Part 7 — Protector of Kanae (Final Part)

79

Deuswulf.

The huge, ferocious creature was more beast than demi-human, and the intensity of its presence made all who looked upon it shiver.

The immense power hidden within was visible in the way that its fur would shine and ripple with every movement of its supple muscles.

Kai saw its magnificent form come into view, and he soon noticed that its fur was surprisingly dirty. Even from afar, he could see that its entire body was covered with countless wounds. As it walked, it appeared to be dragging its rear-left leg. As the macaques in black used their weapons to drive it forward, it was clear that some trick had forced this once-revered beast into servitude.

“Now have at it! Monsters!”

The diabo on the throne lifted its head in response to the loud shouting from the hole above its head. When it saw Wise Princess, it began to move and appeared intent on eating her. Wise Princess tutted in frustration and drew further back into the hole with the pup in the cage held out in front of her like a shield.

When they saw their leader in danger, the macaques in black panicked and began to swing their weapons at the deuswulf one after another, forcing it to take action. The deuswulf howled with pain and then knocked down the nearby macaques with a toss of its head, and then delivered a kick to the macaques tormenting it with their weapons from behind. That alone was enough to make a portion of the army in black lose all organization.

“Monster, fight!”

Wise Princess brought her unsheathed knife close to the caged pup, and it released a yelp that was just barely audible. Finally, the deuswulf reacted, and its reaction was fierce. Its huge body bounded forward to scale the terrace of rock platforms, and it moved with such force that every macaque standing nearby was knocked back.

The army in black raised a cheer when they saw the wolf charge forward. They behaved as if this accomplishment was sure to be enough to turn the tide and assure their victory.

By Kai’s side, Torud of the Nenem tribe was trembling with his head hung and his back hunched, as if he couldn’t bear to look at what was happening.

“Hey.”

Kai tried to get Torud’s attention, and he couldn’t understand why Torud was covering his ears. Porek urged the chief of the Nenem tribe to raise his head, and he finally did so. They saw the mortified expression on his face, but Torud said nothing.

Kai wanted at least a little more information. He’d had no prior knowledge of these macaques in black or the “Wise Princess” they followed, but now he needed to know as much as possible about this huge white wolf that was like nothing he’d ever seen.

They had to press Torud before he finally spoke.

“Tell me what a deuswulf is.”

“From north... gods who protect.”

“Gods who protect?”

“Strong humans steal land of weak demi-humans. Species that can’t live in forest go through forest and live on plains at northern limit. Ones called orgs. We say northern limit because this is as far as we can live. Farther north, nothing can live. Land of snow, ice, death.”

“...”

“Things come from the edge. Evil things.”

As Kai listened to Torud’s faltering speech, he had a vague idea what was meant by the “things” that came from the edge.

The orgs often boasted of their superior strength, but even they were struggling with an invasion that required the combined strength of their species.

“You mean the ones from the snow plains?”

“Vile creatures. They invade land, wipe us out.”

“Then what about this deuswulf?”

“Creature that protects us from ones from snow plains. Since long ago, it lives on Mount Kamur and protects land.”

“And now... you’ve enslaved it?”

“Mad Princess did this.”

At the northern limit, at the boundary between the plains and the land of ice, where survival becomes impossible for even the toughest demi-humans, giant wolves lived on a precipitous, frozen mountain, where they tirelessly killed and consumed the external enemy. The surrounding demi-humans revered these deuswulves, and it was only natural that they came to treat them as sacred beasts.

The macaques’ invasion at the northern limit must have gone badly after they were met with fierce resistance from the resident species. A member of the royal family known as Wise Princess had joined the fighting to embolden the soldiers. Amid the quagmire, she formed a plan that was akin to a divine revelation, and with the help of a few followers, she actually pulled it off.

They had snuck into the nest of a divine beast that was feared and revered by all other species, and they had abducted a pup and lured out its parent, which was then forced to fight in their vanguard. The plan would have been unthinkable for any demi-human species that felt the smallest amount of gratitude toward the deuswulf for protecting them. That was what changed the tide of the war.

Using the ferocious power of the deuswulf, she led a small number of soldiers to one victory after another. The land gods she had captured were given to her followers, and thus she built herself an army that was something of a Wise Princess faction. She invigorated the dying cause of the loyalist faction and earned herself the aliases Wolfmaster Princess and Wise Princess of the North.

Torud explained that the macaques in black that were following Kai even now were made up of tribes with young chiefs who were charmed by offers of land gods.

Their talk was interrupted by a yelp from the beast that echoed through the hollow space of the cavern.

Kai instinctively looked toward the source of the sound and caught sight of the deuswulf’s huge white body as it lost some sort of exchange and began to slip from the edge of the stone table. It came to a stop before completely falling over the edge, but it lay limp with all four limbs twitching. Kai couldn’t understand what had just happened.

The details of that short-lived battle were explained to Kai by the koror soldiers.

“The deuswulf bit the neck of the diabo and then it was thrown back. It didn’t look like it was badly wounded in the exchange...”

“I saw it myself. The deuswulf was cautious. It waited for the diabo to show an opening.”

The confusion among the soldiers made Kai wonder whether some magic had been used, but it was Torud who dispelled that idea.

For the macaques, fighting the diabo was more or less a daily occurrence, and they’d learned much about how to fight with it.

“Diabo is living curse. All it touches die.”

There was a sizzling sound in the distance.

Each time the diabo moved, that sound grew louder and the amount of thin smoke rising from its misshapen body increased. The blue light within the diabo’s body would also grow more intense, like embers flaring up under human breath.

The strangle sizzling sound filled the dark space.

Its whole body is... burning?

Kai realized what the source of the sound was.

It was clear to see that the skin of the diabo was burning.

The flesh of the creature was quite literally smoldering like a charcoal fire being stirred. As the thin smoke it produced spread, the rotten smell became harder to bear.

The diabo let out a threatening screech that was like the scraping of iron against iron, and then it slowly climbed down from atop the king’s throne. It must have finally decided to get up for the sake of feeding on the large prize that it had just knocked down.

It climbed down while sliding its own excessive weight along the ground. Its body was so huge that it couldn’t help but knock down the remains of former inhabitants each time it stepped on a lower terrace. Part of its tail landed in a pool of water, sending a great white cloud of steam rising.

The diabo’s entire body really did look like that of a salamander.

“Why’s the diabo burning?” Kai muttered.

Porek told him, “This is the nature of a diabo. It is said that they are foreign gods that should not exist, and so the world itself rejects them.”

“Foreign...?”

“It means that they do not adhere to natural laws of this world.”

A gust of air carrying a foul stench hit them, and everyone began to choke. They knew that the source of the smell was the diabo itself.

“Stand, Monster!”

Despite the cries from Wise Princess within the hole, the deuswulf merely spasmed in agony without so much as opening its eyes. The strange curse must have been eating its way into the creature’s body.

The diabo gave off flames and smoke as it hunched over the feast that was the deuswulf. But the deuswulf had been the last resort of the macaques in black, and they weren’t about to let it go so easily. They charged over to come to its aid.

Those at the front pushed forward with their characteristically macaque shields held up.

The army in black were climbing a slope that was littered with bodies of their own kind.

The macaques who reached the deuswulf before the diabo bravely tried to hold it back while dragging the deuswulf away like a swarm of ants carrying food.

“It’s too late! Run!”

Torud shouted in a loud voice that was almost a scream, but it didn’t reach the area where the macaques were fighting and raising battle cries. In fact, the macaques that had stayed close to Kai had also begun charging into the cavern where their allies were in peril. There were also those who disparaged Torud as a coward when they passed him because he was a guardian bearer who chose to hide rather than fight.

Based on the confrontation some time ago, Kai guessed that the tribes gathered around the heart of the main territory in the south were the abridor faction while the macaques in a frenzy to capture new territories at the northern limit were tribes scattered across the northern region. Which meant that those macaques must have been the royalists who pledged loyalty to the royal family. They must have been those dispatched with Wise Princess to aid the war efforts at the northern limit.

“Wait! We need plan! You die!”

The warnings that Torud was shouting were all in vain.

Even demi-humans would form factions when many of them gathered in one place, and this would lead to confrontations between members of the same species. That was how Kai understood their current behavior.

“What would you have us do, Master?” Porek asked.

Kai sighed and stood up straight once more.

It would be an embarrassment if they remained there hiding in the shadows while the macaques in black were fighting so bravely.

“I suppose we’d better help.”

With the order given, Kai stepped forward while correcting the position of his slipping mask.

80

The diabo was the embodiment of a curse.

Anyone so much as touched by it would die.

Kai wondered how such a thing came to be. He’d been told that someone who was once a macaque guardian bearer had transformed and turned into the diabo. Some part of him had been expecting it to be another type of guardian bearer much like himself.

But it was a misshapen creature that was nothing less than a monster.

Now how do I kill this thing?

The idea of trying to kill it without ever touching it was enough to make him stop and ask himself whether such a feat was even possible.

He’d have to defeat it by delivering repeated strikes with his weapon from a distance without ever taking a hit himself. It might have been possible if he’d had some kind of longspear, but he also doubted that a spear would be enough to whittle away the massive body that somehow burned like peat.

The other option was to use magic.

Magic might just be the most realistic option.

He felt uneasy about that conclusion. His experience fighting against the armored soldier, a member of the Rigdaros, had taught him that guardian bearers should never rely on magic.

When another group with different colored fur came in from the entrance, some of the macaques in black reacted by pointing at them and shouting.

The sight of Kai and the others in their unusual koror clothing was making the macaques in black wary, but they felt they could overpower them because of the difference in strength between the two species. Many of them were yelling “stay back!” and “don’t get in the way!” while trying to wave them away. They waved their arms as if trying to shoo away a bunch of children, but Kai ignored them, irritating as they were.

To put it bluntly, the most convenient thing for Kai would be to let the idiots in black do the fighting for a while so he could see how the diabo killed its enemies. He wanted them to give him a chance to observe the diabo’s tactics and its quirks.

But of course, the diabo would probably keep a few tricks up its sleeve if it didn’t consider the macaques much of a threat. If the diabo lacked a worthy opponent, then he’d need the deuswulf to recover.

“Master. What should we do?”

“I’m worried about the white thing. Let’s see how the deuswulf is doing.”

Under Kai’s leadership, Porek and the other koror moved with no further hesitation. With Kai in the lead, the koror party headed toward the backs of the macaques who’d dragged away the deuswulf.

The front line of the army was struggling to hold together in the face of the diabo. The macaques in black had no time to be concerned with the koror. Their eyes remained fixed on the diabo as they continued making the same shoo-shoo hand gestures. Kai was thankful that the macaques didn’t openly wish them harm, but the longer they were treated like children, the more annoying it became and the harder it was to ignore.

“Let me get a look at it.”

Near the deuswulf, those who must have been caring for it were huddled around trying to help it.

As Kai walked around the deuswulf touching various areas of interest, the white mass of the creature simply lay there twitching. The creature’s handlers looked at him as if he was a nuisance, but they didn’t try to drive him away. The handlers were so preoccupied by their efforts to help the deuswulf that they had no time for Kai.

I can’t find any fresh wounds...

That was Kai’s finding after making a full circuit around the deuswulf. Next, he searched for some internal injury hidden from view. The first possibility that came to mind was that one of its delicate internal organs might be damaged.

To look for such damage, Kai opened his eyes to the world of auras using the power given to him by the god of the valley.

Kai quietly examined its abdominal region while running his hand over it. The first hint of anything unnatural was felt at the creature’s side, so he decided to try questioning one of the nearby handlers who was grooming the deuswulf.

“It feels swollen inside. Is this where the diabo hit it?”

The macaques weren’t the smartest of creatures, so Kai made sure to ask in the macaque tongue while clearly pointing to the area as he asked the question. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but at that very moment the body of the deuswulf trembled violently.

Its head sprang up and it struggled to rise despite still appearing to be unconscious, but then it collapsed to the ground once more. At the same time, Kai felt a splash of liquid against his face, and he could tell from the smell that this was a large volume of stomach fluid. It made his eyes sting, but he kept his composure and wiped it away with his sleeve.

Looking more closely, Kai noticed that the deuswulf had something between its teeth that looked like a horse’s bit, and the inside of the bit was just visible from within its mouth. It looked as though a cylindrical, woven basket was held in place inside its mouth, and the basket was packed full of a familiar-looking green leaf.

Kai tried to suppress the emotions building inside him as he ushered Porek closer and had him check that this was indeed what he thought.

As soon as he felt sure that he was correct, he tore away the hide straps that held the bit in place.

A medicinal plant, similar to those given to wounded people in Lag, was packed into the woven cage that he pulled out of the deuswulf’s mouth.

Those leaves had a sedative effect, but in high doses they could be poisonous, making it a dangerous plant to handle.

“Idiot! You broke it! Why?”

A macaque that must have been the leader of the handlers approached while yelling when it saw that Kai had broken the leather straps. But Kai paid the handler no attention. He threw the woven cage aside and placed one foot against the deuswulf’s head so that he could force its mouth open.

“The restorative.”

“Here, Master.”

Porek placed a small bottle into Kai’s outstretched hand. Inside was a special koror medicine made from pungent-smelling leaves pickled in a fruit liqueur. Kai poured it directly down the throat of the deuswulf.

“It’s not enough.”

“The eyes. They move beneath the creature’s eyelids. It may have awoken.”

It had regained consciousness, but still it couldn’t move its body.

At first Kai thought that the poison had already taken effect, leaving it in a weak state. But then he remembered that it had been so active a few moments ago. He concluded that effects of the poison must have been a secondary issue.

The main cause of its inability to move had to be the diabo’s curse. Kai went back to examining the creature’s internal aura in areas other than its delicate organs.

Then he finally found what appeared to be the root cause.

The aura’s so faint around its chest...

Its body was growing cold, as if its organs were already beginning to fail.

Kai had felt a particular sort of power from the deuswulf that was familiar to him as a guardian bearer. He could tell that this was a hardy creature that should have begun healing quickly even when heavily wounded. But for some reason it was unable to use that power. Something wasn’t quite right.

This was a powerful divine beast that fought countless battles against unknown monsters at the northern edge. Given the way this world worked, its power had to come from a land god, or something similar, that lived within its body.

What if the weakened part’s the godstone itself?

A guardian bearer’s vast supply of spiritual energy reached the host via its godstone.

Kai felt sure of this fact because he’d experienced the effects of losing his godstone firsthand. He knew that the god within coexisted with the host while sealed within the godstone.

He wondered how a godstone might be weakened. Kai’s intuition told him that the god within the stone, the very source of the deuswulf’s power, was in an inactive state after being afflicted with a negative status effect by the diabo. In other words, the god had fallen unconscious. It was a god, so Kai thought it unlikely that it could actually die.

If the god had only fainted, then the sensible thing to do would be to slap the god in the face and force it to wake up. That was Kai’s somewhat violent reasoning.

But how can I slap a god?

As he thought about it, the unfamiliar image that came into his head was a red box.

The words “defibrillator (AED)” stayed in his mind and were quickly followed by the words “electric shock,” which were equally unfamiliar to him.

Electric? Shock?

Although an uneducated boy of this world like Kai had no way of understanding these words, the concepts they referred to were slowly coming to him. Kai didn’t understand how it all worked, but he was at least able to remember a step-by-step process that seemed possible to follow by substituting in the abilities that were available to him there and then.

