Chapter 44. The Demon King's Name (1)
Chapter 44. The Demon King's Name (1)
1
It was long.
I crossed a long span of time to get here.
[A penalty from the skill is being applied.]
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
It seems the time has come to talk about a certain nightmare.
The battle fought on the twelfth floor.
The moment I became a single drop of water and was swept into the torrent.
[Penalty depth: Medium.]
It was what I saw after being killed by the Demon King.
[It is the Hungry Ghost Realm.]
Trauma.
The nightmare of the one called the lord of nightmares.
[Penalty commencing.]
[Generating the trauma of the monster Demon King of Fall Rain.]
.
.
.
A village burning in flames.
Before I knew it, I stood alone in the middle of a sea of fire.
No.
-Burn it!
Perhaps the one standing alone was not me.
At the very least, I had my guardian spirit with me.
The one who truly fell into this fiery hell all alone was beyond the fire demon.
-Burn the witch's nest to the ground!
Estelle.
The Saintess of the borderlands.
The one who saved the broken people.
-Show no mercy. They are all monsters under a curse!
-Do not let a single one escape!
Estelle could not understand.
Words would not come out.
Utterly unable to comprehend, she could only gape helplessly.
Why?
How could humans burn humans?
The parents who had thanked her. The newborn babies granted new life by her hand. All of those children were slaughtered.
-It is the lord's will!
Soldiers bearing countless banners smashed through the village palisade.
-It is the king's command!
Knights bearing their own coats of arms brought down their swords.
-His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of the Great East, who watches over the rising sun and is the guardian of all who dwell between land and sea......
-His Holiness the Pope has declared that the heretic who dares to call herself a Saintess......
-As the Lord of the Forest has entrusted this task, O spirits, upon this arrow......
-This jewel granted by the reigning King of the Merfolk shall bestow magic upon our staves......
-To honor our sacred oath, we dragon riders have come from the ancient volcano! Now, qi dragons! Breathe fire upon those wicked things......
They loudly proclaimed their allegiances and names, yet still Estelle could not understand.
Who in the world were they?
Who were they, to speak of burning humans?
-Ahh, aaaah!
-Please, save us!
They were meticulous. They surrounded the village as if hunting great game. No escape route was visible. There was a family trying to flee the village, but they were soon caught and hunted down.
The only place to run was the village square.
Pierced by spears.
Driven by swords, shot by arrows,
struck by hammers, struck by magic, burned by flames, the people were herded more and more into the square.
-Cough!
The center of the village.
The heart of the paradise she herself had created.
There, where the smoke hung thick, Estelle slowly looked around.
-Just hold on a little longer. Just a little......
A father hunched his back. A small gap formed between the ground of the world and the father's waist. His young child hid in that gap. The father took the flying sparks in his child's place, and swallowed the acrid smoke in his child's place.
The father died first.
The child lived one minute longer than the father.
-Just a little more......
An old grandfather and grandmother embraced each other. Were they trying to see their partner off at the end? Estelle thought so. But when she looked more carefully, no. A newborn baby was burrowing into the gap between the grandfather and grandmother.
-A little more......
The moment the flames spread, the grandfather and grandmother screamed. But the old couple did not let go. Their elbows burned in the fire and stiffened in place. Even as they turned into pitch-black lumps of charcoal, the old couple held each other tight. Not a farewell embrace, but an embrace to save the little one.
The couple died first.
The newborn's cries that had been leaking from the gap ceased one minute later.
-......
One by one.
The coughing in the square fell silent.
The family that had become the richest in the village by planting an orchard. The old man who went out to the fields every dawn to farm. The old woman who, every autumn, stared blankly at the wheat field and murmured, "The grain has ripened golden."
-Why......?
There was not a single person who was unbroken. Incurable diseases sleeping in stomachs. Cancers eating away at brains and spines. Eyes that could no longer see. Feet that could no longer walk. The world was full of illness upon illness, and Estelle willingly swallowed those diseases.
More than when she had swallowed all those diseases.
-How......?
Now her heart was stained blacker.
Scorched by smoke.
Burned by flames.
She quietly tried to open her lips.
-......
The taste of burning filled her mouth.
