fwooooom!!
Seeing Hwaryeong's leg approach, cleaving through the wind directly toward my head, I gritted my teeth with my eyes wide open.
Bracing for the impending impact, my mind began to spin frantically.
A way to dodge?
None.
A way to deflect?
The time I have to deflect this attack is far too short. I'd need at least enough time to twist my arm or my waist, but I don't even have that.
Then does Hwaryeong know full well that I currently have no way to dodge and no way to deflect?
Yes.
If not, she wouldn't be looking at me with such a savage smile.
The beastmen's leg strength is famous.
If Hwaryeong's leg swept my head in my current state, having removed the Force Field Distortion Ring, my neck would snap instantly and I'd die on the spot.
It possesses more than enough strength to break a human's neck or spine, though it might be too weak to shatter a human skull.
Then why is Hwaryeong smiling even as she's on the verge of killing me?
Is she trying to kill me because she resents that I struck first?
No. She's arrogant and looks down on the weak, but she isn't the type to derive pleasure from killing. Rather, if anything, she would feel a sense of duty.
So the savage smile Hwaryeong wears right now is a smile of anticipation.
Anticipating what? That I'll block or deflect her attack in this situation.
Well, isn't that something.
'No, fuck! How am I supposed to block an attack at this timing?! This is the kind of attack even an old knight couldn't block!'
—For someone who beat me, that's a truly pathetic death—to fall to an attack from a beastman who holds goodwill toward you.
'No, did I know Hwaryeong would thrust her leg at my head with such desperate killing intent? She said it was just a spar, so what code of the martial world allows unleashing a killing move?'
—Is that a beastman word? What an unusual cry.
'Haa.'
I sighed inwardly, complaining at the voice that mocked and ridiculed me.
But soon, feeling a strong sense of dissonance, I 'raised' my head.
Who was I just talking to?
'Wh-what?'
Hwaryeong's leg was approaching me very slowly, at the speed of a crawling snail.
Not only Hwaryeong, but Isil's eyes widening as she watched us from nearby, the watching students opening their mouths to scream, and a group of students pushing through the crowd toward us—
Everything in the world was flowing extremely slowly.
At a glance, time flowed so slowly around me that one might think it had stopped.
And in the midst of it.
—Did you only just notice?
Caw.
A crow, moving like an ordinary creature as if completely unaffected by that slowly flowing current of time, gently flew up onto Hwaryeong's swinging leg and looked at me.
'...You.'
—Hah. You reduced me to this state, yet you cannot even remember, Master?
'Master?'
—Yes.
The crow spoke nonchalantly, preening the feathers of its wing with its beak.
—Did we not agree that the next time we met, it would be as master and slave?
'No way...'
A being who had agreed to meet as master and slave next time.
There was only one such being.
'The demon of the grimoire?'
—Yes. I am Garkul, who pathetically lost to you and fell to become a slave.
The crow looked at me with a regretful expression that no ordinary animal could make.
***
When Garkul was wielding his authority with all his might to seize Jin Prahu's body, he saw Jin Prahu gripping a small metal pin of a never-before-seen object that had appeared in his hand.
'What trick have you pulled now, human bastard!'
Garkul was wary of the object Jin Prahu had created, but soon projected his authority toward him even more intensely.
In this situation, as far as he knew, there was nothing dangerous among the objects humans could imagine.
If there was, perhaps it would be something like the steel giant he had once glimpsed in hell.
But the small object in Jin Prahu's hand appeared utterly worthless at a glance.
'It doesn't seem to have any ether flow, so it's not a relic either. Then is it just empty bluster? Haha, typical human.'
Jin Prahu was letting his guard down, thinking Garkul's authority didn't work on him.
Of course, it was true that the authority hadn't worked until just now.
But the current situation was one where Garkul had melted his very being into his authority and projected it at Jin Prahu.
In this situation, even if his authority didn't work as well as Garkul expected, he could hurl a tiny fragment of himself into Jin Prahu's soul and 'contaminate' his soul with his authority.
If that happened, Jin Prahu would suffer terrible agony and eventually commit suicide.
