Home Party
Competitive types tend to be pretty straightforward when it comes to carrying out penalties. No—they get downright obsessive about it. That's why I, Baek Dongha—a scrub-tier Bronze porter—don't hesitate for a second to land free damage on the forehead of the strongest being in this entire world: the Demon King.
THWACK—!
"Wait."
The eighth forehead flick detonated with crushing weight, and she threw up a palm to stop me.
"What?"
"No... it's just..."
She couldn't say it. Couldn't ask me to stop hitting her. Couldn't admit she'd been wrong. Because she was a pride-stuffed, competition-addicted maniac...
Looked at a certain way, this was an incredibly dangerous situation.
If she lost her mind to rage and counterattacked even once, my body would be reduced to particles.
But I had to do this...
I needed to burn it into this insane game addict's skull. That even if I was a bug compared to her, throwing matches around carelessly could get her stung—badly. If I chickened out and let this slide now, she'd keep challenging me to contests big and small for the rest of my life. One unlucky loss and I was dead. I had to at least cut down the frequency.
So.
I lined up the ninth forehead flick against this girl's brow.
"Wait. Then... I'll grant you one request."
"Huh!? A request?"
Things couldn't have gone better. A request? No thinking required—just let me out of here...
"Letting you leave is off the table, though. If you go outside, I'll kill you. I'll give you something from inside my castle."
"There's nothing I want."
"Urgh..."
The Demon King fanned her lava-hot forehead with her hand, and a look of genuine difficulty settled in her crimson eyes.
"How about some dried alligator hide?"
"I'm good."
"A Fenrir's canine?"
"Don't need it."
"A shoulder massage coupon?"
"You!? Giving me one? Fu—... nah. Forget it."
The Demon King rattled off a stream of worthless junk, dodging the issue. The so-called King of Demons, scrambling her brains just to take two fewer forehead flicks. I was speechless.
"Ah, for fuck's sake... then..."
She was the one bargaining, and she was getting pissy because nothing appealed to me. What a shameless little shit.
A deal? Rejected. Time to resume sentencing that forehead of hers.
Just as I thrust forward the finger of judgment, a loud rumble erupted from my stomach.
—Grrrrumble!
The kitchen the Demon King led me to wasn't much different from an ordinary household's. Just a bit more spacious, scaled to the castle. A utensil holder packed with wooden spoons and forks. Spatulas, ladles, rice paddles, and other kitchen tools hanging on the wall. Pots, cups, the usual.
She made this based on that...?
On the table sat the catalog she'd used as a reference.
Stylish Kitchen Makeover: Beginner's Edition
"...Well? Does it look similar?"
The Demon King, wearing a bizarre apron, paused her cooking and glanced back at me. So that apron was the alligator hide... Her tone was overflowing with expectation, obvious to anyone. The answer was already decided. All I had to do was say it.
"Yeah. The kitchen you made has more personality. Looks better, actually."
Her mouth fell open at that, then she whipped back around and threw herself into cooking again.
I said it to make her feel good. Did she not like it?
Truth was, I'd been reading the Demon King's mood for a while now. I was worried I'd gone a little overboard earlier.
This was different from the chess match.
Back then, she'd put on a performance she could live with, and we'd ended on a pleasant, even split. But the Barrel Roulette just now? I'd completely wrecked her. Literally. I'd struck the Demon King's forehead eighteen times, and my own brow didn't have a single scratch.
Even if it was to instill a sense of caution...
Eighteen was excessive. More than enough to warrant a revenge match. Granted, even if I said I wouldn't hit her, this pride-stuffed maniac would foam at the mouth and demand I do it anyway.
What was she even making? I couldn't picture it. Food cooked by the Demon King...
The moment she realized I was hungry, her face lit up and she immediately proposed a deal involving a meal.
This is a goddamn unequal treaty... fuck.
Lock me up so I can't leave, then use food as a bargaining chip. A proposal I had no real right to refuse.
She wouldn't poison it, at least.
From what I'd observed these past few days, the Demon King wasn't that kind of dirty player. If she wanted me dead, she'd just smash the bowl over my head and be done with it.
"Hmm-hmm~♪"
!!!!
Was that real?
Did I mishear? I'd been getting my brain wrung dry, constantly calculating, so yeah, I was pretty wrecked. Hearing things wouldn't be that surprising...
"Uhu-hum~"
?!
No, that was definitely the Demon King's humming. The girl wearing an alligator-hide apron, using a two-handed sword she'd shaken down from some nameless adventurer as a kitchen knife.
She was humming.
The dinner the Demon King made in exchange for two fewer forehead flicks: stew, fairy bread, basilisk steak, and tteokbokki—spicy rice cakes—that had somehow inserted itself into the spread as if it belonged there.
