Revenge (6)

There were many reasons why soldiers on the front lines suffered at the hands of their mind-controlled allies, but they mostly boiled it down to two major difficulties.

One was the inability to distinguish between friend and foe among those around them.

Anyone could be mind-controlled, so there was no telling when a bullet might come flying from behind their backs. Naturally, their gazes kept turning backward, only to be struck down from the front in the end.

However, this was not a major issue unless it was a chaotic melee situation with allies and enemies intermingled.

“William, why aren’t you pulling the trigger!”

“But, but.”

“That’s not Benjamin you knew! Shoot, shoot him down. We don’t have the means to restrain him until the mind control wears off!”

“Ugh, ughh, aaahh……”

The real agony came secondly, when there were personal ties involved.

The mind-controlled ally was undoubtedly an enemy. This was certain.

Yet that sliver of hope that their consciousness might return was enough to cause the finger that had pulled the trigger hundreds, thousands of times to hesitate.

Some muttered futile apologies as they killed, while others failed to make the decision until it was too late, meeting senseless deaths.

Only now could I fathom the anguish of having to make such a life-or-death choice.

A bullet travels faster than the mental imagery required to wield magic and channel spells.

No matter how skilled Sif was in practical magic, it was difficult to keep up with the speed of a finger pull.

But.

-Thump!-

“Uahh…?”

Sensing the situation, I swiftly swept Sif’s legs as she was about to unleash her magic.

Staggering and about to fall, she instinctively reached out to regain her balance, naturally canceling her spell.

And having bought myself this time.

-Zzzt-

“Hold on.”

“Hold on, what?”

Having experienced this with Freugne before, I knew exactly what to do now.

With a snap of my fingers, electricity crackled outward in sync. Since I had ruled out the solution of swift iron supplementation, delicate control was necessary.

“Just lie down for a bit.”

If rendered unconscious, I had heard, one could no longer wrest control of the body.

But Sif was a formidable mage in her own right, with inherent resistance to other magic.

So as I was about to raise the output to the borderline level where an ordinary person’s life, not just consciousness, would hang in the balance.

“Ugh, ack.”

“…Huh?”

My head suddenly spun, and my vision blurred.

Though I had never experienced it before, Freugne’s prior explanation made me fully aware that this was a precursor to what was about to happen.

‘Must I really do this?’

For a moment, I had second thoughts, but if I lost my grip on sanity here, it would be the end.

I sent a slight current coursing through my body.

My muscles spasmed and convulsed, twisting my frame, but my mind soon cleared again.

Seizing the momentary lapse in her magic, I put some distance between us as the struggling Sif questioned:

“Isn’t this going too far, Edan?”

“You’re not really Sif anyway, so watch your tongue.”

“I see. Then I won’t bother with formalities either.”

Her expression changed completely, an unfamiliar tone spilling from her lips.

The sight of her clumsily imitating a human was slightly chilling, like an unsettling doll.

The Demon Sovereign, or whoever had possessed Sif’s body, had not even made direct contact.

Yet to wield such profound mental domination from a distance – the balance of power was simply absurd.

However, such words from the defeated were mere empty excuses.

“Shall we continue fighting?”

“We shall.”

“It’s meaningless. To win, you’ll have to kill this child in the end.”

Flames flickered in the air.

“But if you had the resolve to do so, you would have used your gun from the start, wouldn’t you?”

“……”

He was right.

I had ambushed them precisely to avoid this scenario.

Inside the factory, where the dust had resettled, the body I had thought was the Demon was nowhere to be seen.

‘Was it an illusion?’

Or had he been concealing his physical abilities?

Was that look of shock an act, and had the Demon Sovereign known the situation would unfold this way?

For now, I set aside such fruitless musings.

And one thought naturally arose regarding Sif’s current state.

‘And Freugne?’

-Crackle!-

The answer soon followed.

An electric current I had not generated lashed out beside where I stood.

---

Edan called out that name.

“…Freugne.”

“Yes.”

“No, you’re not.”

The stiff, puppet-like movements, strange gaze, and slightly diminished magical power.