Garkul only needed to be reborn from his corpse after Jin Prahu took his own life.
If Garkul could intervene within minutes of Jin Prahu's death, the surrounding humans would probably mistake it for Jin Prahu dying and coming back to life.
And they would accept him back into their fold without any particular suspicion, even though Jin Prahu was already dead; how foolish.
'I will obtain your everything after you commit suicide, Jin Prahu! Until then, suffer the pain of your soul being slowly devoured by my authority, and die!!'
Garkul smiled cruelly and projected his authority—into which he had melted everything—toward Jin Prahu.
Even if he might end up like the foolish demons he normally mocked in hell, his entire being absorbed into his authority and no longer a demon, if not now, there was no opportunity for him.
'Yes, it doesn't matter! If I can just steal you away, that level of risk is well worth taking!'
Garkul's life—how miserable it had been.
Born a demon, when he confirmed his authority, he had believed his life as a demon would be solid.
That was how broken he had thought his authority was.
But.
'Kuaaaak!'
'Hoo, an amusing reaction. The sight of you squirming like a bug is truly laughable.'
Crack!
After meeting Abiyan—a high-class demon who wouldn't even glance at a low-class demon like him, and among them the one most renowned as a madman—everything had changed.
After eons of torture, he lost his demonic body entirely, and only his authority and spirit barely combined to be sealed into a book by Abiyan.
Had he been an ordinary mortal, he would have long since lost his mind to Abiyan's torture—time reversed as he was tortured—and devolved into a mere squirming lump of flesh, but he was a demon.
Demons never die or disappear.
Though they can be absorbed by other high-class demons.
'Then I shall look forward to the day we meet again, Garkul.'
Shaaaaack!!
'Yes, just you wait! Abiyan!! I will gather the remains of this human you chose and be sure to take my revenge on you!!'
Garkul shouted the words he hadn't been able to speak at the moment he was being sealed into the book, clinging all the more desperately to Jin Prahu.
One step!
Just one more step and he could stand at the starting point to exact his revenge!!
Just one step…
"Hmm, next time, I'll look forward to you telling me your name, slave."
Ping!
Along with Jin Prahu's words, he pulled the pin of the object in his hand.
And in that instant.
Everything that was Garkul was swallowed by the light emanating from the worthless object Jin Prahu held.
Kwagagagagagang!!!
What could this be called?
To call it the light of the heavens would be wrong, for that light was coated with a sticky, murderous emotion akin to malice.
To call it the flames of hell would be wrong, for it was a light with the power to erase everything equally.
It was like violence created solely to annihilate anything it touched.
Garkul's existence was instantly erased by a light he had never seen in his life.
Especially at this point where he had melted everything into his authority, the light created by Jin Prahu proved even more fatal.
Everything was disappearing.
Jin Prahu, himself, and this space itself.
Jin Prahu would probably escape the grimoire and return to his physical body.
Because Garkul had yet to devour Jin Prahu's soul and spirit.
In other words.
This horrifyingly intense violence applied only to Garkul.
Kugugugung!!!
Was this the end?
To disappear so futilely, unable to even begin his revenge, at the hands of the human Abiyan chose?
How vexing.
At the moment the gigantic light erased him, Garkul understood for the first time the emotion humans called vexation.
The words spat out by humans who fell into hell and suffered, which demons like Garkul had giggled and watched.
He couldn't die like this.
If he were erased by this massive light, as Abiyan planned, he would become a grimoire that merely had information written on it, losing his intellect and intelligence.
Like the ordinary grimoires scattered to humans until now.
That couldn't happen.
That absolutely couldn't happen.
There had to be some way, some way, didn't there?
Garkul searched for a way out, using even the hated authority of Abiyan with all his might, trying to stop his existence from disappearing into that massive light, if only a little.
Something to break through this situation.
As long as he survived somehow, anything would be fine, so please—!
Flutter!
A sound of wings flapping reached Garkul as he desperately searched for a way out.
After that, Garkul barely survived and managed to escape the grimoire in the body of a crow.