What Did You Just Say? (2)
There are things in this world you simply do not touch.
The One Who Felled the Heavens, Sovereign of the Netherworld, Ruler of the Eight Million Demon Host. And the being who held every one of those titles—the Skeleton Demon King, Isaac.
So what happens if you touch it anyway?
…What do you think happens? You just die, obviously.
Yes. Ash should have died. She most certainly should have, and yet—
Then why is my head still attached?
Ash trembled, her slight frame rattling like a leaf in a storm. She didn't dare lift her head in Isaac's presence.
When Isaac had said he needed her head, she'd braced herself for the end. But then—
"You. Aren't you the one who devoured the Blue Faith's apprentices fourteen years ago?"
"...P-Pardon?"
"You've eaten a human or two, sure... but you're not the one on the wanted posters. For a creature that swallowed a whole cohort of disciples fourteen years ago, you barely smell of blood at all."
"Th-that is..."
"Well, that's not what matters right now. What matters is that I need evidence to bring before the Holy See."
"!"
"But a half-baked offering won't fool the Holy See."
At that meaningful smile, the sharp-witted Ash had cried out at once:
"A-actually, there is one more, Your Majesty!"
And so Ash had offered up a fellow demon's head herself, guiding the way through spatial teleportation. What was more, since Isaac found touching filthy paladins distasteful, Ash had schlepped the paladins one by one, whimpering all the while—which was how things stood now.
Ash crouched at Isaac's feet like a beast awaiting its sentence, swallowing hard. Sweat trickled down her bowed head, never knowing when the blade might fall, and her keenly pricked ears strained not to miss a single word from Isaac's lips.
"I knew from the moment I saw you that you weren't the culprit from fourteen years ago."
At those words, Ash felt her mouth go bone-dry.
"...Was it because I lack the scent of blood, then?"
"No."
Isaac smiled with something like contempt.
"You're far too weak."
"......!!"
"No matter how long ago fourteen years was, no one who could topple Rillai without even being caught would be that weak."
Rillai had already been 7th Tier at twenty. As an apprentice, he must have been around that level already.
"Compared to him, you're what—6th Tier, maybe?"
The number of apprentices devoured back then had exceeded one hundred.
"Stuffed hundreds of bodies into your belly, yet still evaded the searches of both the Blue Faith and the Holy See. No. That was not you."
Which was why he hadn't bothered taking her along. Once the Holy See and the Faith of the Enemy investigated, it would come to light that she wasn't the culprit anyway.
"And yet, who would have thought you'd actually bring back the true culprit's head."
At Isaac's laughter, a chill ran down Ash's spine.
And how could it not?
Isaac had merely said he needed a demon's head to bring before the Holy See. He had never once said to bring the culprit's head.
And what did that mean, if not—
"...Were you testing me?"
Ash, understanding everything, squeezed her eyes shut.
True to her guess, Isaac replied:
"Yes. I wanted to see whether your brain actually worked."
Given that another demon had been offered up the moment he mentioned needing a head for the Holy See, she clearly had decent instincts.
She had read the unspoken message perfectly: if you want to live, bring me a different head.
But that alone would never have been enough.
What if she'd brought the head of her own subordinate, or some unrelated demon she happened to have lying around? Isaac would have killed her on the spot without so much as a glance.
Because that would have meant she was the sort who didn't care what she did, so long as she herself survived.
In other words, the answer Isaac wanted was this:
"Bringing back one of the true culprits from fourteen years ago... I'll give you credit for that. Remember that it's thanks to this your life was spared."
If not for this, her head would have gone rolling.
Ash squeezed her eyes shut, as if to say that fleeing from the start had never been an option.
"You knew who the culprit was from the very beginning, didn't you...!"
Isaac's smile turned chilling.
"I did. One was a woman like you. The other was the magic beast she kept. Well, either way—you pass. You'll be of use."
She had good instincts, true. And calling it a magic beast or not, she'd severed the head of her fourteen-years-ago accomplice in a single strike, which spoke to her competence.
Of course, taking Ash's head to the Holy See instead would have earned plenty of merit on its own. The Holy See always wanted demon heads.
But why bother?
Bringing Ash along in the first place would have been a loss for Isaac.
Those inquisitors can extract memories and information even from corpses, after all.
Captured demons were handed over to the Holy See for interrogation. The living were tortured alive by the Faith of the Enemy; the dead were processed in their own way by the Faith of the Black.
And what did that mean?
[You are saying, then, that even what my master discussed with that creature could end up in the hands of the clergy.]
That's exactly it.
Granted, beasts thought differently from humans, making their memories hard to extract—but hand over a humanoid with a similar cognitive structure? Would there be any need to advertise to the clergy that he was the Skeleton Demon King?
Of course, he could simply erase the memories—but...
[My master cannot yet wield memory manipulation refined enough to deceive high-ranking clergymen, can he.]
Right, right.
And that wasn't even the half of it.
Handing over a head bearing traces of memory manipulation? Suspicious as hell.
There were plenty of other demons to farm merit from.
Which was why he said this:
"An anonymous informant identified you as a demon from fourteen years ago. Anything come to mind?"
After all, that snitch of a sparrow had come in clutching its subordinate's intel and named Ash as a demon from fourteen years ago. It wouldn't have named her for no reason.
Ash squeezed her eyes shut.
"...The truth is, the culprit from fourteen years ago is my elder sister."
Ah.
So that's why her records and aura were so similar.
"My sister had her magic beasts hunt down disciples and eat them as snacks."
