Demon Sword Master of the Holy Sword Academy - Volume 8 - Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

VOID GODDESS

“Leo…Leonis…”

He heard a voice. A nostalgic one, the one he always yearned for—her voice.

“—came…for me…Leonis…”

“Rose…lia…?”

He couldn’t see anything. Leonis reached out, his hands groping through the infinite darkness. His fingers caught nothing, however.

“I’m right here. Always, always by your side… That’s why, Leonis… Hurry…and find me…”

Leonis awoke.

“Nng…”

He sat up, rubbing his eyelids. His hair was messy and stood on end. No matter how much Leonis tried to stave it off with sheer willpower, his ten-year-old body required sleep. And it seemed he’d grown weary after eating.

It’s been a while since I dreamed of her. Leonis shook his head slowly and got up.

Dawn had yet to break. The magical campfire was still burning. Leonis turned around, feeling a gaze on him. Rivaiz was squatting down next to him, peering closely.

“Wh-what are you doing?!” he exclaimed in surprise.

“Seeing the Undead King slumber so innocently is a rare sight. What’s more, you were mumbling in your sleep.”

“…?!”

“You were cute, Leo. See?” Veira said, smiling impishly from the other side of the campfire. She held up Leonis’s terminal, which displayed a photo of him sleeping.

“G-give that back!” Leonis flushed and snatched the device out of the Dragon Lord’s hand.

Veira giggled, got to her feet, and extinguished the magical fire. “We should set out before dawn,” she said.

“Right…” Leonis nodded bitterly and reached for the Staff of Sealed Sins, which he had leaned against a rock. No sooner had he done so, however…

Vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…!

…than the Staff of Sealed Sins let out a high-pitched sound, resonating with something.

“Wh-what?!” Leonis stared at the rod in surprise. He realized it wasn’t the staff, but the goddess’s Demon Sword, Dáinsleif, sheathed within. “What is this…?”

The sound of the resonance wasn’t dying down. And suddenly, Leonis heard a voice in his mind.

“You have come…my dear…child…

“You kept…your promise…”

“U-ugh…!”

“Ah, Leo, what’s wrong?!”

“What’s happened?”

Veira and Rivaiz looked confused.

“Roselia…”

“Huh…?”

“I heard…Roselia’s voice…” Leonis grabbed the Staff of Sealed Sins and looked intuitively in the direction of the voice—a mountain range stretching out at the end of the wasteland. “It’s coming from that direction.”

“What do you mean, you heard the goddess’s voice?” Veira pressed while flying through the darkness.

“…I don’t know. However, the Demon Sword is definitely resonating with her,” Leonis answered from atop the skull dragon.

Roselia hadn’t spoken to him since reaching out at the camp, yet the Staff of Sealed Sins still hummed in his grip. Dáinsleif reacted once before, in the ruined city, when he saw the Holy Woman of the Six Heroes, Tearis Resurrectia. The Holy Woman hadn’t been Roselia’s true reincarnation but had harbored some aspect of the goddess.

So why did the Demon Sword respond now, in this other world?

The three Dark Lords crossed the swordlike spires of the mountain range and discovered that a vast forest lay beyond.

“So this world has forests, too,” Leonis remarked.

“Hmm, but this place…,” Rivaiz whispered.

“Yes,” Leonis replied. “It’s dead.”

The woods beneath them were polluted with Void miasma, and there were no signs of life. However, the trees seemed to writhe, as though the forest had become a Void itself…

“Leo, look at that!” Veira called out. “There are ruins down there!”

Leonis used a Farsight spell to follow Veira’s gaze. Between the dead timbers and the deathly fog was a crumbling, stonework fortress. Trees coiled around it, digging into the remains.

Leonis could scarcely believe his eyes. “That’s… But wait, that can’t be true!” he cried. He recognized this decrepit structure.

“What’s wrong, Undead King?” Rivaiz asked him.

“That’s the Lord of the Beasts’…Gazoth Hell Beast’s Ironblood Castle!”

“What?!”

In the depths of boundless darkness, where the flow of time stood still, the Void King hailed as a hero in ancient times awakened from sleep.

His rousing was an unexpected one. The injuries he’d sustained from the last battle had yet to heal fully, and he was meant to slumber for a while longer.

However, he heard her voice.

The voice of his nemesis, the goddess.

