The Hero Party Annihilated
The Demon King's chamber, on the 100th Floor of the Tower.
"Ghk... ghhh..."
A crack split the air. Rebecca's cheek burst like a kernel of popcorn under the Demon King's slap, and she went sailing for a good long while before slamming into the pitch-black stone wall and passing out cold.
I found myself staring in a daze, oddly moved. Huh... so Rebecca's blood really is red. A girl billed as the strongest tank in this entire world getting her ass handed to her this thoroughly stripped the whole thing of any sense of reality. Throughout our entire journey, Rebecca hadn't so much as scraped herself — not even when a pack of magma dragons had dogpiled her.
And she wasn't the only one who got wrecked. The Sword Emperor Nine, the Archmage Dorothy, even the Divine Archer Yuria. Every last one of them had been utterly demolished by a single slap, reduced to rags and sprawled across the stone floor. Honestly, I wasn't even sure they were still alive. Rebecca had probably only lasted that extra hit because she was the tank.
Not that they had any right to complain about getting their faces caved in. They were the ones who'd picked a fight with a Demon King who looked like a little girl — complaining she'd taken all the wind out of their sails — and then thrown the first punch.
"...Dongha..."
Nine, barely clinging to consciousness, strained to lift her head with whatever strength she had left. Probably about to tell me to run, even if I had to go alone...
"...You leave us behind and you're dead..."
Yeah, as if that bitch would ever say something like that.
The Demon King approached the fallen Nine and stretched out a pale white arm.
BANG!!!!
Holy shit.
It was a forehead flick. It was definitely just a forehead flick. And yet a sound that had no business coming from one rang out through the chamber. I'd heard something like it before — back in the military, at the firing range. Even that had been quieter than the flick the Demon King had just fired off. Smoke was rising from Nine's forehead. She looked genuinely dead.
Rest in peace, Nine. You should've tried being a decent person.
Sprawled among the wreckage of shattered teeth, they looked exactly like goblins that had dropped gold and died.
I swallowed. The heat of the... fight? faded, and silence took its place. The Demon King's gaze finally turned toward me.
"You're the last one, right?"
She approached me — the Luggage Porter who'd had no means of attacking and could only stand there watching. Index finger folded over thumb, a forehead flick locked and loaded, she padded toward me on bare white feet.
Black hair in a side-up ponytail. Crimson eyes, and beneath them a teardrop beauty mark. A straight nose. Her mouth was a little large, but her lips were slim. Skin as white as snow. The black corset dress — the kind young ladies of noble houses loved to wear — fell to just below her knees.
Aside from the long horn growing from the left side of her head, there wasn't a single thing about her that looked like a Demon King.
She raised that terrifying pale hand.
Ah... no, goblin!
No, wait. They'd only ended up looking like goblins because they were rankers. If a regular Earthling like me took that hit... my brains would splatter. Or my entire head would.
"W-wait! I won't try anything! I'll leave right now!"
But her footsteps toward me didn't stop. Then again, an armed burglar caught red-handed saying he'd just head home was pretty absurd to begin with.
I backpedaled in time with her approach until my back hit the luggage pack taller than I was. A thunk, and the laundry Dorothy had pawned off on me yesterday tumbled onto my head.
Fuck... so this is how I go. After spending the whole time cleaning up after those idiots.
It was so unfair I could scream. All that time I'd spent crawling through shit like a dog — what had it even been for? The Demon King was right in front of me. And this was the life flashing before my eyes?
"I'll do whatever you tell me to, so please let me live!"
I let out a last-ditch cry worthy of a third-rate villain. Was this how those swordsman-manga characters felt when they chopped off their own captured arms?
"...For real?"
"...?"
Her flicking fingers froze right in front of my forehead. I had no idea what this was, but it was a chance.
"Huh? Y-yeah! For real...! I swear on everything."
Right. Just survive for now. Don't think about the long game. Watch for an opening and get out. She wouldn't do something like torture... right?
"Then don't leave."
"...Huh?"
A wooden table in the center of the chilly Demon King's Castle.
Where'd she go?
The Demon King had dragged the four fallen party members away, left me with a "Wait. I'll go get it," and never come back. The longer I waited, the more my thoughts drifted toward the worst. What exactly was she going to get?
Did she go grab some torture tools? Or maybe an altar to sacrifice me on?
My eyes welled up like a cow being led to the slaughterhouse. What had happened to the others? Right as my balls shriveled up and my imagination ballooned to grotesque proportions, the iron door slammed open with a rattling crash.
The party members she'd been carrying were nowhere to be seen. She was alone. She set a board she'd brought down on the table with a thud.
"Do you know how to play this?"
A chessboard. The same chess from Earth.
Chess?
Why the hell was she suddenly asking me to play this? Should I say I knew how, or that I didn't? Was this a bet where winning meant she'd let me live? After some thought, I concluded that saying I knew how was the correct play.
"Yeah, I know how."
