My Entire Life Savings Walks Away
"Hello, human world!"
From the wreckage of the Death Knight sprawled across the ground, I picked out the least tattered rag I could find and draped it over Radian.
I had no intention of giving him my own clothes — and besides, nothing of mine would have fit him anyway.
Strictly speaking, that rag was my property too, so it did sting a little to part with it. But it was a hundred times better than traveling alongside a buck-naked man.
When Radian learned that I was a demon, he seemed mildly surprised, but he said nothing.
Wait — he slaughtered demons so mercilessly, yet he's surprisingly free of prejudice?
Then again, maybe that's just how fanatics work: if the Goddess has chosen something, their only job is to accept it.
I honestly couldn't tell whether he was insane because he was a Hero, or whether he became a Hero because he was insane in the first place.
Oh, and I'd decided to speak to Radian in formal, polite language.
That fool thought I was a Saintess, so unless I wanted to die, I had to at least keep the act going.
Anyway, after days of walking beneath the crimson-black sky, we arrived at a plain where a ferocious battle had once been fought.
The ground was blanketed in tangled bones and black ash, and even though a full century had passed since the battle, every gust of wind carried the stench of death past my nose.
Radian stopped for a moment, then turned to look at me.
"…This is where my comrades-in-arms fell, fighting alongside me."
He pressed his palms together, closed his eyes, and offered a brief prayer.
Watching him, I snorted inwardly.
He genuinely believed this spot — nothing but a pile of old bones and ash — was some sacred hallowed ground.
Yes… anywhere else might be a gamble, but here…!
While his eyes were shut in prayer, I quietly nudged the soil aside with my toe, dragging the bones buried beneath it up to the surface.
Rise.
The moment I cast the incantation in my mind, the bones began pulling toward one another, assembling themselves into shape.
Half-broken skeletons in rotted armor clattered upright one by one.
Faint pinpricks of light flickered in their empty eye sockets, and a dismal creaking sound leaked from their jaws.
I lowered my eyes demurely and let only my lips move.
Good. Let's see how long you hold out against them with those trusty fists of yours, Mr. Hero.
These are the precious remains of your beloved comrades, after all. Surely you wouldn't smash them to pieces the way you did my Death Knights?
But Radian must have sensed the strange disturbance, because his eyes suddenly snapped open and he shouted at the sky.
"O lost ones! Are you still ensnared by the darkness?"
With that anguished cry, his hands moved like lightning.
He seized one skeleton's arm with his bare hands, ripped it clean off, and used the momentum of his spin to smash in another one's skull.
-Krrrrr—!
-Kiiiiiik—!
The corpses I had just raised were swept away in an instant.
Bone fragments scattered in every direction, and the wreckage strewn across the ground would never move again.
Wow… this absolute lunatic… he claims they were his comrades' remains and doesn't hesitate for a second before pulverizing them.
Damn it… just as I thought, this won't be easy.
Radian, who had felled every single corpse I raised without so much as ruffling his breath, turned to look at me.
His eyes had gone back to those of a zealot.
"Saintess, did you see? They were still in the grip of darkness's wraiths, but by the will of the Goddess, they have been purified. From this day forward, I shall stand at your side and cleanse this wicked land."
Purified, my foot. Slaughter every last one of them — where exactly in that is "cleansing"?
I forced myself to nod.
Fine… then I won't give up. Let's just keep trying.
He's human too, so sooner or later an opening will appear.
And when it does, I swear I'll turn him back into a corpse.
And so we set off again.
Radian strode ahead, mumbling prayers under his breath, while I glared at the back of his head for a very long time.
After walking in silence for quite a while, Radian suddenly tilted his head.
"Something strikes me as odd, though."
Now what's his problem?
"What do you mean, sir?"
"The Demon Realm should, by all rights, be teeming with every manner of magical beast, yet all that has appeared before us thus far are corpses. Saintess — might you have some conjecture as to the cause of this?"
