Shadow Dragon: The Fallen Angel Is My Teacher

I was about to leave and bring her back when the large Exorcist stepped forward.

"What are you trying to do here? Why suddenly care about a Cursed Spirit?" he asked, suspicious.

I stopped and stared at him.

My expression made it clear I thought he was an idiot.

"Are you stupid?" I asked. "Why wouldn't I try to save her? So what if she's a Cursed Spirit? She never tried to harm me.

"She even helped me in the inn saying she would ask the guards to keep an eye out for fights.

"The ghouls tried to kill me, so I want to kill them. That's it. Just because they're both Cursed Spirits doesn't mean I treat them the same."

The large Exorcist stiffened.

Seeing his reaction, I knew he thought he had misunderstood me.

Until now, he had been thinking I was treating the crewmates kindly only because they could be used to fight for me.

He now saw me not as a xenophobic hater of Cursed Spirits, but someone who judged each one like a normal person—enemy or friend, based on actions.

He was completely wrong.

I hated every Cursed Spirit.

Even the ones that could think.

But I knew how to control my emotions and act depending on the situation.

The Exorcist lowered his head.

"I apologize. I had the wrong impression of you."

I snorted. "Good. Then I'm leaving."

He stepped forward again. "I will come too. The domain is filled with ghouls. They may attack you. You don't seem strong, so going alone is dangerous."

I waved my hand. "I'm not a kid. I don't need protection."

He opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off.

"Don't put your priorities in the wrong place. You have the narrative ability needed to find the escape condition of this domain. So stay with Saint Maverick and work with him. Find the escape route."

I tapped my earpiece.

"I'll bring back Olivia."

"Olivia..?" The large Exorcist blinked, surprised. "You know her name? I thought humans didn't care enough to—"

"Stop wasting time on useless talks. Let's just divide responsibilities, I'll handle bringing her back. You handle the escape condition."

The crewmates stomped forward instantly.

"We'll come with ye, Officer!. Aye, let us swing our blades for ye once more!"

"Let us go, Officer! The forest be in fron' of us brave lads!"

I smiled, but still snorted. "You lot need to stay here and heal. If you don't recover, you'll be useless when the next fight starts."

They groaned dramatically, but I ignored them.

Without waiting for any more arguments, I nodded at Dante.

He lifted me easily and set me on his shoulder.

Then he sprinted into the forest.

There was a reason I couldn't let anyone come with me.

As for the escape condition, I was sure the Exorcists and Saint Maverick could figure it out if they put their heads together.

The Exorcists had the narrative abilities and Judy must've collected clues needed for logical deduction.

If they got stuck, I would give them hints.

The trees blurred past us.

We reached the market quickly.

It was still full of those shadowy figures drifting around the festive stalls.

I tapped Dante's head.

He stopped and lowered me gently to the ground.

"Do not fight or cause any commotion here. If the shadowy figures turn toward us, our bodies will freeze," I said.

Dante nodded with a serious look.

I began searching through the stalls and narrow streets.

"Locating target. Directive: turn right. Move twenty-three meters forward. Inn girl is stationary." Judy's voice came through the earpiece, monotone and mechanical.

I followed her instructions.

And soon enough, I found the inn girl near a viewing plaza.

She stood with one hand resting on the railing and a small tray of takoyaki in her other hand.

She was eating it calmly while staring at the sky as if this place wasn't a death trap.

She turned as I walked toward her.

"Oh, sire, ye're here too? I'm sorry 'bout earlier. I warned the guards to hurry if a fight broke in the Drinkin' Whale, but seems the scoundrel who trapped us here slipped out 'fore the guards arrived. If they'd gotten there sooner, they'd have saved us all."

I nodded. "It's fine. I'm not blaming you."

Then I asked, "Why are you still here? Why didn't you try to regroup with the others?"

She smiled faintly. "I were watchin' the fireworks. They're real pretty, ain't they?"

I blinked. "Fireworks?"

She nodded and pointed up.

"Aye. Look above, sire. That fellow up there's like a festival god. Been shootin' off big fireworks since earlier. Oh—there he goes again. Another one."

She pointed toward the distant mountains.

I looked.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then something fell from the sky like a giant, invisible hammer.

It hit the mountain.

The entire mountaintop collapsed in an instant, crushed into a deep hole.

The pit was so dark its bottom couldn't be seen.

A second later, the land shook as if struck by an earthquake.

The shockwave rolled across the ground and hit us.

Attacks like these had been going on since the beginning.

My group just hadn't felt them since they landed far from out location.

"See? Quite the show, eh? Big, loud, and bright." The inn girl giggled lightly.

I slowly raised my head and looked back at the sky.

And my mind throbbed with a sudden headache.

The sky didn't look like a sky.

It looked solid.

There were hundreds of giant hammers floating in it, as if carved out of the sky itself.

Some were the size of matchsticks. Some were as big as islands.

They didn't look real.

They didn't move like real objects.

They were pieces of the sky shaped into weapons, something so wrong that even glancing at them made my head ache.

Yuna appeared at my side, staring upward.

"Lord of Shadows… that seems like a God. No—it's a Cursed Spirit that carries a narrative of it being a God."

I nodded slowly.

This was the reason I wasn't trying to exorcise the Rank 4 Cursed Spirit Blackout Priest.

The moment I made even a slight progress, the Cursed Spirit God in the sky would smash me with one of those sky-hammers.

One hammer could flatten a mountain.

No human could survive anything of that level.

I turned back to the inn girl.

"How many fireworks have gone off at once since you've been here?"

She licked takoyaki sauce off her finger. "Hmm… seems random. Sometimes only one, sometimes eight or nine go at once."

I nodded. That matched the information I knew.

Number of hammers that could fall at once were random.

"Did you notice anything else about the fireworks?" I asked.

She thought for a moment.

"Aye. Each time there be a five-minute gap. But the number that go off together changes. And they get bigger too. Every time, the next firework's larger than the last."

Exactly what I expected.

'Everything is just as I knew.'

'A larger hammer falls each time.'

'If we take too long to escape, a hammer big enough to crush the entire domain will drop.'

An attack like that would not kill the Blackout Priest.

But…

'It will kill every living being in the domain.'