A Flicker of Certainty

“What on earth have we been doing?”

Sir Jager stopped in his tracks at my question.

“They said a demon climbed the ramparts.”

It was so absurd it actually made me laugh.

To endure, to survive, to keep as many people alive as possible, I had wracked my stubborn brain, put on a grand show, and even dry-heaved my guts out.

It was all entirely pointless.

We were nothing more than playthings dancing in the palms of those demons.

“That… we need to confirm…”

Sir Jager cut himself off, gnawing at his lower lip with his front teeth.

Tangled within the wind blowing through the open windows of the hallway were the screams, desperate cries, and distinct stench of human blood.

I let out a hollow laugh and wiped a hand over my tired face.

Just glancing out the window right beside me would confirm whether the soldier’s words were true or false.

Yet I could not bring myself to look.

The moment my eyes confirmed it, the determination I had forced into my heart felt like it would shatter into pieces.

“Sir Jager.”

“Yes.”

The path Sir Jager led me down was the longest route to the ramparts.

I knew this, but I did not stop him.

It was an evasion of a horribly warped reality, a brief reprieve granted to myself to process a death that had once felt so distant but was now right before my eyes.

The laughter that had been coughing out of me eventually died down.

What filled the void was a profound sense of injustice.

Why on earth do I have to go through this?

What did I do so wrong?

I had not lived a completely flawless life, but I had not lived so terribly as to deserve an end like this either.

If I had, at least I would not feel this cheated.

If we could not hold out until Kallios’s army arrived, I intended to die alongside the people of this castle.

I had resolved this while watching the residents pray toward the castle every single day, and I had solidified that intent while looking at the hunched back of the weeping soldier begging for salvation.

Even so, the burning unfairness and anger were impossible to suppress.

I let out a heavy sigh.

Let us calm down.

I was not the only one facing an unjust fate.

Everyone in this castle was an innocent victim caught up in the natural disaster that was a monster wave.

It was not as if I was the only one enduring a tragic fate…

[Priest of the Red Dragon!]

A booming shout shook the entire castle structure.

[Shall I come over there, or will you come out here?]

It was an eerie, sinister voice that sent a cold shiver straight down my spine just by listening to it.

It was difficult to distinguish a gender from it.

Not that determining a demon’s gender would serve any purpose anyway.

“By Priest of the Red Dragon, that thing means me, right?”

“It appears so.”

The only being in this castle directly tied to the Dragon God Capre was me.

The title priest felt entirely foreign, but if I considered it a term used among demons to denote someone bearing a dragon’s blessing, the pieces fit well enough.

[I am starting to get a little bored here, you know?]

Listening to the prompting words, I stepped closer to the window.

Sir Jager extended his arm to bar my path.

“It is dangerous.”

“I know.”

Pushing past his firm arm, I stuck my head out the window frame.

“…What a f*cking mess.”

I clamped a hand over my mouth to stifle the rising surge of vomit.

Mangled corpses were strewn across the ramparts.

Standing on the blood-soaked stone wall, the demon stared precisely in my direction.

The person—or what used to be a person—held in the demon’s grasp was torn apart like a sheet of paper and dropped to the ground.

Fortunately, it was not close enough for the sound of tearing flesh to reach my ears.

It was also a relief that I could not clearly distinguish which limbs belonged to whom, or see the expressions on their faces.

Had I witnessed it from a close distance, I would have shrieked in sheer horror at the gruesome sight before even processing the reality of death.

[Hello.]

The humanoid demon, entirely black from head to toe, waved its lone crimson hand broadly.

A sudden gust of wind carried a suffocating stench of fresh blood.

As my legs gave out and I nearly collapsed to the floor, Sir Jager firmly supported my weight.

[I have a lot of things I want to ask you.]

Grasping the window sill with a trembling hand, I called out.

“Wait right there quietly.”

[Sure thing!]

I thought it wouldn’t have heard me, but a response echoed back instantly.

As I turned away, something caught my eye, causing me to look down once more.

A familiar set of armor was gleaming under the sunlight.

