A Windfall (3)
"Kagh!"
The demons disguised as guards were hacked apart, leaving nothing but mangled ruins behind.
The moment their torsos hit the ground, the human skin they wore peeled away, revealing the monsters beneath.
And that wasn't the end of it.
The remaining demons were all dragged mercilessly into the living shadows as well.
The first ones seized were those who had approached the Skeleton King, and the shadows seemed to seethe with something like fury—as if to say, how dare anything lay a hand on the Skeleton King?
In a sense, the shadows were dispatching the enemies on his behalf, much like holy knights would.
Naturally, the demons could only be thrown into confusion.
They had realized what they were facing.
"Gah! Why—why on earth would you turn on your own kin—kraaagh!"
As if told to shut up, the demons screaming as they were sucked into the black puddle of shadow were swallowed whole.
Even though they weren't weaklings, they were hauled off like toys.
At the sight, the Skeleton King let out a snort of laughter. He'd recognized what that shadow really was.
That's a Shadow Lich, isn't it.
The very same high-tier demon he had resurrected from the totem the Bishop had been carrying not long ago.
So it had lost the pecking-order contest, run off, and then been tailing him ever since?
One might wonder how it had followed him without the clergy noticing, but the Shadow Lich moved through shadows themselves.
If it suppressed its demonic aura it couldn't use its power at all, but in exchange it possessed first-rate stealth that even high-ranking clerics couldn't easily detect.
Impressive that it'd managed to tail him all the way here unnoticed. And yet—how dare it.
Not you, shadow. You, over there.
Hey. That detection spell. Why didn't you mention this thing?
When the eighty-eight had been detected, this little pest had surely sensed the lich too.
He'd shot it a look demanding to know if it couldn't do its job properly, but Whisper merely tilted its head.
Oh, this little brat's got jokes now, huh?
It was infuriating, but Whisper was technically right.
Not a single trace of hostility toward the Skeleton King emanated from the Shadow Lich.
No—rather than hostility, it was more like…
[I will destroy everyone who dares threaten my lord!]
Allies…
[Lay your filthy hands on my lord and I will sever them!]
"Kraaagh!"
Hmm. Affection…?
[So much as glance at my lord with those filthy eyes and I will gouge them from your skulls!]
SPLOOSH!!
…I think the problem is that it has far, far too much affection.
No, honestly, at that level it's straight-up obsession. Kinda scary, actually.
So the Skeleton King couldn't help tilting his head.
Why was a high-tier demon acting like this?
Had it undergone some moral education and attained a profound enlightenment or something?
So the eighty-eight vanished—turns out this thing was the one that wiped them out.
Well, it was that caliber of high-tier demon, after all.
Why a being like that would want to protect a suckling babe in human flesh he couldn't begin to guess, but hey—he'd gotten his nose blown without lifting a finger thanks to it.
There was no way he could complain.
Except for one small problem…
"Um… Young Lord Rillai?"
"How exactly are we meant to process what we're witnessing?"
It was the Eshua knights, still standing there with their swords drawn, simply watching.
These were men who served on the Holy Empire's foremost frontlines and wouldn't blink at almost anything—yet even they looked utterly dumbfounded by the scene.
Their sweat-drenched eyeballs darted left, then right, working overtime.
"The demons are… protecting Young Lord Isaac?"
The Skeleton King waggled his eyebrows, as if to say that was precisely the problem.
However you sliced it, demons guarding a human child crossed a line.
Unless these guys were idiots, suspicion should be the natural response…
"They're not protecting him—they're fighting each other. Trying to kill one another first, that's all."
"Ah, so unless he eliminates them personally, it doesn't count. That's why the demons are guarding Young Lord Isaac?"
Idiots. They're idiots.
"That's the Skeleton King's followers for you."
"Well, serving an undead to begin with isn't exactly a sign of sound mind."
Grateful that you're idiots, but your tongues are running a bit loose there.
Then again, wasn't this actually a stroke of luck?
Because of the Gold Decree, demons shouldn't have been able to exist inside the Holy Empire at all.
He'd assumed that using high-tier magic would get them instantly detected, keeping their movements severely restricted—but these things had slipped all the way into human territory?
Maybe demonic magic is a lot freer to use than I thought.
Of course, not every knight was an idiot.
"Young Lord Rillai. Demons do not track specific humans out of loyalty. And for a Shadow Lich—a species that serves no one—to pursue someone this far means there must be something about Young Lord Isaac."
It was the knight-captain—the one who had blown off the Bishop's arm and larynx.
Her expression was rather grave, and the Skeleton King raised an eyebrow.
She was a high paladin, so he just hoped she wouldn't start entertaining dangerous suspicions.
"A being that even the undead instinctively sense danger from. You insist he is not, but once again, Isaac displays the qualifications of a Saint candidate…"
There we go! Your aim's a bit off, but good enough!