Well, that's because we're near my house. I did a little pest control in advance, you see.
Needless to say, I couldn't exactly say that out loud.
So, my lips fluttering, I brazened my way through it as though recounting some third party's tale of valor.
"Perhaps… it is because that one's shadow still hangs over this land."
"That one…?"
Radian's eyes gleamed.
I cleared my throat for no particular reason and, seasoning my words with exaggerated gestures, began expounding upon my own majesty.
"There once existed a terrifying presence in the ancient Demon Realm. One of the Demon King's four faithful Heavenly Kings… a being called Mordiggian, known as the Lord of Death."
Mordiggian. A name I'd chosen myself after transmigrating into this world.
When I realized there was no hope of getting stronger with my pathetic physical abilities and resolved to change classes to Necromancer, I decided to discard the name my parents had given me along with everything else.
They'd gone weak and abandoned me first, so I'm sure they had no complaints.
Guess being demons made discarding their own child easy as breathing.
Anyway, I wanted my new name to be something death-related.
After mulling over the options, what came to mind was the Cthulhu Mythos — the thing I'd been utterly obsessed with right before I transmigrated.
And thus, the name Mordiggian was born.
Looking back on it now, it does reek a bit of chuunibyou, but it's far too late to change it.
"It is said he raised thousands of corpses with a single gesture, and made tens of thousands of souls wail with a single breath. Even the magical beasts dared not so much as raise their tails in his presence."
Radian held his breath, and seeing that, I got carried away and kept milking it.
"He was also unspeakably cruel… they say that the moment anyone — ally or enemy — earned his displeasure, they were ground to nothing but bone."
Radian nodded, his face grave.
"I see. That cursed being, who despises the living — surely he was behind the corpses' assault when I first met you, Saintess."
I don't hate the living, though?
I'm alive and living quite comfortably right this second — what is this man even saying?
No, wait. No, wait. Why am I bragging about myself right now?
I'd already probably earned his grudge by turning his comrades' corpses undead earlier — I need to watch my step.
But my caution was wasted, because Radian had apparently already reached his conclusion; clenching his fist, he swore with utter solemnity.
"Fear not, Saintess. I shall surely find that Lord of Death and bring him to judgment. Your vengeance — I swear I will carry it out!"
"…I'm sorry, what?"
Watching Radian solemnly declare his intent to hunt me down and kill me, I froze on the spot.
Holy Power radiating from every inch of his body, he was gazing at me with dead-serious eyes.
"Perhaps the reason the Goddess has set me upon this land once more is her will that I sever that evil at its root. The grudge of the Saintess — I shall bear it upon my shoulders, without fail."
…….
Staring at this magnificent bastard of a Hero swearing to kill me to my face, I momentarily lost the ability to speak.
I dug my own grave. With my own two hands.
Just then, a wind stirred in the distance, and once more the bones in the dirt mound creaked and lifted their heads.
But this time, I didn't even have the will to attack.
Knowing this monster would simply crush anything I raised anyway, I'd best conserve every scrap of strength I had left.
Besides, once I left my territory, I had no idea what kind of things might come crawling out at us.
Beneath the blood-colored sky, the border to the human world finally shimmered into view before us.
All sorts of small fry had latched onto us on the way here, but what was there to worry about?
Our dependable Mr. Hero was right here with us.
Of course, every one of my attempts to kill said Hero had also ended in abject failure, so I was screwed. Thoroughly, magnificently screwed.
The energy carried on the wind had subtly changed.
Here in the Demon Realm, demonic energy was mixed into everything — even the air itself — keeping my power hidden. But the moment I set foot across that border, everything would change.
Over there, my power, my true nature, would be laid bare.
Damn it… nothing for it, then.
While Radian was away scouting the surroundings before setting up camp for the night, I began preparing to enter the human world.
"Haaah…"
After one last sweep of the area, I settled myself behind a suitably large boulder and sat down.
Then I placed a hand over my chest.
From deep within my body, I could feel it — that familiar presence.
