The Self-Styled Heavenly Demon Descends
“Master, I know you’re in there. Don’t hide.”
By my estimate, she’d been searching for me for well over a quarter-hour.
With her arms folded and her posture relaxed, the girl kept speaking toward the silent hut as though she had all the time in the world.
Right.
She was looking for me.
This was the martial world.
Anyone who showed up at a stranger’s home without even stating their business was, without exception, insane.
Getting tangled up with someone like that was a terrible idea.
“Even if you don’t come out, this one will wait here without moving a single step.”
The stubborn little witch.
No matter how long I held out, I was still just an ordinary person.
Once my food ran out, I’d have no choice but to go outside.
She was probably in the same situation, but there was no doubt she’d be able to endure longer than I could, talking about inner energy or whatever else martial artists liked to brag about.
Damn martial artists.
That wasn’t fair at all!
I barely managed to force my trembling body upright, and the first thought that slipped out naturally made my lips jut in irritation.
If only I’d gained real power instead of ending up with a body like a beautiful girl’s.
“So unfair.”
The whine escaped before I could stop it, and I slapped my own lips hard.
When danger cornered me, my nerves, driven into a dead end, tried to seize control of my body once more.
In the end, I decided that enduring like this was not the answer. I pulled myself together and opened the creaking door.
Stay calm.
After all, I’d already lived one spectacular life that had even included a sex change in my previous existence.
Rather than crouching here, shivering in fear, I’d be better off facing this head-on.
Creak—
The old door opened with an awful grinding noise.
The girl, who had been standing in the yard with her arms folded, broke into a wide, satisfied smile.
Reddish hair gleaming as if it were on fire under the moonlight.
A full, rounded chest that was obvious even beneath her thick training robes.
A beauty who could stand in for the face reflected in still water.
Her refined features were the sort I had never once seen in the martial world.
And on that bright face was a pure innocence utterly unfit for someone who had barged into another person’s home without warning.
“Who in the wor—”
I snapped my mouth shut before the words could fully come out.
Among martial artists, once a hierarchy was established, it was almost never possible to overturn it.
I rummaged through modern knowledge, desperately searching for a way to respond.
Had someone written a novel like High School Girl IN the Martial World?
But nothing came to mind.
I should’ve read more genres.
“This one is the Heavenly Demon.”
“What?”
Heavenly Demon.
The leader of the Demonic Cult and the public enemy of the righteous alliance.
An absolute master who had sparked the Righteous-Demonic War twenty years ago, turned the martial world upside down, and then vanished without a trace.
I stared at her, dumbfounded, as she nodded with a cheerful smile.
Her?
She looked more like a properly raised lady from an illustrious household, no matter how I looked at her.
If I were to be generous, perhaps she fit some modern web-novel cliché where the Heavenly Demon’s status had been dragged into the dirt and now referred to any vaguely powerful figure with no regard for rank.
And if I were to be even more generous, there had always been that meme about “at the end of the day, she’s only a female.”
But that was fiction.
This was reality.
As someone who had spent my life telling stories, I had heard all manner of rumors about the Heavenly Demon.
A monster drenched in blood during the Righteous-Demonic War, cutting down countless people without hesitation.
Nowhere in the many descriptions of the Heavenly Demon had the word “beauty” ever appeared.
No, more importantly, if she’d been one of the handful of greatest masters in the martial world twenty years ago, it made no sense for her to still look like a girl now.
This was clearly nothing more than the amusement of a madwoman.
My body began to shake.
So this was finally my turn.
I had seen countless commoners toyed with by deranged bastards like this before being killed in the end.
The body I had thought might have grown a little stronger could do nothing before true terror; it froze solid and refused to resist.
The girl, watching me with a smile, placed a hand over her chest and gave a proud little look.
“That’s right. This one is the Heavenly Demon, the foremost person of the Demonic Cult, the foremost person under heaven, and the foremost person of all time.”
Was that some kind of you’re just a third-rate nobody line?
I couldn’t believe I was actually hearing it with my own ears.
If those words had come from some dashing middle-aged man like in the original, I would have been moved to tears.
I looked at the grinning girl with trembling eyes.
Did she really not fear the Heavenly Demon at all?
My mind had stopped working from the sheer absurdity of it all.
My survival instinct was whispering in my head that I needed to get out of here right now.
Without fighting that instinct, I turned at once and grabbed the hut’s door handle.
Rattle.
The door wouldn’t budge, as if something had snagged it.
“?”
Rustle.
When I yanked harder, dust crumbled down over the hand gripping the handle.
Following the dust upward, I saw that something invisible had seemed to crush the upper part of the door with its fist.
Slowly, I turned my head, and the girl was still standing there in a perfectly composed stance, smiling all the while.
So it was her doing.
I quickly let go and spun back around.
I was screwed.
For someone bold enough to impersonate the Heavenly Demon, she seemed to have some real skill after all.
Not yet. I’m still fine.
I clamped down on my nerves and forced myself to think.
After living so long as a storyteller, I had at least learned to sense killing intent well enough to dodge insane sword swings.
Fortunately, I couldn’t feel any killing intent from the girl.
If she had meant to kill me, she would’ve twisted my neck already instead of bothering to block the door.
Then maybe, if I handled my words carefully, I could get through this.
I leaned against the door and started thinking at full speed.
I have no intention of leaving here.
The posture itself became that determination made flesh.
“Why does the Heavenly Demon-nim call this lowly one ‘Master’?”
I asked as respectfully as I could.
It would’ve been a bad move to question her identity or act too bold here.
After all, martial artists tended to enjoy being treated as superior.
