Chapter 78: Stop Dragging Your Words
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 78: Stop Dragging Your Words
Alto, you bastard.
You’re the one who caused this mess, and now you want me to clean it up?
And to think I let myself get played by these cheap tricks and lost sight of the little ladies.
“Wait a minute! I came here to talk!”
“Talk?”
A bloodhound, once unleashed, does not stop its pursuit.
Seeing me already lunging right before her eyes, Barion gritted her teeth and teleported into the air.
“Predictable.”
“Eek!”
No matter where she went, my instincts read her position and speed.
I swung my dagger at the point where she reappeared, but she cast another spell and slipped away, making me hit nothing but air.
This time, I kicked off the air and aimed a strike at a completely different spot. She tried to manifest there but retreated just in time.
Look at this woman.
“Seaweed-hair, you’ve gotten a bit faster since I last saw you.”
“Bloodhouuuund! Just listen to me for a secoooond!”
“You take our women somewhere and then expect to have a conversation?”
“You wouldn’t even pretend to listen if I didn’t have a setup like this anyway! You’re just a mindless brute who’s obsessed with decapitating every demon you seeee!”
“Don’t try to make small talk with me, you demon bitch.”
She must think we’ve forgotten the grudges of our parents and our villagers.
The only reason Alto smiles at the little ladies and feels affection for them is because of the longing for the family he lost to these demons.
Does she really think she can talk to us after smashing our home to pieces?
It’s a foolish thought and an infuriating act.
At the very moment I was racking my brain, trying to piece together the mangled corpses of my parents, I was born.
I was born for the sole purpose of exterminating and slaughtering every last one of you.
“I said wait a minuute!!! Just listen! Do you not care what happens to your women?!”
Stop.
“Ha… ha! See? This is what happens when you play house and fall in loooove… you end up with weaknesses like thiiis… Eek?!”
I aimed for the moment she let her guard down.
The instant she thought I was willing to listen and tried to act smug again, I lunged.
Slice!
By the time Barion realized what happened, half of her right arm was already gone.
“Aaaaagh!!!!”
A fountain of blood soaked the floor.
Seaweed-hair screamed as she stared at her severed arm.
I pressed Howling directly against the demon’s throat.
Grrrrrrr.
My beloved half-blade growled, catching the scent of demon blood.
“I-If you kill me now, your women will be trapped in this dungeon labyrinth forever and never get ouuut!”
“Your arrogance still pierces the heavens, Barion.”
Ignoring her, I grabbed her head and pulled it toward the edge of Howling.
Barion begged and pleaded, tears and snot streaming down her face.
“Eeeek! Please! This isn’t a bluff! This is my domain, so the resonance of my power is thick here! Your women are trapped in a space-time maze! If you just kill me, it won’t be undone!”
“If you don’t undo it right now, I’ll use this to saw through every single joint in your fingers.”
Ah.
Satisfying.
The scent of a Heavenly King’s blood.
To think they tried to calm me down in Lukart with the pathetic scent of common monster blood—it’s absurd.
I’ll carve and carve until the teeth of Howling and Roar are completely worn down.
It was a long-awaited feast.
I was about to enjoy it with a joyful heart when the hollow Heavenly King shrieked in desperation.
“The one whose arrogance pierces the heavens is you! Bloodhound!”
“Huh? What did you say?”
It was amusing to see this bitch, who used to run away if our eyes even met during the Final War, acting tough just because she was inside her own dungeon.
“You think you defeated all the Four Heavenly Kings one-on-one? Aside from that bitch Vulcanus, no demon ever fought you properly! You just acted tough while ignoring the natural laws of the world! So, where are your women now? Where are they?!”
“……”
“What are you going to do, glare at me? If I had wanted to, I could have teleported them all into poison pits or traps, and they’d be dead by nooow!”
“How can you guarantee our women are safe?”
“H-Here. Look at thiiis!”
Barion opened three small portals before my eyes.
“…!”
There, I saw Rune, Narupa, and Diane, each moving alone through the dungeon’s maze.
As I reached for the portal showing Little Lady Rune, Barion quickly pulled it back.
“Oops. Be a good boy, okaay? Once we have a very productive conversation and both get what we want, I’ll send them back very gently and safelyyy.”
“……”
“Please stop glaring at me like that! It’s scaring me to deaaath! Dammit, no wonder that Vulcanus bitch is so obsessed with following you around!”
Teleporting again to stay out of my range, Barion reattached her severed right arm.
Seeing it bubble and fuse back together, I was certain her power had returned.
In fact, she had even become a bit stronger.
“Calm down and listeeen. This isn’t a bad deal for you either, Bloodhound.”
“Why are you still alive and babbling, Barion?”
“Yeees! That’s exactly it! Why are we, who lost the Final War, still alive with our forms intact and our own domains establisheed? I’ll tell you everything about it. So please, let’s just taalk.”
Her way of speaking was as annoying as ever.
I couldn’t tell which part of her sentences she was going to drag out next.
“I have a rough idea. Yobeste must have freed you all at that reed field.”
“Nooo~. Sorry, but you’re only a tiny bit right and mostly wroong~.”
When I left her alone, Barion started swaying and pressed her fingertips together.
