The Troublesome Undead (2)
“Was my son that kind of man?”
“If you're on death's door, you ought to be satisfied with this much.”
Where did he get the nerve to pick and choose, complaining that my swordsmanship was a disappointment? If it hadn't been for me, when else would he ever have gotten a fight like this?
So he needed to be a little more grateful.
Kagaaaaaak!
How long had it been? I had been enjoying myself for quite a while, but I was starting to get bored.
I really had changed since that day. Or rather, the man in front of me was entirely to blame for this.
An hour of fighting was plenty, wasn't it? By now his strength should have been ebbing at a reasonable pace.
As if ignoring that thought of mine, the undead still swung his sword without the slightest hesitation.
Hmm. This was getting to be too much.
“The contest remains undecided.”
That sunken, demonic voice. Truly, nothing could have been more grating.
In that case, I would have to crush him just enough. The stage was already set.
A bitter smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.
“So it's come to this, has it?”
Fighting with teleportation had reached its limit. The hero of the past was strong, true to his name. A mere warrior would never have bested him. No—perhaps, in the age when this man still lived, something like a Demon King had not even existed.
I wondered if he knew what Seto was.
Or if a being called Seto had already existed in those days as well.
Kuarrrrrrrr
The air had already changed. The demonic energy shattered into fragments and was absorbed into my Mana Sword. The miasma that had been coiling around Veratel had long since become mine.
It was being torn to pieces. The final curtain of this battle was drawing near.
I had fought an undead this hard; as far as I was concerned, I had put in more than enough effort. So it was time to wrap things up.
He ought to be grateful I hadn't even used magic.
“Hm? What is this?”
Realizing it now was already too late.
His circuits of demonic energy would already be crumbling, bit by bit. I was only finishing him this gently because he was supposedly Pector's father.
By now the damage would be working its way into the undead's very core, slowly smashing him apart from the inside.
Veratel seemed to have noticed as well; the eyes behind his helm wavered.
“Here. Take this well, Father of Pector.”
Pubububububuk! Kwadddddddk
The demonic circuits warped, then shattered.
In that instant, the undead's assault stopped, and the power drained from his greatsword.
For a brief moment, Veratel's eyes trembled finely.
“I seem to catch a scent that feels… familiar.”
“You know what this is?”
“Ah. Yes. I know it. So that's how it is. You know my son well, then. It was much the same that time.”
That time?
“What do you mean by that?”
“My son became a demon in order to kill me.”
“Your son became a demon to kill his own father?”
Had that bastard really been the kind of man to commit such a crime against his own blood? No matter how far he went, he hadn't seemed like that sort. Just a fellow content to ride the current of the world at a moderate pace—wasn't that who he was?
“Indeed. Did you kill my son?”
“No. I simply won this sword from him. His own blade broke, you see.”
Judging by his reaction, he seemed to know what this sword was as well.
If I played this carefully, I might be able to dig something useful out of him.
“Is that so.”
“Then how about telling me a story? Of your final moments.”
I wanted to hear whatever tale he had to tell.
“You are so curious as to why I died at my son's hand?”
“This side has a need to know.”
Wasn't that the moment Pector became one of the Four Heavenly Kings? Even a single clue about the Four Heavenly Kings might unravel. I might learn the history of the Demon Realm that never made it into human records. How Pector had come to be what he was now. I might even recover the memories that bastard had forgotten.
“Very well. If it is of my final hour, there is no harm in telling it.”
The Kart Alliance of Forty Small Kingdoms
Long ago, before the Empire was founded, the half-blood peoples had continued their history for centuries upon the plains.
Upon the land that would one day become the Empire, the Kart Alliance of Forty Small Kingdoms had been a federal nation of some forty lesser realms, led by the Kart Kingdom.
Countless countries had quarreled and reconciled, and yet the ages had flowed on without ever crossing a certain line.
It was precisely then that a conqueror-king rose in the Kingdom of Falsk, which lay along the border with the Demon Realm.
Veratel, King of Falsk, pressed the surrounding nations and rapidly advanced in politics, economy, and military power.
His aim was not to conquer Kart and unify the continent, but to shift the leadership of the federal alliance to Falsk itself.
He waged wars of conquest, forced countless kings to their knees, and—with Kart's tacit approval—pushed as far as the Ruined Land, where he fought the peoples of that place with ferocious intensity. He was a king the likes of which the world had never seen.
“Perhaps advancing into the Demon Realm would not be a poor choice either.”
In the Ruined Land, Veratel could advance no farther. The resistance of the god-slaying peoples was no small thing, and an army drawn from a federal alliance inevitably ran up against the limits of supply.
In that era, mages were few, and there were no proper blessings for the fields; a war could not be prolonged. So Veratel, having merely prodded the Ruined Land once, wheeled his army about and marched home.
“I am thirsty. Far too thirsty.”
Even so, Veratel, King of Falsk, found it insufficient. He felt a thirst that never ended. He wanted to ride a cutting wind, to make a sea of blood, and to force all things to kneel beneath his feet.