In this age, people who swung swords around while acting pompous were all the same.
The girl snorted at my words.
“Because from this one’s book, Master, this one took a far more progressive first step. How could this one not call you Master?”
What in the world was she talking about?
What had I written?
And what had she done with it?
At that moment, she reached into her robes and pulled out a book.
It was a cheap, flimsy stack of paper that looked like it would fall apart if turned too many more times.
On the cover, in elegant calligraphy, were the words Heavenly Demon Divine Art.
In that instant, one thought flashed through my head, and I slapped a hand to my forehead.
Mother, didn’t you say you’d gotten rid of everything except one copy?
Was “gotten rid of” not burned, but sold instead?
The longing I felt for my late mother transformed into resentment in an instant.
“I won’t ask why Master wrote this secret manual. What matters is that this one gained help from it.”
My mind went foggy.
What help, you lunatic?
That was just a collection of delusional settings I scribbled down when I was a kid!
Of course, I had become like this because I’d followed the very book I wrote.
But I had only copied something that didn’t exist because I was bored.
Heavenly Demon Divine Art was a real martial art.
If you looked at it and knew it was nonsense, you were supposed to discard it on your own.
Why was a Heavenly Demon following it?
Why was she getting help from it!
I swallowed hard and stayed silent.
In the stillness, the birdsong outside sounded unusually mournful today.
After a quiet moment, the girl spoke again.
“There were quite a few passages this one found difficult to understand. But the more this one unraveled them one by one, the more astonishing the results became.”
“That insane wom— her mind is….”
Gone.
I swallowed the words that had almost burst out reflexively.
This mouth of mine!
My concentration slipped in the midst of the confusion, and another unfiltered remark nearly shot out.
I had clenched my mouth tightly enough that my pronunciation would likely be muddled, but she’d still be able to guess I’d cursed.
I hurriedly watched her expression.
Just as expected, her brow twitched as if she were offended.
This could get me killed.
I scrambled for something to placate her.
“Why did that end up in the Heavenly Demon-nim’s hands?”
“Because this one is the Heavenly Demon. Heavenly Demon Divine Art is this one’s property, so it would not be strange for it to return to its rightful master.”
I swallowed.
Whether she was the real Heavenly Demon no longer mattered.
What mattered was that she was, without question, a real lunatic.
“That was not written by me. I am not worthy to be called Master.”
“This one came here in person, and still you say that?”
I was going mad.
From the start, it seemed this girl had no intention of listening to a word I said.
No, even if my mother really had sold the book, how on earth would she know I wrote it?
How did she even know I was here?
My mind began to whirl furiously, trying to find some way out of this hopeless situation.
I couldn’t make another mistake.
Never in either of my lives had I ever concentrated this fiercely. That much I could swear.
How could I send this crazy woman back?
Would she even listen to anything I said?
I had already tried escaping physically once, and that had failed.
I racked my brain furiously, and just when my worry seemed pointless, the answer came from her own mouth.
“This one is prepared to follow Master’s teachings no matter what they may be.”
The girl said it while clenching her fists so hard they trembled.
Even from far away, the quiver in her lips was plainly visible.
Wait a second.
Was she—
Was she trying not to laugh right now?
This damned woman was straining to suppress laughter while mocking a commoner who couldn’t even use a single martial move.
Waving around someone else’s black history and saying, “You wrote this, right? Your wording is fucking awful, can you interpret it for me?” and then trying not to laugh.
Even the trash I’d written in school wasn’t this direct.
One thing I knew for sure: beyond all doubt, she was vicious enough to impersonate the Heavenly Demon.
I looked at that terribly deranged face and spoke with the air of a man who had already given up.
“Uh, could you start with the way you talk…?”
“The way I talk? You mean this one’s manner of speech?”
“Yes. It just doesn’t suit you….”
My voice kept shrinking until it finally blurred into a mumble.
How cruel was this humiliating situation, to have to endure it in the body of a beautiful girl?
This frail body couldn’t bear the shame and started making tears all on its own.
Feeling my eyes sting, I grit my teeth.
I know.
It sounded ridiculous.
But that was the pitiful little protest I had managed to squeeze out.
Honestly, how could someone with a face like that stunning transcendent beauty use such a ridiculous hao-style speech?
Hao-style speech is honorific.
It’s not some arrogant, haughty way of looking down on people.
Why was she being polite to others?
If she was going to do a Heavenly Demon cosplay, I wanted her to commit properly.
It was obvious as day.
That book must have used that sort of speech.
Once chuunibyou struck, people inevitably got drawn into that kind of hao-style phrasing.
It sounded like it had presence.
That wicked girl was surely using it just to mess with me.
Just as the timid, beautiful-girl part of me was swallowing me whole and dragging my consciousness into a pit of despair, the self-proclaimed Heavenly Demon girl muttered something under her breath, looking as if she’d lost her bearings.
Served her right!
I didn’t know exactly what had shocked her so much, but I felt just a little relieved as I wiped the tears from my eyes with my sleeve.
Then, taking advantage of her distraction, I turned at once and darted back into the house.
This time, the door opened without resistance.
The instant I reached the cozy little space, I crawled under the blanket and curled up tight.
Go away.
Please, just go away!
“……”
Time passed, but the outside remained silent.
I cautiously peeked through the window.
Just then, the girl seemed to give up and began walking away with her back turned.
Then she paused for a moment and suddenly vanished into thin air.
What astonishing divine power.
“She’s gone?”
I lived.
Letting out a long, trembling sigh of relief, I curled up on the bedding.
Tears soaked the pillow damp.
“Scary….”
It had truly been a horrible day.
Please. Let something like this never happen again.