Granting Them Rest
Lorelies' Sanctuary.
The sanctuary, once perfectly severed from the world, had cracked under the overwhelming force of the System, and as a result, it was exposed to the outside.
It had begun to suffer intrusions and interference from other worlds.
"The Demon of Corpses, Corfus. Because his dimension sits so close to ours, demon beasts come spilling out through that rift every time. It's a constant thorn in my side."
"Corfus?"
The Lord of Corpses—a madman who raised up false life. His signature was reviving corpses that had lost their lives and enslaving them as servants, but the problem was that such revived life became something lesser than a mere puppet. No ego, nearly all of their former abilities stripped away—nothing more than a corpse in truth. Wherever he appeared, the ground was always carpeted with the dead, and worse still, he didn't merely raise corpses; he killed living beings and resurrected them as his puppets. An utterly demented creature, if ever there was one.
If they weren't corpses already, he'd make them into corpses? What kind of logic is that.
He was a high-ranking demon, and for all his rampaging, he was ultimately crushed—soul and all—by the hand of his own kind, erased from existence.
"Corfus is dead."
"Slain by a high-ranked demon, was he? Demons can never bring themselves to cherish their own kind. They can barely keep their eyes on the enemy before them, and yet."
"The Heavenly Race is no different."
The Heavenly Race kills their own kind as well. Of course, unlike demons, who kill out of simple spite or for gain, they wield their so-called noble cause as a weapon.
'Noble cause,' my ass.
That was why I hated the Heavenly Race even more than the demons. If they were going to be the same garbage, they should at least stay garbage—but no, disgustingly, they'd prattle on about how they were justice and their enemies were sin incarnate.
"Though Corfus is gone, the dimension he left behind still remains. His realm made a pact with the Demon Realm, you see."
If the place had been made with Corfus's own power, it should have vanished the instant he died. But that place was part of the Demon Realm itself—still imperfectly severed from the world, it had endured to this day, continuing to spill its corruption across everything nearby.
"I would gladly go and deal with it myself, but alas, I cannot leave this place. All I can do is destroy the demon beasts that crawl through the rift."
"You want me to go sweep them out?"
"From what I can tell, you despise demons nearly as much as you do the Heavenly Race. Hardly a bad proposition, is it?"
"......"
Demons. They certainly do get under my skin.
From humanity's standpoint, the greater calamity was obviously the demons. When they appeared, the world would fill with death and the land itself would turn into a place where nothing could live.
It wasn't that the Heavenly Race didn't do the same—but the demons' swings were far wider.
Lorelies reached her hand upward. The rift, once barely a crack, had widened just enough for me to pass through.
Kyaeeeak!
Shrill cries poured through the widened gap in greater numbers, along with an ominous demonic miasma.
"Besides, those ones have lost their master. Granting them rest would be no bad thing."
"...Rest, is it."
Clank.
"I'll be off, then."
An sky saturated with ominous miasma.
Thick poison clouds smothered the heavens, and across the land sprawled rivers of blood, corrupted flesh-eating vegetation, and corpses beyond counting.
Long since severed from the thread of life, they lay collapsed with no purpose, no direction. To the eye, they looked like nothing could ever raise them again—but nudge one, even lightly—
Tap.
Kyaeeeak!
Kyaaaaaaak!!
Kyoooooh!!
The earth heaved, and the corpses rose.
And what a variety there was. Humans, beastkin, orcs, goblins, elves, trolls, wyverns...
Clank!
Should I count it a blessing that there were no undead dragons?
Even a quick glance turned up well over several thousand. There were probably even more in places beyond this one.
I could see it.
Their souls are still bound.
Corfus was dead, but by the laws binding them to the Demon Realm, they could not pass on, and still they drifted across the land in bodies of rot.
Unless they were lucky enough to slip through the sanctuary's rift, they would be trapped here for eternity.
...No.
Many of their souls had already faded and shattered. Even if they regained their freedom, I could see that only a handful were whole enough to ever be reborn.
The corpses' bodies, animated by the demonic miasma, lunged at me—seeking to make me one of their own.
I channeled divinity into my hammer.
Fwaaaaah! The moment pure white divinity blazed to life, the corpses that drew near were purified on contact, vanishing without a trace.
As it happened, I had a technique perfectly suited for dealing with the undead—one I'd forged alongside the Dragon Lord.
The Blunt Technique: Light Dragon.
KWAAAAAANG!!
The hammer swept down, and an explosion of light erupted.
The explosion birthed more explosions, and the undead were erased without even the chance to regenerate.
Before I knew it, nothing remained in the vicinity except me, wreathed in brilliant white light.
I offered a prayer of rest for the fallen, then moved on to the next site.
Corfus's dimension funneled its corpses toward all four cardinal directions—east, west, south, and north—and if any single direction went uncleared, the dead from the others would come flooding toward it.
So I swept the south clean at speed, then, evading the corpses swarming toward the emptied south, headed north and purged that quarter as well.
The hammer was devastating in a single strike, but against massed hordes, the spear was simply superior.
Ten thousand corpses were torn apart beneath a downpour of holy light.
Bodies without egos, feeling no pain—yet I could see them. I could see their already-shattered souls. Trembling before a power they could never resist, and at the same time, relieved.
Could they sense it? That their end was finally drawing near.