But more fundamentally than all those elements, it was the emotion imbued in her voice that felt out of place.

Edan had never quite grasped what it meant for a song to be imbued with emotion, but he immediately understood that this arid, dry tone was precisely it.

And he also realized what kind of feelings Freugne had been conveying to him all this time.

-Zzzzt!-

He casually deflected her spell with a flick of his wrist.

It was a more amateurish display of magic than he knew her for. Freugne would never have made such a mistake, and the very fact that she had attacked was more damaging.

Sif’s movements were also slower than he remembered, so he could have easily dodged her spells if he wished.

In their current state, while he might have to forgo subduing them both, he could immediately flee from their front.

‘I need a moment to think.’

The one who had once playfully exchanged banter with Freugne swiftly acted.

-Boom!-

“What, where are you going?”

“First, get rid of that half-assed attempt at imitating my speech.”

Edan concealed himself beyond the piles of debris strewn about the factory.

His frenzied flight had momentarily separated him from Sif and Freugne, at least for now.

And even amid his frantic dashing, he could arrive at one conclusion:

‘Possession is troublesome, but not a perfect ability.’

Just as there were gaps in Freugne’s future sight, could any ability in this world truly be perfect?

If so, the Demon Sovereign would have achieved total victory in the war long ago and be holding a ceremony of joy in Londinium by now.

No, there was no need to go that far – could he not have simply mind-controlled Edan as he had done to Sif?

This was no cookie collection that required consent; he could have just cast the spell, so there must have been a reason for acting in such a roundabout way.

And his deduction was correct.

‘This has become a bit troublesome.’

As he sent Sif and Freugne on their way, following their footsteps, the Demon Sovereign thought to himself.

Implanting simple suggestions, even to thousands or millions, was possible.

Instilling the keywords of joy and complacency into the minds of Londinium’s citizens, whose metropolitan population alone exceeded a million, was no difficult feat.

But to completely dominate an individual’s mind and manipulate their movements was an entirely different matter.

It would have been better to simply crush their existing consciousness and take over their body outright, but the magic he was currently using was closer to temporarily borrowing the body through mind control.

To make an analogy, the former was akin to donning a hollowed mask and moving freely, while the latter felt more like intricately manipulating a marionette.

And even top pro gamers would struggle to control two characters simultaneously.

Let alone two, how could one operate three or more without using their feet? So even during the war, he had only borrowed a single Demon body and used it to control humans from there.

Naturally, fully possessing a body seemed far superior, but such magic required considerable preparation time and was quite challenging even by his standards.

‘If I had a little more time.’

Then he could have simply taken over Freugne’s body directly.

But Edan and Sif had arrived slightly sooner than anticipated.

Lost in thought for a moment, he arrived at the spot where the trail ended.

“There you are.”

“…Yeah.”

He did not bother with trite remarks about sparing their lives in exchange for surrender. One of the two had to die here, no matter what.

Nor did he offer a deal to spare Freugne’s life if the other sacrificed themselves. Edan would never believe him if he had a brain.

But there was still a way to persuade him through other means.

“Why, having second thoughts?”

“……”

“Then how about this.”

The Demon Sovereign, or rather the one temporarily wearing Sif’s flesh, spoke.

“By now, you must realize that this aimless fleeing will resolve nothing.”

“……”

“So let me tell you a new fact.”

He had chosen to possess Sif over Edan for this very moment.

The blank-eyed Freugne walked over and continued:

“I intend to use this girl as my new vessel. If you try to kill her, regrettably, after causing this commotion, I will have to find another human, which would be a waste of my time and effort.”

“So allow me to give a father the chance to spare his daughter’s body harm.”

For he believed Edan would be unable to refuse this proposal.

“I shall give you a moment to consider. But do not dally too long in making your decision.”

In truth, whether it worked or not mattered little.

Eventually, through sheer one-sided force, Edan would break, and even if he chose to kill Freugne, taking her body as a contingency would suffice.

Edan briefly closed his eyes, deep in thought, before rising to his feet.