Chapter 118

At Hayden’s question—whether it was all right to kill him now—everyone present gaped in shock.

It was a child speaking, and they all understood the meaning, so there was no need to take it that seriously, yet the chill in Hayden’s expression and voice—so uncannily like Caldeon’s—made them tense all the same.

Especially Panz, the one about to die, whose face drained of all color.

Feeling a pang of pity for him, Enria spoke gently.

“Hayden will use absolution right away, so please rest easy and close your eyes.”

She meant it as comfort, but once said, it amounted to telling him to die—just phrased politely.

Panz gave her a strained look, then nodded.

There was no avoiding the choice. Hesitation wouldn’t change anything, and since he would be revived immediately, he wanted to be free of this unbearable feeling as soon as possible.

At his nod, Hayden squirmed lightly, asking to be put down. Enria carefully set him on the floor, and Hayden toddled over to stand before Panz on his short legs.

For some reason, Windel instantly shifted into his white tiger form and followed closely behind Hayden.

Panz’s eyes widened when Hayden came up to him and held out a small hand.

“Take it. I’ll kill you.”

“…I don’t know everything about human language, but isn’t there a gentler way to say that?”

Facing death and hearing the word kill spoken so casually made Panz wilt.

“Oh.” Hayden nodded once.

“Okay. I’ll send you back.”

“Back where?”

“Hmm… then I’ll erase you?”

“That’s even worse! Hah… fine, just—just make me dissipate already.”

With a half-given-up sigh, Panz took Hayden’s hand.

In that instant, Hayden poured both holy power and black magic into Panz and said, “Okay. Goodbye.”

“…!”

The tone sounded as if he had no intention of reviving him. Panz’s face went stark white.

The thought that he might vanish completely struck him hard, and regret for everything he had done crashed down on him.

Fearing he would never see the light of the world again, he looked to Rahar and the other spirits and said, “I was wrong. To everyone—truly, I’m sorry.”

At his final, sincere apology, relief flickered across the faces watching him.

Panz shut his eyes tight and apologized once more.

“I’m sorry. All of you.”

“See you again,” Hayden said, letting his power flow as he finished erasing the black magic within Panz.

***

“Damn it!”

Pahomel slammed his fist on the desk in rage.

His fury boiled over at Caldeon and Enria, who had thwarted his plans yet again. Considering how many times they had interfered and the losses he had suffered, even tearing them apart wouldn’t have satisfied him.

“At this point, I should summon the evil god immediately.”

Before Caldeon and Enria began moving, he had gathered human souls with ease. Now that the two had become constant obstacles, Pahomel found them more intolerable than ever. Even if it was a little insufficient, he wanted to summon the evil god now and erase them first.

He spread the magic circle to break the evil god’s seal.

Unaware that Panz was being dissipated by Hayden, Pahomel poured an enormous number of souls—gathered from monsters and poison—into the circle and began chanting.

As he felt the black magic within him being rapidly drawn into the circle, Pahomel grabbed a human soul and swallowed it to maintain his power.

Regardless of the vast souls, the spell, or Pahomel’s will, the black magic continued to be sucked in, and the circle grew brighter and closer to completion.

Alarmed by how quickly his power was draining, Pahomel devoured human souls indiscriminately.

There weren’t enough souls to feed the circle, but worse—he felt he might lose all his black magic.

In the end, he swallowed every soul he had kept in reserve, and when that still wasn’t enough, he even pulled souls from the circle itself and consumed them to hold on.

After enduring like that for some time, the magic circle finally flared with blinding light—complete.

“Done!”

The moment hope sparkled in Pahomel’s eyes, the ground trembled and the circle split in two.

From the resulting gap, a black smoke, several times thicker and darker than black magic, escaped, writhing in a grotesque form.

Too vivid to be called smoke, it shifted chaotically—becoming a monster, then a screaming shape, then forms of agony and rage.

“Panz—!”

Only then did Pahomel realize the truth: the evil god had been unsealed in its raw state, without a vessel.

“This is bad!”

Seeing the malformed manifestation, Pahomel grasped his mistake. If this continued, the evil god he had freed might simply be sealed again.

Desperate, he made a decision—to use his own body as the vessel.

That mere resolve triggered an anomaly: the evil god swallowed Pahomel.

Freed as a soul without a body and wracked with torment, it showed no hesitation.

Black smoke surged into every opening of Pahomel’s body. He screamed, then collapsed unconscious.

For a moment he lay as if dead—then a finger twitched, and he slowly opened his eyes.

Rising as slowly as his eyelids, he looked around, then stood.

He flexed and clenched his hands, rolled his neck, testing the unfamiliar body.

Soon, something in his eyes began to change—each blink closing horizontally as well as vertically.

Though the face was Pahomel’s, the grotesque eyelids, blood-red pupils, and the awkward, grinding joints made him seem less human than a monster wearing human flesh.

It was likely because this body was not Panz’s—the vessel prepared for the task—and because the black magician had devoured too many souls to sustain his power.

The evil god occupying Pahomel inspected the unsatisfactory body for a long time, then turned and lumbered toward the desk bearing the thick black grimoire.

Each step came with joints grinding out of sync.

***

With all black magic purged by Hayden, Panz dissipated completely.

As the black magic vanished, his form grew transparent, and everyone knew he would disappear—but when only his clothes remained, Undy let out a sigh of regret.

[Hayden, is it really okay to revive him immediately?]

Windel asked anxiously as soon as Panz vanished. Hayden had already expended tremendous power nullifying black magic—would absolution be too much?

Smiling brightly, Hayden reassured him and began granting absolution to the empty clothes on the floor.

A blinding light—like sunlight itself—burst from Hayden’s body and flowed through his outstretched hand to the ground.

The clothes wrapped in sunlight began to puff up from their flattened state.

Watching in awe, everyone gasped as a form slowly emerged between the garments.

Enria and Roseanne stared, stunned, at the growing golden glow.

“My goodness…”

“Wow…”

Panz had revived as a tiny dragon—not red, but dazzling gold.

Belona, Rahar, and Tearen were equally transfixed. Rahar’s spirits were more bewildered than amazed, while Caldeon’s spirits looked indifferent, uninterested in appearances.

“Yep. All done.”

[…]

“It’s yellow. Yellow.”

Grinning happily, Hayden hugged the newly revived Panz and beamed.

No longer a wyvern-like figure of might, nor the demonic form with long horns and batlike wings—he was now a cute, tiny hatchling. Cradled in Hayden’s arms, Panz blinked rapidly.

Cute was one thing—but he was far too small.

[Damn it! What did you do to my body, human?!]

Panz shouted, indignant at his drastically changed form.

Hayden paid no mind, poking and patting him with small hands, repeating only that he was yellow.

“Cute.”

“Yeah, cute.”

“To think Panz would end up like that—revival isn’t such a good thing after all.”

As Silri and Eva spoke, Lonn shook his head and muttered.

Panz struggled desperately to escape Hayden’s touch, crying out in despair.

[What about my original body?! My strong, valiant original body!]