Chapter 1. I Didn't See This Coming (1)
When, in the course of a lifetime, does a person feel most cheated by the world?
When they're misunderstood?
When they're falsely accused?
When they've bled and sweated for something and never received their rightful reward?
Well, everyone hits moments like those at some point. But hearing the words,
"I think the patient should have his name attached to this disease,"
and then—
"You likely have about six months left to live,"
—being handed a terminal diagnosis out of nowhere, before you've even turned thirty, is a grievously unfair thing to endure.
Ha. What's the point of winning the lottery, of all things?
Twenty-nine years old. He'd lived an honest life with no parents, no inheritance—nothing—and then, without warning, he'd been handed a death sentence.
Worse, he'd received it on the very day he hit the jackpot—on the very day he'd been celebrating, thinking this was the payoff for a life of toiling away like a worker ant!
So, with death looming, he'd said:
Ah, I really, really don't want to die. I don't care who it is—someone, anyone, please just keep me from dying.
That was exactly what he'd said.
What he hadn't counted on was actually not dying.
And what he most definitely hadn't counted on was becoming the strongest immortal existence possible—an unkillable pile of bones!
At the chorus of praise rising around him, a snow-white skull let out a small sigh.
[Right. So this whole circus is finally over.]
"Pardon?"
[Finally I can stick my tongue out and curse, eat, and take a shit.]
"…Pardon?"
[At long last, I can get hair transplanted onto this skull.]
"…P-pardon?"
Isaac.
Look up, look down—nothing but bone, top to bottom. The world had called him the worst of them all: the Skeleton Demon King.
His infamy ran so deep that while plenty of people couldn't name his country, there wasn't a soul alive who didn't know his name.
Countless heroes had knelt before him, coughing up blood, and everywhere he led his demon hosts, there followed roads of death and corpses that mirrored his own countenance.
In other words, a Corpse Demon King in the most literal sense of the word!
Lord of the walking dead!
The One Who Coveted the Gods' Thrones—an audacity so great that even the Pope of the Holy Empire had never dared order his subjugation!
And yet even a Demon King of his caliber had one great problem.
Damn it all—this is a body that can't even take a dump.
Dying of a rare disease without spending a single coin of his lottery winnings had already been unfair enough to make him haunt the earth in rage.
And in the very instant his breath left him, he'd opened his eyes in another world—as a pile of bleached white bones, unable to eat, unable to sleep, unable even to feel pain.
He'd never so much as held a woman's hand, and then he'd gone straight to bare skeleton—which was so obscenely unfair that he'd gritted his teeth and held fast to his life and his sanity.
He'd built up his strength until he could evolve from a lowest-tier summoned beast, a mere Skeleton jerked around like a puppet, into the Lich, King of the Undead.
He'd fed and sheltered the destitute dregs of the demon race, and raised them back from the brink of extinction—all well and good, all well and good.
"My Lord."
"Our great King."
The savage Demon King whom even the gods feared.
"O our King, whose very name drips with venom and cunning—Isaac!"
[Hey, you bastards—it's Isaac. How many times do I have to say it?]
The Korean named Kim Isaac clutched at a chest he didn't have in frustration, but after several hundred years of his underlings failing to pronounce a single name correctly, he'd decided he simply didn't care anymore.
[As of today, this godforsaken contract is finished.]
"Pardon?"
The Skeleton Demon King went clack, clack, clack, his empty eye sockets flashing with fierce, unbridled joy.
[As of today, I can finally eat, sleep, and take a shit.]
Kim Isaac had wanted to become human.
No—honestly, he'd have taken a lion's ass or a dinosaur egg, anything at all, so long as he wasn't a skeleton.
But no matter what he tried, there was no escaping his undead body.
Even so, it hadn't mattered—not until the gods came to him.
Demon King. Let us enter an employment contract with you.
That was the offer the gods had made to Kim Isaac, who stood at the very apex of the demon race.
