Standing before the church entrance, Evan looked up at the brick building.
This had been a two-dimensional game rendered in pixel art.
Seeing one of the game’s landmarks with his own eyes made it feel entirely different.
“It’s quite different in person.”
It was one of the few sources of comfort he could find in this world filled with things he hated.
‘Let’s think this through.’
He recalled what kind of event this was.
Everyone staying inside the church had died in a single night.
Every death had been caused by catastrophic bodily mutilation. They had died as though something had hunted them down.
The people of Asle regarded the incident as a ‘curse.’ They believed a demon drawn there by those who had profaned the sacred had killed everyone.
Some claimed it had been the work of an animal.
The latter was the more rational judgment.
However, the truth was closer to the former.
‘Because a supernatural entity inside the church did it.’
There were entities in this world that could not be seen but could exert physical force upon reality.
It was an age in which even magic had been incorporated into science, yet it was also a world that still coexisted with inexplicable beings.
That was why superstition continued to wield considerable power.
Some called them ghosts.
Others called them demons.
Whether it was a ghost or a demon did not matter.
Evan only needed to determine how to clear this quest.
‘Going in blindly would be suicide.’
There were almost no methods for dealing with supernatural entities like that in this game.
In most cases, running away was the only solution.
But in a situation where he absolutely had to retrieve the cross…….
After organizing his thoughts, Evan took out a pouch hanging inside his cloak.
It contained the items he had requested from Tumble.
He opened the pouch and shook out its contents, scattering them across the ground.
A large pile of rat carcasses tumbled out.
The pouch had been filled with the best-preserved carcasses among the rats killed in traps.
“These will do.”
Evan closed his eyes and concentrated.
He sensed the remnants left within the rat carcasses by the spirits they had possessed in life.
They were primitive and faint.
While a mage imitated the forces of nature with mana, a black mage manifested rituals by sacrificing souls.
However, that was not a simple process.
A spirit disappeared at the moment of death. Evan was not yet capable of holding one in place.
A soul was also easily lost unless he captured the precise moment of death. It was extremely fragile, quickly becoming damaged and losing its original nature.
However, something remained behind like dregs after both the spirit and soul had departed.
Thought.
To a black mage, even that was a resource.
Evan reconstructed the residual thoughts remaining within the corpses and entered only three commands.
Rise.
Run.
Cry out.
“Squeak, skreeek…….”
Black energy swirled low across the ground, drawing geometric shapes before surging upward and disappearing.
The four-legged lumps of meat staggered upright.
They moved according to principles entirely different from those of living creatures.
They possessed neither instincts nor emotions.
They were merely protein robots in their simplest form.
But that was enough for Evan.
“Skreee! Squeak!”
“Squeeeeeal!”
The rats’ vocal cords produced grotesque noises.
Dozens of rats ran around aimlessly, and some of them entered the church.
Such an unexpected disturbance should have been enough to attract the supernatural entity’s attention.
Evan immediately sprang into action as well.
He pulled his cloak tightly around himself and ran.
‘The entrance is dangerous.’
The attention of whatever was inside should now have been focused on the entrance.
After all, a swarm of rats had suddenly poured through it.
Evan swiftly moved alongside the building.
At that moment, he felt a tingling sensation in the back of his head.
The shock of the lingering thoughts being shattered had reached his brain.
“Squeak!”
“Squeeeeeal!”
After pressing himself against the side of the building, Evan turned his head toward the entrance.
‘It’s started killing the rats.’
Whatever it was, he could easily tell that it was aggressive.
In the game, the instant a player came into contact with that entity, they would either lose more than half their HP or suffer a critical injury.
‘Either way, nothing good will come from encountering it.’
Evan turned his head in the opposite direction.
The building appeared to be approximately two and a half stories tall, and long vertical windows were arranged along both sides.
One of the windows was broken.
Fortunately, it was the window farthest inside.
‘That should be close to the pulpit.’
It seemed that he could enter, grab the cross, and escape without much difficulty if he ran at full speed.
