Welcome to the Demon’s Cabin - Chapter 5

‘Please, O Mater. What is this absurd situation supposed to be now?’

After several days, the man finally managed to open his eyes. In his helplessness, all he could do was weakly call out the name of his god.

He tried to take in the information before him, but his mind was doing everything it could to deny this ridiculous scene.

‘Damn it, my head hurts…….’

He felt like he was going insane. It was a pain that felt as though not only his head, split open against a rock, but even his mind had been shattered to pieces.

How was it possible that after losing consciousness in a forest of monsters where no human should even be able to enter, he was now waking up in a bed?

And what was with this perfectly intact wooden ceiling and walls?

No matter how he looked at it, it was a small room in an ordinary cabin.

Dark curtains were drawn over the window, and on the table sat a blue vase filled with pure white flowers.

Back when he had watched that bastard of a companion lose his mind to revenge, he had thought it might rank as the third most shocking thing he had ever faced.

Now, it seemed he would have to revise that to fourth.

This situation easily claimed second place.

‘Is this a dream? Or a hallucination before death?’

It was the only escape he could cling to, yet he knew perfectly well that could not be the case. The pain slicing through his entire body was far too vivid for a dream or a hallucination.

‘……I have no idea what is going on. For now, let’s put aside questions that have no answers.’

Steadying himself with difficulty, the man tried to move his body. At least his right arm moved without much trouble.

The rest of his body only twitched. The leg that had been injured the worst had almost no sensation at all. He even wondered if it was still attached. He must have pushed himself far too hard while being chased by the chimeras.

At the very least, he needed to check the range of motion of his usable right arm. Enduring the pain, he lifted it upward, then froze in shock.

“……!”

The throbbing arm was wrapped thickly in bandages.

In that instant, goosebumps ran through his entire body.

Forgetting the pain, he hurriedly moved his right arm and felt for his left arm beneath the thin blanket. It too was wrapped in bandages. Even to him, a Holy Knight, the work was flawless.

And his uniform jacket was nowhere to be seen.

The man squeezed his eyes shut. Even as he told himself to think about it later, part of him had been desperately clinging to the hope that a monster had simply dumped him in a long abandoned cabin and left him there as emergency rations. That flimsy hope shattered in an instant.

There were no monsters in the Black Mountain Range that were close enough to human to wrap bandages.

“Damn it.”

A curse slipped out between his teeth. For a brief moment, he noted with relief that his voice still worked. Then he sank once more into a bottomless despair.

The scene from just before he lost consciousness came back to him with cruel clarity.

“……! ……A-are you……!”

The urgent voice of a woman who had seemed to be speaking to him.

And the vivid red color that had filled her eyes rose just as clearly in his mind.

‘Damn it……! O Mater. Why are you doing this to me?’

The name of a god he rarely called upon kept spilling out. He could not endure this without leaning on even the faintest shred of faith.

A demon. A demon!

What kind of beings were they?

Judges of Hell. Wicked absolutes that, once summoned into the human realm, brought immense tragedy and calamity.

Even when his mother had made such a spectacle of attempting to summon a demon, it had amounted to nothing more than vague signs of possible success. And now he was supposed to have come face to face with one of those great demons himself?

The man shuddered the moment that horrifying possibility took shape.

‘No. No, calm down. A demon is impossible.’

He barely managed to hold on to his reason as it threatened to freeze in fear. Clenching his teeth, he forced himself to carefully review what defined a demon.

A demon would normally be far too busy forming contracts and carrying out massacres, spreading chaos across the human realm.

What kind of insane demon would hole up in the Black Mountain Range, build a cabin, and live there idly? Even a passing dog would laugh. The chances of one treating a Holy Knight were even more absurd.

Right. Perhaps it was some variant monster, heavily influenced by the demonic energy leaking from a rift, one with a vaguely developed intelligence.

Or maybe there was a mad but extraordinarily skilled recluse living hidden away here, in the Black Mountain Range.

‘Damn it…… The more I think about it, the more both of those just sound like complete nonsense.’

No matter how unusual, a monster was still a monster. Could one really possess enough intelligence to fully understand and use human culture? Even sirens, the closest to humans, were barely on par with dogs.

And if the owner of this cabin were some powerful expert…… to build a home and live here in the Black Mountain Range would require being practically smothered in divine protection.

The more he tried to reason it out, the worse his headache became. Both hypotheses were riddled with flaws, and he had no idea which, if either, was correct.

Then what about the female demon he had seen just before passing out?

An unmistakable hallucination. Yes, that had to be it. Thinking of his mother must have triggered a demonic hallucination. A perfectly rational conclusion based entirely on reason. It was absolutely not denial.

If only his body were not like this, he would have gone outside to check beyond the door, or done something, anything. Being able to do nothing but lie there made the situation bleak in every way.