If you resolve our problems, then in return, we shall make you human.
And so, ten years after sealing that contract—
BOOM!
—a giant's head came crashing down into the world of the gods.
When the gods realized that the head belonged to the calamity that had terrorized the God Realm itself, they turned snow-pale.
Unbelievable.
The gods stared at the skeleton who'd carried in the giant's head, utterly at a loss for words.
That lunatic actually brought it back.
And the skull Demon King who'd lopped off the giant's head flashed his empty sockets.
[And that makes it done. Every last rebel faction that ever defied the gods—wiped out.]
……!
The gods erupted into a great commotion.
What kind of madman is this?!
Ten years! In barely a decade?!
He'd eliminated every single calamity that even the gods hadn't been able to touch for thousands of years!
The Skeleton Demon King's sockets flashed again.
[Enough with the free extras. Pay me what you owe me. Twelve requests solved, and you make me human—your words, not mine.]
At that, the god in charge of his requests came hurrying over at once.
Apologies for the wait! I simply never imagined you'd dispatch the work this quickly, you see.
[What?]
You must understand—turning a single being human is no trivial matter. So, in that spirit, if you'd be so gracious as to take on just one more task, I believe this side will be able to arrange your payment.
And the Skeleton Demon King gave a pleasant, easygoing clack, clack, clack of a laugh.
[Oh? One more, and that's all? Fine by me. Something that simple? Easy.]
Then, if you would—
BOOM!
[Bastards. You could dunk a skeleton in water and it'd still have more sense than you. Where do you get off running a sucker play like that?]
……!
The Skeleton Demon King was radiating a murderous aura.
The truth was, he'd overheard something entirely unexpected on his way here.
Between us—there isn't actually any way to turn that skeleton Demon King human at all, is there?
What? Really? Then why did the Chief Gods sign a contract with him?
Why, indeed. He was summoned by forbidden magic, an existence outside natural law, so he can't be destroyed—and being undead, he has no lifespan. His power can't be inherited, and he's dangerous enough to threaten the God Realm itself. So the plan is simply to wring that power dry in the gods' service. Clever, no?
True. Cold-blooded as hell, though.
That's ri… KYAAAH! The Skeleton Demon King!
Recalling that backbiting conversation, the Skeleton Demon King stalked toward the gods with unconcealed malice in every clacking step.
[What's this? I have to do good deeds up here in the God Realm to burn away my karma? Clean up twelve troublesome calamities that defy the gods, and then you'll make me human?]
The assembled gods visibly wilted under his presence. On the faces of the whispering deities, annoyance was written plain as day.
What do we do? It seems the creature has caught on.
Well—didn't I oppose this from the very beginning? How did we come to drag such a degenerate into the God Realm in the first place?
W-we never imagined the twelve subjugations would take only ten years… we budgeted a minimum of five hundred years per calamity…
The words were barely out of the god's mouth before an explosion of rage shook the air.
[That's ALL you've got to say for yourselves, you sons of bitches?!]
BOOM!
The Skeleton Demon King raged as if he'd tear the skin from the gods' faces and wear it as a mask.
[From the very start, you never had any intention of making me human, did you?]
At his words, the gods laughed, as if to say, why are you taking this so seriously?
Why can't you see that all of this is for your own good? I mean, why this obsession with being human? That body of yours is so convenient! No eating, no sleeping, no dying—
[Screw you! What the hell would you know about how I feel?!]
He could still remember it all, plain as yesterday—the day his head became a bare skull.
Thus, a Demon King is born!
The face of the summoner who'd dragged his soul from another world, all for the sake of creating the ultimate Demon King!
And the faces of all those people—men and women alike—who'd bolted at the mere sight of him for hundreds of years! And the priests and knights who'd come charging to cut him down, dismissing him as just another weak, low-tier monster!
But truthfully, none of that mattered compared to the real thing:
[I have HATED skeletons, corpses, blood, horror flicks, and gore my entire life! Do you have ANY idea what it does to me, looking in the mirror every single morning?!]