Kai slowly moved his hand over the position of the deuswulf’s godstone and inhaled sharply before delivering a concentrated burst of spiritual energy. In that same moment, the limp body of the deuswulf sprang into the air like a fish removed from the water.

Kai repeated the process several times, but the deuswulf still didn’t wake up. It seemed that he’d have to rethink this simplistic approach. He tried thinking about things on a more practical level, just as he had when first using trial and error to learn magic. With some reluctance, he also carefully tried to recall the finer details within the complex “instruction manual” in his memories.

Put simply, a defibrillator was a medical device designed to restart a stopped heart using an electric shock, but the design was based on the way that muscle cells within the heart moved in response to electricity. This made bursts of electricity effective.

What Kai needed was a set of principles for producing that same effect.

What he needed now wasn’t a way to stimulate the unique organ known as the godstone; his ultimate goal was to slap the face of the god within that was slacking off.

Kai tried to develop the image further in his mind. The time when he’d felt a god within a godstone most keenly were those times when he’d felt the indescribable feeling of a god struggling in his stomach after he’d eaten it.

When he’d eaten the godstone of the org attacking the koror village, and when he’d eaten the godstone of the armored soldier following their battle to the death, he’d clearly felt something thrashing around inside his stomach. It was as though their gods really hated being eaten.

It was a fairly basic idea, but he wondered if he could somehow recreate that same situation. Kai began to test the idea immediately.

You’re about to get eaten.

Kai’s spiritual energy followed his mental image.

He sent his spiritual energy to the godstone within the deuswulf and formed a membrane that embraced it like a pair of hands. He then tried to form it into the invisible stomach that he’d imagined.

Once he’d created the feeling of a stomach savoring the marrow within the godstone, he constricted the membrane of spiritual energy and felt something like a pseudo sense of touch. He slowly permeated through the bony substance and before long he’d made it through the hard layer. Then he couldn’t help but recoil from the hot marrow within, as if he just touched boiling water.

It feels hot.

It surprised him a little, and he even lost his concentration for a moment, but after a deep breath, he once again began to constrict the stomach.

In no time at all, he found some foreign object within.

There you are.

He knew immediately that it was the god, or a part of its spirit, within the godstone. The only thing he’d ever expect to find lurking within the godstone was the god he was searching for.

Although he had demonstrated that this technique was useful in practice, Kai remained oblivious to the power behind the idea of artificially extracting a god dwelling within a godstone in a world where the presence of gods had a profound effect on the nature of reality. The whereabouts of the god within a live guardian bearer could easily be determined using magic, even while they were unconscious.

Next, Kai rapidly constricted the stomach as if pouring cold water over the unconscious god.

Wake up! You’re being eaten!

Then it squirmed with shock.

It was like plunging a hand into a waterway and pulling out a small fish. The small life-form was fiercely resisting as if fighting for survival.

An instant later, the eyes of the deuswulf sprung open and it began coughing as its lungs started to work once more. It writhed around and then barked before lifting its body with a beast-like swiftness that caused Kai to move back. The creature was standing once more.

“Woah!”

“Our wolf lives again!”

The handlers were shouting with excitement.

The deuswulf’s gaze fell on Kai, as if it had understood who had taken care of it. Every hair on Kai’s body stood on end as he felt the vast chasm that lay between deuswulf and human as life-forms. But the courage he’d learned after surviving many fights to the death made it possible for him to look the huge divine beast in the eye.

Kai jutted his chin forward, urging the wolf to go.

It may have been his imagination, but Kai felt that there was gratitude in the eyes of the deuswulf, which still looked at him even as it turned around.

The company of macaques in black were all knocked back as the deuswulf charged through them. Kai watched it from behind and saw the front line of macaques ahead of the deuswulf had already started to lose all sense of organization. They were standing on the bodies of their fallen comrades with shields held high, and several guardian bearers who appeared to be the commanding officers were risking their lives to hold back the advance of the diabo.

The deuswulf leaped back into the fray, causing the cries of many of the macaque soldiers in black to change from cries of anguish to cries of joy.

The deuswulf had learned that it was foolish to leap at the diabo recklessly, so now it carefully kept some distance away and charged around the diabo in a circle while dodging the tentacles that sprouted from it.

The instant that it was out of the diabo’s sight, it swiftly changed direction by jumping off the edge of the stone table, and it landed on a rock platform located behind its enemy and several levels higher up.

Once in position, it steadied its limbs and readied itself.

“Burn it up!”

The shout from Wise Princess was heard at the same time.

Sparks flowed out from the jaw of the deuswulf, hinting at the incredible heat building within its body.

The next thing to come from the mouth of the deuswulf was a true column of fire. It unleashed hellfire that was no less than a beam of incinerating heat.

81

This was the true cause of the burned bodies of macaques they had seen outside of Dehoushi.

The explosive sounds that had felt so out of place in this world must have also shared this same cause.

Fire breath!

It was said that there was a mythical creature known as a dragon that looked similar to a lagarto but could breathe fire from its mouth.

Of course, no such living creature existed in this world. Kai knew that it was no more than a fragment of his memories drawn from his past-life self. It was just that the name came to him the moment he saw this feat with his own eyes.

Thinking rationally, he was sure that this had to be a type of fire magic.

Releasing such intense flames from inside the mouth wasn’t something any ordinary creature would be capable of. Instead of coming from a hand, it was coming from the mouth. That was probably the only difference in the technique it used.

Doesn’t its mouth get hot inside?

The heat of fire could roast flesh.

People would easily get burned if they touched a flame with their hand. It seemed to make no sense for fire magic to be released from the throat because that was little more than a hollow tunnel passing through the creature’s body.

The diabo was suddenly bathed in intense flames, but the slow creature made no attempt to run. Its only reaction was to stop pecking at the fallen macaques and raise its head toward the deuswulf above it. Even with those destructive flames covering its entire body, it barely moved.

Like moist charcoal that burns poorly, the diabo boldly retained its black form within the flames. Kai now felt sure that magic was not going to work on the diabo. Even the body of a guardian bearer, which was just ordinary meat, was barely affected by ordinary fire once it acquired some resistance. This outcome wasn’t so surprising.

The deuswulf realized its attack was ineffective and leaped back. An instant later, a tentacle that sprouted from the back of the diabo like a mane swiped at the spot where the deuswulf had been standing.

There was a growl that sounded like an expression of disappointment from the deuswulf, which was now keeping its body low at some distance. The beautiful white fur on its body shimmered and what appeared to be an enormous amount of spirit poured out from the divine creature’s body.

It was at that moment that Kai knew for certain that the deuswulf was also a guardian bearer with some supernatural god dwelling within it. He felt he could almost see the kumadori hidden beneath the creature’s fur.

Kill it!

The god of the valley was raging inside Kai at that very moment, demanding that Kai throw himself into the battle taking place before him. He gripped the sleeves of his koror soldier clothing tightly and tried not to succumb to the god of the valley’s emotions.

Fire magic hadn’t worked. The sharp claws and fangs that were good enough to kill the evil creatures that roamed the snow plains had also been useless in the face of the diabo’s curse. Rather than continuing to remain a bystander, Kai began to think seriously about how he was going to attack the creature. But then the deuswulf made its move.

Its attack was a plain and simple bite.

Kai braced for the worst, thinking that the deuswulf had become rash in its desperation, but what followed was confusion as the wild battle before him took an unexpected turn.

But how?

The deuswulf leaped down from the high platform, buried its fangs into the throat of the diabo, and then twisted its body in midair so that it turned with its fangs as a center point. It tore into it using nothing more than fangs as hard as iron, but it displayed astonishing combat ability as it used the power of its jaw to form a vice that gripped and tore away the enemy’s tough skin.

The deuswulf then dropped gently to the ground and spat out the piece of flesh like something better left untouched. To ensure this newfound path to victory, the deuswulf leaped at the beast once more without rest.

Kai was taken aback as he watched.

“Why wasn’t it cursed?” Kai muttered, but no one answered him.

Even Torud and Porek, with their many years of experience as guardian bearers, were left speechless by this strange event.

The deuswulf had appeared helpless, but now it was throwing itself at the diabo as if there had never been a problem. And to everyone’s surprise, there was no more sign of the negative status effect that normally came from touching the diabo.

Kill the diabo!

The god of the valley was also becoming increasingly agitated. Perhaps it was scolding its host for failing to act while the prey they’d come here to hunt was being killed by another.

But of course, Kai didn’t move. The baron had told him that any guardian bearer who carelessly threw themselves into battle while leaving their victory to chance would not live for very long. Only a fool would enter the fight without trying to understand why the deuswulf was able to go unharmed.

Among the macaques dressed in black, there was no shortage of such fools.

Several of the guardian bearers who’d been supporting the front line had charged forward to reinforce the deuswulf’s attacks.

These demi-humans with their superior muscular strength preferred to use crude, heavy weapons like their axes. The flexible axes wielded by the macaques in black were such weapons, and the weight of their blades made them slow to accelerate before each strike.

The skin of the diabo was obviously much tougher than that of a guardian bearer. The weapons they used looked capable of cutting a frail human clean in two, even if the human wore armor. But their blades could only just penetrate the diabo’s surface. Even so, the macaques in black continued their frenzied assault. They must have known that they had to keep up their efforts if there was to be any hope of survival. But the diabo didn’t overlook them; it swept its tentacles to brush them away like ants biting at its skin.

This allowed Kai to find the answer to one of his questions. When several of the macaques thrown back by the diabo lay on the ground unable to move, it showed him that the diabo’s curse had not disappeared.

It’s still cursing them. So how...?

The battle between the diabo and the divine beast was still ongoing. They fought tooth and nail in the style of wild animals as pieces of flesh and bone were being torn away.

Although the diabo was larger in terms of its body’s girth, the deuswulf’s body was still several times larger than a macaque. A single bite could tear away a macaque’s abdomen, and its claws were long enough to create horrific lacerations.

The diabo’s movement continued to be slow. The main thing that demanded attention was the unpredictable movement of its tentacles.

Viewed from the sidelines, it didn’t look like the fight was going badly. The macaques in black who’d previously been witnessing a hopeless and devastating battle were now sounding carefree as they cheered, even though many of their own had already fallen. They knew now that their deuswulf was more than powerful enough to take on the diabo.

Guide me, My God.

Somehow, the deuswulf had gained sudden immunity.

After consuming the armored soldier, he had started to feel somewhat closer to the god of the valley, but still, it didn’t listen to any question he asked it. His predecessor must have had experience fighting with diabos, and now Kai was in need of the lessons learned from those battles. Kai was left scowling and irritated beneath the mask.

Then, while the koror party were standing and watching the fight between the two beasts above them, a chunk of flesh torn from the diabo came falling toward them.

The exposed surface of the diabo’s body where the flesh had been torn away burned blue with new intensity while the small piece of removed flesh pulsated like an independent life-form.

Its behavior made Kai think of an amoeba, though he’d never seen or heard of an amoeba before.

The scattered chunks of flesh bitten off by the deuswulf each behaved the same way, and their unsettling movements carried them closer and closer to the main body. There were even chunks of flesh rejoining the main body that looked as though they were being absorbed at the creature’s rear.

It was proof that the diabo’s body could endlessly regenerate. The deuswulf appeared to be fighting it on even terms, but in reality, it was forced to fight a tough battle with no way out. That was Kai’s interpretation.

The inside of the diabo... if you look closely, it’s like ripe marrow from a godstone. It’s black, but I can see through it a little...

This idea had come to mind when Kai had looked at the creature as food for a moment, which was a common habit for people who lived in the barren borderlands. The idea made him smile wryly because this meat would make even a dog vomit.

Chunk after chunk was being torn away, but the pieces continued to merge with the main body as it regenerated. The battle looked endless. Or rather, it would end with the deuswulf’s defeat when it finally gave in to exhaustion. Kai felt that he had to strike while the deuswulf had the strength to fight, or that outcome was going to become unavoidable.

When Kai moved forward, Porek and the koror followed behind him. They didn’t look like they’d be much use in battle, but they could at least provide a distraction, they could throw the foul-smelling scent bags they’d brought with them, and they might throw sand in its eyes.

First off, I need to avoid touching it.

The chief of the Nenem tribe had given him an iron axe when they’d set out. Kai tried swinging it and got a feeling for its weight. He could tell that this was a weapon taken from an org. It was crudely made, but it felt familiar in his hand.

The skin of a guardian bearer was hardened by the protective blessings of their god, but no matter how tough it became, it was never harder than iron. Based on that reasoning, guardian bearers would fight with iron-made weapons.

He’d heard that, before transforming, the diabo had been an ordinary macaque soldier who’d been promoted to a guardian bearer. The question was what changes had the transformation to diabo caused.

It looked as though the deuswulf’s fangs could penetrate its skin. In that case, it was likely that iron weapons would also work. Kai delivered a chop with the axe, using his strength as a protector to put an incredible amount of force behind it.

When his attack landed, it felt as though he’d hit a rock wrapped in tanned hide.

He was sure that his attack had worked, but most of the power behind it had been reflected back. The only reason he’d been able to maintain his grip despite his numb hands was that he’d half expected this to happen. He’d guessed that the diabo had to be this hard after watching the macaques in black attack it with such desperation.

So that’s how hard it is...

He could see that there was a crack in the blade of his axe.

The crude axe was more suited to cutting bone than flesh, but it had cracked with a single swing.

It made sense. This was more than a ragtag bunch of guardian bearers could handle. There were very few ways to attack the creature that were actually effective.

Kai made a wild sideward swing with the axe. He’d instinctively hit back one of the diabo’s tentacles that came flying at him. He had a sense now for the attacks that the slow-moving diabo used most often.

He had noticed that the diabo, much like a giant salamander, had raised its upper body to look back at the koror trying to distract it from its blind spot. The cries of Porek and the other koror behind the diabo were inaudible as they moved back, away from the huge mass that threatened them.

Its skin was hard, and its mass was equal to an entire longhouse from Kai’s village. Even cutting away its flesh in a frenzy seemed unlikely to deliver a fatal blow.

The only conclusion was that taking this creature’s life would require a strike to some vital area. The deuswulf was desperately increasing the intensity of its attacks while aiming for the throat and guts, which were normally vital areas of living creatures. Anything living would die if its head was cut off. That was a sensible conclusion.

Then Kai felt he was being watched.

He looked up and saw Wise Princess hiding in the hole above. As she looked down at the scene from that opening, she was observing Kai closely.

Though macaques were more heavily built than humans, she was rather small for a member of her species. Beneath her coat of white fur and her scale armor, her body was probably only a little bigger than Kai’s. Her face was just visible, and it looked much more like a human face than the other macaques. She almost looked as if she could have passed for a human woman. The oldest family that the macaques revered and considered royalty may have been an advanced breed with intelligence that surpassed other members of their species.

When their eyes met unexpectedly, Wise Princess maintained composure befitting royalty. Without faltering for a moment, she looked Kai straight in the eye.

82

Why am I in a place like this?

Zayena looked at her surroundings as if she’d just woken from a daydream. The reality soon came back to her once more. Instead of a restorative, she had dried leaves that her healer had advised her to throw away. She chewed them just 10 times before spitting them back out. It meant that their effect was weakened, but it was an addictive substance, so she had no choice.

Even as she shook her head, she had to accept the reality.

Where am I? Why does it smell so bad that I want to rip my nose off? What’s the ridiculously huge black thing crawling before my eyes? No one told me it would be bigger than a deuswulf.

