Chapter 82: True demon

I think that Kalroth just went crazy, he grabbed some weird dagger and stabbed himself with it. That would be crazy enough with a regular dagger, but that thing is causing his mana to start pouring out from every cell in his body. There's no way that he can survive that, is he trying to kill himself?

No, that's not all. I can also feel his mana... change? I have never seen anything like this before, it is as if the fire in his fire mana is gradually disappearing.

That hollow mana is slowly expanding around him as it tries to escape from Kalroth's body, it doesn't seem to be under his control. The tables, the crates, the weapons... everything that comes into contact with the strange mana starts to slowly turn to dust and fall apart. Looking at my hand I can tell that the same thing is happening to my body, if I just stand here doing nothing I'm going to die... Well, not that I care.

...

Wait, what am I saying? Of course I care! I don't want to die! Why did I even think that? Fortunately, it doesn't seem like this type of damage is particularly difficult to heal.

Now that I think about it, there's one phenomenon I've read about that resembles this. Someone's mana becoming hollow and destroying everything in their vicinity, including the owner of that mana himself. There are only a small number of reports of such a thing happening and none of them were confirmed, so I never gave it much thought until now...

"Hey! You need to stop this! Take that dagger out of your chest or you are going to die!"

"..."

Kalroth seems to be unresponsive, something is clearly wrong with him. Whatever, I'll remove the dagger myself.

I remove the strange spike-shaped weapon without any difficulty, which seems to accomplish exactly nothing. The hollowed mana has gathered in his chest and is still transforming what's left of his fire mana.

After taking a couple of seconds to use my mana sense and analyze the situation I think that I can tell where this is going. Right now the remaining fire mana is keeping the hollowed parts stuck to Kalroth's body like glue. Once it has all been converted, it will begin to expand rapidly, and considering the strength of his mana, it will most likely engulf the entire castle. Kalroth will die at that moment, I will probably survive, but the same cannot be said of everyone else around here. I need to stop this somehow.

'Mana corrosion'

That spell normally does the trick when I want to get rid of mana, but against this type, it doesn't seem to be working at all. I guess that was like trying to neutralize an acid by throwing even more acid at it.

'Black dome'

I try to surround it with a dome-shaped black wall to see if I can contain it, but it falls apart like everything else, all it can do is slow it down a little.

I'm starting to run out of ideas... at this point, I should probably be starting to panic, but there's something strange about that mana. For some reason, I don't seem to be afraid of it at all, even though I know that it is dangerous.

There's only one way for me to stop this, I don't like it but it seems like I have no choice. I have to destroy every part of his body that's supporting the hollowed mana, that should at the very least stop it from expanding any further.

'Shadow lance'

As expected, my spell was weakened so much by that hollow mana bubble that it did no damage at all. I'll need something stronger... So I need to calculate how much power I need for my spell to get through without causing too much damage, then I need to control it perfectly to preserve the most vital parts of his body, and then I have to heal him in an instant, with the same mana I used for my attack. And he's already an inch away from death as a result of the hollowed mana eating away his body... The chances of him surviving this procedure are less than one in a thousand, doing this would be the same as killing him...

But what else am I supposed to do!? If I do nothing, he's going to die anyway along with a bunch of other people. Perhaps if I had more time I would be able to come up with something better, but I don't... I've already wasted too much time thinking of useless things, let's do it now.

'Obliteration blast'

I do my best to cast a powerful spell while limiting its power. My plan somehow works better than I expected and the hollowed mana not only stops expanding, it also transforms into dark mana somehow... I'll have to figure out how that works when I get the chance.

As for Kalroth, when I started healing him I noticed right away that he didn't make it... If only I was better at controlling my magic and using flesh shaping I might have been able to save him, but I was not good enough.

I just killed a person, didn't I... And yet I do not feel as if I did. Instead, I feel as if I had just watched him kill himself. Looking at it rationally, that is basically what happened; he used a tool that killed him and would have killed many more if I didn't stop it. And since I wasn't given any other valid choice it just doesn't feel as if I was the one who did it. But is it normal to be rational in a situation like this? Am I heartless for thinking this way?

I take a look at the spike dagger in my hand.

"What is this thing anyway?"

