Competing for Sex
Sloan made it look far too easy — but Demon Kings are ancient monsters who've known nothing but victory after victory their entire lives.
Even as the weakest among them, I can still slaughter most warriors without breaking a sweat. That alone is proof enough.
"GRAAAAAAAAH!"
The one-eyed cyclops bellowed at us for daring to set foot on its territory.
It stood roughly five meters tall and weighed several tons — a terrifying beast made even more formidable by the thick iron plates covering its entire body.
"IN—TRUDERS!"
It swung an iron club that would have snapped a well-trained knight's spine in a single blow, and a literal gale tore through the air.
Yet for all that speed and bulk, the strike hit nothing. We simply weren't where the creature thought we were.
"Is it because you've only got one eye? You can't even focus properly."
Camilla murmured a brief incantation and blinked the entire party out of range in one go.
Sloan, of course, just stepped back on her own. That twisted look on her face had been getting uglier by the minute. Frustrated that her turn still hadn't come, maybe?
As if to prove the point, Camilla stretched out a pale hand and gathered her mana.
"Wind Blade."
The wind condensed into a single point and reshaped itself into a blade — more precisely, a circular saw spinning at three hundred and sixty degrees. Even I, who knew next to nothing about magic, could see the wind with perfect clarity. And its power was every bit as devastating as it looked.
"GRAAAAAAAAGH!"
The spinning wind-saw punched straight through the iron plating on the cyclops's left arm and shredded flesh and bone without mercy.
With a sickening sound, an arm weighing well over a hundred kilos hit the ground with a heavy thud. Blood sprayed from the severed stump in thick, pulsing jets — then, moments later, the bleeding stopped.
"I was aiming for the head… Still can't get my aim right."
"Ugh! Y-you didn't finish it just now, right? That means I can go next! Right?!"
"Sorry, but no. It's my turn now."
The cyclops's regenerative ability was absurd. You could literally watch red clumps of flesh writhing and climbing back up from the severed stump.
I'd heard that higher life forms capable of speech had complex body structures that took a long time to regenerate. This thing seemed to transcend all of that. Then again, expecting anything scientific from a piece of merchandise was a fool's errand. And expecting it from these women…
"One shot is more than enough to kill. Wasting that much time and still failing to finish the enemy? You're a disgrace as a mage."
"…Ugh!"
Twang! Elisa drew her bow, and the arrow tore through the air with a force that produced truly horrific results.
"KRAAAAH! M-my e… my eye!"
The arrow drove clean through the cyclops's eye and punched out the back of its skull. Even the creature's raw strength couldn't withstand that kind of power. It staggered backward for a long moment before finally going still.
Camilla was one thing — but Elisa's strength was… formidable in its own right.
"Does this put me in the lead?"
"Grrr…!"
"Try a little harder, Camilla. All that talent and you still can't put it to use. What a shame. A real shame. Why not specialize in just one thing, like me? Spreading yourself thin across a bunch of shallow techniques is just… pfft."
Wow. She really knew how to get under someone's skin. So that was what experience looked like.
"Look over there."
Camilla pulled one of her signature blank-faced expressions and pointed a finger past the horizon.
"Elisa. You see that?"
"It's a mountain. I have eyes too."
"No, no! Look! Something's coming."
A chance to rack up more points had arrived.
In that same moment, my sharpened senses picked up multiple presences.
Each one carried a heavy weight — and even without deliberately probing them, I could tell their owners were a well-equipped army.
"You dare trespass on my land, and that alone is not enough…"
The 55th Seat, Budalin. Perhaps because he could freely reshape iron at will, every single soldier under his command was outfitted in expensive full plate armor.
His appearance was as grotesque as any of my kin. His upper body was an octopus bristling with tentacles; his lower half was human.
"Ugh, what a hideous-looking thing. How does something like that even exist?"
"You measure beauty by your own pathetic standards? How utterly laughable. To my eyes, you lot look like hairless monkeys."