Estelle knew that her heart had blackened a little.
The village burned through the night.
Estelle burned through the night.
Scrape!
Estelle clawed at the ashes with her fingertips.
No one disturbed her. Seeing the village engulfed in flames, the soldiers had leisurely departed.
The ruins of the paradise left after the burning.
-Lepandor......
There lay a father's corpse.
-Dazena......
Beneath the father lay a child's corpse.
-Solape... Chou... Ugensache......
She dug.
-Mobazaizan... Topo... Enna... Garchov......
With her bare hands. With her fingertips.
The ruins of a village where nothing but ruins remained. The ashes of a paradise that had collapsed into cinders. Even as her fingers stained black, and the blood that flowed from her cracked nails discolored to black as well.
Estelle dug.
-......
And then she opened her mouth and ate.
Human flesh.
Human bone.
Where there was neither flesh nor bone, ashes.
-......
Human flesh was no longer fragrant. She could feel no appetite, no beauty whatsoever. The smell of burning. Only the lingering scent of what had burned away. Yet Estelle did not stop eating the burned things. She swallowed them. Ravenously. Even if it was hideous.
Estelle's mouth was stained black with filth.
Estelle's teeth were dyed black.
-Pitiful things......
Her esophagus was painted black, and fluid pooled in her stomach. The blood became a viscous secretion and spread through her whole body. It was not only blood. Something was flowing from her eyes.
It was probably not tears.
If it were tears, why were they not transparent?
-Pitiful things......
Therefore, it was nothing but filthy water.
Sewage that other humans had used and discarded, flowing and flowing until it reached her.
Having nowhere else to go, it had simply pooled in her heart.
-Pitiful things......
The filthy water did not stop flowing black.
-You.
It flowed into the square.
-You, you too. You too are human, and yet.
It flowed into the village.
-You too were born human and know the beauty of life, and you too are human and know how to shed tears, so how. How could you.
It flowed into the wilderness.
-Call them monsters? Burn them as monsters? Was knowing beauty and shedding tears truly not enough? And so you felt no hesitation in naming and burning them?
It flowed into the mountains and fields.
-And so you remain human, while these... my children must remain monsters forever? Is that your world?
Resentment flows like rain.
-In that world, do you alone smile? Were you alone permitted to be beautiful? Do you alone have the right to shed tears? Are you alone human? For you, it seems a person must prove themselves to be a person.
The heart echoes and cries out.
-Then now, you prove it.
Rain fell.
-Show me.
Rain fell.
-I curse you.
Because the rain falls.
Now no village will burn, and no borderland entrance will be engulfed in flames.
My children. My blood. The color stolen from my heart.
My blood has already lost its color and flows only as the filthy water of ashes, but the rain that falls upon this world is red, and so it testifies in place of my blood.
-Be swallowed by your own malice.
Rain fell.
The rain.
-You,
The rain.
Rain fell.
-You made me this way.
On and on.
-And so I made you that way.
The rain.
The rain fell, and......
-Gong-ja.
Blink.
-Wake up.
A voice.
-This is not your hell.
At the low voice, I barely managed to open my eyes.
[Trauma reenactment complete.]
[Confirmed that the subject's ego has been maintained.]
[Ending penalty.]
* * *
One stroke.
Merely because I held a single sword.
Two cuts.
Only because what I had to cut remained in the world.
-Gong-ja!
Blink.
-Now!
I looked ahead.
No.
The scene ahead was shown to me.
-His head is empty!
Drifting through a moment as if it were an eternity.
Before my eyes, having crossed an instant, stood a figure whose entire body was pitch black.
Filthy water flowed endlessly from his body.
Water, even when cut, is still water, so there was much to cut.
One stroke, two cuts.
I cut what had to be cut.
-Kraaaaah!
As he was cut, the black king shed filthy water.
Perhaps it was not filthy water.
If it were filthy water, why would it be red?
Blood.
Bright red droplets of blood flowed from the Demon King's body.
-Ugh... keuk......!
The Demon King staggered backward. One step. Two steps. When he took a third step, the filthy water stopped flowing from the Demon King's right arm.
