More Useful Than I Thought
The Sixty-Seventh Rank Demon King, Gulombus, was an upright-walking lizard standing roughly a hundred and fifty centimeters tall.
His only armaments were a one-handed shield large enough to cover his entire upper body and a mace, so at a glance he looked like some common foot soldier. The way he talked matched the impression.
But he was a Demon King all the same. One who had once held power greater than my own....
"Vallitics, where are you?"
"I'll be there shortly."
"Good. Hurry up. And as you can see for yourself — that lump of flesh over there… Lichtes made it. Looks stronger than me, doesn't it? He didn't spare the materials. I'd say he ground up at least seven souls of former Heroes."
Pouring that kind of extravagant material into the thing without restraint — he must have been furious. If he couldn't have it, he'd smash it, was that the idea?
"Well, given the vessel… the body will probably collapse within a week. Not our problem either way. What matters is that we eliminate the Hero somewhere in this city."
"And how exactly do you plan to do that? Or have you forgotten that thing butchered Urk Heizen?"
"Have you forgotten my innate ability? Combined with yours, we can take down any enemy no matter how strong."
His ability was spewing various poisons from his mouth. He couldn't produce toxins that directly snuffed out a life, but paralyzing the nerves or inducing hallucinations was well within his reach.
No matter how tough Sloan's body is, taking that poison head-on would still be dangerous. She's fighting with pure physical power alone.
Only something on the level of Lylie's miracles could purge that poison. Either way, this one needed to die here.
"Anyway, we should get started soo— ghk?!"
"Tch."
Still cloaked in stealth, I tried to drive my blade into his cervical spine — but his scales were harder than expected, and the dagger sank only about three centimeters deep.
Misjudged it. I should have pushed it deeper. Still, the attempt let me identify the weak points. Prolonged stealth put a strain on the body, so I released the ability and revealed myself.
"Vallitics! What the hell do you think you're doing?!"
"What does it look like? I was trying to kill you."
"Don't you know that killing one's own kind is strictly forbidden?"
I knew that perfectly well. There were any number of rules Demon Kings were supposed to observe among themselves. I just didn't care for them.
Weren't Demon Kings supposed to be pure concentrations of evil unbound by rules? Back in the Demon Realm, no one had the slightest hesitation about killing each other. The moment an opportunity presented itself, everyone was busy stabbing each other in the back.
"You— don't tell me… you're siding with the Hero."
"As if. Me, side with the Hero? This is about disposing of trash that was about to interfere with my schemes. Besides…"
I could feel it instinctively. He had been planning to stab me in the back as well.
Otherwise, there would have been no reason for him to come to this city at all. Urk Heizen was already dead, wasn't he? Only an idiot would face a monster like that head-on. We were arrogant, not stupid.
He would have tried to kill me the moment I absorbed Urk Heizen's power. Even with that strength fully taken in, if he threw every ability he possessed at me, he could have finished me off easily enough.
"Heh heh… so you're not a complete idiot. Fine, you're right. There's no facing that monstrous woman head-on. The death cries of our kin still ring clear in my ears."
In that instant, the dagger lodged in his scales was yanked free. And the ground at his feet, which should have been soaked, held only the faintest traces — hardly any blood at all.
Had he been present when Urk Heizen died and absorbed some of that power as well? Even scraps of that strength would have been formidable. Enough for significant growth.
"Bad luck. I only absorbed one of them. If I'd gotten here sooner, I might already be a top Thirty-Sixth Rank Demon King by now…. Still, killing you should just about make up the difference."
True to his lizard nature, he flicked his tongue and heaved his mace high, then charged. For someone a mere hundred and fifty centimeters tall, the rush was absurdly powerful.
In the instant before impact, I cloaked myself in stealth and used my enhanced physical abilities to leap high into the air. Gulombus, apparently thinking I had rolled to the side, wrenched his jaws wide open and fired that repulsive innate ability of his.
Even one hit of that would be bad.
But the same went for him. I now knew exactly which spots would bounce a dagger and which would take one. There would be no more mistakes. I was going to kill him for certain.
"You rat bastard. Hiding again! That's right — every time a real fight comes around, you always run."
The swaggering lizard swept his distinctive pointed eyes this way and that, trying somehow to pin down my location.
"Get out here in front of me right now!"
So I decided to grant his wish. Dropping the stealth, I surged forward at speed and drove my blade toward his face.
But he deflected the dagger with the shield he was holding. I couldn't see his eyes, yet the smug little chuckles told me he thought he'd won.
"In the end, luck just wasn't on your side, was it? You fool."
He laughed without realizing this was exactly the move I had been angling for. I had figured he would reflexively thrust the shield forward instead of counterattacking.