She wished she had somewhere, anywhere, to sit down and then sleep. In her haste, she hadn’t been able to get any good rest for the past two nights. While these useless thoughts were bothering her, Zayena was trying to control the monstrous wolf that would bite her to death given the first opportunity, and she was giving orders that would send her precious followers to their deaths.

Why call me Wise Princess?

Woe betide this hopeless, foolish girl.

She felt she could only keep her sanity when she was thinking this way.

Her people extolled her as Wise Princess.

She wasn’t being humble. Macaques were never as sharp-witted as the other species around them, they lacked the mastery of metallurgy that orgs possessed, and they lacked the wisdom that allowed humans to create plentiful food from sand-like grains.

They were just a large, tough species that knew how to keep fighting. Being praised as “wise” among these people was not such an accomplishment.

Wise Princess.

She doubted that she had the talent to be worthy of such a title. She was an impertinent young lady who was no more than the youngest member of the oldest family that carried the blood of the first king. Knowing the danger associated with her position, she decided she would risk her life to go against their customs. She was blessed with unexpected luck when she created a foothold in Nova. Her father, the king, had always been deeply distrustful, but it was the madness in the blood of the oldest family that drove him to a political purge, causing people to distance themselves from him. Many of his own children were also killed, causing them to flee from the palace. She escaped with her life and fled with her siblings to Nova in the north, though she had no guardian, not even a low-ranked wild god that might be given to an illegitimate child of the royal family. Once there, she was frantic to secure some land and a god just so she might find a place to live.

She had not carried wisdom with her.

She had been forced to find wisdom to stay alive.

The macaques who made it to the northern limit were locked in an endless struggle to defend their land. They begged assistance from a certain tribe that might provide mediation and allow them to make peace with another species at the northern limit that had attacked them ferociously. The tribe of long-tailed foxes served giant holy wolves living on a sacred peak in the north, and members of the tribe were considered sacred creatures beyond reproach. They held fertile land within an incorruptible basin.

She had wanted that land.

Thus, the chief of their tribe was deceived into attending a meeting where they were killed. She’d felt no guilt. It may have been that she herself was afflicted with the madness that was common to members of the oldest family.

They took the land, they stole their holy power, and they didn’t even hesitate to steal the giant holy wolf that they’d worshiped. The chief of the aggressive tribe that they had been there to negotiate with was then enraged, but once she had the holy power of the long-tailed foxes, she was able to trick the holy wolf and take its cub. The rampaging giant wolf crushed the first wave of the other species magnificently, which won over many of her detractors. She had successfully turned the situation around.

She was credited for the rapid expansion of Nova at the northern limit, she gained the devotion of many of the aggressive tribes, and she built herself an army that not even her father could ignore. But even so, she did not feel worthy of the lofty title of Wise Princess.

If I’m so wise, then why did I come back here? Why would I abandon Nova after we finally established a firm foothold?

She’d worked tirelessly to amass elite soldiers and she couldn’t afford to lose them, but now they were being squandered against the diabo.

She was fixing a mess made by her foolish brother who had been too easily influenced by his younger sister. But her brother had been far too reckless in many ways, and he’d brought the hate of many tribes upon himself. The countless curses they placed on the gravesite of his god were like a crucifixion, and they led to his transformation. It would have been better if he’d been reduced to a diabo while in Nova, but just because it had happened elsewhere didn’t mean that she couldn’t just look the other way.

For one thing, it would have been quite fitting if cowardly tribes of the south were left to slay the diabo, after the way they’d simply watched while blood was being shed on the front lines at the northern limit.

Is it my blood? Am I no better than Father?

From inside the cage she kept behind her back came the feeble whine of the pup calling for its mother. After they’d overexerted themselves on the march, the pup was allowed to grow weaker than it ever should have. If the pup’s life ended now, the deuswulf would no doubt tear Zayena apart limb from limb while she still lived. Its hatred for her would drive it to devour her.

When she thought of all her sins, she didn’t feel the slightest bit wise.

The one wish that had constantly been in her head was to protect the homeland of her people. It was as if she was possessed by her ancestors and driven by their fixations.

Despite all the disparagement she’d endured, despite the repeated opportunities to reconsider, her heart would never change, and she always came to the same decision.

My father must be laughing at his foolish daughter while he watches from the underworld.

Her once-feared father had been eaten.

She was told that he’d been hungrily devoured by the many people who’d lain hidden within the palace. If the king god had already returned to the grave, it meant that deep within the palace where the diabo sat, the throne—a position that should only belong to members of the oldest family—was undefended and waiting for a new successor.

She could not allow it to be taken by someone unworthy. On the blood and honor of her glorious species, she had to reclaim the king god.

She knew that once she embarked with this determination, she would be ensnared by the thread of the spider god, whose web held all those bound by fate.

All other roads were already closed to her, and she was forced to remain on the path she had chosen for herself.

Zayena was muttering to herself and half in disbelief.

What is that small thing?

Up until that moment, she hadn’t even noticed that the creature was there.

In the homeland of 100,000 macaques, the royal palace grounds were hidden deep within Dehoushi by the great lake. It was here that the king god dwelled, and no other species had ever been permitted to enter since its initial discovery by their ancestors.

Now she saw that the place was host to some uninvited guests.

It can’t be... it’s a koror.

As the dominant species of the forest, the macaques had forced weaker species into subservience without tolerating resistance. One such species was the koror, which were known for their dexterity and their ability to produce valuable goods.

Subservient species were forced to pay tributes, and koror were forced to make offerings at every opportunity because they kept many valuable goods. Zayena herself wore many accessories that were made by delicate koror craftwork. It was likely that the products they produced were found in great quantities around royalty and tribe chiefs everywhere.

This meant that none of the macaques felt hate toward the koror. In fact, they held a strange affection for them, as if they were valuable livestock that were never killed needlessly.

For many generations, outsiders had not been permitted to enter the royal palace grounds. Any member of another species that crept in uninvited would be expelled after inciting the anger of more than just the royal family.

But now that the intruders were peaceful koror, Zayena felt as if it was actually somewhat amusing.

She felt she was witnessing the strangest thing. It was as if an animal had broken loose from its pen and happily gone to see its master in their home.

The koror male was holding a full-sized orgish axe that it used to hack at the diabo. It was hard to see how much of an effect each attack was having, but the extent of its power was clear from the faint reaction of the diabo, which felt no pain at all.

It was hard not to laugh at this bunch of koror who didn’t know their place. She gave an instruction to her people that outsiders trespassing on their holy land should be expelled.

“Throw these idiots outside,” she told them.

Her prized soldiers had gone to the northern limit and fought fierce battles for Nova. They would have no trouble staying organized while fighting the diabo, just so long as the deuswulf was keeping it busy. It was this belief that made Zayena feel that a few of her soldiers in black could be spared to deal with the koror. She had brought a collection of soldiers considered elite even within Gahama. They even included a dozen or so guardian bearers. Of those, 10 were new guardian bearers who’d been given gods recently stolen at the northern limit. They were fierce fighters with exceptional loyalty.

The quickest to respond to Zayena’s instructions was a young soldier named Seod. He was a male who’d become very confident since gaining a guardian, and knew so little of his place that he’d allowed himself to fall in love with Zayena, whom he served. She had even heard that his wish was to be her mate. Zayena had no problem with daring males. She had surrounded herself with males that constantly competed to show their bravery, and she was able to assess their worth while keeping them under careful control.

They’re too desperate. These idiot males.

Seod’s squad began moving around the stone table where the diabo sat in an attempt to get closer to the koror, but some of them feared the enemy so much that they would hesitate and lose their footing, causing them to trip on the rock terrace many times.

It was Seod, the exceptionally fit male who led the way, who first made it past all obstacles and approached the gathering of koror with an air of disinterest.

The koror used their toy spears to threaten Seod, but this was no threat to a guardian bearer. Their spears were knocked aside with a wave of his hand. He shouted at them so loudly that his voice could be heard amid the chaos: “Back to your nests!”

He was not gentle as he grabbed each koror and threw it down. They disappeared one after another, but it was the final, most elderly koror that caused problems for Seod. It stood its ground many times when challenged. It appeared to be one of the koror’s key guardian bearers, but Seod was a powerful tres sigil, so it was no match for him. As other soldiers arrived and left the elderly koror with nowhere to go, it too was knocked down.

Naturally, Zayena also wanted rid of the somewhat daring koror soldier that was out of its depth fighting against a diabo. Seod noticed this final koror that he’d almost overlooked and appeared almost bored as he reached out to grab it from below. He was about to grab its leg, but by chance, the koror stepped on his hand. Then something incredible happened.

Impossible.

Without even looking in his direction, the koror soldier slammed the sole of its shoe into Seod’s face just as Seod was about to grab the creature with both hands. The kick was so powerful that it sent Seod stumbling backward, even though he was several times larger than the koror.

The angered soldiers then began to surround it, but then it did something that caused all of the soldiers to suddenly freeze.

This koror soldier must have been another guardian bearer. Zayena couldn’t see its face, but she knew it must be displaying a kumadori, and the expressions of the soldiers that were facing it directly suggested that it was a fairly high-level kumadori.

“Who you looking at?” That one clichéd line was enough to make a group of more than 10 soldiers back down.

How dare this koror.

Zayena was cursing the koror under her breath. She could see that the soldiers of Gahama were too afraid of the kumadori they saw on the koror soldier’s face.

But the enemy was a koror, and koror were so much weaker than macaques. If they all attacked it at once, there should have been no way a small koror could defend against their long, powerful arms, no matter what their sigils were.

But despite Zayena’s orders, the scared Gahama soldiers had scrambled away from the stone table. Zayena couldn’t help but tut with frustration when she saw them running like a bunch of children playing tag.

Even Seod, who was finally climbing back up the terrace platforms, was yelling angrily after feeling ashamed by the behavior of his underlings. As he failed to regain control, the anger was turning his face red, and he leaped at the koror soldier several levels above in an attempt to intimidate it.

He’d completely forgotten that there was a diabo nearby. Seod’s long arms allowed his large body to scale the terrace effortlessly. As Seod approached a level which would be within reach of the enemy’s leg, the diabo raised itself up. More accurately, it lifted up its lower body and unleashed a sweeping attack with a rear leg that had been hidden under its body.

The koror soldier was agile enough to dodge the attack, but it seemed to realize that Seod was about to move into the path of the diabo’s leg.

It all happened in an instant.

The koror soldier took the iron axe, which looked oversized compared to its small body, and put it against its shoulder to serve as a shield as it placed itself between Seod and the diabo’s leg.

The difference in size should have meant that the creature was easily swept aside, but the edge of the stone table warped upward slightly, such that the koror soldier was able to brace its feet against the surface and could just barely defend itself. Seod must have been quite shocked. He went pitifully tumbling down from the stone table once more.

Zayena had exhaled all the air in her lungs and for a short while she forgot to breathe again.

That was a surprise.

Anyone who touched the diabo would be killed by the curse.

This knowledge had been passed down by the oldest family of royalty since ancient times. Indeed, she could see that several of her own guardian bearers had already been left unable to move. Even the deuswulf that had been their last resort had completely fainted for a time.

Although some quick intervention from the handlers had brought it back, Zayena had been stricken with a cold sweat at that time. Even the ancient wolves that hunted the evil that roamed the snow plains might die instantly from the diabo’s curse if they were careless. It was a threat grave enough to send shivers down the spines of weaker creatures born into this world. A diabo would devour all of the blessings of the land gods that filled the world. But just existing caused them to burn up in blue, purifying flames as the world itself rejected them. Such creatures were forced to steal the divine power of blessings from others just so that their incarnation could continue to exist. Lesser life-forms would have the power that gave them life stolen at the slightest touch.

She realized that one of her important soldiers had just been rescued by a lowly koror. Her instincts stubbornly told her that it could not be so.

The lowly koror struck back by forcefully pushing against the diabo, causing its large body to slide downward. Even as she watched the diabo being pushed back, she still refused to accept what was happening.

The koror soldier picked up a crude shield left by one of Seod’s squad members and checked that the shield was big enough to hide its entire body. Then it threw away the iron axe that had been its only weapon, as if it was no longer of any use.

It rammed into the great body of the diabo repeatedly as if testing the strength of the shield it held. The deuswulf had still been attacking the diabo from the other side, but then the deuswulf felt a shockwave strong enough to make it hastily retreat. No doubt, the diabo itself would struggle to endure that shockwave directly.

The tentacles came flying, arcing as they approached, as if trying to reach the koror soldier behind the wooden shield. But the koror raised a bare hand to brush away the tentacles as if they were a mere nuisance. She saw it for herself that they were indeed brushed away. Although brushed away wasn’t quite right. It was more like they were cut away.

The koror soldier held nothing in its hand, and yet it had cut away the tentacles with ease as if it held some sword that couldn’t be seen. The flesh whips formed by the tentacles rained down near the koror, causing Seod and his squad, who had already backed away, to grow more fearful and flee.

What is this creature?

The bottom of the wooden shield formed a sharp point that could be inserted into a gap in the rock. The koror soldier breathed calmly as it secured the shield in place and then fixed its messy, pale red hair by tying it once more.

Someone cried out, “Our protector!”

With Seod and the others gone, the koror gathered together and appeared to be checking that none of them were harmed.

Zayena saw that they were joined by a tribe leader who was powerful enough that even she recognized him.

It was Torud, the chief of tribe Nenem. Torud was an underling of the abridor, the one who had stolen so much devotion from her father and called himself the acting king.

The Nenem tribe must have played some part in the koror’s intrusion.

Zayena kept herself hidden as she bit her finger and thought hard.

She strengthened her grip on the cage containing the pup that she held with both arms.

83

Kai felt no malice in the gaze of Wise Princess that fell on his head from the hole above. However, when the macaques in black then tried to remove the koror from the cavern, it was clear that she was certainly no friend of theirs.

If it had been possible, he wanted to work with Wise Princess’s forces, which were still holding together. But it seemed he’d have to continue watching their movements carefully while thinking of some other way to make use of them.

By chance, he’d obtained a shield. It was standard equipment for a macaque, but the crude wooden shield was wide, thick, and tough, and they wouldn’t have been able to use such shields if not for their high physical strength. They must have had a production area hidden somewhere in the forest, because it used a large amount of caulk that humans had in short supply and would use sparingly as a hardening agent.

This thing’s good.

Kai tried ramming into the diabo several times and was actually able to push back its huge body. The stone table alone wasn’t particularly wide, so he’d needed to make space for a run-up and build up some force.

He’d found that his invisible sword was able to cut through the diabo like everything else. Cutting off one of only two tentacles was a big deal. The deuswulf was fighting hard at the other side, and even if this was a diabo, it would still struggle to deal with attacks from both sides at once.

Kai felt a sense of calmness growing inside himself now that he’d found a way to defend against the diabo. Kai paid close attention to the movements of the diabo and deuswulf while thinking again about the question that had been bothering him for some time: Why isn’t the deuswulf affected by the diabo’s curse?

As soon as it knew that the fire breath wasn’t effective, the deuswulf had changed its behavior.

The deuswulf had accepted that the diabo in front of it wasn’t an enemy to be taken lightly, and spirit had overflowed from its body, sending ripples through its beautiful fur, as if it was preparing itself.

At that point he’d felt nothing more than a vague sense that something had changed. Kai’s guess was that its god had sensed that the deuswulf was in danger while fighting the diabo, and it had given it some sort of resistance, or some sort of protective blessing.

It made him remember the fight with the armored org.

The fire magic that had been his hidden trick had been ineffective when he used it for a second time. He remembered how the armored soldier had laughed and ridiculed him for using curses.