Black puddles still pooled in the Demon King's footprints, but compared to the first step, at the second step, and compared to the second step, at the third step, the puddles shrank more and more.
Before long.
-Keuk, hoo... uuugh......
The filthy water was peeling away from the Demon King's body.
Drip. Drop.
No longer able to flow as filthy water, blood flowed in its place.
The color of life, it seemed, was originally red.
[The existence of the Demon King of Fall Rain grows faint.]
The being who had once boasted absolute martial supremacy was no longer there.
-No... no, ugh......!
The Demon King wrapped his right hand around his left arm. Blood was flowing from the left arm. As if he could not forgive even a single drop of blood from leaking out, like a person desperately trying to scoop up spilled water, the Demon King pressed firmly on the wound.
-My children... not like this... resentment, outcry......
"Retreat."
I spoke in a low voice.
If a person's sword cuts the body in two, a voice severs the soul.
As if cut by my voice, the Demon King flinched.
"Withdraw to the twentieth floor. You cannot defeat me anyway. Return quietly to your stronghold, to your final demon king's castle."
Even just looking at the 'world map,' the war situation was crystal clear.
Blue territory. Humanity's domain once again covered the continent. It crossed the central mountain range. It crossed the canyon called the Goddess's Shield. The temple where the one-eyed giant gazes down. The forest where fairies dance. The waterfall where merfolk frolic. The volcanic crater now filled with a clear lake instead of lava...... There was not a single patch of territory on the continent, from the plains to the corners, that was not blue.
On the other hand, the red territory.
"Now return to your starting point."
A single point.
It was nothing more than a single dot.
No matter how vast the plains a fire has burned, in the end it dies down to a single ember. And even if a flood of water rises to the very base of the sky, in the end it ceases as a single drop of water.
On the vast world map, only a faint red dot like a firefly remained.
That place,
"is your final destination, Demon King."
The Demon King bared his teeth.
-You, you bastard......
The Demon King raised his head. The filthy water had stopped and blood flowed in its place, but half of the Demon King's body was still burned black. His face was the same. Only his red eyes glowed with particular menace. With his face still submerged in ash-water, the Demon King glared this way.
"Hm."
Sword Saint silently gripped his sword hilt.
"I'll yield the final blow to Death King."
The witch leisurely commanded her six mirrors.
-......
No matter where one looked, there was no chance of a reversal. No opening was visible. Perhaps it was because I had glimpsed the Demon King's trauma. The current situation felt exactly like the village surrounded by soldiers.
A curtain of encirclement with no hole to escape through.
-Keuk!
The Demon King had no answer but to flee. Yet the reason he could not readily choose that answer was because the Demon King himself knew it was not the correct one.
It was the same.
Just as fleeing the flames to the square could extend life by only one minute. Even if he retreated to the twentieth floor, driven out by us, the moment of defeat would merely be delayed slightly.
-Damn it......! Damn it!
Blood flowed from the Demon King's mouth.
[The Demon King of Fall Rain resolves to retreat.]
[Demon King of Fall Rain retreats to the 20th floor!]
Yes.
Even knowing they will burn to death, humans still flee.
The more he fled, the closer the Demon King came to being human.
[Confirmed the Demon King's retreat.]
[History altered.]
[Revising the 19th floor stage.]
The world was once again wrapped in beads of light.
After confirming that the Demon King had vanished, I turned around.
"Sword Saint."
"Mm."
"Black Dragon Master."
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry. I want to clear the twentieth floor alone."
I lowered my head.
"Thank you for helping me up to now. But I want to settle things with that Demon King myself. Please let me go alone."
"......"
The witch shrugged her shoulders.
"Sure. I'm fine with it. You contributed the most getting us here... and anyway, I'd decided not to act on your orders for five days. I broke that on my own to help, so this time I'll really stay put."
"Hmm."
Sword Saint sheathed his sword.
"Once today ends, it will already be the fifth day. After you finish with the twentieth floor, come see me separately. There is much that you and I need to discuss."
"Yes, understood."
I lowered my head again.
"Thank you."
And then I headed onward.
"Teleport."
The twentieth stage.
[Welcome, Death King.]
The Demon King.
To the village where Estelle was born.