"Wait — it can talk?"
"How deeply offensive. Do you take this body for some mindless beast?"
I was mildly curious why he'd shown up like this all of a sudden.
Why come alone, without his army? He had to know how strong Sloan was.
More importantly — he doesn't recognize me at all.
I thought it over for a moment and suddenly realized: I was still stealthed.
Has my ability gotten strong enough that he can't sense me? Now that's useful.
For someone who needed to move in secret, this was the best possible outcome. Perfect. It meant I could keep Budalin from saying anything unnecessary.
"When your ancestors were still playing with fire in caves, I and my kin had already built a radiant civilization. Do you primate spawn dare insult us — we who shall live forever — by questioning our intelligence?!"
He wasn't wrong. I'd probably lived longer than even Elisa's ancestors. What a piece of work.
"So? Showing up alone like this, it looks like you've come here to die."
"Hmph! Can you think of nothing but violence? How truly amusing."
"You're one to talk. Who invaded first…"
"Behold! The reason I have personally descended upon this place! This one seeks to forge a peace with you humans!"
Peace? A Demon King… wanting peace with humans?
Has this one gone eccentric too?
I'd heard there were occasional Demon Kings who became so enamored with human culture that they started acting just like them. We called those ones eccentrics — they barely seemed like Demon Kings at all.
Maybe it was simply because we, too, were higher life forms with emotions.
"For someone proposing peace, you're awfully arrogant. Fine. What exactly is this 'peace' of yours?"
"I shall not attack humans for the next hundred years. In return, you will not attack my colonies."
"Wow. So after beating the hell out of everyone until now, the second things look a little rough, you want to back out? That's impressively cheap."
Sloan raised her sword. She'd been biting her lower lip, seemingly listening to Budalin in silence.
Both Budalin and I knew better.
She was itching to kill someone. It had already been seven hours since she'd last taken a life, hadn't it?
The fact that a murder addict like Sloan had held out this long was astonishing in itself. If Budalin made one wrong move here, she'd be on him in an instant.
"I do not come empty-handed in my bid for peace. The five manors beyond the Serat, Aniril, and Durran rivers — I shall cede them all to the nearby humans."
He had no way of knowing the truly horrifying truth — but did he at least realize Sloan was holding back her urge to kill? His voice grew urgent as he muttered on.
"Hnn… hnn… I-I can't take it anymore."
"Hold it."
"Nngh! I want to kill. Girls. I can kill him, right?"
"…What?"
"I want to tear his throat out with my teeth, then shred his hide to ribbons. If I pulled out every one of his teeth and drove them deep into his eyeballs, what kind of sound would he make? Ah… I want to know."
A deeply cruel, utterly horrific thing to say. That insane murderous bitch…!
"What a ghastly act you intend to commit. Do you not understand the meaning of sacrifice? Every time you, the Hero, move, hundreds of soldiers die."
"That sounds wonderful… Hundreds dying because of me. I'm the best."
"I am merely trying to resolve this peacefully! How can a Hero choose slaughter?!"
As expected, I seemed to be the only one who truly understood Sloan.
I was allowed to take some pride in that, wasn't I? If there were an academic field for it, I'd hold a master's degree by now.
And from the perspective of a Master of Sloan Studies, Budalin's proposal was having the opposite of its intended effect.
It's like a steak basting itself in sauce and then begging to be eaten off the plate.
Sloan simply loved killing — but more than anything else, she loved slaughtering enemies who begged for mercy just like this.
Budalin was only goading her further. The results were going to be truly horrific…
He should have come with every subordinate he could muster and forced a fight to the death, not shown up asking for peace.
"I've heard enough of your sniveling for mercy…!"
"Wait."
"…Camilla?"
The one who stopped her — one step away from becoming a pure killing machine — was Camilla.
"You stay put. From now on, we're competing for points."
"What?"
"Stay. Put."
…Wow. So Sloan's face could make that expression.