“Hrohhh, hrohh, hrohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

The Void King’s howl tore through the darkness.

Gazoth Hell Beast, the Lord of Beasts. He was the destructive master of the Dark Lords’ Armies’ third division, the Demon Beast Corps, and fought personally on the front lines. Gazoth’s stronghold was built in a key location for the conquest of the human kingdom and was the Dark Lords’ Armies’ greatest fortification.

Yet even it was lost during the war’s final days, thanks to a coordinated attack by the Six Heroes. The Lord of Beasts himself dueled the Swordmaster, and although he perished, his demise befitted a Dark Lord.

Standing before the remains of the now-ruined Ironblood Castle, Leonis gasped.

“…There’s no mistaking it. This is the Lord of Beasts’ fortress.”

The moss-covered walls had collapsed and were now half submerged into the ground. Still, Leonis was certain this was Ironblood Castle, for he’d visited it many times as an ally.

“So that’s what it looked like,” Veira, who had returned to her humanoid form, said. “Gazoth’s castle, huh?” She seemed to be confused by this sight.

Admittedly, Leonis wasn’t faring much better. “What’s going on? Isn’t this supposed to be a different world?!”

Why were ruins from a thousand years ago, from Leonis’s era, in a place like this?

Maybe we didn’t traverse dimensions, but were simply thrown to some other part of our own world?

It was possible, but Leonis found that unlikely. The blood-colored sky and desolate land covered in Void miasma felt too different from home.

Rivaiz cocked her head. “Hmm, this is incomprehensible…”

“Let’s just go inside for the time being,” Veira decided, taking a light step and then shattering the crumbled walls with a loud kick.

Unlike the exterior facade, the castle’s interior had maintained much of its original form. The kingdom’s allied forces had stormed these halls and likely sought to use the structure as their frontline base rather than destroy it. Humans might have used it for centuries after it was seized. Parts of the stone showed signs of repair.

A few spots on the walls still emit mana, too, Leonis noticed. Maybe that was why the degradation inside wasn’t as severe.

“Is this where the Lord of Beasts died?” Rivaiz asked.

“No, after Ironblood Castle fell, Gazoth Hell Beast challenged the Swordmaster to a duel on the Blood Fang Plains, where they supposedly perished.”

“I see. If their remains were here, I would have liked to take them with us.”

“If there were any bones around, I’d claim them for my own,” Leonis insisted. “I’d love nothing more than to have the Lord of the Beasts’ skeleton for my collection.”

He considered going to the Blood Fang Plains for them, but now wasn’t the time for it. The Staff of Sealed Sins was still resonating in his hand. It felt like the deeper they advanced into the castle, the stronger the reaction.

Is it Roselia?

Leonis produced a flame at the tip of his rod, illuminating the passage leading under the castle.

Why was the Demon Sword reacting to something that resided in another dimension? And how had Ironblood Castle come to rest here?

I have to catch Azra-Ael and get answers out of him.

After descending deep underground, the three Dark Lords came to a giant gate. It was closed shut and sealed firmly with sorcery for good measure. Leonis held up the Staff of Sealed Sins against the gate, realizing that the resonance grew more intense when he did.

He ran his fingers over the walls, analyzing the sorcery used there.

“Sealing magic… And it’s not the work of the Lord of Beasts from what I can tell,” Leonis remarked.

The spell possessed multiple layers, and as Leonis drew a symbol to undo it…

“This is taking too long. Hyah! Dragon Lord Slash!” Veira suddenly kicked the door.

Bwoosh!

The gigantic barricade was blown away and shattered with a thundering noise. A cloud of dust blew into the air, obfuscating the way forward.

“…That’s barbaric, Veira,” Leonis chided her.

“Dragons hate dawdling.” Veira shrugged.

“On this matter, we are in agreement,” Rivaiz said.

The three Dark Lords looked past the door.

“…?!”

The cloud of dust cleared, revealing a pitch-black crystal pyramid that reflected no light.

“…A Goddess Temple?!”

It wasn’t anywhere near as big as the one in Necrozoa’s underground temple. It was about as large as a casket. A Goddess Temple was a device the Dark Lords’ Armies used to receive the goddess’s prophecies.

“Now, this is curious…,” Rivaiz whispered. “What is a Goddess Temple doing here?”

“I’m not sure…,” Leonis replied.