Guardian bearers that housed a god already had tough skin for the sake of ensuring the safety of the god within them. If they encountered some external effect that threatened the life of the host vessel, the god within them would immediately protect its host by providing some blessing that provided resistance against that effect.

The deuswulf had endured the diabo’s death curse once.

The god must have then provided some sort of resistance against it. That was Kai’s chain of reasoning. But unless the host vessel or the god within understood what was producing that external effect, there was no way that the resistance could be activated. The evidence for this was in the fact that Kai’s invisible sword had been able to damage the armored soldier repeatedly.

In other words, this meant that either the deuswulf or the god that blessed it had understood the nature of the diabo’s death curse and the reason behind the negative status effect. To Kai and the macaques, the curse was beyond explanation, but to the deuswulf, it was all within the scope of some existing knowledge that they’d learned through everyday life.

At the edge of the northern limit, divine beasts had continuously offered protection from “evil things,” but Kai didn’t know what sort of creatures those were. It did, however, make sense that some special wisdom might be gained from battling against those unknown creatures.

The ones that roamed the snow plains at the edge, where even the toughest demi-humans were unable to live for very long, might not have obeyed the world’s natural laws, and it was even possible that those life-forms were somewhat similar to the diabo.

Hey, God of Mine.

Kai tried directing his thoughts inward.

The god of the valley was revered by those around him as a protector and had come to be feared. There was no way it didn’t know anything about diabos. It had even been filled with murderous rage when it saw the thing, so it was hard to imagine that it didn’t know anything about it.

Give me some resistance against diabos.

...

It wasn’t quite so easy to start a conversation.

Kai felt as though he was trying to communicate with one of the old folks from the village who struggled to hear anything. Old men and women still had their good points, and he had nothing against them as long as they still worked, but now was no time to let the god of the valley sit idle.

If it was going to continue to pretend it couldn’t hear, then Kai had some ideas about that. The god of the valley was inside Kai’s godstone. And just a while ago, Kai had found a new method for affecting the god that was using his body as a shell.

Hey!

He had so much spiritual energy inside himself already that he didn’t need to gather it. Forming a “stomach” was no trouble at all.

He imagined gripping with open hands.

That mental image alone caused Kai’s power to reach the god within his godstone. A curled-up, resting, little life-form awoke with a start. That was the image that came to mind.

You gotta tell me! How do I beat a diabo?!

Kai visualized his words as images and sent them to his god. His god received the image and appeared to freeze like a frog hit with a splash of water, and then it began to mumble what sounded like a series of incoherent curses. His god was filled with burning hatred toward the diabo, and it wasn’t clear whether Kai’s words had reached its ears.

Kai had seen many times how people could be thrown into confusion after receiving a life-threatening injury in battle. They would spout nonsense to anyone who’d listen as if trying to make their last words heard, but it was surprising how going along with it could lead to a conversation.

Kai continued to pay attention to the movements of the diabo while casually offering some responses.

Detestable, detestable...

You got that right. I can’t stand this thing.

It erodes the ground; it trespasses.

Wow, sounds awful.

Quickly. Quickly. It must die. It must.

Sure, I’ll kill it right now.

Yes. It must die. Waste no time!

How do I kill it though?

Quickly! Quickly!

Yeah, but I’m asking how.

Pierce it! Strike the perch!

Finally.

This was the one piece of information he needed.

There was a godstone within the diabo.

Naturally, the guardian bearer must have had one somewhere before transforming into a diabo, and in the process of turning the host into a meat vessel, the godstone became a vital spot incorporated into the diabo’s own body. The godstone was the place where the diabo took root when appearing in this world. The diabo would sink into it looking for a hospitable environment, similarly to any ordinary land god that used the godstone as the resting place within their host.

This thing they called a godstone was probably an organ that acted as a natural receptacle for living creatures to house higher forms of existence such as gods. Kai theorized that some mysterious evolution had occurred to provide a place that allowed life-forms to gain the exceptional power that came with housing a guardian.

A perch.

In other words, all he had to do was destroy the godstone located somewhere in that huge body.

The problem is...

He had no way to guess exactly where the godstone was located.

He held the diabo back using the wooden shield. While the diabo was fighting to regain the ground it had given up, Kai tried to determine the godstone’s whereabouts by catching glimpses of the areas across its stomach and back.

Ordinarily, the godstone tended to be found near to a living creature’s heart, so the place where Kai focused his attention was the chest region of the diabo. He examined it the same way he’d examined the deuswulf. He looked inside using the god of the valley’s gift that allowed him to see auras.

But the diabo was cloaked in a powerful aura that made it difficult to see the inside clearly. There was already an extraordinary amount of aura flowing out of it, and the blue flames that burned its skin were bright enough to hurt the eyes, so the whole thing was overwhelming to the senses. Worse than all of that was the foul stench that was so awful it brought on tears.

Even with the thick scarf around his neck pulled over his mouth, the smell still made him light-headed. It had started to give off white clouds, similar to the smoke of tobacco leaves, which drifted over, carrying the most terrible smell and making his eyes sting. This might have been its response to being repeatedly rammed with the shield.

He couldn’t help but feel pity for the deuswulf knowing that its sense of smell must have been much more sensitive, and it was biting into that foul-smelling flesh directly. It must have had some amazing mental fortitude.

The deuswulf’s concentrated attacks on the throat were working. From where he was standing, Kai could see that it had already torn halfway through the diabo’s thick neck.

But will it even die if it loses its head?

The deuswulf was fighting ferociously and no doubt thought that removing the head would mean victory. But the bitten-off pieces of the diabo’s flesh were quickly creeping back to the main body from all sides.

There was no doubt that a human guardian bearer would die if their head was cut off. But this salamander-like monster didn’t look like it was about to die, head or no head. Unlike most living creatures, the diabo didn’t look as though it had a brain or any other vital organ within its head.

Kai thought for a few moments and then made it his priority to obtain new information to base his decisions on. While the deuswulf aimed to decapitate the diabo, Kai would assist its efforts from the rear.

There’s so much torn away that one more hit should do it.

But of course, that wouldn’t be easy. In that moment he used magic to create the longest sword that he could possibly make. Even with half of the diabo’s neck torn away, it was still broader than a young balen cedar.

He used his own judgment while deciding how much spiritual energy he’d need to cut clean through, and as a result, he spent almost all of the spiritual energy that was filling his body and ready to use.

If he’d been attacked at that moment, he would have been crushed before he could move. It was a reckless plan that left him undefended, and it was only possible while the deuswulf was the main focus of the diabo’s hatred.

He quietly placed the wooden shield on the ground and broke into a run. With one hand drawn back and coated with the invisible sword, he ran up the stone table.

Then he put all of his energy into a leap at the diabo from behind.

As he flew through the air, his eyes met the amber eyes of the deuswulf, which was looking at him in apparent disbelief. It must have been surprising to see a member of a tiny species so much smaller than itself, holding no weapon, jumping right into the middle of the battle.

The attack he delivered while twisting his entire body appeared to be nothing more than a barehanded chop. To the deuswulf, this was an unwelcome distraction. Rage made its fur stand on end and it barked, as if to say, Begone, weakling.

Just a moment later, that anger had dissipated.

A single slash from the hand of the small creature, which appeared to be empty, cut through the remainder of the diabo’s neck beautifully, severing the head from the body.

Meanwhile, Kai was surprised when bodily fluids sprayed from the diabo like a sudden downpour of rain, requiring him to react fast. In an instant, he created a burst of fire magic from his hand and was fortunate that the thrusting force was enough to change the path of his fall. The head of the diabo was falling near him, but he quickly kicked it away from himself with the sole of his shoe, taking care not to touch it directly.

How’d you like that?

While falling, Kai watched to see whether the answer to the deuswulf’s solution had been a valid one.

The deuswulf had also moved back quickly to avoid the great volume of bodily fluid spraying from the diabo. Then it edged forward and looked in awe at the small creature falling on the other side of the spraying blood.

The diabo had lost its head.

That great mass of flesh bounced once off the edge of the stone table and then went tumbling down toward a gathering of the macaques in black. The macaques panicked and scrambled to move back.

The macaques that were far back enough to stand their ground raised a cheer now that they saw that their deuswulf had been victorious.

“We’ve won!”

“The diabo is slain!”

As the celebration was spreading, Kai sprung back to a place that was out of danger before crawling over to his wooden shield. He didn’t feel safe until he had it held up in front of him.

He saw that the headless diabo had remained completely still for a time. It certainly did appear to have ended its life, so much so that a few fools mistook this for their victory.

The happy celebrations of the macaques lasted for only a very short while.

“Run!”

“The head not dead!”

The large chunk of meat that had been the head was now creeping through the macaques in black. Just as the smaller pieces had done, it crawled along the ground like a worm, back toward the main body. It was all the more disgusting when the chunk was larger.

Likewise, the headless body didn’t look particularly weakened. It was simply leaning off the edge of the stone table so that it could greet the head once it made its way back.

That’s how this thing is, wolf.

The deuswulf had lost all hope of victory. The fact that its jaw was strong enough for it to tear into the diabo’s flesh was certainly impressive, but that method was far too laborious for use against this enemy.

Kai watched the deuswulf’s reaction closely.

The deuswulf likewise studied the face poking out from behind the wooden shield and seemed curious about the koror soldier it belonged to.

All right. You’re not going to run?

If the deuswulf was going to run with its tail between its legs, Kai was ready to face the diabo using his own power alone.

But if the deuswulf was going to stand its ground, he wanted all the help it could give during the fight.

Now that the diabo had recovered its missing head, it stood up once more and unleashed a deafening screech like iron scraping against iron. Now it was the koror soldier hiding behind the wooden shield that held the attention of that regenerated head.

They were locked in a struggle to the death.

84

Kill it!

The god of the valley was riled up now that its host had finally decided to take action. It shuddered with anticipation as if facing off against a life-long enemy.

Kai searched within himself and found that the spiritual energy he’d used up on a single sword strike was beginning to replenish itself.

In this world, performing magic would use up the spiritual energy within the user’s body. Magic became unusable once those spiritual energy reserves had been used up, making spiritual energy somewhat similar to MP. However, spiritual energy regenerated very quickly. Or at least it did for Kai, because he happened to be a guardian bearer. This rapid rate of regeneration meant that magic was better compared to a special attack that needed to be charged first.

But of course, guardian bearers used spiritual energy for many other purposes too, such as protective blessings and physical regeneration, so spending it all on one thing was a dangerous decision.

I’m gaining about a tenth back with each breath.

He felt the divine power of his god leak out from his godstone and collect within his body as spiritual energy, and the feeling made Kai recall some past life memory of hot water collecting in a bathtub.

As long as the reservoir didn’t run dry, he could use magic to his heart’s content. Before becoming a guardian bearer, he was at a level where he’d die after using just enough energy to burn up a single candle, but now he had an inexhaustible supply that was no doubt due to his god serving as a vast reservoir.

Kai couldn’t be supplied with more energy at once than his body had the capacity to hold, so things like the invisible sword that he’d just used required something close to his maximum output.

Cutting through two yules of flesh was about the most he could manage.

Complex and seemingly meaningless information started to run through Kai’s head as he tried to estimate how much MP he currently had.

The size of each molecule in the flesh?

The square of the neck’s radius multiplied by 3.14?

Total number of bonds at the cross section?

He had to force these racing thoughts out of his mind and steady himself once more.

When another tentacle came flying at him he severed it instantly with his bare hand. The deuswulf watched it happen, and then cautiously backed away in its confusion.

Just when he thought that he no longer had to worry about the diabo’s tentacles, he realized that a new tentacle had grown. Regeneration was its specialty after all; it had never been limited to just the two.

Forty percent...

As he monitored the recovery of his spiritual energy, he considered the most effective way of cutting into the body of the diabo.

Even with the full power of the invisible sword, cutting the entire body in two looked like more than he could manage. If he really put everything he had into it, he’d be able to cut a little more than he had the previous time, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to cut deep enough.

If he was going to make another attempt, he wanted to cut somewhere that gave him a high chance of hitting the godstone.

His eyes had started to adjust to the aura rising from the surface of the diabo, but it was still so powerful that he couldn’t see through it to the godstone’s location. If it had been ordinary bright light he could have just squinted when looking at it, but auras didn’t work that way. The only way to reduce the brightness would be to make the diabo use up its own supply of spiritual energy.

While Kai was thinking, the diabo was preoccupied with bringing its parts back together now that it was reunited with the head.

If cells are active at the cross section... This must be healing magic.

For a moment, Kai had the crazy idea that he might just cut at the diabo over and over until its spiritual energy was dried up from using too much healing magic, but that made him laugh behind the mask. Cutting away little parts of the diabo one after another wasn’t as easy as cutting up a vegetable. At the very least, it was beyond Kai’s ability.

Another option was to try stabbing it in random places.

Stabbing the thing didn’t require the invisible sword to be particularly big and he could repeat the process several times. But then the damage would be focused on small points, and getting lucky enough to hit the godstone would take tens if not hundreds of attempts.

It was a pessimistic way of looking at it, but Kai had been born and raised in the borderlands where hopeless situations were part of life. Accepting the reality of the situation was something that came easily.

The never-ending battles with demi-humans were the same. They were more than a sane person could tolerate. And whenever food supplies would run low during a famine, people would accept it and stop thinking about it. It could be described as the stoicism that came with living in the borderlands.

Kai had little trouble throwing away his indecision. He charged at the diabo with renewed determination, knowing that he was just doing what had to be done.

The godstone has to be inside its body somewhere.

Even if he had to guess the exact location, knowing which section of the body it was in would give him a much better chance of landing a fatal hit.

Several tentacles came flying at him. His spiritual energy was gathered in his right hand where he was creating the sword, so he didn’t have time to direct it elsewhere. He dodged one tentacle and then another as he threw himself toward the diabo.

Then he stabbed it.

He stabbed straight through the area where he imagined the diabo’s heart might be.

Damn... that was a miss.

He could tell from the sensation that he hadn’t hit anything.

But of course, he’d been ready for this. He quickly prepared another sword. An invisible sword made for stabbing used about 20 percent of his spiritual energy. If he breathed evenly and left some time between each strike, he could make swords continuously.

The hole he’d made in its body closed itself before his eyes and then disappeared completely. He made sure not to forget where each hole had been as he stabbed it a second and then a third time, creating new wounds about a palm’s breadth apart.

But once again, he felt no resistance.

This is endless.

He soon began to grow frustrated by the lack of results from this painstaking method. The diabo’s body was as big as one of the village longhouses, and now that he’d started, Kai could guess just how long it would take and just how many attempts he’d require if he stuck with this crude plan of creating evenly spaced sword wounds. The rational part of his brain told him to give it up. If he continued to repeat this dangerous process of getting so close to a strong enemy, the risk associated with each sword strike was far too high for the anticipated reward.

He’d hesitated to use the last sword he’d made, but when the diabo tried to kick him, he severed its front leg without a second thought. As Kai was trying to buy enough time to get his thoughts in order, an unforeseen attack came at him as a torrent of black rain. Bodily fluid sprayed from the diabo, and it was aimed right at Kai.

For a moment he felt intense heat.

Then he felt an overwhelming sensation of cold.

He felt his body temperature dropping rapidly in each place that the black blood touched, and it felt as though his skin was burned by frostbite.

The diabo’s curse!

He couldn’t help but feel proud of himself for thinking of a way to counter it so quickly. If the curse reached his god’s perch, the godstone within his body, then his god would likely be stunned.

