Chapter 13. Bonds (3)
The Saintess.
The hammer sent by the gods to punish evil.
The valiant vanguard of the subjugation army, wielding holy light.
The foremost radiance of the Holy Empire, and among the most chaste and honorable knights in all the land... There were plenty of titles one could use, but to sum it up in a single phrase, she was essentially just an exorcist.
A highest-rank knight of light, created for one purpose only: the eradication of the .
And not just any ordinary Demon King, either.
Ever since the history of the human realm began, she was a being the gods had painstakingly crafted for the sole purpose of exterminating the 'Skeleton Demon King' — the worst of the worst, the calamity of calamities.
From the god of beauty to the mightiest god of war, down to every nameless minor deity in between, the gods had gathered en masse to forge her.
So how did that turn out?
How did it turn out, indeed.
The demons were left swooning and squabbling over the goddess-like beauty the gods had bestowed upon her. The demon army was devastated by her overwhelming prowess in battle.
Naturally, the people assumed that with such a relentless advance, the Skeleton Demon King would be vanquished in no time.
But then, who was the Skeleton Demon King?
"Hooo. Those gods sure do love pouring effort into the most pointless places."
The Skeleton Demon King had ruthlessly seized the knight of light sent by the gods and hung her up in front of the crowd. She was such a tiny little thing that he couldn't even muster the enthusiasm to fight her, so he'd magnanimously given her a good thrashing and sent her packing with strict instructions never to come back... or so the story goes. Like hell it does!
"Slaying the Demon King is my destiny!"
She blew herself up and died!
'These lunatics!'
Mad as they were, the Saintesses went mad with style. If it meant killing the Skeleton Demon King, they would stop at absolutely nothing.
Worse still, their life force was divinely blessed to cockroach levels, and a strength that was formidable to begin with only grew stronger with each passing generation.
By the time he collided with the eighty-first Saintess — the last one he ever faced — even the Skeleton Demon King, frankly, had felt the brush of death.
So he gave it everything he had and utterly annihilated the Saintess and everyone connected to her line.
Crushed them so thoroughly that they'd never even dream of rising again.
Stomped them into the dirt so completely that a grandiose Demon King subjugation would remain forever beyond their wildest fantasies.
He certainly did... he definitely did that.
'You insane — a Saintess family?!'
At the words that he was descended from the Saintess's bloodline, the Skeleton Demon King clutched his head.
No, to be fair, the Saintess's bloodline meant a supreme pedigree. Judging by ability alone, it was a flawless body with nothing left to desire.
Perfect for taking revenge on the gods — so powerful, in fact, that one could argue it would be impossible without this bloodline.
There was only one problem.
And at the same moment, he finally understood why the holy knights of Eshua had that particular glint in their eyes whenever the name Skeleton Demon King came up.
"Eshua is a proud house, honored through the generations as the one entrusted with dispatching the gods' arch-enemy — and the only bloodline to ever produce the Saintess."
"The Saintess has lived for one purpose alone, generation after generation: the destruction of the Skeleton Demon King."
The Skeleton Demon King squeezed his eyes shut.
Damn it all — come to think of it, he'd never asked for the Saintess's family name!
But even so, how had he never noticed?
If the Saintess belonged to a specific house, there was no way he could have missed it...
"The Saintess concealed all information about herself, lest the family ever fall into the Demon King's grasp. She hid even her attire with the utmost care."
"She devoted herself to her family like no one else..."
No — that's exactly the kind of thing you're supposed to disclose!
If you don't, innocent victims like me appear! Damn it!
"Furthermore, the Skeleton Demon King was a coward of a Demon King who refused to fight, did nothing but flee, and even dumped the Saintess in a maze of a place."
"Clearly, he deliberately refused to face her and let her go alive."
"Yes, exactly. He knew better than anyone that having one's pride as a warrior and a knight broken was a fate worse than death. Truly befitting the head of the treacherous demon race."
The Skeleton King's butt was sore again from all this clutching.
No, it's just that I didn't want to watch you blow yourselves up!
Let them watch flesh and gore splatter everywhere, and see if they still say that.
Besides, being alive was what counted. And here they were, sitting around spouting antiquated nonsense about honor and pride.
'These barbarians, slashing away at me without so much as flashing a turn signal.'
Why did he think he used magic in the first place?
Partly because he'd always had more confidence in using his head than his body — but also because he hated looking at corpses.
Because of things that happened in the past, blood and corpses disgusted him on a visceral level. His parents' deaths had been the trigger.
But magic could reduce even bone to dust in an instant.
So why not simply dispatch the Saintess with magic, you ask?
If that had been possible, he would have done it ages ago!