He mentioned a green witch, could that have been Cureva again?

'The extent of the crimes will be revealed to her. And she will be forced to make a decision to kill.' I remember what the prophecy said, and the sudden realization makes me want to punch whoever is in charge of writing these prophecies in the face. It said 'the extent of the crimes'... 'the crimes', not 'his crimes', the crime that 'forced' me to kill Kalroth was not his, it was hers!!! Why did it have to be worded in such a misleading way!?

This is too much, my head hurts... I think I need to sit down for a moment.

Arana somehow managed to wake up and find me a lot faster than I expected, but she's been standing there without saying anything for five minutes now... I guess she just does not know what to say.

"Ara, since Kalroth is dead and I'm alive, does that mean that I won? Is this what winning feels like? He threw away everything, his morals, his subordinates, even his life... for THIS!?"

Why did I get angry all of a sudden? And then I calmed down right after. I just cannot decide how I'm supposed to feel.

"Luna, please do not blame yourself, I'm the one who-"

"I'm not blaming myself and you are not the one who did anything."

Before she has a chance to ask me what I'm even saying, I show her the dagger. "He apparently got this from Cureva, do you have any idea of what it is?"

"Is that what caused his mana to become void mana? Then it can only be the work of demons... But there are not supposed to be any left in this world, so how could she have gotten a tool from them?"

"What are you talking about? There are demons everywhere."

"Ah, no. I'm talking about the REAL demons. Do you know how the beings we call demons used to be called the 'manaborn'? And during the war against the demon king, they were renamed after the demons that had not been seen for thousands of years."

"So the real demons existed?! I always thought they were just a myth!"

"They were beings from another dimension that invaded our world a long time ago and fought a war against the five gods, who also existed by the way. In the end, they were all destroyed or banished, so they are no longer around. Even I do not know much about them, only that they were made of void mana and could drain the elements from other mana to make more of themselves."

"The five gods? Then Vilde might know something about this. I guess I'll have to ask him."

"Who's Vilde?"

"The guy that was called the god of fire a long time ago. I met him when I reached the bottom of the infernal caverns."

"Luna... It seems like you are not in a good state of mind after what just happened, but that's not-"

"I met him! I swear!"

She doesn't believe me... her lack of trust has certainly been causing problems, she didn't warn me about Cureva and she's still not told me what plans she has for me. We cannot keep going like this, or rather, I should not have let her keep all of these secrets from me in the first place. We need to have a serious conversation after this.

I take another look at the dagger, could this thing also get rid of my dark mana? Then people would not be afraid of me anymore, and if I also lost my power, I would no longer find myself in situations like these with people's lives in my hands... If I just stab myself, all of my problems will go away, just like that.

WHAT!? Where did those thoughts come from!? I don't want to get rid of my problems in that way. My dark magic is a part of who I am!

Feeling suspicious, I use my appraisal stone to check the dagger, and it reveals that it's level 91. This is not the information I would get from appraising a piece of equipment, this is like what I get when I check a person or a monster.

"Ara, I think that you were wrong about one thing, this is not some tool that Cureva got from a demon." The spike detaches itself from the handle and begins to float in the air. The metallic paint falls off, revealing a semitransparent material underneath. "This is a demon."

The spike flies at me and I lift a hand to stop it. It pierces a bit into my palm, but that's fine... It could only do what it did to Kalroth because he literally allowed it to do it, and I am not a complete idiot like him.

Whatever this being is, it feels like it's even lower than a monster. Maybe it's because I'm a healer, but the only thing I can compare it to is some type of virus.

Just now it tried to do something worse than killing me, it tried to make me deny my existence, and yet, I do not feel angry. For some reason, it seems impossible to feel any anger or fear towards this thing, but I still know that it needs to be destroyed.

I close my hand, using all my grip strength to crush it. The spike begins to crumble and its void mana starts to become dark until it falls apart and disappears without a trace.

forli

Did anyone remember that demons used to be called manaborn? I'm not sure if I've mentioned it enough times before this, and I don't know if I ever implied that the 'true demons' that they got that name from were their own separate thing. The reaction I was going for with this was 'oh right, that was a thing', but I'm afraid the one I got was 'wait, that was a thing?'.