Sir Jager made his intense desire to stop me glaringly obvious, yet he could not utter a single word to contest me.

He simply had no logical argument to offer.

Our opponent was a demon who had infiltrated the castle completely single-handedly, and we possessed absolutely no means to stop it.

Commander Elindo, who seemed like he would be of actual use in a battle against a demon, was currently lying motionless on the ground.

I recognized him by the polished armor he had kept immaculate to avenge his son.

From where I stood, it looked like his limbs were still attached, but once a warrior falls to the ground like that, it is over.

The option of leaving the Commander to hold the rear while we fled was entirely blocked.

Cowering inside the castle would only mean waiting for death to claim us.

If we wanted to draw even a few more breaths, we had no choice but to rely on the demon’s whim.

Well, whatever.

I have lived a long enough life.

This existence should have ended the moment I was hit by that truck, but by some stroke of luck, I slipped into this body and gained a few more years.

Just when I thought I would wither away from sickness and die, luck favored me again, allowing me to live.

I… had occasionally thought that perhaps I was playing the role of a fantasy novel protagonist.

The kind of character who rewrites the original plot and lives a comfortable, grand life.

Kallios, who was destined to become a tyrant, becomes a decent ruler, while I live well, eat well, and eventually close my eyes peacefully within this Principality of Kaian.

Dmn it. Bullsht. Fck this. To hell with it. Crap. Screw this. Fcking hell.

Swallowing down the sudden surge of sorrow, I watched the gates of the lord’s castle swing open.

The massive doors parted slowly.

Brilliant sunlight poured into the space.

I could see the residents prostrating themselves entirely, crying out the names of the Dragon God and myself.

Ah, I really want to see Kallios and Sierra.

Isaac and Ilios, too.

I deeply missed the people I had left behind in the Empire.

It brought a wave of sadness that what lay before my eyes was not the towering spires of the Empire or my private garden, but the desolate front courtyard of the Visconti estate.

“Your Highness, Prince Kaian!”

A voice called out from behind.

It was Lamierre.

Rushing forward to wrap his arms around me, Lamierre locked his fingers together tightly over my stomach.

“What are you doing?”

“It is almost ready. Please just wait a little longer.”

“Is five days your definition of a little?”

Lamierre pulled me tightly against his chest.

Being embraced from behind with only my waist dragged backward left me in an awkward, slouched stance that must have looked utterly ridiculous.

Lamierre’s chin rested against my shoulder.

As if throwing a tantrum, he rubbed his head against the side of my neck and cheek, whispering softly.

“If it is just Your Highness alone, I can transfer you immediately. Please just hold out until sunset.”

“And how exactly am I supposed to hold out until sunset?”

No answer returned to fill the silence.

He couldn’t bring himself to say the words out loud.

Throwing the soldiers, knights, and residents of this castle into the demon’s jaws just to buy time was one thing, but setting aside the sheer cruelty of the method, there was no guarantee it would even be effective.

Aside from displaying enough monstrous strength to rip humans apart, the demon had not revealed any other abilities yet.

What if it possessed an entirely different power capable of wiping everyone out instantly?

What if it ordered the entire encamped monster horde to swarm the castle at once?

What if the other demons who had yet to show themselves suddenly materialized?

Staring down at the arms binding me in a suffocatingly tight grip, I gently tapped the back of his hands.

“Anyone watching would think I am walking straight to my death.”

“…”

“Though to be fair, about ninety percent of my mind feels exactly that way.”

“Your Highness…”

In truth, even ninety percent was a massive bluff; ninety-nine point nine percent of my mind felt that way.

Through our contact, I could feel Lamierre trembling against my back, shoulders, and neck.

It was a situation where bluffs were the only thing keeping me together.

“It is not as if I am entirely powerless, right?”

“…”

“To be completely honest, I have zero confidence in actually hitting it with an arrow, but if I get close enough and just blast fire right at it, maybe something will work out.”