Death Energy. The energy of death I had painstakingly gathered, bit by bit, over more than a century.
The grudges and lingering attachments of the dead. The emotional residue spilled at the moment of their dying.
"What a waste…"
I murmured it with complete sincerity.
Do you have any idea how many years this took to collect?
But if I didn't want to die on the spot, I had no choice.
Closing my eyes, I began forcibly dragging the death energy streaming through my body into a single point.
As the energy that had spread through my entire body along my bloodlines began flowing in reverse, a needle-like pain surged through every inch of me.
"Ughk…!"
Damn it. That hurts.
It was only natural — I was forcibly tearing out something that had seeped naturally into my soul and flesh over untold years.
I gritted my teeth. With every wisp of energy that left, my body grew impossibly lighter.
And at the same time, hollow to a horrifying degree.
I'd never even consciously registered it before, but this power had been part of me for centuries, settled into my body as naturally as my own limbs.
Ripping it out whole left me feeling like I'd been drained of every drop of blood.
In the end, I had no choice but to brace one hand against the ground and buckle.
"Hah… hah…"
My head spun, and I felt like my stomach was about to turn itself inside out.
I panted raggedly for a long while.
And there, floating before me, bobbed a black sphere the size of a human head.
Every now and then, something resembling a human face would surface on its skin and sink away again, while faint, incomprehensible whispers echoed at the edge of my hearing.
Hmm. Any way you sliced it, that thing looked evil.
Saintess, my ass. If I walked into the human realm carrying this thing, they'd declare a holy purge on me right at the border.
I stared at the black sphere for a moment, then flexed my fingers.
The massive mass of death energy began compressing, little by little.
-Crrreak!
-Crrrreak-kreak!
The forcibly crushed energy let out a series of strange groans.
Head-sized shrank to fist-sized, then down to the length of a single finger joint.
By the end, it was no larger than a pea.
It reflected no light at all — a thing like a hole punched clean through the world.
"…That should do it."
The problem was that I couldn't just leave this thing here.
This was power I'd spent several hundred years amassing.
If anyone happened to pick it up, I'd come home to find myself flat broke, plain and simple.
But I couldn't exactly carry it with me either. Hmm…
Rolling the black crystal across my palm, I glanced around.
After just a little rummaging through the old battlefield, one reasonably intact skeleton caught my eye.
"You. Come here."
At my beckoning finger, the bones sprawled across the ground rattled upright.
Several ribs were missing and its helmet was half-crushed, but it looked perfectly capable of walking.
Was this really the right call? Entrusting the entirety of my power to one pathetic little skeleton?
After a moment's deliberation, I fixed my gaze on its chest.
"Hold still."
I reached my hand in between its ribs and pushed the black crystal inside.
With a brief incantation, filaments of death energy threaded out of the crystal and latched onto the surrounding bones.
The skeleton's whole frame shuddered violently.
-Wuuuum
Inside those hollow eye sockets, black flames bloomed all at once.
…….
I gazed quietly up at the thing.
The skeleton gazed quietly down at me.
Was it my imagination, or did it look bigger than it had a moment ago?
Perhaps because it was cradling most of my power, the aura it radiated was every bit as murderous as a High Undead's.
I took the creature by the shoulders and spoke to it with all due gravity.
"Go home. Don't fight anyone. If anything picks a fight with you, run — whatever it takes."
-Rattle
"Go into my room and wait quietly. Do not come outside. Ever."
The skeleton nodded.
"And don't let anyone take that from you. No matter what."
-Rattle
It understood, right?
This was the weakest I'd ever been, so honestly, I couldn't even tell if I'd done it properly.
"Go."
At my flick of the hand, the skeleton turned away.
Watching its receding back as it crossed the wasteland toward the place where I lived, I felt a strange ache in my chest.
There goes my entire net worth. On foot. Buck naked, no less.
"…You'd better find your way home."
Feeling oddly anxious for no good reason, I added one last word.