Following the direction Grain had pointed out, I came across a structure that I hadn’t seen before.
It was a large stone building, not quite a house but too small to be a castle.
It didn’t have a sophisticated feel; rather, its rough appearance, with moss growing here and there, seemed appropriate.
However, it looked clean, as if it had just been built recently.
But the shape was oddly familiar.
“What is this? Is it some sort of traditional demon architecture?”
In areas densely populated by demons, buildings with this theme are common.
I initially thought it was just the atmosphere of the map, and that the demons had simply settled into existing structures.
But seeing this, I started to wonder if the demons had a particular affinity for this style.
There was nothing strange about finding such a building here.
According to Grain, the person here was likely Diggers, who had turned into a demon.
What kind of house the demons live in didn’t really matter.
With that thought, I hesitated for a moment, but then resumed walking.
“Let’s go in.”
“…Wait. Are we really going in like this? I can just put you down…”
“Just in case. You prepare some defensive magic.”
Seria was still holding onto me.
Her abilities were heavily focused on magic, so her physical abilities weren’t the best.
Despite traveling for hours without resting, she seemed fine, possibly because she used magic to compensate for her stamina, but her movements still had a slightly creaky feel to them.
In that case, even if she couldn’t dodge, carrying Seria and letting her focus on defensive magic seemed like the most efficient choice.
There might be a better way, but with the urgency of the situation, I couldn’t afford to think of other solutions.
As soon as we entered the building, I saw flashing red zones everywhere.
It was a trap.
The problem was that some of them seemed to trigger automatically, even without touching them.
Dodging them wasn’t going to be easy.
“Rudion.”
Seria must have felt the same energy and called my name to warn me.
I nodded lightly to acknowledge it and continued forward.
Soon, the red zones swept over the spot where I was standing.
“Ahhh!”
I quickly jumped sideways to dodge, but in the process, I must have applied too much pressure on my arm, and Seria nearly tumbled out of my arms.
To be honest, I was a bit flustered.
When I had carried Alkine before, it hadn’t felt like this.
Alkine’s high stats meant she had an incredibly stable center of gravity even when held, and I could move without much issue.
But Seria was different. She seemed to struggle more.
“R-Rudion, please don’t hug me so tightly.”
It turned out that, while both of them were light, the difference in their balance and stability was noticeable.
…Is it normal to compare these things?
No, probably not. So I decided to stop thinking about it any further.
“Sorry. Just hang in there a bit longer.”
“…Okay.”
For now, I just needed to keep moving forward.
We continued to push through the traps.
Since I was carrying Seria, I couldn’t dodge and had to disable the traps directly, which was difficult.
Dodging wasn’t too much of an issue since I could see the traps, but Seria was the problem.
“Out! Ugh, aaaah! Rudion, please slow down and stop forcing me into weird positions!”
“How am I supposed to avoid each trap while carrying you? Just bear with it!”
Despite complaining, Seria was still managing to cast defensive magic, so she seemed to be handling it better than expected.
Of course, that didn’t mean she was perfectly stable…
I still heard strange sounds like complaints, groans, and gasps, but we both kept going without showing it.
It wasn’t a very big building, so we soon broke through all the traps and reached the door.
“I think they’re inside. I can feel a bad aura right ahead.”
According to Seria, both Alkine and Diggers seemed to be inside.
Since there was no reason to hesitate, I kicked open the door and entered immediately.
Boom!
“Ahhh! Rudion, please stop pulling me like that!”
But in the process of running forward, I ended up pulling Seria into my arms again.
Seria turned her head away from me in a panic, looking like a cat startled by a bad smell.
Wait a second. Do I smell?
Seeing Seria’s reaction, I thought it was possible.
“I didn’t mean to do that. It’s just… sometimes it’s unavoidable when moving.
But do I really smell that bad? I don’t think I’ve sweated much.”
“That’s not the issue… Sigh, never mind.”
In this situation, Seria would probably understand.
Right now, what’s more important than that is the safety of Alkine.
I looked around the room I had entered.
It was a very spacious area, but there was nothing inside.
There were just a few pillars supporting the building.
And in the middle of this empty room, a huge birdcage stood alone.
“Alkine is in that birdcage, right?”
“That’s right.”
Alkine was looking at us from inside the cage, but her face seemed to have become quite gaunt.
Well, she had been tired and had fallen asleep, and on top of that, she had been kidnapped.
If she was still okay, that would be more strange.