The magical defenses of the Saintess, infused with divine power, were beyond imagination, generation after generation.
To kill one, you had to thoroughly incapacitate her and then personally sever her head or tear out her heart.
The wretched creature was so utterly indestructible that no one but himself could so much as scratch her.
And it wasn't without reason that he'd tried to erase the Saintesses from existence while they were still alive.
Killing a Saintess was a loss for the Skeleton Demon King.
For the gods, creating and maintaining a Saintess consumed an enormous amount of their power, so they couldn't simply multiply them at will. If they did, they'd have to reclaim that power to avoid straining the God Realm.
Which meant that if the Skeleton Demon King obligingly killed a Saintess off, the gods would have been positively grateful, promptly churning out the next generation — this time fully upgraded, no less.
In a word: keeping a Saintess alive was the single most effective way to drain the gods' power.
That was precisely why he'd ignored her demands for a duel and tossed her onto some deserted island, telling her to wander until she dropped dead...
"Every Saintess in history seethed with rage over it. 'If you won't fight me, then kill me! Or if you're really a Demon King, act like one and take me as your slave!'"
Damn it! What did he want with a deranged gore-fetishist!
At that point, the Emperor spoke with a grave expression.
"Indeed, I can well understand the fury toward the Skeleton Demon King. Were it not for that wretch, House Eshua would never have known decline."
Shut it, moneybags!
If I hadn't held back against the Saintess, I'd be the one dead!
In any case, things were finally making sense.
'So that's why they've been treated as a fallen house. They failed to deal with me, and despite all that legitimacy and power, their honor collapsed.'
It wasn't a complicated story.
The Saintess's entire reason for existence was the extermination of the Skeleton Demon King. And yet in hundreds of years, not a single subjugation had succeeded.
How could a Saintess who failed her divine mission have possibly been treated by the Holy Empire over the centuries?
And considering the personalities of the Popes throughout history, it was hardly surprising that the Eshua family and the Saintess had come to be regarded as the empire's shame.
Those bastards he knew were exactly the type to do it.
'Well, whatever. It's fine.'
So the Saintess was his ancestor?
So what?
Even with a Saintess for an ancestor, the Skeleton Demon King felt not a shred of shame.
He had no choice but to feel that way.
'Granted, my intent was to wither the gods away — but I never once actually killed a Saintess.'
"There are ten or twenty Saintesses on record who starved to death, trapped in mazes built by the Skeleton Demon King."
...Ah, crap. I forgot to let them out.
"That would be almost preferable to what came after. Five of them died of a broken heart."
...No, seriously!
Why did all these so-called supreme knights die so pathetically — of that, of all things?! Died! Yeah right!
He might not be as bad as the Pope, but to think he'd be stuck sharing a pot of rice with an ancient nemesis — of all the awkward situations imaginable.
Then again, honestly, it was fine.
Even if it was a bad history, they'd merely fought because a Demon King and the gods' proxy were bound to clash.
The words "sworn mortal enemies" fit the Pope far better. For the Saintess, "begrudging affection" and "love-hate" were closer to the truth.
If it hadn't been for destiny, they might have actually gotten along splendidly.
So there was only one person the Skeleton Demon King needed to watch out for.
The eighty-first Saintess, the last one he'd ever seen.
The only woman who could wield even the power of the Divine Dragon — Melissa, the strongest Saintess, the one who had made even the Skeleton Demon King fear for his life.
The one he'd clashed with the most, the one whose thread of fate ran the longest.
'But I last saw her at least fifty years ago.'
He hadn't yet confirmed what year it was now. But adding her age when they'd met to the time he'd spent sealed, at the very least...
"It has been a hundred and fifty years since the Skeleton Demon King was sealed. In that time, the demon race has only grown stronger, so the Saint is a precious opportunity for the Holy Empire to rebuild its strength — and a treasure to the royal family as well."
Right, two hundred years in total!
Melissa, you're dead already.
If you were alive, you'd be a zombie.
"Moreover, House Eshua currently has no Saintess, does it not? The one who bore this child vanished without a trace along with her husband."
Correct! Exactly right!
No Saintess in the family!
And said Saintess vanished after giving birth to me!
All the easier to devour this family whole, then— no, wait, that's not it. Hold on.
The ones who went missing are my parents, aren't they!
The Skeleton Demon King pressed a hand to his face as if struck by a headache.
Only then did he realize why he'd been left unattended.
'Now that I think about it, I'm an orphan — that's why they were slow to come find me.'
Well, fine. Good, even.
Great abilities, a great house — a spoon so diamond it was practically royalty-tier.
Everything about the situation was good.
Being a newborn without a guardian was a minor flaw, but still acceptable. A child of a noble house would typically have wet nurses anyway, and frankly, hired staff were easier to work with than half-formed blood ties.