It would've been perfect if she'd said Saint rather than Saint candidate, but still—excellent work.
The Skeleton King's mouth curled upward.
And no wonder—the man had already guessed how weak his standing within the family was.
Thanks to none other than the Emperor's behavior.
However greedy the man was, for the imperial family to dare propose taking a child of a Ducal House?
That could only mean the Emperor knew the child wasn't important to Eshua.
So if people around him hyped him up as a Saint, then from the Skeleton King's perspective, nothing could be better.
And as a Saint, he'd receive the ultra-luxury treatment while swallowing this ducal house whole.
The Skeleton King smiled a dark, greasy smile at that delightful thought, but—
"He is not a Saint, just an ordinary little boy. A mere Saint candidate would breathe out divine power like a Saintess does, yet I sense no power from him whatsoever."
The Skeleton King's eyebrows twitched, as though the remark had struck bone.
Truly a Saintess's bloodline.
Well, fair. Embarrassing as it is, I still don't know how to actually draw out divine power.
Holy arts belonged to the realm of the unconscious, but his brain was so thoroughly wired for spellcasting that he needed to consciously force that door open.
And sure, Saintess kin were quick on the uptake—but there was no way in hell they'd ever imagine that he, the Demon King, simply didn't know how to operate holy arts yet!
But the uncle looked at him with something like pity.
"More to the point, a 'boy' born of Eshua couldn't possibly carry power like a Saintess's, could he?"
"!"
At those words, the knight-captain strangely couldn't find her voice.
Instead, murder flaring from her eyes, she changed the subject.
"Then did the demons swarm here on the Skeleton King's orders alone? On a child with no power at all? Just how cruel and pathetic is this Skeleton King?"
Suddenly demoted to a pathetic creature, the Skeleton King stared at her in disbelief.
But the uncle shook his head.
"No. The Skeleton King is far more wretched and petty than you imagine."
Wow. This uncle bastard just had to pile on, didn't he.
The Skeleton King glared at his uncle, but the man answered only by staring straight at Isaac's body.
Beneath the silver hair, his blue eyes narrowed.
Memories of the past flashed through his mind.
"Milady! Another Eshua child has died. To that curse again."
"Damn it—that accursed Skeleton King's curse, again…!"
"When, when will that vile curse of the Skeleton King ever be lifted?!"
"Young Lord Rillai?"
At the knight-captain's voice, the uncle, who had been lost in thought, raised his sword high.
"It's good to be kind to the child, but don't grow too attached."
"Y-yes?"
"He won't live long anyway."
"…I beg your pardon?!"
In that instant, the uncle hurled his sword aura at the demons, and in sync with the signal, the paladins unleashed their holy arts.
The knight-captain seemed the most flustered by the uncle's words—but in truth, the most flustered of all could only be the Skeleton King.
Excuse me, you uncle bastard!
What's with dropping a terminal diagnosis out of nowhere?!
Explain yourself before you go, damn it!
But before he could object, the blue holy arts of Eshua wrapped around a section of the grounds.
It looked like a barrier.
The uncle apparently had no intention of sending the Skeleton King's subordinates home in one piece.
"Everyone still breathing—gouge out their eyes and interrogate every last one! And those already dead—drag them back out of Hell! I'll make them pay for daring to spout the Skeleton King's name on Eshua soil!"
You—!
Interrogating them for me is all well and good, but explain the "won't live long" thing first!
"Keep watch and make sure no harm comes to the child!"
An explanation! Just give me an explanation!
Soon the uncle's offensive holy arts detonated right above the Shadow Lich's head.
The lich guarding the Skeleton King roared out its demonic aura against the overwhelming force.
[Dogs of the gods! How dare you cage my lord in such a filthy place!]
Furious, the Shadow Lich hurled itself at the knights.
Apparently, it had concluded that the paladins were kidnapping the Skeleton King.
But at that very moment, a wall of light crashed down from the sky, trapping the Shadow Lich inside.
BANG! BANG-BANG!
"We've got it!"
"Now, bind it before—khk!"
The wall of light shuddered violently under the fury-driven thrashing of the Shadow Lich.
WHAM!
The Eshua knights sent flying groaned through gritted teeth.
The Shadow Lich was, individual specimens aside, a high-tier demon of at least the 6th Tier.
The kind of creature that could throw not just a city but an entire nation into chaos—it was nobody's pushover.
But this one seemed to be far stronger than the average specimen.
And sure enough, as the Shadow Lich's demonic power kept climbing, the knight-captain shouted urgently.
"My lord, it's beyond the 6th Tier! Ordinary holy arts won't touch it!"
"No help for it, then. I'll give up on taking it alive—we destroy it, Magic Core and all."
Eyes flashing, the uncle began to activate his own ability.
Ignite
But that was when it happened.
Tinkle!
At that ominous chime, the uncle whipped around toward the Skeleton King in alarm.
"Isaac!"