……?!
So the Skeleton Demon King glared at the palace of the God Realm with doubled fury.
He'd spent his entire life unable to save a single coin for himself, devoting everything to feeding his underlings—and this was his thanks?
[Ten years of being your errand boy—shoe-shining, latrine-cleaning, massages, pest extermination—all for free. You'll be paying up for mental anguish and emotional distress, plus damages.]
At that, the gods, as if struck speechless, blocked his path in a single stride.
The damages are what we should be collecting from you!
[What did you say, you bastards?]
Do you have any idea how many treasure-grade elixirs of the God Realm you've consumed up here?!
The Skeleton Demon King let out a scoff of pure incredulity.
[Treasure-grade elixirs? This thing doesn't even grow hair. It's moisturizer. Scalp moisturizer and a red energy drink, plain and simple.]
M-moisturiz… energy drink……?!
An elixir holding tens of thousands of years of the God Realm in a single drop, and you call it a—you—wait. Hold on. Did you just say it was red?
[Yeah. It was sealed inside a box with dragon-scale patterns.]
The gods could not believe their ears.
What the Skeleton Demon King was describing was unmistakably the primordial treasure of the God Realm—kept in the deepest vault of the gods' own treasury—
Treasure?!
You DRANK it?!
You went into the restricted zone, of all places—?!
[Ah, don't worry. I hated to waste what was left, so I used it to mop my feet. Smelled nice, though.]
……?!
[What? You told me anything inside the boxes counted as recovery potions, and recovery potions get drunk. Your words.]
The gods clutched at the backs of their necks.
He surely couldn't have mistaken a treasure box for a potion case?
They concluded that reasoning with that degenerate was simply impossible.
Of all things—one of the Eight Forbidden Treasures.
No matter. It works out, in a way. This is, after all, the one and only chance to erase every last demon from existence, now that the creature is here in the God Realm.
A pity, though. He was such a convenient demon to exploit.
At the casual talk of breaking the treaty and wiping out his underlings, the Skeleton Demon King's sockets flashed with something chilling—any trace of jest gone.
[You? Kill me? This may be your home turf, but you'd need to drag in at least a Chief God or two to lay a finger on me.]
He'd intended to walk away without a fuss, so long as the contract was honored. Now he drew upon his power.
THOOM!
The earth shuddered, and at a magnitude of mana utterly unlike anything before, several lower gods flinched and shrank back.
This is why one never signs a plain employment contract with a Demon King! An existence that cannot be destroyed—what are we to do about this?!
But at that very moment—
CRACK!
[Ghk!]
The Skeleton Demon King staggered. The mana he'd been channeling had simply vanished.
And it didn't stop there.
I can't move my body.
In the same breath, mockery drifted toward the bewildered Demon King.
Useless. No one whose name is written here may so much as twitch.
[!]
The Skeleton Demon King flinched as he took in the gods.
Because of the objects they were holding.
…Bugs?
Dead insects—taxidermied, preserved in stillness.
But these were no ordinary specimens. These were the implements that sealed away any calamity, devouring its mana down to the last mote.
Do you know how this world has endured until now? Because of these. Every great calamity of the past has been sealed within them.
And as proof, when the taxidermied bug bearing the Skeleton Demon King's name began to glow, he felt his very soul being siphoned away.
At last, the Skeleton Demon King let out a scoff of boundless indignation.
[You bastards. The employment contract was bait all along—the real goal was to rip out my soul and seal it from the start, wasn't it?]
The gods, in turn, wore expressions of serene benevolence—benevolence as they understood it—finally revealing their true colors.
Did you truly imagine that a filthy Demon King had any right to walk the same soil as gods?
You should be grateful we deigned to use you as our hands and feet at all—and yet you dared, witless thing, to expect compensation?
[What did you say, you bastards??]
Well, you were to be told the truth only after we'd used you up. You found out rather faster than expected.