The entity would not leave this place and chase him to the end of the world.
Evan approached the broken window and raised his head to look inside.
A horrific scene lay strewn across the floor.
‘Did more than twenty people die?’
He calmly searched for his objective.
‘There it is!’
The Golden Cross rested atop the altar.
Someone appeared to have moved it there, making it easier to retrieve.
All he had to do was enter, take the cross, and run.
Before moving, however, he looked toward the church entrance.
The repeated shocks of lingering thoughts disappearing kept tapping against his mind, inevitably drawing his gaze toward the scene.
Then he saw it.
“……?”
An entity that should not have been visible.
“……What is that?”
***
In this game, the things called ghosts, demons, or curses—in other words, ‘supernatural entities’—were invisible and immune to attacks.
No matter whether they chewed or tore their victims apart, there was no choice but to suffer one-sidedly.
They were quite literally one-sided ‘curses.’
Evan knew that setting perfectly well.
That was why he could only freeze when he saw a hamster tearing apart the rat zombies.
What…… was that?
A hamster tearing apart rats?
“Graaargh! What the hell are these rat bastards?!”
“Just get the hell away from me!”
No.
It was a talking hamster tearing apart rats.
It was larger than most big dogs. If it stood upright, it would probably reach Evan’s chest. Its fur was split evenly between white and brown.
It also resembled a capybara or quokka, but its peculiar bodily proportions clearly matched those of a hamster.
“Uh…….”
Even when facing the corporate man and the mage, Evan’s mental state had remained steady.
Now, however, he found it more difficult than ever to keep himself together.
“Uh, so…… hamsters tear rats apart.”
No, that was not the point.
Evan slapped both cheeks and barely managed to regain his senses.
Then he made eye contact with the hamster and lost them again.
“…….”
“SKREEE! A human? Another human came here?”
The hamster, which had been playing with the rats, rotated only its head by 180 degrees and stared straight through Evan.
Its red eyes fixed directly upon him.
“Human souls are…….”
The hamster smiled.
Needle-like teeth were revealed.
They possessed a structure no hamster could possibly have.
“Delicious.”
That was when Evan completely regained his senses.
He formed a hand seal that would allow him to draw up mana rapidly, only to hesitate.
‘It’s dangerous.’
No matter how ridiculous it looked, its true nature was exactly what Evan knew it to be.
No attack could affect it, and it was extremely lethal.
Regardless of how absurd the situation was, he could not forget that fundamental truth.
Evan suppressed the mana he had drawn up.
He had to make a choice in that split second.
The cross resting atop the altar entered his vision.
If he missed it now, he would never have another opportunity.
He vaulted over the windowsill.
The end of his cloak caught on a shard of broken glass and tore with a long rip.
Within a few steps, Evan leaped onto the altar and seized the Golden Cross.
Now he only had to return.
He spun around with that thought, but…….
“Please save me…….”
The instant he heard the voice, he turned toward it.
It had come from beneath the corpses.
‘Everyone who died here was a gang member anyway.’
They were trash who had merely met disaster while trying to deal drugs.
There was no reason to feel sympathy for them.
However—
“Please…… save me…….”
It was unmistakably the voice of a child.
Evan’s hesitation was closer to an uncontrollable instinct.
“……Damn it.”
Evan forcibly stopped himself despite already beginning to run.
He knew perfectly well that sympathy was a luxury if he wanted to survive in this world.
He would truly abandon it.
Starting tomorrow.
Evan faced the damned hamster head-on and organized his thoughts.
He could not kill it.
He could not even slow it down.
Then what could he do?
He formed a hand seal that aided mana concentration.
A black mage was different from a mage.
Black magic required neither hand seals, magic circles, nor incantations.
However, those methods could still be used appropriately to provide assistance.
That was especially true when borrowing another mage’s mana.
‘Sacrificial Rite.’
He opened his palm and activated a soul he possessed.
A dark blue, translucent figure manifested behind Evan.
It bore the appearance the lightning mage from the pub had possessed while alive.
