Unruly Summon Chapter 50: Killing (Patreon)

"We have an action packed line-up for you tonight!" yelled someone. From the way the voice boomed over the entire stadium, there was obviously magical enhancement of some sort going on. "Maybe not our longest schedule, but certainly a spectacular one. Coming tonight is a rare exhibition match between B ranked slayer teams! We have members of Hraxxoth's Posse and Glynacleth here to demonstrate the heights slayers can reach, in the hopes of inspiring our younger audience members towards this dangerous but vital role."

The crowd went wild, cheering at the names of the groups. Were they famous? Were the crowd just cheering on general principles? I had no idea. The announcer waited patiently, obviously well versed in how to handle a crowd. Meanwhile, my mental overlap between James and the demon I assumed was Hraxxoth just grew stronger. Seriously, who would give their parties names like that?!

"But first," continued the announcer, "in a slight change to our advertised schedule, we have something else for our younger and older spectators alike: a warning. Bring out the condemned!"

"Not you, yet," whispered my escort as from the opposite side of the arena, three demons were forced through a gate at spear-point. The first was a short, nervous looking man with rounded, fur-less ears and a pink tail. Probably rat, or some other sort of rodent. The second and third were both far more confident, one with a full wolf head and a thick tail, and the other an elephant-man. He didn't have a full elephant head, but did have a trunk sticking out where his nose should have been. It gripped a sword, with another one in each hand. Dual-wielding was hard enough, but that guy used three!

None were fully armoured, dressed in rough clothing with only a leather breastplate and gauntlets for protection. I wasn't any better, though; I had my own clothes on, but the borrowed armour I'd been given was no different from theirs. Not that I really needed it...

"The next time you find yourself caught in the grip of envy, rage, hatred, or even just the heat, and you start to think you deserve more and no-one else matters, remember this day. Ask yourself if it's worth it. Ask yourself if you want to be them. Murderers, rapists, thieves of food. This is where you'll end up."

The crowd jeered. Some people threw things, although I noted without surprise that no food was involved. There were no rotten tomatoes here; the announcer had just put food theft on the same level as murder, and letting food go rotten was probably a sin just as bad.

"And finally, let me introduce their executioner. Travelling here all the way from the Ricousian Kingdom is the human Alex of Greenstone."

The crowd fell into silence.

"That's your cue. Go," said the hostess who had guided me here.

I tried, I really did, but my feet flat out refused to move.

"Now, I can tell from your confused silence you're all wondering why a human has travelled all this way," continued the announcer, smoothly covering for me. "Let's just say that the tri-wielder down there committed some war crimes during the recent skirmish, and that he was stationed in Greenstone."

Skirmish? I suppose if no humans had counter-invaded the demons, to the local civilians, the war probably had a limited impact beyond the loss of trade. It probably went some way towards explaining why our reception here in the demon kingdom hadn't been that bad, despite being humans.

The elephant man in question peered straight at me, and as he sprouted an obscene smirk, I realised I was trembling. He'd already been confident, but seeing me apparently frozen in fear took things up a few notches. He obviously believed he was the strongest here.

The fact that the wolf-headed bandit seemed to think the same thing didn't seem to matter to him.

He mouthed something at me, slowly and carefully to ensure I got the message. "I liked her. She had a pretty scream."

It was an obvious attempt to rile me up, to make me angry. Perhaps it was strategic; angry people made mistakes. Perhaps it was simple sadism. Either way, he achieved his goal, despite the way I wasn't actually related to anyone involved. The same coldness returned from an hour earlier, when Minoru had first declared their crimes, and my trembling stopped. My grip around my borrowed sword tightened, I made a subvocal cast of Maius Omnia Visus, and I successfully put one foot in front of the other, stepping out into the arena and full view of the silent crowd.

I had no idea where Mary and the others were sitting, and I wasn't about to look around to find out. I kept my gaze firmly on my target, doing my best to ignore the spectators. I just hoped he'd keep talking. I needed him to keep me angry. Angry enough to kill.

"Four people have entered, but only one will leave," declared the announcer. "Begin!"

As Minoru had predicted, the two bandits immediately attacked each other, while the elephant-man started walking calmly towards me. "Would you like me to describe what it was like? The crying and the screaming at the start? How much she was begging for more by the end?"

He was almost certainly making stuff up. Unless one of the girls coincidentally had a passing resemblance to me, or had otherwise mentioned a brother called Alex, there was no way he had anyone specific in mind. It was all for the purposes of making me angry.

... Which in turn was because he was desperately trying to survive the fight. Something that I knew, but was trying very hard not to think about.

His overconfidence helped. Had he been cowering on the floor, begging for his life, this would have been a lot harder. Perhaps too hard. The fact that he could say such things with such callousness meant that I didn't struggle to raise my sword, drawing on my lessons with Christine and taking my stance as I carefully exhaled.

His expression changed, showing a momentary flicker of doubt before it hardened. His casual walk turned into a charge.

It became obvious within moments that his triple sword setup was more of a stunt than something serious. Yes, he could swing the sword with his trunk, but it was so slow and unwieldy that I could dodge it without thinking. I parried the blow from his left hand with my own sword, while the blow from his right never came, on account of the way his wrist was half-severed.

He leapt backwards, his expression twisting into one of incomprehension as he stared at his arm, his hand hanging uselessly, attached only by a small strip of flesh. My subvocal Parvus Ventus Ferrum hadn't been enough to completely sever it, but it was enough to render it useless.