Still, rest easy. Your new body has been specially prepared—one that will resemble you quite perfectly. Aren't you grateful?
The taxidermied bug they spoke of was none other than a slick, glistening, bald maggot.
The Skeleton Demon King's sockets flashed with naked killing intent.
[The LEAST you could've done was grab a hairy tent caterpillar?!]
Tch. Still obsessed with a few lousy strands of hair? Whatever. Your skeletal husk and your underlings will serve us faithfully as slaves for all eternity, so fear n— GHKK?!
CRACK!
The gods carrying out the soul-sealing jolted in alarm.
The taxidermied bug binding the Skeleton Demon King's soul had begun to split apart.
As they gaped at the sight, a laugh rose up that chilled every spine in the hall.
[You idiots. If you're going to do it, you finish it in one instant—and without getting caught!]
W-wait—!!!
Before anyone could even think something's gone wrong, a colossal explosion tore through the God Realm.
KUGUGUNG!
By the time the gods recovered their senses, it was already over.
They stared at the shattered God Realm, turned snow-white.
That lunatic—!
He detonated his own body! Is he out of his mind?!
But the upper gods froze solid for an entirely different reason.
The ritual! Was the ritual properly cast?!
P-pardon?
If the skeleton Demon King slipped through our fingers, the consequences would be truly beyond mending!
For the first time in centuries, expressions of genuine fear crossed the gods' faces—but the panic was brief.
They found the taxidermied maggot in the wreckage.
The larva, once frozen rigid, was now wriggling and squirming as it never had before.
The ritual took hold. The Demon King's soul appears to have properly entered.
At the news that the Demon King had been contained, the upper gods at last exhaled in profound relief.
Then all is well.
The gods gazed upon the bug as it thrashed desperately, dragging itself along as if begging for its life, and sighed.
That lunatic. The sheer scale of the destruction he caused single-handedly…
He survived only because his body is that of an Undead—fatally weak to divine power. Had it been anything else, even this method would have failed.
Quite. His obsession with becoming human, too, was surely nothing but an attempt to erase his one weakness. Human flesh is so very friendly to divinity, after all.
The gods doubled over with laughter.
Well then—let us use this occasion to slaughter the demon race in its entirety. Every demon we destroy becomes nourishment for our power, does it not?
Excellent. And the pretty ones, the comely ones—we shall keep as slaves.
Those are the Demon King's underlings. They are hardly easy kills—and gods cannot meddle directly in the mortal realm.
Then what other way is there—!
But at that moment, an Elder God raised his hand.
Evangelism makes a god flourish.
!
With the whole of my strength, I shall forge a vessel for a Saint—a holy child, an evangelist—and send it down to the mortal realm. Entrust the demon purges, the evangelism, all of it, to the Saint, and the matter is settled.
Pardon? Are you certain, my lord? The expenditure of your power will be immense…!
A thousand years of sleep will mend it. So choose carefully—into this precious vessel of a Saint, instill a beautiful soul, one that will obey our every word.
Seal the bug that holds the Demon King in the deepest depths, where no one may approach, and guard it with the strictest vigilance.
Yes, my lord!
Thus the name of the Demon King—that insufferable wretch who had needled the gods' tempers for hundreds of years—would be erased from history.
They watched the bug being hauled off toward the interrogation chambers and felt only relief.
That insolent skeleton Demon King… we shall make him come to his senses inside that maggot, under torture, for the rest of eternity.
Right. Composure.
Keeping one's composure—very good.
Live a few hundred years as a skeleton, and sure, you take a few knocks. You lose your soul a time or two. You get sealed inside a maggot and tortured a little. That's just life.
Yes. Fair enough. But—
"Oh my, the baby Saint is awake!"
The Skeleton Demon King was reeling from what had just happened to him.
What is this? A baby?
Why am I not a maggot??
No, more importantly than that—
A Saint? A SAAAAINT?