There was a Goddess Temple in every Dark Lords’ Armies base, and that included Ironblood Castle, of course. However, the human alliance army destroyed all the ones they came across as they claimed locations during the war. All the temples were annihilated save the one hidden in Necrozoa.

There shouldn’t have been one here.

“Maybe the Devil of the Underworld created this altar,” Rivaiz suggested.

Leonis nodded. “…Yes. That’s possible.”

Azra-Ael was devoted to Roselia, so it wouldn’t have been too strange to learn they’d built a new one.

“But I still have to wonder what Ironblood Castle is doing here.”

“Indeed.”

Leonis took a step forward and touched the surface of the black crystal. The Demon Sword contained inside the Staff of Sealed Sins reacted violently. In response, the black crystal released a flash, followed by…

<—nd…my beloved…child…>

…a voice.

“What…?”

Leonis wasn’t the only one who’d heard it, either. Rivaiz and Veira acknowledged static-laden words echoing from every direction. The black crystal flickered again.

<—found you…beloved child…successor to…Demon Sword…>

The barely intelligible voice echoed through the chamber. The Demon Sword in Leonis’s hands hummed in concert.

<Why…? I thought you had…disappeared…from this world…>

“I…disappeared?” Leonis whispered, dumbfounded. “What are you saying? Who are you?!” His shout drowned out the strange, garbled speaker.

It couldn’t possibly be her. The goddess had perished long ago, to be reincarnated into a human body a thousand years later. Yet against all logic, Leonis believed this voice to be hers.

When Zemein activated the Goddess Temple in Necrozoa, Dáinsleif hadn’t responded like this. Therefore, this speaker had to be someone else who’d assumed the goddess’s identity.

Surely, that was it, yet Leonis knew on instinct that this was no pretender. It was definitely her…

<…I’ve always looked for you…>

This voice from the black crystal…

<…Always sought you out…>

<Always, always, always, alwaysalwaysalways…>

…kept repeating the word with maddened, yearning desire.

“Roselia…is it…really you?” Leonis whispered, voice tense.

He reached out for the crystal like she was truly there.

<…My beloved child, successor to the Demon Sword…I’ve always…waited for…you… Please…you must…find me…>

“Roselia! I’m here! I’m right here!” Leonis couldn’t help but shout. He beat his hand against the pyramid repeatedly. “Roselia!”

Veira grabbed his arm. “Leo! Something’s wrong!”

“What…?” The Dragon Lord’s alarmed expression helped Leonis calm down.

<I…am…■to…■■■■■■■■…■■■…>

The goddess’s voice changed suddenly. Black mist bled from the crystal, surrounding Leonis’s hands.

“What?!” He pulled away, assailed by a terrible sensation, like his soul was beginning to fester.

Void miasma…?

The vapor coiled around his arms, climbing up to his neck slowly.

<…My dear…child…■■■■ Star of…Nothingness…■■■■…>

“Ro…selia…!” Leonis moaned.

“Hahhhhhhhhhh!” Veira cried, slamming her fist against the Goddess Temple.

A crack ran through its obsidian surface, and it shattered with a loud, clear sound.

“Veira, what did you do?!” Leonis shouted, not immediately aware of how loud he’d spoken.

The Dragon Lord didn’t pay it much mind, however, staring at her fellow Dark Lord. “Leo, your hand…!” She stared at Leonis’s arm.

“What…is this?!”

The places where the miasma had touched Leonis’s right hand were inflamed as though from a burn, and a strange pattern formed on his arm. A sharp, burning pain ran through his skin.

“It looks like a hex,” Rivaiz stated while examining the marking.

“A hex…?”

Rivaiz frowned, observing it closely. “Yes. I’ve never seen such a pattern before, though…”

The crushed remains of the Goddess Temple were beginning to lose their glow.

“Let’s get out of here for the time being,” Veira said. “I can’t say I like the air of this place.”

“I am in agreement,” Rivaiz added. She picked up a black fragment. “For now, I’ll take this back with us.”

“Ugh, wait, something’s…coming!” Leonis called. He spoke entirely out of intuition. Every cell in his body shrieked in alarm.

This feeling… No, it can’t be… Is it really him?!

The Dragon Lord and Lord of the Seas noticed the presence at the same time.

“Wh-what?!”

“This is…?”

They looked up to the ceiling. And the moment they did…

Crrrraaaaaaash!

…Ironblood Castle was utterly erased.