Isaac understood at once.
So that woman was the one Rillai had been chasing.
Well, either way, he'd caught the main perpetrator who'd devoured the disciples. Surely that would earn him some celebration? And capturing the beast-handler on top of it—his family would be overjoyed...
"Your sister's tier?"
"9th Tier, Your Majesty."
Isaac sighed, for some reason.
Ahhhh. Yeah, no wonder Rillai couldn't catch her.
[9th Tier? Is that not the realm of the True Demons?!]
Yeah, yeah. Apparently so.
True Demons (眞魔).
The highest order of demons beneath the Demon King himself.
The rulers who had held dominion over demonkind before—demons who had, in the end, bowed to the Skeleton Demon King, but powerful purebloods all the same.
And being purebloods, some of them had despised a lowly Skeleton standing above them.
Well, he'd silenced every last dissenter, but it still must have stung.
From their perspective, a Skeleton was nothing more than a summoned creature—a summon they themselves called forth. And yet here they were, being ruled by that summon.
But what of it? If they hated it so much, they should have worked harder and clawed their way up themselves!
Those whelps who couldn't so much as brush the hem of his robes no matter how hard they struggled.
Old-fashioned boomer logic, sure—but so what? If they had complaints, they were welcome to live a few centuries as a Skeleton themselves.
Anyway, that was the situation now that the Skeleton Demon King had vanished.
"I-I don't know the will of the upper echelons, but I heard that after the Skeleton Demon King fought the gods, his power waned. So we were ordered to kill the Saint and gather strength in his name..."
Pfft! So you're telling me they propped up a fake and have been gathering power in his name?!
Insolent, but I can roughly follow the logic—
"We also spent the King's assets, Your Majesty."
...Come again?
"We sold off the King's treasures and his castle!"
You absolute—?!
Sold? Sold WHAT?
To whom—to HUMANS?!
Whisper cautiously eyed Isaac's spinning eyes.
[M-Master?]
Ha. Fine. Sure. The Demon King did vanish.
Who cares about some measly assets— absolutely care, is what I care!*
That fortune I'd gathered since my Skeleton days—no, wait, that's not the point. Hoarded wealth means nothing by itself. It only matters if you spend it when it counts... it matters my ass.
Dammit, it hurts... no, no, that's not it. If it strengthens my power, anything goes! Some petty treasure means nothing... it doesn't, dammit! IT MEANS EVERYTHING!
Well, at least if liquidating my assets to humans helps the cause—
"We sold everything to the gods, Your Majesty!"
Crack.
In that instant, something in Whisper snapped, and the familiar let out a shriek.
[Master! Your power! Your power is leaking out! Gaaah, I can't hold it, KYAAAAAH!]
The magic core's power, which Whisper had been pressing down with all its might, finally erupted.
Like a gas pipe compressed under pressure, its walls caving in against the force within.
BOOM!
Mana burst from the magic core.
The escaping force blew the windows out, swept the room's contents away, and left everything in shambles.
CRASH!
"Uwaaah!"
Whisper barely managed to wrestle the mana back under control—but Isaac's eyes were twitching, spinning wildly in their sockets.
"You bastards. I'm not letting this go."
Damn them. People who'd sell anything and everything—except it's THE GODS they sold it to?! Handed it to those bastards?! That fortune, built over centuries!
Do they even know who I am?!
I was humiliated by the gods, rolled around in the dirt like a ball—and gathered every bit of it through that! And those bastards treat it like flea-market junk! Are the rich so spoiled they've run out of things to loot, so now they're eyeing the Demon King's treasury?!
Ash, the snitch, lay prostrate and shivering violently, while Whisper groaned as though dying.
Isaac looked down at Ash—who was on the verge of fainting—with eyes half gone mad.
"Do you know anything else about the gods?"
"Y-yes?"
"150 years ago. After the Skeleton Demon King fought the gods—what happened?"
"I... I don't know the details, but whether the God Realm suffered great damage or not, things have been quiet ever since."
Quiet?
Isaac's lips curled.
Huh. Unexpected.
Given that he'd been sealed, it would hardly have been strange for the gods to seize the moment and purge the demons wholesale. The fact that they hadn't meant they lacked the strength to.
And what did that mean?
So the blast from my self-destruction did more damage than I thought?
He'd blown himself up purely out of spite—tell them to eat shit, even a speck of damage counts—so perhaps the scope of destruction had exceeded his own expectations. Otherwise, there was no way things could stay quiet for a hundred and fifty years!
And yet something still felt off.
Whatever damage they'd taken, this was too quiet.
Strange. Knowing those bastards' personalities, they should be tearing the demon realm apart in a frenzy by now.
Why?
Because they had to know the seal failed.
Letting the Skeleton Demon King's soul slip through their fingers meant, from their perspective, that everything was ruined.
And yet quiet?
They were even leisurely helping themselves to the Skeleton Demon King's property, piling up karmic debt while they were at it?
Calling it that they didn't consider him a threat didn't hold either—had that been the case, they'd never have bothered scheming to trick him into the seal in the first place.
"The more I think about it, the stranger it gets."
"Pardon?"
Isaac should have been caught and locked away in the maggot by those very beings. But now?
"The fact that I'm standing here means the maggot is empty. And not one of them has even tried to come looking for me?"
"...Your Majesty?"
...Don't tell me those bastards still think I'm inside the maggot?
No. They're not that stupid.
Then Isaac's eyes gleamed with something chilling.
Don't tell me... there's something ELSE in there in my place?