"You're a mage?" he hissed. "Impossible... We rounded up all the mages in Greenstone, and you weren't one of them."

In the back of my mind, I was aware of the noise of the crowd, now back to full volume, and the continued commentary of the announcer. I just let it all wash over me. Right now, I had one thing I needed to concentrate on. One thing alone.

Given that I didn't want to publicly announce I was a hero, going all out with magic was a big nope. I didn't want to reveal that I could use all affinities, or that I could call upon a veritable ocean of mana. That didn't mean I wouldn't use any magic, though. Minor spells of one or two elements wouldn't be suspicious.

Nevertheless, I didn't follow up with more magic, but once more raised my sword, this time taking the role of attacker. My opponent raised his left blade with unnatural speed, my mana sight showing him drawing on the local mana as he took me more seriously. He parried, but the attack had been a distraction anyway. The real one was another point-blank wind blade, this one tearing into his trunk, slicing it in half. A second of his swords clattered to the ground.

"Fuck!" he screamed as he leapt backwards, blood now pouring from two wounds. "How dare you? How dare you?!"

"I'm pretty sure that's what I should be asking you," I calmly replied.

"You're... you're... you're just a human. Whichever one of those bitches you're here for, you should be thankful she was pretty enough to catch the attention of me, a demon!"

I responded with a simple, "Parvus Ventus Ferrum," not bothering with keeping it silent this time. I'd aimed it at his remaining wrist, but with the distance between us, he dodged. Not a complete surprise.

"Dammit! I was saving this for him, but no point if I don't last that long," muttered my opponent, and through my mana sight I watched him dial up his body strengthening. And then things changed.

I hadn't had any sight spells active when Minoru showed us her transformation, but this time I had the mother of all sight spells switched on, and hence could see as the mana poured into his body, and then somehow moved in a direction orthogonal to the usual three, pouring into his soul. The soul twisted in response, and the body echoed it.

I'd heard how miasma twisted people and animals into monsters, and I'd seen how Mary, when she was suffering miasma poisoning, started having mana bleeding into her body. I hadn't known Maius Omnia Visus back then, so I hadn't seen her soul, but perhaps the demon transformations were related to whatever miasma did? But the demons' transformations were reversible... I couldn't help but feel that there was something important there, but this wasn't the time to think too deeply about it. This was a time to deal with the towering elephant in front of me.

Elephants were big creatures anyway, and this demon had scaled things up further. Furthermore, while his wrist had been half severed, in his transformed state the wound was reduced to little more than a shallow cut. Thankfully, his trunk didn't regenerate, and even in his transformed state, half of it was missing.

I struck him with a few more small wind blades, but they no longer had the power to penetrate his thick skin. If I wanted to harm him with magic, I'd need to step things up a notch.

I didn't, resorting to swordplay instead. In exchange for his size, strength and toughness, he'd thrown away his agility, and dodging the head-bashing and stomping feet was easy. And each time I did, I was able to leave another slice on him with my sword. Body strengthening of my own was required to push it through his skin, and the sword's length wasn't sufficient to hit anything vital, but the small wounds were adding up.

For a few minutes we duelled, until, whether from blood loss or exhaustion, his transformation broke. With a pop, the elephant was gone and the man was back, naked, blood pouring from dozens of cuts. He no longer had any weapons, and my mana sight showed his body strengthening had broken. His previously confident expression was gone, replaced by mounting despair.

He turned his back on me and ran, despite the fact he had nowhere to run. For as long as I lived, he couldn't leave the arena. A final small blade of wind sliced into one of his ankles, and he tumbled forward, face meeting dirt with a satisfying crunch.

"Why?" he mumbled, desperately trying to push himself up. He coughed, spitting out a mouthful of blood, along with a tooth. "Why?" he repeated.

"Why what?"

"Why are you toying with me?! Is this fun?!"

I blinked, not having any idea what he was talking about. Fun? Of course not! This was practically torture!

And then it occurred to me that from his point of view, I had been. The very first wind blade, which I'd used to slice his wrist, could just as easily have been aimed at his throat. So could the second. I could have ended this instantly, but I hadn't done.

"Because a good friend of mine asked me to make you suffer," I answered, and I knew it was a lie. Yes, Wendy had asked me to make him suffer, but that wasn't at all why I hadn't killed him. I hadn't even considered a fatal attack as an option. I'd unconsciously been trying to 'defeat' him, rather than 'kill' him.

And now he was defeated, but not dead. He wasn't capable of walking or holding a sword. He could barely even push his head up from the dirt. If I left him alone, he would probably bleed out.

I didn't leave him alone. I took my sword and, with a trembling arm, I did what I'd come here to do; I drove it through his heart. I kept my magically enhanced eyes on him, watching the red overlay of 'life' drain away, before the soul floated away from the body and slowly dispersed.

It was done. I'd taken a life. He certainly deserved it, but even so... the moment I confirmed he was dead, the nausea struck. I could feel the bile forcing its way up my throat.

My imminent sickness was interrupted by a slow clapping, somehow clearly audible above the continued roaring of the crowd. Surprised, I spun towards it, seeing the completely uninjured wolf-headed man leisurely sitting on the decapitated body of the rat-man, watching me with every sign of amusement as he applauded. "A fine show," he declared. "Ready for the next round?"

... Right. There had been four people in this fight, not two.