Truth was, "knowing how" didn't even begin to cover it. Back in high school, I'd won a regional tournament that even adults competed in. If she wanted to bet my life on a game of chess, that was exactly what I was hoping for.
"Then teach me."
"Huh?"
"So this is called castling, where the king and the rook..."
"Uh-huh."
Apparently the Demon King had wanted to play with the chessboard she'd looted from an Earthling party. But she hadn't known the rules and hadn't had anyone to play with, so she'd been amusing herself by playing both sides with a set of bizarre homemade rules.
"So if I do this, like this, then I can't castle, right?"
She picked things up fast and applied them well. Give her a little more time and she'd probably eat ordinary players alive.
The impromptu crash course in chess came to an end. I'd taught her as thoroughly as I possibly could, cold sweat pouring down my back the whole time, because the Demon King had been leaning so far forward she looked like she might get sucked into the board. And then, as the most natural next step in the world, she set up the pieces for a match.
"I'm telling you this now."
"Huh?... Huh?"
The air around us went ice-cold. A black aura seeped from the Demon King's feet — the same aura from when she'd caved in my party members' skulls.
"Don't you dare go easy on me. Don't you dare."
I swallowed.
"Huh? Y-yeah... of course."
A bad feeling surged up my spine.
"Aaaagh!!!! Shiiiiiit!"
After losing two pawns and then a knight, she unleashed a roar of condemnation. The sound echoed through the silent castle, and I thought my heart might explode.
Fuck. I'm screwed.
The most exhausting type of opponent you could face across a board. Overflowing with competitive fire, but if you went easy on them they'd foam at the mouth and lose their minds. That was the Demon King.
I'd already won two matches. With each one, her snow-white cheeks had flushed a little more, and now they were dyed a deep red. And if I so much as tried to go easy on her—
"Hey. Why aren't you taking my bishop right now!? You're going easy on me, aren't you?"
She was godawful at the game, but she had a sixth sense for spotting when I was holding back, and she'd hound me for it.
Ugh, hic. What the hell do you want me to do, you crazy bitch!
Trapped with no way out, I was so frustrated I could cry. Should I just burst into tears? Surely she wouldn't keep demanding matches from someone who'd thrown everything down and started crying out of sheer misery.
BANG!
No!
Absolutely not! Throwing a match in front of a competitive maniac. It would be about as catastrophic as stuffing her captured pieces up her nostrils and desecrating them.
Throwing the game is also not an option.
She had talent, but there was no way she'd beat me. A thrown game would be painfully obvious. The third match was slowly tilting in my favor too, and her volume, already maxed out with rage, only kept climbing. If I won this one as well, I was going to die. Guaranteed.
Think. Think, Baek Dongha.
Ah!
...This was the only way. It was a stretch, but... it was all on me.
I'd been pressing the attack, and then, right on the verge of checkmate, I wasted a turn like a complete idiot. As expected, she — already seething — exploded.
"Huh!? Oh, come ON!! Hey! You're going easy—"
"Ah! I messed up. I didn't see that! Daaamn!"
I clutched my head with exaggerated gestures and groaned. The Demon King blinked at me with round, wide eyes.
"Ah! I had it in the bag! Just one move! Can't I take back just one move?!"
I clasped one hand around a pointing index finger and begged. To sell it, I opened my eyes so wide they nearly popped out and made my cheeks tremble.
"...What? You said taking moves back was something only amateurs begged for."
"Ah, please, please, I'm begging you."
"..."
She's thinking about it.
An amateur's plea. One of the best sales pitches you could make to a competitive junkie.
"Just one move, then?"
"Yes!!"
Got her.
She let out the longest sigh, like she'd just performed some great act of charity, and made a whole show of it. This from someone who'd been getting her ass kicked...
I immediately ended the game with my next move. Then I pranced around like a colt with its tail on fire, whooping in triumph. Or rather... I pretended to.
"Whoooo!! Hell yeahhh!! I won!!"
As expected, she didn't get that angry. Of course she didn't — I'd only won thanks to her generosity.
Don't half-ass the celebration, Baek Dongha. Put your whole body into it.
I let out a cheer, gathered the pieces I'd just fought with from the board, lined them up in a row on the floor, and snapped off a salute to each one.
"Knight! Those swift legs of yours made this victory. Rook! Without that charge of yours, we wouldn't have stood a chance. You there, Bishop! If you're a hero, then act like one — stop sulking in the corner by yourself and get over here! And of course, the ones who made them all shine — that's you! All eight pawns!"
The message was this: the match had been an incredibly thrilling, soul-stirring masterpiece of a game, and even though it was her first time, she'd been a worthy rival who'd given me that much fighting spirit. It was childish, but I had no choice.
Please buy it. Please.
But then.
"Heheh. Uhuheheh."
My heart dropped.
...?
...Fuck...? Why is she laughing?
The goal had only been to end things without pissing her off. The Demon King giggling was not a result I had accounted for. Wearing an expression of complete satisfaction, she spoke.
"You're the same type as me, huh? Let's play together. Next up..."
I was so fucked.