If It Doesn't Fall After Ten Strikes, Strike It a Hundred Times
I seized the Demon King by her horn, slammed her to the ground, and drove my sword straight through her heart.
Thump. Thump. The heartbeat was unmistakable against the blade’s tip.
A wound like this should have been fatal, even for Morgan and her Recovery Magic Sword.
Yes, it should have been. But unfortunately, it seemed fatal wounds did not apply to the Demon King.
The Demon King staggered upright, my sword still buried in her chest.
Fearing she might steal the blade, I yanked it free and fell into a wary stance.
As I watched her carefully, the Demon King made a show of it—sealing the gaping hole in her heart in an instant.
The blood trickling from the tiny puncture stopped. Flesh knit together. Even the blood she had been coughing up ceased.
It was an obviously abnormal level of recovery. No, could this even be called healing? This was closer to a miracle.
Of course, I wouldn’t die from a sword in my body either. When I fought Morgan I had even planned to counterattack after taking her blow.
The avatar bodies possessed high regenerative power and could recover quickly as long as vital points weren’t struck.
But even I would die if my heart was completely pierced. Naturally, if I blocked with magic power, very few things could penetrate me—but I would still die.
The Demon King, however, was different.
She rose and recovered without issue even after her heart—the vital point for any living creature—was run through.
The sight was like watching someone use a game-system cheat. I voiced my complaint at the sheer unfairness, but the Demon King only threw her head back and laughed, as if she found the whole thing endlessly amusing.
I brushed off the Demon King’s explosive laughter with a single curt remark.
If I stayed here she could experience near-death countless times? Did she not realize that a sword through the heart during one of those experiences would kill even her?
Probably not.
I inwardly confirmed the thought I had been ready to laugh at as foolish.
For whatever reason, the Demon King was utterly convinced. She was certain she would never die.
Then what was the reason?
Immortality? No, it couldn’t be true immortality.
No matter how different the game and reality might be, the gap wasn’t large enough for the Demon King—who had died normally in the game—to become truly unkillable.
In the game the Demon King had definitely died at the hands of player characters and other major NPC heroes, and that death marked the end of the main story. There had never been any chance she was immortal.
The fact that my attack just now had nearly killed her suggested she really had been on the verge of death. Of course she could be lying, but my instincts told me it wasn’t a lie.
To summarize: for some unknown reason the current Demon King was convinced she would not die, and in reality she would not die. That was the extent of my findings.
And to confirm it, I would apparently have to test it myself.
The Demon King spread both arms, declaring she would accept every attack I made.
At the same time I saw demonic energy covering her body without a single gap, far denser than before. I swung my swords with everything I had.
I didn’t know how many times I could kill her, but I resolved to keep swinging until she was carved apart and finally fell.
I never stopped swinging my blades.
If she dodged, I cut. If she blocked, I cut. If she deflected, I cut.
I had no initiative. Against a Demon King who no longer underestimated me, seizing the lead in a one-on-one melee was impossible.
So we exchanged blows honestly, one after another, for several minutes. The fight quickly spiraled into something unreasonable.
The Demon King, wrapped head to toe in demonic energy that showed no sign of running dry, recovered instantly from every strike and charged at me in perfect condition. Each time I took one of her attacks, at least a tenth of my HP vanished.
I gave everything I could. With all my strength.
The exhilarating heat still burned inside me. Using it as fuel, I moved without pause.
But in a battle this unfair, it was inevitable that the already tilting balance would eventually collapse.
I reached my limit first. Coughing blood, I dropped to one knee on the ground.
The metallic tang filled my mouth, then stained the dragon’s scales crimson in my blurring vision.
The Demon King looked down at me and shrugged, as if disappointed. The casual gesture made curses rise in my throat.
Don’t you dare say that, you cheating bastard.
I wanted to shout it, but the filter would only mangle the words. So I swallowed them, trying to preserve what little strength I had left, and breathed hard.
When I glanced up, the Demon King was sitting atop the dragon’s head with one leg stretched out, wearing a bored expression and the same indifferent eyes she had before the fight began.
She had talked about killing me with full power earlier, but it seemed she had never been serious.
Well, knowing that was exactly why I could still breathe this easily.
For now… I understand one thing.
The battle against the Demon King had been nothing short of despairing, yet I had realized one undeniable truth.
She was a tree that would not fall no matter how many times you struck her—not a hundred, not even ten thousand.
The demonic energy wrapped tightly around her body showed no sign of diminishing. Thanks to that, her stamina returned to full in an instant and never dropped by even a single point.
At least her learning ability was not very high; I had managed to take one more life. But against an opponent with an unknown immortality, it meant nothing.
So I lowered my head so she wouldn’t notice and secretly connected a message spell to Mu.
Because Mu had left the line open in advance, I only needed to pour magic power into it even while using Aria’s body.
The familiar sensation of a thread of magic connecting, just like when I had linked with Pina earlier. Feeling it, I spoke inside my mind.
Mu, can you hear me?
Yes, Mother. I am listening.
The best part of message magic was that you didn’t need to speak aloud.
Only now, with the Demon King right in front of me, did I fully appreciate that advantage. I gave my order to Mu.
The subjugation of the Demon King has failed. We’re retreating. But don’t activate the spell immediately—wait thirty seconds. I still have one last thing to say.
Understood. I will activate it exactly thirty seconds after this message ends.
The connection cut with a crisp click.
The instant it severed I began counting thirty seconds in my head and forced my creaking, rusty-hinged body to stand.
The Demon King’s face brightened the moment I rose. I gave her a look that asked if she was crazy. Any more fighting and I really would die.
The accumulated damage and fatigue hit me the instant I made that face.
It would have been nice to use Morgan’s Recovery Magic Sword, but absorbing that much demonic energy would only backfire. I had no choice.
I tossed the futile hope into the trash and asked the Demon King, who had risen with me.
The reason the Demon King—who had declared she would kill me—was sparing my life. Honestly, I didn’t need to hear it; it was surely because I had entertained her.
My guess proved exactly right.
The words were slightly different but not far from what I expected. It was the mindset of a powerful being who had been bored for a very long time.
Before I could even nod at the predictable answer, the Demon King opened her mouth again and added something I had not anticipated.
Comrade? Comrade?
I snorted at the absurd suggestion.
The final boss herself was trying to recruit an enemy who had killed her twice—imperfectly, but still—as a comrade.
Though we were both strong, perhaps because she stood on a higher plane, the idea was difficult for me to understand.
And with words this incomprehensible, it was more efficient to erase them from my mind than to try to understand them.
I shoved the Demon King’s statement into a corner of my thoughts. Right before Mu’s teleportation magic activated, I left her one final remark and threw myself off the dragon.
If you wait five years, the heroes I raised will kill you.
The children will kill you—the one I could not kill.
I fell beneath the dragon with those last words. The Demon King’s voice, nearly swallowed by the wind, was the final thing I heard before the teleportation magic turned me into light and carried me away.
At the very end.
In the final instant, what I saw was my own footprints stretching beyond the line that had been drawn.