A stomach!

He created a thick coating of spiritual energy around his godstone.

It happened within his own body and he didn’t imagine anything physical like when using magic. He only had a moment, so he couldn’t use any past-life knowledge.

He just imagined it was thick.

Something thick and tough.

Every bit of spiritual energy in his trunk region gathered around his godstone. As long as he kept his godstone protected, he could survive. Kai had learned that that was true for any creature that became a guardian bearer. This priceless knowledge had been taught to him by the priest that he’d hated so much.

Protect it. Form a barrier.

The curse of the diabo could pass through the iron-like skin of a guardian bearer like it was nothing, and it didn’t take long for it to seep in through the thin surface of Kai’s chest. It knocked him unconscious immediately.

**

His body was small.

Any child that struggled to get enough nourishment soon after being born would never grow to be very big. This was common knowledge even in the borderlands, and he knew many people besides himself who had grown like twisted little roots, always remaining scrawny and short.

According to custom, Kai had become a soldier upon reaching adulthood, and he wasn’t surprised to find himself the weakest and the smallest in his squad. He was nimble at least, but he’d still felt like more of a hindrance on the battlefield.

I wish I was stronger.

He’d always thought that way.

His squadmates had told him.

The only way to get strong was to eat demi-human godstones. Human weaklings needed that nourishment and the power it gave them, or they’d never grow strong enough to fight.

Then Kai realized that, for no particular reason, a delicious-looking godstone had landed right in front of his eyes.

Kai felt so hungry that he didn’t wait for permission to eat it. He broke it open, exposing the contents within, and he ate with no shame or care for his reputation.

No one can have it. It’s all mine.

He bit into it and began to feed.

It tastes so good!

It was a delicious, rich syrup, unlike anything found in the basic meals given to villagers, and he could actually feel how it nourished his very existence.

Kai took another look at the marrow stuck to his fingers.

The marrow stuck to the broken godstone looked like a black jelly formed from dark blood, and it turned a dark, rich amber color when light shone through it. He began to salivate in an instant and then took another bite.

The juice dripped from his mouth. He soon finished eating the godstone he’d found. Kai took a look at his surroundings. Though he was unlikely to be blessed with such good fortune a second time.

But then Kai found another.

It was right there.

An unusually large godstone was cracked open and abandoned beside him.

The amount of marrow packed inside was far beyond the content of an ordinary godstone. Kai felt suspicious yet drawn toward the godstone, and then ate from it deliriously as his appetite got the better of him. It wasn’t enough to satisfy his hunger. The nourishment within filled his mouth and then slid down his throat as he gulped it down. This process filled him with joy, lulling Kai into a dreamlike state.

His luck really had been good. He doubted that ever again would he be handed such a large quantity of marrow.

If this was marrow from a real godstone, then its owner must have been unimaginably big.

A strange sense of déjà vu grew inside of him.

He had seen something like this not long ago.

He felt sure of it.

Poison...

At that moment, the sweet fragrance of nourishment that came from the black jelly became a rotten smell of poison. This was a potent poison that would end one’s life if just a single drop entered the mouth.

It tasted so bitter that he felt he might vomit up the entire contents of his stomach. He grew cold as if the blood was drained from his body.

He realized it had been a trap set to kill him, and his despair was accompanied by an intense rage that filled his brain.

Shit... shit... Who? Who fed me this rotten thing?

The pain made his eyes tear up as he watched the small mountain of black marrow rise up before him. It seemed he’d be buried under that unbelievable mass, so he fought to endure the feeling of dizziness while being dragged away, fearing it might crush him.

What is this black monster?

Kai wondered if the poison he’d eaten might kill him right there and then. Perhaps he’d lose all ability to move as he grew colder.

His heart was beating so hard that it felt like it might leap out of his mouth, but his body was so cold he felt he’d freeze up. Fear gripped him as death began to feel inevitable, causing his heart to beat frantically. His hand clutched his chest as he curled up.

It felt hot.

The inside of his chest alone was smoldering like a hot stone.

He wanted to warm his cold limbs. He wanted to thaw his flowing blood to stop it from freezing. Slowly but surely, the warmth in his chest spread out to other areas.

It was the heat that gave him life that was breaking free.

“Master!”

He heard a voice shouting to him.

“Our God!”

“Our Protector!”

Kai felt his body shaken violently by the many hands that grabbed him. As his consciousness was shaken back and forth, he began to wake up.

Kai opened his eyes and saw a gathering of koror around him. And behind them was a black and fearsome lump of flesh approaching to deliver the final blow.

It was the underside of the diabo’s foot.

That instant seemed to stretch out indefinitely. Kai got up and pushed away his precious koror followers to scatter them and then threw himself aside to save himself from being crushed by the foot.

While rolling, he grabbed a macaque shield that was lying on the ground and pulled it toward himself to stand it up.

Thump!

The stomp carried all of the diabo’s power behind it, and the force was enough to make the stone table shudder. As the energy returned to Kai’s body, he charged at the diabo. He had to save the koror who were still frozen with fear. That was the only thought in Kai’s mind as he charged forward. Soon after he started moving, he felt a fire ignite within his body, and the warmth spread to every part of him.

“Get back!”

He slammed the shield against the diabo and delivered a body ram to it from his shoulder to give it more force.

The framework of the sturdy wooden shield broke apart.

The shock he’d delivered to the diabo sent half of its body reeling into the air.

85

The fact that he’d been able to come back from the diabo’s death curse, its incurable hex, was nothing short of a miracle.

It was unclear exactly what had brought that miracle about.

It was quite possible that it was down to the spiritual protection Kai had made and thrown together the moment he was cursed. It could also have been that Kai was such a powerful guardian bearer that the curse couldn’t drain all of his energy reserves.

But the curse he’d received from the diabo was unlikely to have been overcome so simply. The god of the valley may have counteracted the curse using some divine power.

All of these things were possible, but Kai couldn’t say which was the right answer. But he was alive at that moment. That was the only thing he could be absolutely sure of.

I’m still alive.

He had felt as though all the spiritual energy had been stripped from his body for a time. The memory of the cold emptiness he’d felt was enough to make every hair stand on end. That feeling may have been something only ever felt by those on the verge of death as their life’s fire dies out.

He felt certain that the rapid loss of spiritual energy itself was the cause behind the sudden death that came with the diabo’s death curse.

That last-ditch defense effort might be the only reason I wasn’t drained dry.

Some other intelligence within Kai was trying to define the strange curse brought about by the diabo as a quantifiable effect. Even naturally-occurring poisons that quickly brought on death only worked once a particular “lethal dose” was exceeded. It was possible to stay healthy within some particular exposure limit.

He hadn’t just lost spiritual energy; it had been forcefully erased from him by the diabo through some magic.

While the invisible sword had incredible sharpness, it also required enough spiritual energy to compensate for the amount cut. Likewise, the diabo’s curse must have been quantified according to the amount of time spent in contact with the subject and the contact surface area, or the volume in the case of bodily fluid. The volume of fluid he’d been bathed in may have corresponded to almost an entire depletion of Kai’s spiritual energy.

If the time of effect is short and energy is drained most strongly in the area of contact...

Wrapping his godstone in all of the spiritual energy he’d been able to gather probably hadn’t been in vain. If spiritual energy was lost as the curse spread, then using it to reduce the effect on the godstone containing the god of the valley might have been a weak countermeasure, but not completely ineffective.

My god wasn’t knocked out, so I survived it. I got lucky.

He had also been fortunate that his followers were there to rescue him after he’d fallen unconscious. If he’d been fighting alone, he would be in the diabo’s stomach by now.

I’m still kinda hungry...

After the strange dream he’d had, he couldn’t help but see the diabo’s body as a giant mass of godstone marrow.

Although it smoldered with blue flames, the flesh itself was slightly translucent and it looked soft at a glance. The fact that its surface was tough as iron was likely due to some protective blessing within the diabo.

He wondered if the bodily fluid that gushed out like blood was the same as the juice found within marrow. He couldn’t stop imagining that its body was the same jelly down to its core.

It was a ridiculous thought, but if the diabo’s body was a poison that could kill those it touched, it might not be so different from the toad’s marrow that had caused Elsa to fall into a coma. He just wished the part about it making people fall unconscious after eating it wasn’t the same.

How’d that toad ever live with a body full of poison?

The body slam was followed by the sound of fragments of the shattered wooden shield hitting the ground. The thoughts in Kai’s mind were incredibly detailed, and he felt as if the flow of time in the real world had slowed down dramatically.

Kai’s slam against the diabo had caused half of its body to slide off the platform where it was sitting, sending the macaques in black who’d been gathering below running and screaming. The deuswulf dodged the falling diabo and swiftly moved toward the wider space where Kai was standing.

But it didn’t want to get too close. It warned Kai to stay back by bearing its sharp fangs and issuing a low growl as it looked at him.

Kai’s thoughts were starting to take shape.

The toad had carried poison in his body, and yet it had not threatened his life. There had to be some reason that he was able to live.

The bone... the godstone.

His marrow had of course been sealed within the round bone of his godstone.

The toad’s body and his poisonous marrow had always been kept apart by the bone of his godstone. The reason he hadn’t poisoned himself was because the bony shell provided by his godstone had sealed the poison inside.

I’ve been thinking about this backward...

The bone known as the godstone didn’t exist to hold the marrow.

The bony substance was there as a shield to protect the body from the poison that formed inside.

The word “calcification” went through his mind. A substance known as calcium within his body could form aggregates by building up within cells.

If necessary, it could form new bones after birth.

A bone that could completely protect against the poisonous nature of marrow...

“Don’t act like you’re scared of me.”

When Kai looked at the deuswulf, it bared its fangs even further, showing its gums as a threatening gesture. The sharp fangs in its mouth had been able to tear through the iron-like skin of the diabo with ease.

Then Kai remembered that white instrument carried by the truthseeker had been able to pierce through his own body just as easily.

Teeth... and bone...

Hey, My God. Kai directed the words inside himself.

He spoke to the god of the valley within his godstone.

Give me some sort of protection like bone.

There was a knack to establishing communication. He just had to squeeze with the spiritual energy inside himself while it was wrapped around his godstone. He felt a slight stirring inside the cramped godstone that must have been the god of the valley.

Cover my body in bone, would you?

****!

He had absolutely no idea what his god was saying.

It may have been some language transcending words that was only comprehensible to other gods.

But Kai knew that his own request had gotten through. He could feel the heat rising within his chest.

Ripples of something unknown spread through Kai’s body, transforming the substance of his skin. It only took a moment before his skin felt stiff. His body soon became rigid quickly as if his joints had been coated with stone.

At first, Kai thought he’d made a mistake, but with effort he was still able to move his joints.

His joints ground like ungreased hinges as they resisted movement, but then further changes occurred through some unspoken negotiation with his god, and bone on his skin turned to fragments that coated his body like armor.

He tried hitting one arm against the other.

They made a clunking sound like two hard objects colliding, and the strange sensation made Kai shiver involuntarily. His whole body was indeed bone.

Kai’s hand moved instinctively in reaction to an approaching presence. He’d grabbed hold of the diabo’s approaching tentacle in his hand. He startled himself when he grabbed the tentacle, but the shock in the amber eyes of the deuswulf was far greater when it saw what had happened.

You can’t curse me.

He felt the heat from the blue-burning embers.

But the unbearably cold feeling of his life draining away was gone.

Kai used brute force to pull the tentacle toward himself. It resisted, but he dug his fingernails into it and was able to tear it away using the power of his grip alone.

He didn’t flinch when sprayed with bodily fluids from inside the severed tentacle.

“You’ve got a blessing like this, right?”

The deuswulf tilted its head in response, as if it wanted to understand Kai’s question. It couldn’t be expected to understand the human tongue. But the strange, small creature standing before the deuswulf was clearly intent on defeating the diabo, so the deuswulf had gradually become less wary.

The deuswulf had accepted Kai as another hunter. Wordlessly, it asked to fight with him as a single pack by pointing its nose toward the diabo. Perhaps it moved with a pack when defending against the evil things that roamed the snow plains.

Kai felt he’d been given permission to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the deuswulf, and it was a feeling like no other. Differences between their species were irrelevant when there was a diabo to be slain.

The sluggish diabo showed its stomach as it slid down to a lower level. The deuswulf charged at it.

Thanks to the blessings of the god within, its fangs easily penetrated the skin of the diabo with the same effectiveness of the instrument used by the truthseeker.

But the diabo was so big that it was difficult to remove any significant amount of its flesh.

In that case, Kai was ready to strike the tear made by the deuswulf using his sword.

It’s not enough.

He couldn’t unleash his full power recklessly.

If he released all of his spiritual energy reserves at once, it wouldn’t leave enough fuel for the bone skin blessing that he’d acquired for himself. He still didn’t know how much power was safe to use, so he had to reduce the power he was using by half.

But the tear now went halfway through the diabo’s body and a large cross section was completely exposed. The deuswulf bit into the upper half. Kai gripped its lower half.

If I can’t cut it, I’ll rip it apart!

They exchanged no words. They understood their objective simply from watching each other’s movements.

The deuswulf and then Kai pulled the two halves of the body apart with all of their might. The shriek unleashed by the diabo sounded like a scream, and that probably wasn’t just Kai’s imagination.

The diabo had been torn in half right down the center of its body, and now both halves were thrashing around with their individual limbs.

Where’s the godstone?

Kai searched the exposed cross sections. Within the soft flesh, which continuously spilled out bodily fluids, he couldn’t see anything resembling a godstone.

It was a few moments later that the battle took a turn.

One of the two separated halves was behaving less and less like a living creature, and the form that it held was beginning to crumble apart. The turn in the battle came when the severed head became a pulsating mass of flesh and began moving toward the main body.

Kai watched as it happened, but his focus was lost for only a short while.

The small pieces of bitten-off flesh had acted likewise.

They were all ultimately aiming to merge with the main body. The important thing was where that homing instinct led them.

“Wolf, we’ve got our target.”

Kai showed his teeth as he grinned.

86

The sure way to slay a diabo was to strike its godstone.

Now Kai had finally found a method for determining where the godstone was.

“You’re not rejoining that body!”

Kai wrestled with the one mass of flesh that had started to pulsate violently.

He ignored the unpleasant feeling that came with gripping its greasy surface as he dragged it further away from its other half. Kai’s superhuman strength as a guardian bearer allowed him to push that mass of flesh, which was like a small mountain.

The diabo realized that its efforts to recombine had been thwarted and thrashed its remaining front legs to change direction while moving on its stomach. A tentacle shot out and wrapped itself around Kai’s arm, and then another caught hold of his neck.

The bony substance protected him from the death curse, but it did nothing to alleviate the physical pressure of the tentacle at his throat.

As hard as his skin was, it was only as hard as bone. Although the bones of a guardian bearer had a similar hardness to iron, the massive tentacles of the diabo could still crush him, and it applied enough force that cracks were starting to form.

“Wolf... Do... something...!”

The deuswulf finally took action and tore the tentacle apart with its teeth. Kai had been trying to pull himself away from it, and now he was sent flying headfirst into the mass of flesh. The liquid dripping from the mass of flesh found its way behind the mask, and Kai spat repeatedly.

Although the poison had entered his eyes and mouth, he didn’t feel death approaching.

“Damn... this juice actually tastes good.”

He was even able to talk with cool indifference.

The sweet fragrance was the same as the godstone marrow that every village soldier longed for. Although he didn’t swallow any of it, he was hit with an intense pang of hunger.