Because that was the only way he could sneer at me. I made sure he wouldn't get the chance. Releasing the lodged dagger, I kicked the shield hard with my foot.
"Ghk?!"
"You stupid lizard."
The shield, forged from special materials, was too tough to break even with my enhanced strength. But I could shove him backward. Staggering, Gulombus flailed his mace about wildly.
He didn't seem to realize that only threw his balance off further. Hissing and sputtering, he eventually planted his feet again.
"You—!"
He dropped the shield and sprayed paralytic poison from his mouth — a vicious fluid that could freeze even the muscles of respiration. I had no reason to take it, of course, and was already gone. Another long leap carried me high into the air. The sound of my landing and the dagger punching between his scales arrived as one.
"You piece of—! Stop— with the damn— stealth already—!"
I hadn't even used it this time. He seemed thoroughly aggrieved. His tongue was long enough to be irritating, so I shut it for him. The moment stealth became available again, I vanished and sprinted in.
"Grrraaah!"
He went berserk, thrashing his mace through empty air — but again, I had no reason to get hit. After dodging every swing, I kicked the dagger that was just beginning to regenerate and drove it home.
A wet, meat-crushing crunch, and he made a strangled ghhhk of a sound. The blade had punched clean through a lung.
Unable to speak, he hurled a furious mental wave at me.
"Waaait! If I die, our kin won't just sit still!"
"You don't need to worry about that."
Because I wasn't going to be the one who killed him. My plan was to stay at the Hero's side and reap the benefits. There was no need to dirty my own hands any further.
I seized the nape of the lizard who had collapsed face-first. He gurgled and thrashed in resistance, but how much could a creature that could barely breathe actually move?
His regenerative ability was strong, true. But there was nothing he could do about the blood flooding a punctured lung.
He could seal the hole in the lung and the vessels, but he couldn't drain the blood already filling them. Pinning down his feeble resistance, I took my dagger and chopped off his arms and legs one by one.
"Gyaaaaaah—! Stop, stooop!"
Savage mental waves radiated in every direction. Unfortunately for him, the only kin around to hear them was me. We shared the experience of death itself — but not the circumstances leading up to it.
So if I hoisted the considerably lighter lizard and tossed him toward Camilla, who was currently pouring out magic—
"Huh? What is that. A monster?"
—then no evidence would remain that I had killed him.
"Gyaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!"
"What kind of monster is… Vallitics?! Did you catch this?"
"Yes!"
"Really? Nice work!"
Camilla didn't even look at the limbless lizard before incinerating it. The flames were as hot as the Lich's fire I had seen before, only on a smaller scale.
A spherical fireball swallowed his body in an instant. Mental waves scraped across my skin like claws — then fell silent. Within seconds, Camilla's flames had vaporized him so thoroughly that not even ash remained.
Finally!
As he burned, a new power was etched into my soul…. Had I absorbed too many of my kin's strengths? Not only my body, but the power of my very soul had grown denser.
I've gained another innate ability.
Every Demon King possessed at least one powerful ability. In my case, it had been stealth….
Blink
Swap positions with a dagger
I didn't fully understand why a second ability had awakened, but my standing as a Demon King had risen that much further.
"Nice."
It really was. I was no longer Vallitics, the weakest of the Demon Kings. With this much power…. maybe I could even fight the Hero? Not head-on, of course — it would have to be an ambush.
Should I do it right now?
Maybe, at this moment, I could actually take care of the Hero—
"Hell yeah! The head!"
If I had to describe the sound, it was a wet, meaty thwaaaack. Distinctly different from the noise a sword made when it cut.
Because Sloan had smashed that lump of flesh not with the edge of her blade, but with the flat of it. And she had done it while spinning a full circle midair, no less — whoooom.
"Looks like the meat's starting to pulp up nicely! Great! Let's keep shaving it down!"
What kind of unhinged woman was that.
Sloan had no elegant swordsmanship, no clever tactics of any kind.
Just raw strength. The insane power in those arms made the impossible look easy.
What kind of human was that even…? Was she even human? No, before that—
Ambush the Hero?
Delusional didn't begin to cover it. If I tried to ambush that lunatic and failed, I was dead without question.
I'll keep my head down for a while.
If I wanted to face Sloan, I was going to need to get a lot stronger first.
Probably…. about six times stronger than I was now?
"Hahahaha! Camilla! Look at this! The head came off!"
No — eight times…. ten? No. Far more than that!
…Whatever the exact number, the fact that I needed to become vastly stronger remained unchanged. And that was going to be a miserable ordeal. Because that monster would keep getting stronger too.