Chomp, chew-chew. Two days since I'd entered the Demon King's room. Before that, I'd starved for two days climbing the Tower. Slurp, chomp-chomp. Any sense of dignity had evaporated long ago, ever since I'd been transported to this world. Even accounting for that, I was aware I was eating with an unseemly amount of passion.
"Is it good?"
Just as I was shoving a mouthful of steak into the stew, her question made our eyes meet.
!!!
"Pffah—mmph mmph—"
Thank god. I threw a hand up just in time to stop the food from exploding out of my mouth. She'd been watching me inhale my food like a starved animal... and now she was splitting that huge mouth of hers ear to ear, grinning with the most sinister look.
"Mmph... gulp. Hoo..."
No way she'd poisoned it. Why go to the trouble of cooking a meal for someone you could kill with a single slap?
Why the hell was she smiling like that...?
"Is it good?"
The Demon King repeated the same words, her face now blank. The sight was terrifying, but this was another free-response question with an obvious answer.
"...Yeah. It's good. Really good."
"...Heehee... kikhikhik."
Eek.
Don't laugh. Please. Please stop cracking up.
It's fucking terrifying...
I didn't know if this was even a coherent thought, but... the truth was, her looks were outstanding. Frozen in a still frame, appearance alone, nobody would argue if she got street-cast as a model—as long as they didn't know she was the Demon King living on the 100th floor of the Tower.
However...
Was this what they called conditioned fear?
My party had been slaughtered right in front of me. Those genuine monsters who'd spent the entire journey wringing actual monsters dry like they were nothing. Dropped by a single, unfunny slap.
They were such massive bitches that I didn't feel a shred of vengefulness...
But it was more than enough to plant terror in me.
"Is it good?"
Why do you keep asking...
"Yeah... it's good."
"You cleaned the plate, huh?"
She grinned that bone-chilling grin again and picked up the stew bowl I'd practically inhaled. The catalog stuck underneath it slipped free and unfurled with a flutter. A bookmark was tucked into one of the chapters.
Home Party Manual for Hosting Friends
"Let's compete with this next."
I doubted my ears. So that meal had been a funeral offering.
"Uh, huh? Compete at what?"
"Speed apple peeling. The penalty is eating these carrots."
On the stew plate she'd been eating from, only the carrots she'd meticulously picked out remained.
Fuck! Why do I have to eat the vegetables YOU were picky about as a bet!!
And a Demon King, of all people, shouldn't be picking carrots out of her stew. What kind of deranged lunatic was this, I wanted to shout—but I couldn't raise my voice. Because I was scared. It was a somewhat unsanitary wager, but I was grateful it didn't involve my skull getting caved in.
"Here, you peel first."
She handed me an apple and a paring knife. Leave it to the Demon King to so blatantly propose a bet that favored a girl...
Did you think that's what I was going to say?
Not a chance in hell. I'd been through land battles, sea battles, and aerial combat. I'd been a cook in the military, and ever since arriving in this world, I'd done household labor every single day while getting chewed out by four people with the pickiest damn palates.
At times like this, I was the Sword Emperor. I was the Demon King.
The idea of the Demon King getting healthier from eating carrots was concerning, but if she was throwing down a gauntlet in the kitchen, I had no choice but to accept with gusto.
I chewed the last carrot thoroughly.
I lost...
Her handiwork was something I had to acknowledge, even as an enemy... The world was wide, and masters were many. The Demon King watched me with the satisfied look of a child observing a stag beetle eating sugar in a cage.
Chew, chew. Gulp—
"...I ate it all."
I opened my mouth wide to prove it was empty.
"Wow... I was half-skeptical, but you really ate it all? You're pretty skilled, huh?"
The Demon King looked at me with newfound respect. Don't give me that evaluation over eating some carrots.
"Go wait. There's something else we're going to do together."
!!!
Please stop... I'm begging you... what now...
Fattening me up only to slaughter me. She was the spitting image of the witch from Hansel and Gretel.
"...Okay."
But what could I do? I had no oven to shove the witch into, and no clever Gretel at my side.
DING! DING! DING!
?!
A warning alarm erupted—not just inside the kitchen, but seemingly throughout the entire castle.
"What's this? A fire alarm?"
Even if she lived like an Earthling, she had that too?
"...It means an intruder has arrived."
An intruder!
I cheered internally! They were finally here! A party that would take down this vicious, competition-addicted villain! You late bastards! Do you know how long I've been waiting?! I still love you, though! Maybe a party member who'd lost their memory had called in reinforcements. Please! A high-ranker party! Don't let it be some trash-tier group! My heart pounded at the thought that I might finally get to go home.
"Where are they coming from!?"
"...You... like that so much...?"
...Oops. I'd gotten so excited my energy had spiked like Santa Claus had shown up.
She gathered mana in the air, and a translucent screen appeared. The crowd visible within it...
That was... unmistakable. A flag with two pairs of black dragons intertwined.
The meal I'd just eaten was apparently her funeral offering.