The protective barrier that had been shielding the Skeleton King had vanished.
Don't tell me—the Shadow Lich—!
And perfectly on cue, the barrier trapping the Shadow Lich shattered as well.
Tinkle!
"!!"
Freed, the Shadow Lich shot past the knights and came barreling down on the Skeleton King like a nightmare.
"My lord!"
"It's going for the young lord!"
Everyone rushed to shield him.
[O King!]
The Shadow Lich reached the Skeleton King.
It seemed incapable of speech, so its thought-waves poured out raw and unfiltered.
[O King! I shall deliver you from those filthy clerics at onc—]
But the moment its eyes met the Skeleton King's, the child broke into a radiant smile.
Unlike that saintly, sage-like smile, his eyes glittered with something bordering on madness.
As if he had been waiting for this exact moment.
And then, something astonishing occurred.
FLASH!
With an enormous burst of light, the Shadow Lich vanished.
No—it hadn't vanished.
It hadn't vanished at all…
"J-jerky?"
The Shadow Lich, transformed into a strip of dried meat, thudded to the ground.
And then, as if nothing at all had happened, the Skeleton King crawled laboriously over and picked the jerky up.
"Gotcha."
At the sight of it—uncannily like a baby picking up its rattle—the knights who had come sprinting over, faces drained white, and even the uncle, all stood there with vacant stares.
The Shadow Lich, a high-tier demon, had been defeated.
But what truly stunned them was something else entirely.
"Th-that was Totemization, was it not!"
A high-tier sealing holy art said to be usable only by high priests and above.
"Did Young Lord Isaac just perform the supreme holy art of turning a demon into a totem?!"
"The very art said to be usable only by Saintesses and Cardinals and above?"
As the Eshua knights shrieked at the unbelievable spectacle, the knight-captain shot the uncle a sidelong glance.
"You—you said Young Lord Isaac was perfectly ordinary…"
"…"
The uncle looked thoroughly rattled as well.
The Skeleton King, totem freshly in hand, on the other hand, smiled with deep satisfaction.
The high-tier Magic Core I'd let slip has come crawling back on its own two feet.
In truth, the Skeleton King had planned on this from the very moment he'd spotted the Shadow Lich.
He had no intention of standing by while a pack of idiotic paladins blew up a Magic Core—a veritable elixir of life.
And above all, what kind of madman would stand and watch a being he himself had resurrected die at someone else's hands?
Well, since this one came to rescue me, I suppose I could take it on as a subordinate.
Its power seemed temporarily weakened from its totem state, but it was a strong demon—7th Tier at minimum.
And he needed intelligence on the demon faction anyway. He had to find out who had dared violate the Gold Decree and impersonate him.
Of course, he hadn't actually used the Totemization art the way the knights thought.
There was no way he could cast such a high-tier holy art yet.
So how had he done it?
He was the one who had resurrected the Shadow Lich from its totem form in the first place.
And naturally, the reverse had to be possible too.
From the moment of its resurrection, the lich had passed through the Skeleton King's hands—its Magic Core now laced with his own demonic power.
With the mark already in place, a mere gesture was enough to convert it back into a totem.
Which, put the other way, meant it was a technique utterly impossible without first taking the creature into his hands—but whatever. None of that mattered right now.
"This child will bring glory to the name of Eshua."
The uncle stepped forward and scooped the Skeleton King up into his arms.
All the knights were murmuring, then breaking into cheers.
"Using Totemization—surely that is proof he's the Saint?"
"Saint or not, the only one who ever managed that at such an age was the Saintess herself! A once-in-an-age genius has been born to Eshua!"
Bathing in the cascade of praise, the Skeleton King closed his eyes as though utterly intoxicated.
Yes!
This! This is it!
Come on, heap it on, you cursed, filthy paladins!
In truth, part of why he'd used the Shadow Lich was precisely for this.
This body wielding Totemization, an art reserved for Saintesses and Cardinals?
Saint treatment. Obviously.
Full ultra-luxury VIP care, incoming!
His baby food would come piled high with truffle mushrooms from now on!
"Isaac, let's go home. Your uncle will teach you all sorts of things."
The knights stared at him in disbelief—is he serious?—but the uncle, arms full of Skeleton King, mounted his horse in high spirits.
"This uncle will raise you into a magnificent paladin. You have the talent for it!"
The Skeleton King smiled too.
Sure, kid. Forget the paladin thing—when we get home, hand over my body first, whelp.
"Even if you cannot live long—leave that to this uncle. Somehow, some way, I'll make your name resound across this continent!"
Ugh, seriously, WHY does this bastard keep predicting his own nephew's death?!
When the Skeleton King's eyes went wide with a glare, the uncle only laughed in response.
"Haha. Once we're home, this uncle will teach you all about cursing the wretched Skeleton King, starting with the very basics. We'll master it top to bottom, day by day!"
…Eshua. You absolute bastards.
Just you wait.