─For someone granting them rest, you're awfully brutal about it.
"Would you care to do it yourself, then?"
─Hmm. I can't say I'd do it much differently.
Heh.
There was a note of laughter in Lorelies's voice as it rang through my mind. Grating, in its own way—but once this trial was done, she was someone I'd never have to see again.
Best to finish it quickly.
After a brief rest to recover, I moved swiftly and cleared out the remaining east and west as well.
In the east, the entities were closer to phantoms than corpses. In the west, an endless tide of fifty thousand insects came swarming, and I wiped them all away with the Rain of Spears.
The demon beasts barely ranked as ordinary monsters at level 80. A skilled ranker could handle a handful, a single-digit ranker could take down a hundred without breaking a sweat. A thousand would be a strain, but Leo—or Sword God in his prime, before he lost his strength—could manage it easily enough.
Assuming they could withstand the miasma, that is.
That was only ever in terms of fighting them in DeoEn. If they had to fight here, in the Demon Realm itself, even ten would push them to their limit.
The Demon Realm's thick miasma and poisoned earth granted the undead an immense wellspring of power.
The phantoms, especially, were nearly impossible to fight with physical attacks—but the moment I approached wreathed in divinity, they were purified on the spot.
In any case, of the hundred thousand demon beasts in this place, I had killed ninety-nine thousand.
Only a thousand remained.
Lorelies's voice resonated through my head.
─Now you need only defeat the Six Demon Heavenly Kings.
"The Six Demon Heavenly Kings?"
That was a spectacularly ugly name. Not the Six Heavenly Kings, not the Demon Heavenly Kings—Six Demon Heav... what?
─He idolized the Six Demon Kings of the Demon Tribe. A natural thing, perhaps, for one who had become a demon—but the problem was that his bent ran rather differently from the ordinary.
"Mutants are common enough."
Perhaps because demons, compared to the Heavenly Race, were a species specialized in magic, they had always bred their share of eccentrics.
─After his pact with the Demon Realm, Corfus split his own power into six and fashioned six Demon Kings. They fell vastly short of the real thing—mere insects, in truth—but they say he was satisfied all the same.
Corfus had always commanded corpses and relished standing above others. And this Corfus—unforgivably—had dared to mimic the sacred number six that symbolized the Demon Kings, granting each of his creations its own dominion and even the grandiose name of Six Demon Heavenly Kings.
To those above, it might have looked like nothing more than children playing pretend. But to demons of equal or greater standing, it was anything but. In the end, Corfus was crushed—soul and all—by a supreme-ranked demon, on the charge of blasphemy.
"Demons, punishing blasphemy?"
─That is how our records word it. In a demon's phrasing, he simply 'got above himself and died for it.'
Truthfully, even the supreme-ranked demon had probably been driven less by loyalty to the Demon Kings than by plain indignation—'Who do you think you are, playing Demon King?'
Unlike the Heavenly Race, demons were fiercely individualistic; in practice, they schemed against one another constantly, all to climb a little higher.
Whatever way you sliced it, Corfus was destined to die.
─Corfus is gone, but through his pact with the Demon Realm, the Six Demon Heavenly Kings remain. Slay them all, and sever the heart of the First Demon Heavenly King.
"How strong are they?"
─The lesser six are weaker than a Knight Commander. Their gift lay in commanding great numbers; individually, they were never remarkable.
But the First was different.
─He is Corfus's masterpiece, wrought with all his heart and soul. His power rivals Manus's—or exceeds it.
"Manus..."
Manus had been formidable in his own right, and this thing surpasses him...
It might turn out to be a somewhat difficult fight.
My name is the Third Demon Heavenly King.
I was born bearing the dominion of Necromancy, a gift for commanding things—just as our lord, Corfus, Lord of Corpses, once did.
Long ages have passed since our connection to Lord Corfus was severed, yet never once—not for a single moment—did I doubt him or waver in my faith.
Some among the Six Demon Heavenly Kings, in their arrogance, thought otherwise. But this one followed and believed in him, wholly and without reservation.
And yet...
"The Fifth Demon Heavenly King has fallen! Cause of death—spear wounds..."
"The Fifth... no!"
"The Sixth has fallen as well! No—how, in so short a span—"
"Urgent report! The Fourth Demon Heavenly King has passed on..."
What in the world was happening?
It had been perhaps two minutes since word arrived that ten thousand of the corpses within the Demon Realm had perished—and that the intruder had entered from the south.
Why had three of them died in so brief an instant?
And worse, the one committing this madness was an angel—
"She's here!"
KWAAAAAAAANG!!
The gates of the Third Demon Heavenly King's fortress shattered, and a woman of blinding white entered.
Though an unmistakable enemy had breached the walls, no one—not a single soul—could halt her stride.
Urrrgh... uhhh...
The rotting corpses dissolved into nothing simply from her drawing near. The only things untouched by decay were his minions, forged from his own dominion—but even they could not approach her.
The hammer slung across her shoulder tilted upward, imperious and unhurried.
"So this Demon Heavenly King is a Lich."
"...You cursed witch!"
From the Third Demon Heavenly King's hand, the dominion of Necromancy flared, raising its skulls.
And then—
KRA-CHAK!!
The hammer came down and pulverized the Lich.