My body was frail, and I had never properly learned how to wield the power dwelling within me, but regardless, I was born with a dragon bloodline so potent that people called me the second coming of the Great Emperor Kaian.

Furthermore, Kallios’s presence and a fraction of his strength were added to mine.

If I pushed myself to the point of setting my own body ablaze, I might just pull off that fractional point of a percentage.

“And besides, if I hide until nightfall and escape all by myself.”

I looked around at the people who had chosen to entrust their fates to me instead of fleeing.

Parents holding their infants, young adults, the elderly, children, boys, girls, the knights and soldiers slaughtered by monsters and torn apart by the demon, as well as Lamierre, Sir Jager, and Sigret.

The weight of what I carried had become far too heavy for me to just survive alone.

Though if I did manage to keep my life, I suppose I would find a way to live on somehow.

“I will be back.”

The arms constricting my waist finally loosened.

I forced a brief smile before hardening my expression and stepping through the gates.

Sir Jager and Lamierre followed closely behind me.

[So a believer of the Water Dragon was here too?]

The demon glanced briefly over my shoulder, acknowledging Lamierre’s presence.

[Your aura was so dominant that I did not even notice. Priest.]

We halted our advance.

The distance between us and the demon was roughly fifty meters.

Since it was rumored that the demon could clear high ramparts in a single bound, maintaining this much distance could hardly be considered safe.

However, drawing any closer felt like it would truly cross the line into a suicide mission.

Fortunately, the demon seemed satisfied with this arrangement and did not demand that we approach further.

The demon tilted its head from side to side before plopping down carelessly onto the ground.

A wet, splashing sound echoed as it settled into the massive pool of blood pooling beneath its feet.

“Ask your questions. You said you had a lot of things you wanted to ask.”

Despite having hurried my mind by claiming it was bored—and had my mind not been rushed, I would never have come to meet it so recklessly—the demon did not ask anything immediately and instead sank deep into thought.

Standing amidst the bizarre silence, I observed the demon’s appearance.

When viewed from afar, it had looked like a mere black silhouette, but up close, it was slightly different.

It possessed hollow eye sockets and a protruding lump that presumably served as a nose, but it had no mouth whatsoever.

If one were to crudely shape a shadow into a humanoid form, it would look exactly like this.

Its height was roughly similar to mine.

Its limbs were as thin as withered tree branches.

Moreover, simply looking at it induced a profound wave of discomfort, as if I were facing something entirely malevolent.

It was distinct from the demons I had seen in my dreams, and different from the ones preserved within Arjen’s memories.

Those entities were certainly grotesque, but they had never made my heart feel this deeply unsettled.

I could not tell if this was the inherent difference between a real, living entity and something immortalized in dreams and memories, or if the creature standing before me simply occupied a far higher tier.

Since the demon showed no intention of speaking, I opened my mouth first.

“Why did you come here?”

[Hmmm…]

“What is a priest, and what is a believer?”

[Hmmmm…]

“When are you going back?”

Regardless of whether I spoke or not, the demon simply rested its chin on its hand, entirely absorbed in its own thoughts.

“Are you going to kill me?”

The demon shifted its gaze to look at me.

[How can you kill something that is already dead?]

“What?”

“What kind of bullsh*t is that?!”

Lamierre shouted.

Rather than the demon’s words, I was far more startled by the fact that a word like bullsh*t had actually escaped Lamierre’s mouth.

“Your choice of vocabulary is absolutely perfect.”

“Ah.”

Lamierre clamped his mouth shut.

Mentally noting to praise him properly if we made it out of this alive, I repeated the exact words Lamierre had just uttered.

“What kind of bullsh*t is that?”

[No, wait. Let us see. There has never been a demon who killed something that was already dead.]

The space where eyes should have been consisted of nothing but two hollowed-out cavities, and its face was entirely featureless without a mouth, yet I somehow received the distinct impression that the demon was grinning.

[Which means… if I do it, I will be the very first, right?]

In a single instant, the demon vanished from my sight.

Sir Jager lunged forward, wrapping his arms around me as we rolled across the hard ground.