The koror had been watching nervously, but they began to cheer when they saw that Kai was so unfazed that his stomach could rumble in the midst of the sickening stench. Porek removed a small package from his belongings and asked Kai if he’d like to eat a cake containing nuts.

Kai could suppress a wry smile when faced with that question in a situation like this one. His people must have believed in the power of the god of the valley that they worshiped from the bottom of their hearts. He lifted up the mask and gave Porek an order: “Toss it over!”

The cake was thrown true, and Kai was able to catch it in his mouth with just a slight movement of his neck. He took his time to chew it as he put the mask back in place. He still had the taste of the diabo in his mouth, but he swallowed the cake regardless. The feeling of the cake landing in his stomach was enough to lift his spirits and keep him going.

The mass of flesh was so big that it had even been a struggle for Kai, but the deuswulf had joined him and pushed with its head along the way, and they were finally able to make it fall down.

They sent the flattened mass of flesh falling down to the bottom of the terrace. Then it began to squirm in another attempt to merge with the main body.

Although it was slow to move, this large chunk of flesh moved far more vigorously than the smaller pieces as it propelled itself forward.

Porek was standing by expectantly, so Kai ordered him to not let the fallen mass of flesh get closer. Once given a task, the koror set about their work in high spirits. Torud appeared to have a vague sense of what Kai was trying to do, because he issued a booming roar that echoed through the vast cavern, and then began to beat his chest vigorously.

It served as a call to arms. Macaques hiding in the various holes here and there in the cavern showed their faces and then came flooding out. Those macaques were most likely remnants of the abridor faction who had remained defiant and had been watching the progress of Wise Princess’s fight from the shadows. More than one hundred of them poured out and gathered near Torud.

“Stop that thing!”

Torud also went running down toward it and began to lead the gathering soldiers.

Kai decided he could leave it in their hands. He wiped the bodily fluids from his face with his hand as he turned toward the remaining half of the body.

The diabo understood now that Kai and the deuswulf were strong enemies. It gave up on waiting for its lower half to reemerge and began to regenerate its salamander-like form with just the remaining half of its body.

Naturally, it had a lot less mass now that it had lost half of its flesh.

This somewhat slender looking diabo’s body had started looking a lot more manageable to Kai.

Invisible sword!

Now it seemed likely to work.

This time he went on ahead without waiting for the deuswulf to bite first. As the diabo shrank back, the aura on its surface was seen in the eyes given by the god of the valley as a flickering light.

In response to an external threat on their life, a guardian bearer could receive additional blessings from their god to resist that threat. The god appeared to be struggling to think of a blessing that would be effective against the threat posed by Kai. The diabo lacked the knowledge needed to block the magic known as the invisible sword.

By gaining resistance that blocked the curse, Kai only had to watch for the diabo’s attacks. He got close to the diabo by sliding along the ground to keep his body low, allowing him to slip under its flailing tentacles.

It used its tentacles to cover its head, so Kai slammed his body against it while delivering another stab, and then he forced his sword to cut upward. The cut didn’t go all the way through, so both Kai and the deuswulf worked together to finish the job, just as before.

As the diabo was ripped in two, it once again unleashed a piercing cry like iron against iron. At first, it sounded like the meaningless howling of a dying beast, but soon it began to sound like speech.

That power, give me.

It threw itself down toward its severed bottom half.

“Don’t let it rejoin the body!”

The koror responded to Kai’s command.

Here and there, Torud and the macaques also began to cry like apes. At some point, the macaques in black had joined them so that they could take on the mass of flesh as one.

As always, none of them could touch the diabo’s flesh. Instead, they had found straw ropes that they used to pull it along like a net filled with fish.

Will eat you.

Go ahead and try.

Kai looked at how small the diabo had become and had to wipe his hand across his mouth to wipe away the saliva. There was only a single cake in his stomach, and it was still rumbling.

The diabo’s body looked a little different now. As it grew slimmer, its legs grew longer, and it had taken the shape of a strange four-legged beast.

The evil god that had descended on the world had taken root on a perch that was the godstone of the transformed guardian bearer. The core of the diabo itself was no doubt that godstone. When the vessel of flesh was torn in two, the main body would be whichever half contained the godstone.

He didn’t know where in the diabo’s body the godstone was. But by forcefully tearing the body into two pieces, half of its body could be ruled out.

It was much more efficient than cutting and stabbing blindly.

But as the diabo became smaller, its movements also became that much more nimble. The indescribable four-legged beast had caught Kai unaware by using its newfound agility to dodge his sword.

Kai tutted in frustration, but the deuswulf was accustomed to hunting fast-moving prey. It quickly moved into the diabo’s path and then gripped it in its jaws. In terms of size, the diabo was now roughly equal to the deuswulf, and its body was thrown around with each shake of the deuswulf’s head.

The diabo was slammed against the stone table and then its front legs were pinned down. Kai knew it was being presented for him to cut. Without hesitating, he jumped forward and sliced through the diabo’s stomach.

In keeping with their unspoken arrangement, the deuswulf pulled away the part that included the head. Bodily fluid sprayed everywhere as half of the diabo was pulled and torn away, and Kai didn’t fail to spot the glimpse of white that was visible for just a moment.

It was unmistakably a white bone.

He threw away the bottom half he was holding and cried out to the deuswulf.

“Wolf! That’s it! We’ve found it!”

There was an understanding between them that came from fighting side-by-side. The deuswulf threw the half that had howled toward Kai.

He didn’t let it escape. Kai inserted the blade of a hastily-made invisible sword into the cross section where he’d seen the white object. It wasn’t a well-made sword and was more like a dagger, so it didn’t create a particularly deep wound in the large mass of flesh that was the diabo.

However, it was enough to make a cut in the surface of the diabo as it was beginning to heal, and Kai plunged his hand into the cut without any hesitation. Regardless of how tough the skin was, its insides were weak enough to be damaged by kicking or punching.

Kai groped around in the slimy interior with one hand and then his fingers touched something hard hidden within. The surrounding flesh was contracting in an attempt to move the lump someplace else. Kai forced his arm deeper in and used brute force to grip the lump.

Then it was finally exposed: A white mass the size of a newborn baby. It was bigger and heavier than expected, and its weight threw Kai off-balance, causing him to land on the ground on his back. He landed in a pool of the bodily fluids that turned his whole body black, and then had to quickly move back like a mouse being chased by a cat.

This thing’s huge.

Kai breathed heavily as he squatted down with his back to the stone table and looked at the final form of the diabo. Kai knew from experience what happened to a guardian bearer who lost their godstone. It wasn’t instant death, but certain death would approach as the spiritual energy within their body drained away.

Even ordinary foot soldiers knew the importance of being ever-vigilant of their enemy if they wanted to live through a battle.

Before long, the body of the diabo crumbled and melted away, and Kai finally breathed a sigh of relief. But then there was a feeling of pain in his arm that made him look down. A small amount of the flesh was still active and squirming. It looked like it was stretching itself over Kai’s arm like a skin in an attempt to eat him.

The diabo probably had only one of the vital organs that were characteristic to living creatures. Thus, no matter how finely it was minced, that wouldn’t be enough to destroy it.

The godstone, the seat of the god itself, was beginning to regenerate as a new main body.

That main body was in Kai’s arms at that very moment.

So this was the main body.

The pain he felt in his arm was most likely caused by the flesh finding its way through cracks in his bone-like skin. He scraped away the formless bits of jelly that covered him and left them on the ground.

Then he created the sword that would deal the final blow.

Help me.

It was the last wish of the diabo.

Kai ignored it.

I want to play more...

Kai felt his anger building when he thought of the great massacre that had almost wiped out the macaques being nothing more than a game to the diabo.

It was the reason the god of the valley wanted it dead.

“You’re finished.”

The deuswulf.

Porek and the koror.

The many macaques.

They were all holding their breath and watching as Kai brought his sword down on the godstone.

If possible, he didn’t want to waste the juice that would flow out. His stomach rumbled. He didn’t just want to kill it, he wanted to eat every last scrap.

Porek and the others were aghast. They must have realized Kai’s intention when they saw him wipe his mouth. The macaques were stunned. Everyone had thought it was poison, but now that Kai could resist the curse, he felt that he could eat it.

To stop the juice from spilling, he first cut a hole in the top by moving his sword round in a circle.

Then he removed a small top part and looked inside the godstone. He was cautious, so he wanted to check the interior before putting it to his mouth.

Inside the hole was total darkness.

Given the considerable weight of the thing in his hand, he imagined a massive amount of marrow must be packed inside. Kai was particularly confident in the power of his eyesight. He peered into the hole.

Then he saw it.

An eye...

He saw it through the hole he’d created in the bone.

Inside that hole that was as big as a human mouth, he saw an eye looking back at him.

There was no mistaking it. In fact, he could clearly see the fear in that eye, and it filled Kai with a sense of unease.

The shock was so great that he had completely lost his appetite. He created the sword on his right hand and made the hole a little bigger.

He saw white teeth.

It felt so strange that Kai couldn’t help but stare at it. But even if he wasn’t going to eat it, he still had every intention of destroying this godstone. He inserted the fingers of both hands into the opening. The feeling of lukewarm flesh squirming within made the hair on his neck stand on end.

Kai mustered up all of his strength and split the godstone clean in two. He intended to kill the disturbing life-form inside the moment it was exposed to the outside world.

Pop!

The bone broke in two.

And then.

In that moment the world was inverted.

The sky broke open.

His ears were filled with an intense sound that shook his brain, like a thunderous applause, or like open palms slapping against his face. Then the diabo’s shriek, that sound of iron against iron, rang out once more, and all of the pieces of flesh scattered about the royal palace grounds began to self-destruct before their eyes. Like a fish with its innards removed, the diabo’s flesh foamed and then began to split apart, turning itself inside-out.

“Play with me! More!”

Its frantic pleas grew quieter as if it was being dragged away.

“No! Put me back...”

The swirling sky intensified, becoming like a tornado.

The fearsome thing escaping from the godstone that Kai had broken apart was gushing out so powerfully that even the strength of a guardian bearer wouldn’t have been enough to hold it back.

The pieces of flesh scattered here and there each grew smaller as if crushed by some unseen hand, and in a single moment, they all ceased to exist, as if by magic.

A rapid transformation was occurring, and then suddenly they knew it was over.

The moment the diabo had disappeared, something was dropped in front of Kai as if the diabo had left him a parting gift.

“Hah...?” That was the noise Kai was able to make.

The diabo had disappeared.

And in its place, a macaque that Kai had never seen before was lying at his feet. It lay on its side with its fur wet, as if it was a baby that had just been born.

“Shendor!” Wise Princess cried.

87

The macaque that had appeared before him in place of the diabo was a young male with long, soaking-wet fur.

Shendor. That would appear to be the name of this male.

Shendor studied Kai with his eyes wide in astonishment, as if he was looking at the god of death, and before long he began a painful-sounding coughing fit. With each breath, he brought up more of some foreign substance from within his lungs.

“Shendor!” Wise Princess shouted to him once again.

Perhaps her human-looking facial features made Kai imagine it, but her voice sounded very feminine and was smooth in a way that was unlike macaques.

Kai looked up and saw that Wise Princess was not actually alone in the hole. There were several macaques in black that must have been her closest followers standing in front of her as if shielding her.

With the diabo defeated, they must have entered other holes and moved through passages that led to her position. Following Wise Princess’s orders, her close followers moved close to the resurrected Shendor as if planning to arrest him. The deuswulf moved to block their path before Kai even had a chance to react.

The deuswulf kept its body low and bared its teeth threateningly. It was seething with rage every bit as powerful as what it had shown the diabo. Fear froze the group of followers in place, but then Wise Princess yelled something from behind them.

“God of ours! Stand down!”

Those were the only words she spoke.

The deuswulf wore a look of frustration as it slowly backed away.

For reasons unclear, Wise Princess was able to command this divine beast whose power must have been far beyond her own.

Even with one of the followers holding the cage that contained the hostage pup, this relationship of power appeared unnatural. The deuswulf continued to growl in frustration, but Wise Princess moved before it without fear and commanded it to move back with a simple hand gesture. There was clearly some force that compelled the deuswulf as it backed away further.

When Kai looked confused, Torud provided him with more information. “Mad Princess is shrine maiden that serves deuswulf. She stole power of long-tail fox ritual.”

She stole the power of a ritual?

Now he understood why she’d addressed it as “god of ours” while showing not the slightest bit of respect. Kai shook his head at the unfairness of the world.

“I get it. It’s magic.”

Wise Princess’s body appeared to be bound to the deuswulf by a long, narrow trail of spiritual energy as she gave her orders. It was similar to the way that the truthseeker’s eyeball had been controlled by a trail of spiritual energy acting like a wired connection in the magic of one hundred eyes.

Wise Princess couldn’t have had absolute control, or she wouldn’t have needed the hostage pup. It was likely that the arts that controlled the deuswulf demanded that the user give clear orders at every moment of every day or the force compelling the deuswulf would lose its effect.

The follower holding the cage poked at the weak pup inside with a dagger. The combination of the two approaches left the deuswulf unable to act, and the handlers from before all surrounded it at once and forced its mouth to close around the same woven basket as before.

Kai might have done something, but Wise Princess issued another quick command. He saw macaques in black forming a circle around him.

Several of the macaques were climbing onto the back of the suffering deuswulf and opening the side of its mouth so they could force it to drink some medicine. The deuswulf struggled, but it became calm again once the sedative they’d given it took effect, and before long it was doing as it was told.

“That’s poison,” Torud concluded based on the unique, sweet smell that came from its mouth.

The deuswulf was too strong to control, so they’d weakened it with poison. That method was only possible because blessings placed on the deuswulf maintained its health.

When Wise Princess’s followers saw that the deuswulf had calmed down, they moved closer to it, appearing relieved. They drew back once more when Kai, who was increasingly bothered by what was happening, scowled at them.

Kai had a feeling that the macaque named Shendor, the male who’d been placed under so many curses that he’d transformed, must have been engaged in evil behavior on the battlefields to the north. When he tried to get away, Kai pinned him down with one leg. Wise Princess’s followers laughed at Shendor’s predicament and openly insulted him, making it clear that they had absolutely no sympathy for him. Kai caught the word “prince” among the insults and realized that this macaque was a member of the royal family just like Wise Princess.

Wise Princess had stolen the ritual’s power and manipulated the deuswulf into wreaking destruction. If this was her brother, then it was likely that he’d used similar, shameless tricks. As Kai thought about how Shendor must have lived his life up to that point, he increased the pressure of his foot on Shendor’s stomach.

Wise Princess looked Kai in the eye.

Deep within a firmly-made iron helmet that was wholly unlike macaque craftsmanship, Kai saw two eyes that he might have taken for human if this was any other place. Her eyes looked sharp, and she regarded Kai coldly before looking down at her brother who lay at Kai’s feet.

“You must excuse me, Shendor.”

A look from Wise Princess made her followers return to her, and with a swish of the leather cape that hung down to her waist, she headed deeper into the cavern toward the throne. Kai warned her, “I’ll kill him,” but her response was merely, “Do as you will.”

Shendor struggled violently on realizing he’d been abandoned, but a single punch from Kai was enough to leave him unconscious. After being unable to consume the godstone he’d recovered, Kai’s stomach was grumbling loudly.

“Where are they going, old man?”

“They steal king god.”

