Luke watched the old landscape of the village rot for a few seconds and asked the demon, "What do you intend to change by showing me this?"
For the half-wolf, that scene was one of the saddest scenes he had ever seen. A beautiful village, healthy people, fertile ground, all this was spoiled by a single demon.
"It is not obvious?" The shadow asked the half-wolf in a laughing tone. "I wish the end of those who held me in that seal, who put this weight on my back, I wish the end of the Melki Imperial Court, their descendants did this to me."
In the entire region within Sakonoth's domain, the only truly untouched part was exactly the top of the ridge they were on. The leaves on the single tree were still very green and swaying hard in the icy wind.
The half-wolf would normally think hard before making any decisions, but this time there was no reason. He rose from his seat, looked at the black silhouette and held out his right hand with a smile. For a single moment, that smile looked truly flattering, but as soon as Sakonoth went to shake his hand, Luke grinned evilly and used <Gluttony>.
The lines of the half-wolf's right palm were the epicenter of a vortex that engulfed everything around it. First Sakonoth was swallowed, then the wooden bench, then the entire summit was gone, and finally, the walls of the demon domain were swallowed up as well.
Drenched in sweat from the exertion and his mind unsteady, Luke opened his eyes as wide as he could, but his lids were still a little drooping. In front of him was a thin, small, feeble creature. This creature did not have a human appearance, nor was it animalistic, the elongated snout was parted in the middle, and where there would normally be whiskers there were, in fact, thin tentacles. In the socket holes, there were no eyeballs, indicating that the creature was blind. Its chest was the biggest thing, but it was no bigger than a foot, not to mention the ribcage that was fully etched into his black skin. It was a boring monster, but not scary at all thanks to its weak appearance.
Luke looked at the creature with contempt and asked, "You used every strength you had to establish dominance. Why didn't you use it correctly?"
"I-it would be us-seless to order you have of monsters to at-tack you. Y-you are feared b-by al-all of our race, L-luke Lange." Trembling with cold, Sakonoth replied. "Y-you ar-are the reason the Religion of Sa-sakan hates ha-half-beasts."
"So you preferred to trust me to be innocent and take your bluff? This was a brave thing, or rather, as the Bishop said earlier today: foolish."
"Yo-you are mu-much stronger than anyone has told me, mu-much stronger."
"It's been a long time since I last faced any demon ally who managed to escape, more than two years, actually." Luke countered.
Meredith reached Luke at this point and instead of hugging him tightly, acted like a true adventurer and aimed an arrow at the monster.
Hazor also approached and placed the sword blade flush with the demon's body on the ground.
"You're also... with strong allies... The First Servant won't like to hear that, that's what he feared the most..."
"He won't know about it, you'll die here."
The demon was silent for a few seconds. "... You can't, I will be reborn... when you kill me."
"Not if I say your real name, eh?" Luke opened the <Normal Inventory> and calmly took out the Obsidian Sword.
Again, the demon was silent, which was more than enough for Luke to hear the weak creature's heart race. "There is no way you would know my name, there are no human records of me, none of the Servants can be killed by an ordinary human, much less such a mediocre being would know our true names."
At the moment, Luke Lange didn't know exactly how to respond. He didn't know exactly how the Scales discovered the Tenth Servant's name, so finding a suitable answer wouldn't be easy, but he found an answer faster than expected. Luke looked at the two companions beside him, and saw that neither of them doubted that he really knew the demon name, neither of them even questioned him when he said it, and that was the greatest proof of confidence he could get.
"As you know, I'm not a normal human, I'm the reason devotees of the Sakan Religion hate half-beasts, and look now, I'm about to kill their God." Luke said and drove the obsidian sword into the creature's head before it could say anything else. "Farewell, Sakonoth."
From the blade of the sword, the Tenth Servant's body began to disintegrate and turn to ash that scattered on the ground. Luke forcefully pulled the sword from his body and looked at it for a few seconds in silence, then he turned to Commander Hazor and said,
"You wanted to know where that cursed item was, huh? Sorry, I completely forgot about that until a second ago."
Hazor furrowed his brows, confused by this sudden statement, as he too had already forgotten. Then he laughed a little, which made Luke confused.
Meredith quickly started laughing too, both for the same reason Luke was laughing and for the strange expression he was wearing.
"What? What are you laughing at?" He still didn't understand.
"N-it's nothing!" Meredith stated, tried to regain her serious posture, but the moment she looked back at Luke, she couldn't take it anymore and started laughing again.
"Luke, I didn't even remember we came here to get an item, I understand you." Hazor managed to contain the urge to laugh more easily than Meredith. "However, things are not over yet, look..." He pointed at Sakonoth's corpse.
In the middle of a small pile of ash, there was the core of a demon, a sphere a little larger than normal and completely black. It had been a long time since the half-wolf had seen one of this type up close.
This content is taken from fr(e)ewebn(o)vel.𝓬𝓸𝓶