We had secured the upper hand now. The point of this attack, using a Word that left strong mental effects, was to give the demons a final extra push.
The demons who were hit by it cringed and stopped dead in their tracks.
Some of them who were especially weak or took a direct hit from the Word immediately turned to dust and crumbled where they stood, and the rest who survived finally started to scatter.
The demons started to flee. Al must have been at his limit; he sunk to the floor on the spot.
Menel and Reystov, who were used to fighting for real, summoned the last of their energy to sink arrows and blades into the backs of the escaping demons, inflicting as much damage on their forces as possible. Even though they had lost their leadership, having demons on the loose would be a recipe for chaos in this area. The fewer of them there were, the better. If our enemies were showing us their backs, we had a duty to take them out and not ignore them.
Meanwhile, Ghelreis kept a vigilant watch, and as for me, after finally taking a moment to catch my breath, I set about healing everyone’s wounds.
“Gracefeel, goddess of the flame, grant us healing and vitality…” I put my hands together and prayed. Warm light flowed from everyone’s wounds, returning them to normal as if the injuries had never existed there to begin with.
However, I couldn’t bring back the stamina everyone had used up. We couldn’t afford to get overconfident.
After that, we did a once-over to make sure there weren’t still any enemies hiding anywhere. After we confirmed that we had completely chased the demons from the Hall of Light, we all shared smiles again. Each of us spontaneously raised a hand, and the crisp, refreshing sound of palms clapping against palms reverberated around the hall. My arms were tired, but a gentle warmth was left behind in my palm. It was the warmth of victory.
“Thought we were really gonna die there,” Menel said, laughing in relief.
“Turns out charging into the main base of the demons with just the five of us was pretty reckless.” He put an arm around Al’s shoulder. “Good job, brother! You really pulled it out of the bag!”
“N-No, I hardly…”
“No, you holding the boss back made it a ton easier for us to go all out,” said
Reystov.
Ghelreis nodded, too. “If their general had been allowed behind us, we could have been smothered and killed.”
I was in total agreement as well. “It was you who took them back. The mountain, and the crown.”
I picked the crown off the Scarabaeus’s head, which was rolling on the ground, and tried to hand it to Al. However, he turned it down with a shake of his head. “No. Not yet. We still haven’t taken everything back.”
After hearing his voice so full of determination, I nodded too. He was right.
Indeed, we hadn’t yet taken back the whole of these mountains. The dragon remained.
“But if we do take it all back, Sir Will, I’d like you to be the one to crown me.”
“What? That’s a job for a high-level priest, isn’t it?”
“You are a high-level priest, numbnuts!”
“Huh? Oh… So I am.”
Everyone burst into laughter. I laughed, too. It had only just occurred to me that we could laugh. We could all still laugh.
Our opponent was going to be a strong foe the likes of which we’d never faced. It was difficult to call our situation ideal, but battle was always like that.
Even if the situation left a lot to be desired, we had to do the best with the cards we had. We’d used up quite a bit of stamina, but we were still brimming with the will to fight. Our spirits hadn’t been dampened. We were in the best condition we could hope for right now.
“Let’s go. We’ll start by putting all the magic and blessings we can on us ahead of time.”
“Wait.” Reystov was frowning.
“What’s wrong?”
“Look over there.” He pointed to the area in the center of the hall, where countless demons had turned to dust. There were little mountains of the stuff all over the place.
“Huh?” Al tilted his head. Then, all at once, he turned completely pale. “It’s gone.”
“Gone? What’s gone?”
“The Scarabaeus’s body!”
“What?! Wait a fig second, we’ve got the head right here…”
We had its head. But — only now did I realize— it hadn’t turned to dust!
Demons, who were visitors from another dimension, always turned to dust when they were killed. Sometimes weapons or other small parts of them would remain, but nothing like this.
“It ran off…”
“Will, slow down, brother, how the hell could a body without a head—”
“If its body is like a bug’s, there’s a chance. Haven’t you ever seen a bug moving after its head’s been pulled off?”
Insects have a rope-ladder-like nerve cord running throughout their body from the cerebral ganglion that corresponds to their brain. I remembered reading somewhere in my previous life that it was one of the unique features of insects’ bodies that they could distribute their information processing because of that structure. In other words, if that beetle-demon’s body resembled a bug’s on the inside as well…
“It had its head taken off and it still ran. I don’t know how capable of thought it is right now, but…”
Some high-level miracles could regenerate missing body parts. I had my doubts whether a head could be regenerated — such a thing was impossible to test or verify for humans — but it wouldn’t be at all surprising to me if it was possible for demons.
“Menel, track it.”
“Got it!” Menel immediately started tracking its movements.
While he worked, I began placing effects and strengthening magic on everyone. If we allowed the general to get away and rebuild its forces, we would be done for. There was every chance that next time, we really would be surrounded and killed.
“After it!”
Everyone raised a battle cry.
Tracking the Scarabaeus took us out of the Hall of Light and following passages even deeper into the heart of the mountains.
Ghelreis said, “This is the way to the Great Cavern.”
“Maybe it went to get help from the dragon?”
“Possible. But it’s also possible it can’t think much and it’s just running blindly wherever its body takes it.”
I hoped it was the latter.
With a full set of strengthening magic upon us in preparation for an encounter with the dragon, we ran through the labyrinthine stone passages, shining up our surroundings with the light of our magic lanterns. The farther we advanced, the thicker the miasma became. If the dragon was the one producing this miasma, it had to mean that he was now very close by.
“Be careful, everyone!”
We made our way through the corridors, passing dusty, ancient rooms and halls. We crossed bridges over deep chasms. And finally, we reached a large, dark hall.
I couldn’t tell just how large it was; even with the range and brightness of Pale Moon’s blade set to their maximum, its light didn’t reach the far walls. It must have been an enormous smithy. Furnaces full of cold ash from which the fire was long gone were lined up like rows of giant tombstones. I could imagine that long ago, next to these roaring furnaces, experienced craftworkers had yelled at their apprentices over the racket of clanging hammers. There would have been songs to set the pace of the work as the contraption for transporting the ore clattered to and fro. But now, the fires were gone and the hammers had ceased; there were no voices of dwarves and no machines in motion. The darkness and silence was total.