Since she hadn’t tried to escape, I thought maybe her powers had been sealed or something like that.
I know she’s not okay, but it’s polite to ask anyway, right?
“Alkine! Are you alright?”
At my question, Alkine nodded slightly.
Phew. Thank goodness. She looks a little tired, but she seems fine.
‘Then…’
I casually shifted my gaze to a man I had been ignoring.
Diggers Jibchack. That crazy bastard. How did he even think of kidnapping someone after becoming a demon?
‘His way of thinking is completely different from ours.’
It was an absurd move, almost like that famous meme.
No matter how you look at it, there are things you can do and things you can’t.
He seemed pathetic, thinking he couldn’t kidnap her by normal means, so he became a demon.
And yet, he still thought I was the cause of all his problems, as he had been glaring at me intensely for a while now.
His gaze was so murderous that if I had been in front of him, I felt like he would have stabbed me right then.
That’s when I set Seria down and walked toward Diggers.
Behind me, Seria’s magic circle flared up brilliantly.
‘Really, it’s reassuring to have such strong backup.’
With a thought of gratitude, I drew my sword from my waist… and delivered a sharp remark.
“Alkine doesn’t like you. Give it up.”
That was the one thing I could say to really get under Diggers’s skin.
The effect was immediate. Diggers opened his mouth as if to say something but then charged straight at me.
Normally, he would have told me everything—what had happened, why he liked Alkine, and how he had become a demon.
“If it wasn’t for you!! The president wouldn’t have gone weird, and I wouldn’t be like this!”
But maybe it was because I had scratched him hard.
He couldn’t control his emotions and kept spouting nothing but primal rage-filled words.
It was perfect. I didn’t want to understand the backstory of these assholes anyway.
I dodged Diggers’s attacks as he kept charging at me, again and again.
The sword I always used was now imbued with the dark energy of the demons, and his bare hands swung around, full of black aura.
Whatever it was, I wasn’t concerned as long as I could dodge it.
Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do unless I could parry a pattern.
“You’re absolutely wrong, right? The president never liked you!”
So, I decided to just talk back a bit, maybe to mess with him mentally.
It seemed like that had quite an effect, as Diggers’s already red face turned even more flushed with anger.
Wow, at this point, he doesn’t even look like a demon, he looks like a goblin instead.
His movements were extremely fast, but maybe because his emotions were getting the better of him, his attacks weren’t sharp enough, so dodging wasn’t difficult.
The hardest part was just listening to his pointless insults.
“You arrogant trash…! I’ll tear you apart and kill you!! And then I’ll make the president mine!!”
Hey, you crazy bastard. Killing me won’t make the president yours.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to say that.
At just that moment, he made an attack I could actually parry.
Clang!
I immediately parried.
Diggers’s attack, full of rage, was effortlessly bounced back.
Maybe because his stance was unstable, he was sent flying backward.
He crashed into the birdcage that had been sitting still!
As he collided with it, something must have triggered it, as the door to the birdcage opened.
I didn’t know exactly what happened, but Alkine, who wouldn’t just stand idly by in this situation, immediately rushed out of the cage.
Diggers reached out his hand to try and grab her.
But his hand never reached Alkine.
It was because Seria, who had been watching from behind, shot a spell that knocked his hand away.
“…You’re tough. I was going to cut it off.”
Seria, casually saying something menacing while bringing Alkine to her side, had just rescued her.
Seeing that Alkine had escaped, Diggers seemed to give up.
He just sat down in front of the cage, staring blankly at us… oh, he’s crying.
“Rudion, that person is crying?”
“He’s not a person. He’s a demon.”
“Oh, right. Wow… even demons cry…”
It’s kind of surprising that demons cry.
I wanted to tease him a bit more, but I decided to check on Alkine’s condition first.
She had looked weak while in the cage, but now that she was outside, she seemed to have recovered quite a bit.
She immediately created a Mana Sword, confirming that her powers had indeed been sealed inside the cage.
Having regained her strength, she carefully looked up at me and lightly thanked me.
“Even though it’s late, I almost caused a huge disaster. Thank you… thank you so much.”
“…Huh?”
“No, I mean… Thanks! Thanks, I said!”
She seemed to have been very tense. Her usual concept of being calm had slipped away without her realizing it.
It was understandable. She’d been suddenly kidnapped and had her powers sealed, so she couldn’t do anything.
When Seria saw this, her eyes momentarily lost their brightness but quickly returned… maybe because it happened so fast, no one noticed.