『Soulcraft·Manifest, Phantom Spirit Incarnation 』
The soul, consumed by Evan’s domination, raised its head without expression.
What mages called innate mana……
To the eyes of a black mage, it was merely a slightly unusual part of the mage’s soul.
Evan consumed it to cast magic from the Lightning School.
“Blitz.”
A tingling sensation ran from the tips of the fingers forming the seal all the way to his Achilles tendon, as though they had been connected into a single circuit.
He kicked off the ground.
CRACKLE—
With a single step, he reached the place where the voice had originated.
Blue sparks leaped across his body.
The reaction speed of his nerves and muscles surpassed conscious perception.
After roughly sweeping the corpses aside, he found a child drenched in blood beneath them.
“Brace your neck.”
Without even having time to examine the child’s condition, Evan lifted the child and tucked them beneath one arm.
“SKREEEEEE!”
“……!”
At that moment, the murderous hamster, which had somehow already closed the distance, swung its sharp claws.
Evan barely managed to throw himself aside and evade them.
The corpse where he had been standing was split in two.
It was difficult to understand how such stubby forelegs could produce that result.
‘It’s much faster than I expected.’
A chill ran down Evan’s spine at the realization that, without the spell enhancing his neural reflexes, he would have been split apart instead of the corpse.
He was slightly caught off guard.
As far as Evan knew, that entity had not been this fast.
‘Was that just a gameplay concession?’
Evan bit his lip at the thought that this world had screwed him over once again.
This shitty game world.
“SKREE-HEH-HAHAHAHA!”
The giant hamster bared its fangs and charged with a bizarre laugh.
The claws hurtling toward him were an undeniable threat, but the very fact that something like this was endangering his life felt absurd.
Evan had already finished calculating.
He could escape if he ran at full speed.
However, doing so while carrying the child would be impossible.
Abandon the child or die here.
At the moment that brief decision formed, Evan realized there was a third option.
‘I can see it.’
He could see the ‘entity’s’ soul.
He had no idea why it was visible.
However, this was not the time to consider the reason.
The only thing that mattered was the undeniable fact that he could see it.
In that case…….
Evan instinctively reached out.
If he could make direct contact, he might be able to destroy its soul.
┌────────────┐
【Black Magic: Soul-Eroding Seal】
Analyzes the soul of a target in physical contact.
An analyzed soul can be damaged.
Damaging the soul also damages the body.
└────────────┘
The moment he saw its soul, he became certain.
Black magic was itself a set of laws in which conditions and outcomes were linked with absolute honesty.
However, at that moment, a magic circle he had never seen before began glowing red on the back of his hand.
“……?”
None of this was something Evan had intended.
He had merely reached out his hand.
However, he instinctively knew what the symbol glowing upon its back represented.
“An inverted pentagram…….”
It was the symbol of a demon.
“SKREE?”
The charging giant hamster was crushed vertically into the ground beneath immense pressure.
Some tremendous force bore down upon the entity.
Stone fragments flew in every direction as a deafening crash echoed through the church.
“SKREEEEEE! RAAAAAAAGH?!”
The giant hamster thrashed and screamed.
Evan watched it with eyes glowing red.
Then he thought—
Why does this work?
It was not that he failed to understand that he had caused all of these results.
But the entity wearing the skin of a hamster was supposed to be immune to every attack.
This situation itself made no sense.
‘……Of course, something has been wrong ever since I became able to see it.’
Evan reviewed the factors he had failed to consider.
Before long, he found a clue.
Right now, I am…….
“……A black mage.”
At the same time, the creature shouted,
“SKREEEEEE! In this age?! A black mage still survives in this age? Don’t make me laugh!”
The reason Evan had known nothing about the current situation was simple.
When he had played the game, the Black Mage class had not existed.
“…….”
At that moment, Evan felt his soul tremble violently.
He felt the soul of the entity wearing the hamster’s skin becoming bound to him.
Every piece of information contained within that enormous soul poured into Evan like a tidal wave.
“This is…….”
His vision went black, and an inner world unfolded before him.