Mission:014 Blood of the Demon

Mission:01-4 Demon Blood

After escaping the laboratory, Nero did not dare pause for even a moment. She cut straight across the small square in the castle's rear courtyard, vaulted over the railing, and dropped down into the pool below the steps.

"Cough, cough!"

Then she spat two more mouthfuls of red liquid, thin threads of blood slowly dissolving into the pool.

Nero lay sprawled in the middle of the pool, panting twice before lifting her head to look at the skybridge facing the waterfall. Her heart gave a violent jolt.

Nero knew this skybridge. It was a hidden passage concealed behind the waterfall, connecting to the forest on the far side of the bay. When no one was passing through, it should only have been half there.

Now the waterfall had been cut off by the sluice gate, and the two sides of the skybridge were joined together. The mechanism had clearly been activated, which naturally meant someone from inside the Order was coming. Worse still, Nero's heart was sending out a signal: a demon was approaching.

This was the power the original Nero had possessed. As the injured area changed, its position had shifted as well.

The one coming from the other side—could it be someone like Agnus, a human who had undergone the Order's "Ascension Ritual" and already turned into a demon?

What a disaster on top of disaster. Although Nero's wounds had already healed after absorbing Yamato, she was still extremely weak and had no weapon to use. There was no way she could defeat an enemy like that.

"Damn it. If only I could at least use Yamato..."

Nero stood up. Her bloodstained habit and soft blond hair had both soaked up water and become especially heavy. She paid them no mind and stepped out of the pool dripping wet.

A cold wind blew past, and only then did Nero abruptly remember that the Order's castle stood atop a snowy mountain. She could not help shivering.

"Tap, tap, tap."

The sound of heels striking the ground drew steadily closer. Nero narrowed her eyes and made out the woman walking unhurriedly with a catlike stride beneath the moonlight.

The woman had white hair and dark skin, and wore a white dress adorned with peacock feathers. Large swathes of her skin were exposed to Snow Mountain's cold wind; one glance was enough to tell she was no ordinary human.

But after recognizing the newcomer, Nero instead felt relieved. She dodged the sword wing that dropped from overhead, kicked it into the pool without looking back, and shouted, "Help!"

The woman barely moved, yet two throwing knives suddenly sliced past Nero's ears, cutting off a few strands of blond hair and pinning two Sword Wing Demons to the wall tiles.

Immediately after, the woman vanished from where she stood like an illusion and appeared above Nero's head. In her hands were the throwing knives she had somehow retrieved, and she coiled around the incoming Silver Knight like a snake. Her hands moved with agile grace, and in the blink of an eye, she had dismantled the hollow armor into six pieces.

Nero picked up the spear that had fallen to the ground and swung it, skewering two Sword Wings that were diving toward her. Then she threw it, pinning the last one to the wall along with the earlier ones, before bending over and panting a couple more times.

The woman spread her arms and landed gracefully like a gymnast, the tall heels of her shoes tapping out a light "click" against the ground.

"Thank you," Nero said, lifting her head to thank her.

"Gloria," the woman introduced herself. She twirled the two throwing knives twice on her fingertips, then slid them along her thighs and tucked them into her long boots, swaying her hips as she approached Nero.

She reached out, the fingers beneath her white leather glove sliding from Nero's jaw all the way to her earlobe, lifting a lock of blond hair.

Nero tensed as the other woman's face drew closer. Her hands unconsciously cupped before her chest, her whole body taut. "W-wait..."

"I'm very sorry for hurting your hair." The woman calling herself Gloria instantly drew back again. "Although I'm new here and haven't met you before, you should be the Nero Credo mentioned, right?"

"Y-es."

Nero's voice started a little high, but she quickly forced it down. She knew that the Gloria before her was actually a false identity someone had created in order to infiltrate the Order and destroy its conspiracy. She was one of the very few people Nero could trust at this moment.

"Now that's strange." Gloria propped her chin on one hand and blinked. "I heard Credo's Sworn Sister suffered a fatal injury and was being rescued by Agnus—so why are you here, being chased around by these little 'toys'?"

"Agnus is a bad guy!"

Nero answered instinctively, then came back to herself and began thinking about how to pass her information to the other woman without making it sound abrupt.

"He said he wanted to use my blood to awaken... the 'Savior'..."

Gloria raised an eyebrow. "Mm?"

Nero made herself calm down and quickly reviewed what she was going to say. There really were no problems or holes in it. "I didn't agree, and then he turned into a demon! He wanted to kill me, and he also said..."

"Ah... all right, all right." Gloria cut Nero off, folding her arms as her attitude changed in an instant. "I understand the situation. But what I asked just now was something else.

"Come on, answer me honestly. How did you get out? And this—"

She pushed aside Nero's hands protecting her chest and touched the demonized Flesh and Blood over Nero's heart. "What is this?"

Nero stiffened again and stammered, "I-I was already like this when I woke up."

Gloria closed her eyes, seeming to sense something. Nero's breathing grew rapid from nerves. She lightly bit her lip, her face pale.

"Could it actually be the real thing?"

Gloria opened her eyes with a frown and withdrew her hand. She looked the taut, dripping Nero up and down, then suddenly said, "It must be cold wearing soaked clothes, right?"

"Huh?" Nero came back to herself and only then realized she had been trembling faintly the entire time. "I guess... a little."

"Here."

Gloria pulled a long crimson dress with a shawl from who knew where and tossed it to Nero.

Nero caught the clothes blankly and looked at Gloria. "Ah... um, thanks?"

Gloria did not answer. She simply stood in front of Nero, staring straight at her. After a while, as though only belatedly realizing it, she said, "Oh~ Perhaps you'd like somewhere a little more private to change?"

Nero's cheeks twitched and slowly flushed red. "Isn't that obvious?!"

Even if Nero were still a man, she would not take her clothes off in broad daylight—though it was moonlight right now.

She tried to keep her voice as low as possible, but the end of the sentence still rose slightly with indignation.

"All right, that was thoughtless of me." Gloria shrugged and turned toward the skybridge. "Come on."

Nero clutched the clothes and followed behind Gloria like a lost fawn. The two of them crossed the skybridge and entered the cave hidden behind the waterfall.

"This should do. Come on, change into them and let me have a look."

Why did she need to look?

Nero stayed silent for a long while, and in the end, she still did not ask the question.

The wet, bloodstained, tattered habit was thrown onto the ground. Nero wrung out her hair and put on the long dress Gloria had given her.