The only real problem was that he needed a powerful ally to shield him from the Pope...
"Even without the child's parents, there is the Matriarch. From the Pope without, and the Demon King within — Eshua is more than capable of protecting the child, inside and out."
Right, so in place of a Saintess, there's a Matriarch.
Then it didn't matter at all.
Whoever it was, as long as they could keep the Pope in check...
"But has Lady Melissa not departed to subjugate the Skeleton Demon King's minions? I imagine her return will take considerable time."
Yes, yes, off she went to hunt my minions...
Hold on.
Who?
Melissa?
"The Matriarch was the previous Saintess — the last to face that Skeleton Demon King, and the strongest of them all. Not the sort to waste time over such a minor affair. And she is eagerly awaiting her grandchild, besides."
The moment the Skeleton Demon King learned the Matriarch's identity, he very nearly vomited blood.
Melissa!
Why are you still alive?!
'If you're human, have the decency to return to nature already!'
Rich words coming from a several-hundred-year-old monster who'd just reincarnated as a baby — but that wasn't the point.
'Damn it, the moment I get caught, I get fast-tracked to the afterlife.'
As the Skeleton Demon King's face began to curdle, the Emperor remarked, intrigued.
"How would this sound? The royal family shall care for the child until the outline of whoever harmed his parents can be traced. Would that not allow Melissa to finish her house's great task with an easy heart?"
At that, the knights of Eshua all wore faces of stricken anguish.
Naturally — they had no choice but to take it as a declaration that the Crown did not trust Eshua's knights.
Whether the Emperor read their reaction or not, he said with a smile:
"This is no slight against Eshua's knights. Merely a matter of each side doing what it does best, in service of a shared goal."
A shared goal.
He meant the Pope and the Holy See.
Eshua despised the Holy See for treating them as the empire's punching bag, and the Crown had long wished to crush the Pope's factions that irritated them so.
Stay far from politics, the message went — keep guarding the border and hunting demons, as you always have.
Everyone stands to gain, the Emperor was saying.
"The Crown can offer this child a great deal. Above all — Eshua is the house that produces the Saintess, is it not? Perhaps you might entrust the boy to the royal family? When it comes to raising sons, I daresay we are the more experienced party."
The knights bit their lips hard and bowed their heads.
"Your Majesty. Forgive our boldness, but we beg leave to speak."
"Speak."
"It is true that Eshua's knights' chief duty is guarding the Saintess. But before that, we are demon-slaying knights — specialists in the eradication of the demonic. We are the legion that fights on the empire's frontmost line, where the demonic spawn."
Having found their footing, the knights' eyes glowed with quiet fire.
"In matters of demon-hunting, is there a single house in the Holy Empire that can stand beside Eshua? As the sharpest blade on the empire's front lines, we are certain we can protect the young lord — and give the boy what he needs most."
The Emperor looked upon their disciplined fervor with evident interest.
"What the boy needs most, you say."
The granduncle, taking the knights' words as self-evident truth, smiled proudly and spoke up.
"What Your Majesty could give the child would amount to silk, castles, gold bars, and land, at best. Wealth is lovely, of course. But Eshua can offer something no amount of gold could ever buy: honor and a spirit of challenge worth trading life itself for. And an unbreakable will that—"
And that was when it happened.
For some reason, the granduncle suddenly looked flustered.
Having escaped his cradle, the Skeleton Demon King was crawling toward the Emperor with agonizing slowness.
The startled knights' eyes darted between the cradle and the baby.
"Y-young lord?!"
How he'd escaped the cradle was a mystery in itself — but the place the Skeleton Demon King was headed for!
Gotcha!
The tiny hand of the baby who had crawled all the way to the Emperor closed around His Majesty's ankle.
The Emperor then looked down at the infant patting his leg, unmistakably demanding to be picked up, and was utterly delighted.
"Oh! So you would choose us, then!"
"Young lord?!"
The knights of Eshua panicked and lunged to grab him.
It's not safe, come back here right now — the words they couldn't possibly say out loud, so they only flailed their hands desperately at the air.
"Young lord, this way! Over here! Peekaboo!"
Little voices chimed in, trying to lure his attention, but the Skeleton Demon King, now cradled in the Emperor's arms, turned his head away with perfect composure.
Nah, don't need you lot.
I'll just be a royal honored guest, thanks. Peekaboo.
"Y-young lord! Come back here this instant!"
Nope. Not a chance, you lot.
What are you, an army?
Honor and unbreakable challenge spirit, my skeletal behind.
Clinging snugly to the Emperor, the Skeleton Demon King didn't so much as pretend to listen.