She seemed to be trying to form a wicked, devious smile, but to my eyes, she just looked like a groveling sycophant.
“After we were defeated by you all, our essences were on the verge of being completely drained awayyy~.”
“The priests were purifying your essences.”
“Yeees. Right then, as the Demon King was defeated, he unleashed a massive explosion as a final act of defiaance.”
Because of that explosion, the Four Heroes died, and almost all of our remaining comrades perished as well.
The Ranger, Regeros, was the first to charge in, plunging his dagger into the core of the Demon King’s essence before being incinerated.
The Priest, Mirachi Bichante, sacrificed himself just before the explosion, using the last of the Bierma tribe’s power to protect us.
The Tank, Vanguardier Dakuren, blocked the explosion in front of the Mage, turning into a lump of charcoal.
And if the Mage, Bisharen Diberuper, hadn’t suppressed the power and range of the explosion to the final battlefield at the very end, the world itself would have been destroyed.
Even though Regeros had lowered the initial power by stabbing the core, the world still nearly ended with that one blast.
He wasn’t called the Demon King for nothing.
“With that explosion, our essences were carried far away like dandelion seeds in the wind. And the place where I landed was none other than Dakuuuren.”
“Talk faster if you don’t want your right arm cut off again.”
“Eek! Since the Demon King had vanished, my demonic energy was naturally in a pathetic state. The best I could do was create a dungeon to protect my essence and spawn low-level monsters. Occasionally, I’d play around with space-time. My dungeon was nothing more than a decent source of loot for you humans.”
I heard that thanks to that, Little Lady Narupa’s magitech business had grown significantly.
Hmm, considering that, I worried that killing her recklessly might damage our little lady’s business.
“But recently, I felt a massive amount of demonic energy being released in the north. After feeling that energy, I was suddenly able to manifest my body again. And just as you said, my power has grown quite a bit tooo.”
Seaweed-hair let out a long sigh.
“But, I’m not exactly happy about ittt.”
“Why? Didn’t you say you regained your power?”
“There is only one thing it means when a demon of the Heavenly King rank can manifest their form againnn.”
“What is it?”
“The emergence of a Demon Kinggg.”
The trace of a smile vanished from my face.
Not that I was smiling to begin with.
“To be precise, it seems a successor to the Demon King has been released~.”
“Who is it?”
“Heeee~.”
In contrast, the seaweed-haired bitch’s mouth split into a wide, leering grin.
“You have no idea at allll?”
“Whoever it is, I’ll just bite their throat out.”
“Heeeeee~ that’s fine~. I don’t particularly like the successor either, you seeee?”
Barion spread her arms wide and flicked her long, snake-like tongue.
That tongue actually secreted venom.
The effects of the venom varied every time, which was a real pain.
“Aaaltooo Bertraand~. Let’s join forces~.”
“Join forces?”
I was so dumbfounded I couldn’t even speak.
A prey dares to ask a hound for a truce?
“We have a common enemy, don’t weee?”
“I asked who that enemy is.”
“Hi, heee~ it’s no fun if I tell you alreadyyy. But they’ll definitely start a reckless war. I hate that stufff. All I want is to spend my life with people who are fun to play withhh.”
“……”
“Believe it or not, my power to manipulate space-time has grown quite stroong. So I can occasionally see the future or pinpoint the world’s turning points. Let’s stop the Demon King’s successor togetheer. And in return, you can offer me about 100 people every year~.”
“100 people?”
“Yeees, that’s a huge discount, you knooow? During the war, I used to kill 100 people a dayyy!”
“Let me ask one thing.”
But for some reason, the seaweed-haired bitch shook her head with an even more disgusting smile.
“Nooo~ I’ll be the one asking questions. You just answeer.”
Two small portals opened.
On the left was Little Lady Narupa, and on the right was Little Lady Rune.
As she thrust her hands into the portals, sharp, honed claws wiggled just a short distance from the backs of their heads.
“Looking at your eyes, it doesn’t seem like you have any intention of complying quietlyyy.”
Of course.
What kind of “conversation” did I expect from a demon bitch?
“I’ve been watching youuu. If you don’t want the skulls of the two girls you cherish most to be crushed, you’d better follow my orders—”
“Rune’s party, listen up.”
“Heh?”
“Rune’s party, return immediately.”
It was simple.
I used the communication function embedded in the Return Stones Little Lady Narupa had distributed to order an immediate withdrawal.
“Alto!”
“Oppa!”
Hearing my voice through the Return Stones, Rune and Narupa immediately shattered the stones and teleported outside the dungeon entrance.
“Uh…?”
Barion just stared blankly through the portals.
“Hey, you son of a bitch.”
Cracking my neck, I growled.
“I told you I’d kill you if you dragged out your words.”
“Heeeek! Wait! There’s still one more girl left! That one can’t use that strange stone!”
One more girl left?
The answer came easily.
So, without much hesitation, I spoke clearly.
“Kill her. You can kill that one.”
“Heeeeeeeeee…!!!!!”
The seaweed-haired bitch, her face distorted beyond recognition, lunged at me with a screeching voice.
“Abandoning a comrade! Are you even humaaan?!!!”
Hearing that from a demon really hits the conscience, doesn’t it?