When Torud realized what Wise Princess was doing, he began to scramble up the stone table. Wise Princess and the others were on a level just ten yules higher up. There were signs of a struggle as Torud must have quickly caught up to them, but it was many against one, so the outcome of the fight was swift. Kai did not doubt that Torud had been held back.

If this was the royal palace, then the all-important gravesite of the king god must be somewhere within, just as it was with human castles. It was easy to guess that location was somewhere behind the king’s throne.

Kai had no particular interest in who became the king or queen of the macaques. His only thought was that whoever wanted the job should take it.

No one showed any concern for the prince, and he wasn’t seen as a hostage. The way he’d slaughtered his own kind after transforming into a diabo had been a horror to behold, and he was now regarded with contempt. But after everything that had happened, Kai had no desire to kill yet another macaque.

Kai took his foot away, and Shendor went chasing after his sister with his back hunched over.

“The diabo was slain by your protector, the king of valley!”

They had been left behind before any victory had been announced. The koror felt as though it should be their lord that was receiving praise, so it was Porek who stepped forward and spoke out as their representative. Soon after, other soldiers also raised their own cries.

“It was the protector who slayed it!”

“Glory to the kingdom of the valley!”

“Long live our king!”

“Long live Kai!”

The macaques who’d watched the koror celebrating finally realized that their species had won, and they began to celebrate, with many of the macaques in black joining them. Their cheers combined to create a thunderous roar that filled the cavern.

Many of the macaques swung around the axes they carried as weapons and danced madly. There were some macaques in black who had climbed on to the stone table to follow after their absent leader. One of those who’d left first was the young male soldier who had been outdone after picking a fight with Kai.

A swarm of macaques had gathered around Kai. They were all crying out, “Our protector!” and trying to grab his arms and legs.

Kai had been waiting for an opportunity to finally eat some more of the cakes Porek was carrying, so he was angrily trying to hit the macaques away, but that wasn’t enough to discourage them. They grabbed Kai’s small body and lifted him high into the air.

When he realized that they were lifting him up in celebration, Kai smiled as he gave in to the exhaustion that finally got the better of him. It was good to finally relax.

In this world, strength was righteousness.

Some of those that lifted him up had been macaques in black. He saw the commander that he’d argued with at the entrance, and it made Kai laugh from his stomach as they were throwing him into the air.

It was then that Kai felt their mission to slay the diabo was truly finished.

**

A quarter of a toki later, the macaques had appointed themselves a new queen.

This was of course Wise Princess, who now had the king god dwelling within her. A meeting between her and the protector, Kai, began with Kai being surprised from behind.

Kai had been so careless that Zayena was able to put the tip of her dagger to the area just below Kai’s shoulder blade. Either Kai’s skin was tough enough to repel the attack, or the attack had been non-serious, because he was not wounded at all. “Your defenses are weak,” was her poor assessment of him, and it was clear in the way Kai scowled that this bothered him. Kai then responded by cutting Zayena’s dagger down the middle with his invisible sword.

Its cutting power seemed to impress Zayena. She ran her finger along the cut to determine its smoothness before throwing away the useless half-dagger.

“You used this same trick in the battle.”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“They call you Protector, but I need to ensure you’re the real thing. Don’t be so angry.”

“Are you trying to kill me?”

“You wouldn’t die quite so easily, Protector.”

“...”

The two continued to look at each other as their conversation stopped. Zayena’s followers were trying to put pressure on him with statements like “How dare you?” and “Kneel before her.” Kai completely ignored them. Zayena herself wasn’t demanding anything from him.

Those with royal status did not kneel. Zayena did, however, begin what appeared to be a formal macaque greeting. She took Kai’s hand and acted as if she was grooming his fur. She did this even though there wasn’t actually any hair on Kai’s arm to groom.

Next, Zayena presented the nape of her neck from beneath the iron helmet, thus exposing a vital part of herself. Kai was being silently pressured to groom her. Members of the macaque royalty had long white fur, but they were even more unique in that the fur around the head was more like human hair.

Kai’s eyes darted about with indecision, but the macaques around him weren’t going to allow him to ignore her greeting. He had no idea what he was doing, but he pretended to groom her anyway. With that, the greeting between the two finally came to an end.

“Although I asked for nothing from you, it is fact that you have slain an evil god. I thank you as our queen. Is there anything you would ask of me?”

Essentially, now that she was established as queen of the species, she wanted to solidify her image as their ruler in the minds of the macaques from important tribes. If someone was going to grant a favor to the benefactor of their species, it would be fitting for the queen to do this, rather than the abridor. That was the point she wanted to make.

There was some commotion from the back of the crowd, which probably came from the abridor faction. He thought they might even have been the macaques he’d encountered before coming here: the members of the southern tribe that had waged war with Lag.

They wanted it to be known that they were the ones who deserved credit for finding someone who could help, but it was all the same to Kai. All that mattered was that he’d won the fight and maintained his honor as their protector.

“State your wish. Whatever it may be, I will grant one request.”

When Zayena said this, there were gulping sounds from her associates gathered behind her. These included the young soldier who was infatuated with Zayena, and he looked at Kai like someone watching the movements of an enemy.

When Kai remained silent Zayena repeated the same words. When she said the words “whatever it may be” once more, Kai mustered up his courage.

“It can be anything?”

“Whatever you wish.”

Kai thought about it for a moment and then said, “Let that white thing go.”

The white thing was of course the deuswulf.

After being weakened, the deuswulf had been dragged out of Dehoushi by its handlers, and Kai hadn’t seen it since. Kai argued that it should be treated better in recognition of its services, but the macaques remained arrogant and refused to listen. Kai had felt a genuine sense of friendship with the deuswulf and wanted it released as his reward.

For a moment Zayena looked as though she’d been caught off guard, but then she laughed softly, sounding very human. “This wish I cannot grant,” she said.

When Kai looked as though he wasn’t about to back down, Zayena had more to say.

“It has already broken free. Just now, it bit and killed one of its handlers before escaping and running for the lands in the north.”

“But how...”

“Did you not know? I, Zayena, am now queen of the macaques. The king god, that which our species worships, resides within me.”

“...”

“I have abandoned the power of the ritual. I no longer have use for that creature.”

It was at that moment that Kai remembered something, told to him by Porek, that all guardian bearers ought to know.

No one may have two guardians. Two gods could not reside within the one godstone. In other words, this female had used some trick to steal a guardian from another species in the north, and she hadn’t hesitated to dispose of it for the sake of inheriting the king god.

She abandoned her god...

Kai had just witnessed an example of it happening.

“Didn’t you think it might kill you after getting free?”

“If it wishes to kill me, it may try. I am queen of the great race of macaques. Do you think I cannot handle an insolent beast from the north? But even such creatures are not immune to the curse of the land. After killing a handler, it even abandoned its dying pup so it might flee.”

Zayena laughed as if this was amusing, but there was an unmistakable madness in her eyes that made Kai doubt what she told him. The other self within Kai also agreed with that judgment.

A precious god, a god that brought with it a powerful beast servant, would not be so casually thrown away. The orphaned divine soul must have been inherited by someone else nearby. Kai knew that they would continue to use the deuswulf to wage war in lands to the north once more.

This woman’s cunning was beyond his reckoning.

He thought hard and tried to guess the “correct response” to her question. A somewhat unpleasant answer came to mind. Kai decided he would do his best to resist that unhappy outcome.

He thought a little more. Rather than what he wanted, he thought about who he wanted to rescue.

“In that case, I’ll take the pup.”

Zayena was clearly taken aback by Kai’s request. Then she looked as if it displeased her. This was not the answer she had been hoping for.

A deuswulf pup so weak that it was close to death. If he was to be rewarded for his services, then this was all he wished for.

If it hadn’t been given a guardian yet, then it wouldn’t be bound to any land. He could take it back to the valley, and then release it once it was healthy. That was his plan.

The hostage that they’d used to drag the deuswulf so far from its homeland was sound asleep within the cage, its chest rising and falling as it breathed weakly. Kai took the cage and bent the bars with his hand before scooping up the deuswulf pup that was curled up inside.

Kai and his party of koror were invited to dine at a feast held by the queen, but they had to leave quickly because Kai had a sick patient to treat. This made the queen angry once again.

What actually happened was that the queen challenged him to fight with the young males, who were all terribly angry for some reason, one after the other, and Kai felt as though they wouldn’t allow him to refuse.

This queen must have been quite beautiful according to macaque standards. The males were all desperate to win her favor somehow, but none of them were a match for Kai, and all they showed to her was how much more powerful their protector was as he defeated them one after another.

With the queen continuing to watch him with an ominous gaze, he asked for some milk to give to the deuswulf pup. He found that he could throw his weight around to great effect among the macaques, and he had no trouble gathering up all the gear he’d need to take care of the pup.

“Wow, it’s really drinking it.”

Kai couldn’t help but raise his voice when he saw the pup, which must have been quite hungry, sucking at the spout of the jug of milk.

There was also a merry celebration from the koror that were with him.

With that, Kai and his party left Heju while a large gathering of macaques saw them off.

88

Now then.

It wouldn’t be quite correct to say that Kai and the others went straight back to the nation of the valley after slaying the diabo.

Torud and other chiefs belonging to the abridor faction chased after them in desperation. Since these were the people who Kai had made a deal with in the first place, Kai agreed to pay the abridor one final visit.

Word must have already reached the Nenem tribe’s village because they were already preparing for a feast despite the hardship they faced. In the end, Kai couldn’t refuse, and they were kept there for a whole night.

Although the village was filled with starving inhabitants, food was brought from neighboring settlements on the abridor’s orders, allowing them to prepare a feast grand enough to make the saliva of hungry macaques form a river. Liquor that must have been liberated from the stores of Dehoushi was also brought out.

Naturally, ingredients were limited, so there wasn’t much variety to the dishes. It was mostly potatoes and beans that were either boiled or steamed with minimal seasoning, so it was all filling but not exceptionally tasty.

But Kai was used to simple food, and he filled his stomach without any complaints. They served precious liquor that smelled of honey and figs, which they all drank straight. As they became mildly intoxicated, it helped the conversations flow. Kai was able to drink heavily, probably because of the blessings that reinforced his body.

An old macaque shared the oral history of their people while friendly guardian bearers repeatedly described the exploits of past heroes who were the pride of their species.

The abridor had now recovered from the condition caused by the diabo, and he and Kai served each other from the same pot of liquor while the abridor explained the power structures of their species without keeping anything secret.

There were 48 tribes of macaques with a total of 20,000 members living in that area. Kai didn’t even know how many humans there were living in the borderlands, so this number was more than he could imagine. The best he could do was to imagine how many villages like Lag that would be. It was well worth knowing that there were enough of them to take on many of the villages of the borderlands combined.

In its present state, the nation of the valley didn’t even compare to villages with 1,000 inhabitants like Lag. The two species that had gathered around Kai didn’t even amount to 200 people combined.

Although they had Kai as their king, Kai alone was exceptional, and anyone attacking while he was absent would be resisted by only a small, weak army. Kai realized that he had to think carefully about the difference in power between the valley and neighboring species, or he’d eventually make a wrong decision that put them on the path to ruin.

While they were drinking together, he received a proposal from a tribe chief asking for a declaration of friendship, albeit a temporary one. Finally, the abridor, as the leader of the collected southern tribes, proposed that they would make yearly tributes to Kai as their protector if he would give them his backing in exchange. Kai accepted the proposal out of pure self-interest.

Thus, the nation of the valley established a friendship with the abridor who controlled more than half of the 20,000 macaques, which meant more than 10,000 macaques in the southern region.

The nation of the valley led by Kai thus increased its standing in the region. While the alliance of northern tribes appeared to have enthusiastically welcomed their new queen, the abridor and the southern macaque tribes now had the backing of a protector, which could not be ignored.

Strangely enough, this was what first caused the name “Protector Kai” to spread to the world of demi-humans in the north. At the same time, rumors that the god of the valley had found a new host, and that the current god of the valley had been chosen from among the weak koror, spread through the region.

It was this rumor that caused the oppressed and imperiled weaker species of each region to be drawn to the nation of the valley.

**

The reception from the macaques lasted from noon until night.

If nothing had stopped them, that gathering of heavy drinkers would have probably continued into the next day without trouble. The end of the banquet came when a group of females surrounded the banquet tables and pounced on the thoroughly drunk males. After they had taken several victims, the abridor announced the end of the gathering.

“Those potatoes weren’t bad...”

“We give you some. But not so many it angers them. Forgive me.”

The group of females had even the abridor scared. They were similar to what Lag called the women’s council.

The Nenem tribe was already low on supplies and full of hungry macaques, so the females didn’t look willing to give away a portion of their dwindling supplies to the guests, no matter how important those guests were. From the point of view of the females, the males were like idiots who needed constant babysitting to stop them from using up everything.

“Please leave soon,” the females urged them while smiling sweetly. It looked as though the original plan had been to give away a cart full of locally grown potatoes, but the amount that they actually gave to Kai was reduced to no more than a single gunny sack’s worth.

“Next ten years, we give potatoes.”

That was a reference to the tributes they’d mentioned.

Conditions were tough this year, and they had to make apologies. They promised that next year they’d also provide a cart filled with a vegetable known as taro that was the pride of their species.

There were many widows among the females, so they asked if Kai might take one as a concubine. This was the one offer he didn’t hesitate to turn down. Aruwe and Nirun were already more than Kai needed, and he had no intention of taking in anyone else. And then there was of course the fact that these females were definitely not Kai’s type.

They said their goodbyes in the traditional macaque style of pretend grooming, and then Kai departed from the region along with his party.

**

When the party arrived back at the valley, seven days had passed since their departure.

The koror and uzelles had waited impatiently for their master’s return, and they caught the party off guard by rushing to greet them. Kai sacrificed Porek and the soldiers to the crowd as he used some quick movements to slip away and escape to his valley.

“Our God!”

He heard voices calling after him, but Kai still hurried on toward his cabin with only slight feelings of guilt. Up until entering the valley, a warm, sleeping ball of white fluff, the deuswulf pup, had been curled up in Kai’s arms.

Aruwe must have heard all the noise outside because she came out of the cabin to greet Kai. Behind her, the uzelle girl, Nirun, also poked her head out soon after.

The wolf pup would not eat bean porridge or potato soup. Even putting some dried meat into its mouth didn’t work. That left only one thing that they could use to feed this infant.

Kai impatiently lifted the pup in both arms and presented it to the two women of the cabin before making an unexpected and unreasonable request.

“Feed this thing your milk!”

The baby needed a mother, and that meant a female.

In the Nenem tribe’s village, there had been a female with a newborn child who had offered to share some milk. But the pup had already grown teeth and had a bad habit of biting, so she’d ran off looking hurt.

Now it would be up to the women of the valley to do their best. Kai felt sure that these two girls could be relied on to fulfill his request. At least that’s what he thought before making the request.

He had definitely not expected the two of them to turn bright red and then cower while covering their chests.

“Milk...?”

“My God, you...”

“Die! Please...”

Kai was still determined to get some milk for the pup, but when he kneeled down to examine the two girls, Nirun tried to hit him with a charging headbutt. Kai had no trouble defending against that. While the uzelle girl was in a humiliating pose with Kai gripping her horn firmly in one hand, Aruwe came rushing in and childishly scolded Kai with a chop to the forehead while shouting “No!”

They were quick to explain to him why his request wasn’t something he should ask of a girl who had no children and wasn’t even married. Kai’s remorse was deeper than the valley itself.