And so he conceived a single bold scheme.
“We advance into the Demon Realm.”
It was a war of conquest against the Demon Realm itself—something no human had ever dared to attempt. Of course it was not a decision to be made lightly.
“The Demon Realm, my lord? The harvest has not even finished.”
“It is a place no human has ever once marched upon. We shall try. To place the Demon Realm beneath Falsk.”
His vassals' opposition was fierce, yet not one of them could stop him. Veratel's path of conquest, and the bearing of a conquering sovereign, were not things anyone dared defy.
At first, the campaign into the Demon Realm seemed a success. But this was an age when knowledge of the Demon Realm was even scarcer than it is now, and it was not long before they struck an impassable wall.
Even the maps the Empire would one day possess did not chart the whole of the Demon Realm—so what need be said of the maps of that era? Relying on incomplete charts, Veratel pressed his victories and raised a fortress of his own within the Demon Realm.
Geographically, it was a poor judgment.
On the surface, the fortress seemed ringed by mountain ranges on all sides, ideal for defense and as a military strongpoint—but the reverse was true. What looked like mountains were layered folds of land, and among them ran roads wide enough for demons to move freely.
To the demons, a fortress that had been planted in their own front yard was the perfect thing to smash.
“The demons are swarming in!”
“Hold them!”
The demons, recovering their momentum in the surrounding lands, came pouring in. From every direction they charged to crush the human foothold, and Veratel drove them back again and again.
Each time the demons came, the corpses piled into mountains. The soldiers' morale remained high—but weapons and supplies were needed in equal measure. Under the endless demonic assaults, Veratel's army gradually wore down.
One by one, Veratel's forces crumbled.
“I will not be brought down like this!”
To fall in such a fashion was far too bitter. Before long, less than a quarter of Veratel's army remained. Swords were broken, spears worn out, and the arrows had long since been spent. The oil they had brought to burn the demons had been used up early on.
“Great King. We will hold them. You must escape this place.”
“My son is in the homeland. Here I will fight to the end and die.”
Death did not matter. If only this endless thirst could be quenched—that alone filled his heart. Besides, his grown son Pector was in the homeland. And so he resolved to fight here until he died.
As he fought on, Veratel began to wield a strange power. The demonic energy of the Demon Realm was more than enough to erode a human. Yet Veratel, already at the level of a superhuman, absorbed that energy and reached a new realm.
The king came to raise his fallen soldiers from the dead. And so the battle repeated itself. He waged endless war alongside the subordinates who had fallen and risen again.
“My soldiers! Kill every last one of those demons! Hahahahaha!”
Word of this reached Pector in Falsk. Learning of his dead father, Pector sent an army under the pretext of granting him a peaceful end.
“Father! Have you not done enough!”
“Hooo. So this time it is my son. Come! My son!”
Regrettably, Pector lacked both the combat strength and the experience of his father, Veratel. Worse, the being that had once been his father already belonged to the category of the Mains.
For an ordinary human to face a Main was no easy thing. Crossing blades with his son, Veratel felt a surge of strength he had not known in a long while. And the son could not overcome the father.
Veratel even turned his sword upon the soldiers of Falsk, the kingdom he himself had ruled, until the situation could no longer be overlooked.
Pshuuuk
“Ghhhkk…!”
Pector barely escaped, a great sword-wound left across his chest by the rampaging Veratel.
Thus a stretch of years passed. At last Veratel's life as a human came to its end. He felt his own body rotting away.
Then one day, a presence radiating vast demonic energy appeared before the fortress. It was his son, Pector.
Unlike before, the young man's emotions seemed dried out, and the sword in his hand was enough to drag Veratel's long-maddened mind back into focus.
“I am the one who made you this way. Ah… so I killed my own son.”
“To stop a monster, one must become a monster. You have seen far too much blood. Now rest in peace.”
Pector pressed his father with the authority he had obtained.
“What is that aura?”
“I do not know myself.”
“Did you sell your soul to a demon?”
“If it was to stop you.”
Veratel was tormented by the thought that he had made his son into a monster—yet he could not stop. Strangely, as if bound by some curse, he attacked his son without end. If not for this chance, when else would he ever fight a battle like this again?
At last, Pector was able to bring his father down.
The cost in sacrifice had been far too great.
“That is how I died. Only when death was upon me did I feel sorry for my son.”
Listening to the man's story, I clenched my teeth.
This was starting to make me angry. In short, he had killed his own son, hadn't he?
Of course, whether it was this man or Pector, I was perfectly confident I could watch either of them die without so much as batting an eye. It wasn't my business, and if I felt like keeping a shred of loyalty, I could always put up a single grave for Pector.
Unless it involved someone on Celia's level, there was no reason for me to step in personally.
Anyway, the reason I was angry right now was something else entirely.
Pector had died at his father's hand and, for some reason, had become one of the Four Heavenly Kings. It was possible that Seto had already existed in that era as well.
If so, I had to ask.
“Why the face?”
“Do you happen to know anything about Seto?”
Perhaps—just perhaps—he knew something about Seto.