In the end he went looking for a woman with a child and his request was accepted by a woman from the uzelles. The uzelles produced a particularly good milk. There was no easy way to stop the pup from biting, so they decided that the milk would be fed to the pup using the jug with a spout that the macaque handlers had used.

“Now drink up.”

It must have been quite hungry because when it got close to the jug it obediently began to suck and drink from the spout. It must have become more relaxed when it started drinking because its small body then felt limp.

The pup then fell into a deep sleep in Kai’s arms. Aruwe and Nirun looked adoringly at its sleeping face and then looked at Kai as if they wanted to hold it too. Kai considered it for a few moments and then told them that he’d be leaving the pup in the care of the uzelle woman giving it milk, and that they were not to touch it.

At some point he hoped the pup would be fit enough to return to its own kind. This little thing would grow into a proud creature, and it wouldn’t be right for it to get overly familiar with people.

“You’ve got no milk and you can’t raise it in the cabin. Sorry for getting your hopes up.”

“...”

“Master...”

Someone suddenly grabbed his sleeve and he looked down to see the koror girl with an awfully forced-looking smile on her face. For some reason the uzelle girl behind was rolling up her sleeves and giving him a serious look.

“Aruwe...?”

“You just have to ask, and we can fulfill your wishes,” Nirun said coyly.

“We can meet your expectations,” Aruwe added in tandem.

With a tug on Kai’s sleeve, Aruwe held up a small bag that contained some round, black pellets.

“It’s important to prepare for these things,” Aruwe remarked.

“Preparations...?”

“Master, try one!” Nirun urged him. “G-Go ahead!”

“This medicine will give you energy,” Aruwe nudged.

“Go ahead!”

“Swallow one!”

Feeling overwhelmed by their insistence, Kai swallowed a pellet like they’d asked.

Kai was so thick-headed that he thought it must have been a medicine for fatigue. Being a tough guardian bearer meant that he felt no need to be particularly cautious, and he gulped it down without any fear.

A moment later he noticed the way the two girls were smirking and he knew he’d made a mistake. But that type of medicine didn’t take effect immediately. The effect wouldn’t kick in for some time, so Kai was still confused by their improved moods.

After that, Aruwe prepared food that was nothing short of delicious, and Kai ate until he was full. He also had something to drink. His tea was soon replaced with wine, but Kai didn’t worry because he didn’t easily get drunk.

Having satisfied his ravenous appetite, he felt more drunk than he’d expected. He stumbled into the cabin and curled up in bed together with the pup. As always, Elsa was there sleeping. She had lost much of her weight... but now her face had taken on a sort of ephemeral beauty. A strange feeling grew within Kai.

He stroked her cheek, but it wasn’t enough, so he rubbed his own cheek against hers. Her body felt warm and soft, and for some reason, Kai felt himself tremble with some swelling of emotion. Kai’s legs went weak as the wholly inappropriate feeling of lust grew. Then his legs gave way. He landed on his rear and noticed the two girls sitting politely in the cabin for some reason.

Before he could express his surprise, Nirun lunged at him. She rubbed her head against his chest and turned her eyes up to look at him expectantly.

It was at that point that Kai realized he’d fallen for the trap the two had laid for him.

“T-There’s time,” Aruwe said.

The girls had estimated how much “free time” Kai had been planning to spend in the valley. When Kai was too shocked to move, they must have taken that for consent.

“R-Right. You should take it easy here in the valley, Master!”

Aruwe turned bright red as she fidgeted and curled her own hair with her fingers. Kai wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to force herself to do anything embarrassing.

Although they had him cornered, the thing that allowed him to keep his sense of reason was the sleeping Elsa, who had never left his sight. Kai pretended to be drunk on the medicine for a while and broke free each time they attempted to pin him down, but when they got the sash around his waist loose, he found himself in a disadvantageous position.

“We’ll make children!”

“Let’s just do it already!”

Although they were different species, they were still young girls, and these weren’t proper things for them to say.

The usual servant and master relationship had been turned on its head and Kai was starting to find it all very annoying. He finally stopped trying to act all calm and mature and fought back with magic. Magic? In this situation? Some unknown other self within Kai tried desperately to stop him, but Kai released his magic from his right hand without hesitation.

Fire magic? Of course not.

This was a type of magic that made people calm in an instant.

Cooling magic... Cold hand!

Aruwe’s eyes were teary as Kai reached out to touch her. Then the feeling of his hand against the back of her neck caused her to jump back and fall over. She cried “Kyaun!” like a shocked lamb as she retreated, and then Nirun dived in just as anticipated.

She was covered in light fur from her neck to her back, so she had few vulnerable areas. She was holding out her chest to get his attention, so that was where Kai grabbed her.

“Cold! Hyah!”

The cold feeling made Nirun scream and then she fell backward onto the bed.

“Master...”

“Your hands are so cold!

“It is winter, you know.”

“It’s warm here in the valley!”

“Master! You’ve used some trick, I know it!”

Then Kai backed out of the cabin while holding up his right hand, which was coated in cold, white air. He could feel the white ball of fluff that he held in his left arm squirming, and he remembered the milk that the uzelle woman had given him before hurrying out of the valley. With no thought for his pride or reputation, he fled at full speed.

At the valley’s edge, a feast was being held to welcome back Porek and the soldiers, and to thank them for their hard work. When Kai leaped into the light of their bonfires and drew near to the feast, everyone heard the shouting from the two girls chasing after him, leaving Kai lost for words for a few moments. “I’ve changed my mind. I’ll join you,” he told them before joining everyone.

Some of his people realized that Kai was considering running away again because he’d realized that the two girls were right behind him. They took the opportunity to make fun of him.

“Our god is defeated!”

“The secret to a long peace is to keep the men under control!”

There were both koror and uzelle, men and women, enjoying the banquet. Kai noticed that sitting beside Porek was the smiling miao merchant, Fluu, who happened to be visiting.

“Master.”

“Hide me, gramps.”

The only building fit to shelter a human like Kai in the koror settlement was Porek’s house.

At Kai’s insistence, Porek smiled wryly and stood up. When he heard the voices of the persistent girls approaching, he casually asked, “Is my granddaughter not to your liking?”

Kai was in a hurry and was about to get impatient, but then he was caught off guard when Porek appeared to remember something.

“That reminds me. The human hostage that you left in our care is still in there.”

Kai had completely forgotten about her himself.

Now he remembered her.

The only thing that had made it possible for Kai to make a long trip away was the idiot daughter of the baron.

Fortunately, that idiot daughter was also being taken care of by Porek. Porek was pointing to a separate structure that looked like an extension to his house.

Porek’s house had been made by hollowing out the trunk of a large balen cedar, and for koror that was a good size, but for humans it felt a little cramped.

The door to the extension was barred, but the dim interior could be seen through a little window.

Through that little window, which might have been big enough for a koror to crawl out of, there was a shocked face looking his way.

Kai hastily put the removed mask back over his face and looked at the girl through the window. The freckled girl within was not particularly beautiful, which wasn’t to say that she didn’t at all compare to other girls, but just that she had rather average looks. Obviously, the majority of village men who were shunned by women would have thrown themselves at her without a second thought.

In front of her stood Kai, dressed as a koror soldier.

“Who... are you...?” she asked softly.

Thanks to the effect of the medicine, what Kai saw was a girl who looked about 50 percent more attractive than she actually was, looking his way with upturned eyes.

89

A full seven-day cycle had already passed since the day Kai had left Lag.

Kai had gotten used to living as a demi-human, and now it felt a little unnatural to be going back to his true home in the human village.

He reminded himself that he had to go back to the village eventually. He surprised himself a little by the way he was thinking.

As for Aruwe and Nirun’s attempts to chase after him, they were greeted by lukewarm stares from members of their own kind once they reached the edge of the valley and had retreated leaving nothing behind besides one last resentful cry of “Master...” The way they became self-conscious when they realized they were drawing attention made it seem as though they were both still naive girls.

That gave Kai some relief, but Kai’s troubles with women were far from over. A new “trouble” had come back to haunt him after he’d carelessly allowed himself to forget about her.

Lana, the second daughter of Lag’s baron, Moloch Vezin.

“D-Don’t kill me.” The girl was blindfolded when they brought her out of the cabin.

Now that her role as a hostage was over, Lana could be returned to the village. She’d been blindfolded using an old koror sash wrapped around her head many times.

This was an obvious precaution to hide the location of the valley, but she’d fought with all her might to stop herself being blindfolded, thinking she’d be killed.

The spectacle had given Kai a sense of déjà vu. When livestock were killed in the borderlands, their eyes were covered so that they’d have no fear of death.

They should have said something to her first, but it was too late by the time they realized that.

She must have barely had need to work her muscles as a lady of a lord’s household, but once she let loose, her strength was still enough to push back the ordinary koror who were surrounding her. Even though they only had to hold down one young girl, it quickly became clear that Porek himself needed to get involved.

Once her hands were tied behind her back and her eyes covered with a tight blindfold, she began screaming that she didn’t want to die. She finally wet herself when Kai put her over his shoulder.

Some of the koror urged Kai to change his clothes when they saw him soaking wet and steaming, but he only shook his head and sighed because it felt like it would just add to the trouble. “I’ll get this over with first,” he said, getting to work.

Kai was able to move with the same agility even while carrying someone over his shoulder, and he advanced through the dark forest like the wind.

The girl gave out the occasional scream and kicked her unbound legs now and then, most likely because she felt an intense feeling of falling. The warm urine had quickly chilled and turned to ice in the winter wind.

At first, she had repeatedly begged for her life with pleas such as “spare me” and “don’t eat me,” but after half a toki of traveling she must have come to accept her fate because her body went limp against Kai’s shoulder. Kai could have gotten out of the forest in half the time, but it took longer because he followed an indirect course, going one full circle around the lagarto marshland, to confuse her sense of direction.

When he left the forest, he kept going until they’d reached a place where Banya, which would have served as a landmark, was out of sight. Then he finally lowered her to the ground and removed the blindfold.

In the end, rather than being killed, her blindfold was removed and she was told “go home” in a distinctly human voice. She knew nothing about demi-humans, but she saw that Kai was about the same height as a human, so she naturally assumed he was human.

“Get going. You free now.”

Kai pretended to struggle with the human tongue as he pointed in the direction of the village. When first told to leave, the girl looked about her in confusion, then she stared at Kai.

“Did you just rescue me?” she asked in surprise.

Kai realized that the disguise that he’d come to rely upon now carried a funny smell as he put his nose close to the area that had gotten wet. When Lana, the second daughter of a baron, realized that the liquid was her own urine, she frantically waved her hands in front of her face while trying to explain herself.

Being his usual thickheaded self, Kai continued to smell his clothing, so she threw a snowball that landed at his feet. When he scowled at her, the next one hit him right in the face.

“Is that what you’re into? Gross!”

“What gave you that idea?”

Fearing being labeled a pervert, Kai rather insensitively told her “it stinks,” and then he was hit with another snowball.

Lana remained standing still on the snowy plain under the night sky. She looked at Kai’s pointing finger in confusion as she exhaled a breath of white cloud.

She was looking at his pointing finger as if it was meant for someone else, but then she realized what the person standing in front of her was asking her to do.

“You can’t be serious.”

It was unusual to expect a young girl, unsure of her surroundings, to walk across a cold plain covered in snow on a dark night. Lana wanted to make sure that the mysterious boy was aware of that fact. She also thought she’d win Kai over with her sex appeal, which she’d overestimated to a fair extent, and that left Kai not knowing where to look.

Her attempts at seducing Kai actually looked rather infantile, and Kai would normally have laughed out loud. However, at that particular moment it presented a problem.

Lana’s unfounded self-confidence only grew when she saw Kai become so flustered that he covered his eyes with his open palms and then looked away. She had probably spent each day toying with the foolish stable boy in the same way up until he helped her run away.

“Which village are you from?”

“...”

“I’m from Lag. Don’t let my looks fool you, I’m the daughter of a baron. A noble lady.”

If he abandoned her right there after going to so much trouble to rescue her from her evil captors, he might regret missing his chance with such a special lady for the rest of his life... or at least that was what Lana very clearly wanted him to think. She was right to point out that most poor villagers would never get a chance to get so close to a noble lady, and most probably wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to ask for some favor. But Kai had already chosen himself a wife and had another two unwanted wives to boot. That was quite enough for him already.

In ordinary circumstances, he never would have felt such a strange sense of attraction towards her.

Oh man. She’s making me dizzy.

At that particular moment, Kai was still under the effects of the medicine that the two girls had expertly concocted. The responses she provoked from him were excessive in various ways.

As Kai struggled to fight off the feelings of lust growing inside him, Lana knew that she had him right where she wanted him. “Don’t tell me I’m not your type?” she said while very deliberately looking at him with upturned eyes.

“I get it,” Kai said, letting his tongue slip, “you’re pretty.”

“Really?”

“Y-Yeah...”

“Hehe. Oh my.”

As much as Kai hated knowing that she had him in the palm of her hand, it was hard for him to ignore his male instincts. So Kai finally gave in. A large part of it was that he didn’t want her playing with his emotions any longer.

“I’ll take you to the village,” he told Lana.

Without speaking another word, he picked her up and put her over his shoulder like a piece of luggage. Lana resisted being handled so roughly, but Kai soon started to run.

After he’d been running for a while, Lana finally stopped screaming in his ear and fell silent. She relaxed against his shoulder and clung to him tightly. When they were halfway there, Lana looked more like she was hugging him.

Kai felt the warmth of her skin, the softness of her body, and the way her heart was beating rapidly like an alarm bell. At some point she had started to playfully bite his neck. He’d already been struggling to suppress his feelings, and this was getting a little much.

Kai had been too distracted to judge how much time had passed when they finally reached a place where Lag was in sight. When he put Lana down, he was dismayed to find the girl continued to cling to him.

Eventually he made Lana stand on her own two feet and told her once more: “Get going.”

Lana took just one look at the village and then looked back at him with her face slightly red. The look in her eyes was enough to make Kai feel overwhelmed.

“Come meet my father.”

“No. Just go.”

“I want to thank you somehow!”

“I don’t need thanks. Bye.”

“Wait!”

Lana threw her arms around Kai and then tried to move the mask away from Kai’s face. Kai grabbed her hand at the last second and then thrust her away.

“Don’t you want me?!”

“...!”

The reason he turned back to look at the girl was that lust was building up inside him once again. Although he looked away quickly, an alluring smile appeared on Lana’s face as she felt sure that this was her victory.

“Come to the village.”

“No. Go home.”

“I won’t! I said wait! Listen!”

She sighed as if letting him know that he was a difficult man to deal with, making Kai also grow tired of the situation.

“Tell me what village you’re from,” she demanded as Kai ignored her and turned to walk away.

She was asking for the human village that Kai belonged to, but Kai was acting as a koror soldier, so he told her, “Hacar.”

“I’ve never heard of it. Where is it?”

“Far away.”

“Oh, is it really?”

At this point there was already a serious misunderstanding between the two.

“Are you a guardian bearer? Not that it matters. If I can’t go to the banquet, then I’d be happy just to find someone I get along with.”

“...?”

“You’re a little rough around the edges, but I don’t mind that. At least try talking to my father.”

“...??”

When Kai lost all interest and turned his back to her, Lana threw a snowball at him. When Kai still didn’t turn around, she started to sound more demanding.

“Look at me!”

Kai looked back once more without trying to hide his irritation, and he promised himself this was the end of it.

“Thank you for rescuing me! See you around!”

She gave Kai a kiss on his mask.