#086 Self-Destruction
#086 Self-Destruction
An explanation of the Spirit Machine.
Adjustments for Lucius, Rosemas, and Droniel.
'It's over!'
Having finished all of that without incident, I felt like I could finally sleep in peace.
'There's nothing left that can interfere with me now.'
I don't need sleep.
But the mental strain over the past few days had been considerable, and I needed a rest where I didn't think about anything for a while.
Right.
A little rest.
For someone who uses their head, if you don't take at least a minimal break, your skull is bound to crack later.
No matter how carefully you manage your stamina and prepare for what's ahead, when a dangerous situation arises, things get difficult in all sorts of ways.
Therefore.
The Demon King's ultimate secret technique.
Zoning—
Zoning out at full power.
Acedia or whatever, my original body or whatever—I think about none of it.
Whether Lucius pairs up with Rosemas or not, whether Droniel watches them and grinds her teeth while agonizing over whether to take off her mask and reveal her identity or not, whether Rapid works hard to calm the villagers and find a way to contact Regret, the center of Odron, or not, whether Liliez puts up a barrier again or not.
Whether Zepar is after me or not.
Right now, I am a person who thinks only of rest.
With no thoughts at all, with no worries at all, I enjoy this brief meditation.
Does sleep come?
No, it doesn't.
This body is a dead body, so it has no sleep.
But if human sleep is a time that relieves the fatigue of body and mind and restores vitality, then couldn't what I'm doing now—spacing out and resting—also be called sleep?
'I want to go home.'
As my consciousness drifted wherever it pleased, I suddenly wanted to go home.
I want to lie in my Demon King's castle, laze around in bed, and just keep living like that.
As the Great Demon King, after all the suffering I've endured so far, why did I have to come here and go through this misery again?
I just want to live while doing nothing but breathing.
The destruction of the Demon Realm.
The conflict between Celestials and Demonfolk.
The clash of heaven and demons unfolding in the Middle Realm.
The survival of humanity caught in between.
And long before all that, the seven powers created by the two goddesses who made the world, and the spirits who wield those powers.
The Spirit Machines that imprisoned those spirits.
All of those things only make my head hurt.
There is only one thing I want.
Revenge against Zepar.
He must pay for the crime of daring to make me suffer.
The Demon King who did everything he could five hundred years ago, who chose to accept defeat quietly before the world's destruction.
I was the Demon King who had abandoned everything I had built as head of the Demon King Army and chosen the survival of the Middle Realm. I was already exhausted to death, and Zepar had forcibly dragged me back into active service. Zepar had to die.
"......."
I tried to zone out, but even that wasn't easy.
There were too many things bothering me to just zone out.
I deliberately lay still in bed to keep my head from hurting, but the things that made my head hurt were piled up like a mountain.
To the point where Lucius, Rosemas, Droniel, or the other Heroes didn't matter at all.
-How long are you going to live like that?
Satan said.
-The reason I train my body is to defeat stronger enemies. The reason Lucifer trains his body is for physical beauty. What purpose do you exercise for?
-Is there a reason to train your stamina?
-Of course. If you want to lead a healthy life for a long time, shouldn't you save the world that life will continue in?
Satan and Lucifer had missions.
-The Demon Realm is going to be destroyed now. There are less than two hundred years left. We must cross over to the Middle Realm and make it ours. This world is already dying.
-So you're telling me to come along?
-Is there another leader as excellent as you? It may be a human perspective, but we are Demon Kings and you are the Great Demon King. Naturally, following the stronger one is the basic way of the Demonfolk, is it not?
-A guy who's always itching to say he can beat me in a straight fight?
-In terms of pure force, yes. But isn't your true worth not in force? Your ability to rule a group. That ability was already proven when you came within a step of conquering the Middle Realm. If only the Hero hadn't attempted to self-destruct with the world on the line at the very end—
-Stop. I'm feeling phantom pain in my heart, so stop that story.
I remembered it vividly—talking while lifting weights.
It was something we'd talked about while I lifted and lowered an iron bar loaded with steel weights forged in Lucifer's territory, in the hell of the Demon Realm. But Satan, a brawny Demon King who could nearly match me in sheer strength, always asked me....
No, not just Satan—all the Demon Kings asked.
-Don't you intend to go back to the human world and take revenge?
They asked.
Aren't you bitter about slipping when you were one step away?
How long are you going to live so lazily, just breathing with no reason or purpose in life?
-One who wishes to die along with the planet, with no purpose in living. Can such a being truly be called alive?
-The Demon Realm will perish. If there is any life form left in the Demon Realm at the end, it will be you. I will cross to the Middle Realm and live an infinite life, and you will be destroyed.
-Wouldn't it be better to come along? If you say you'll go again, all the Demonfolk will rise and follow behind you.
-It's the path to becoming our true leader, a Demon God. Think about it seriously.
"......Ha."
A Demon God.
When I thought of that, a laugh escaped me on its own.
As one who carried within me the truth of the world that I could never tell anyone, their proposal to rule the Middle Realm by commanding the Demon Kings as a Demon God was truly....
"Master."
"......Lucius."
It was time to wake from my reverie.
Lucius's voice calling me was urgent, and I immediately grabbed the staff I had placed by the bed.
"Enemy attack?"
"...Yes. They're a completely different type."
Lucius pointed out the window.
Beyond Liliez's barrier, beyond the ice wall, life forms completely different from the Narag Venomous Insects were circling around the barrier.
"......!!"
At the sight, my hands and feet trembled.
A form both familiar and strange.
An existence I never thought I would see in the Middle Realm.
"...What is that?"
"You don't know either, Master?"
"......."
The Crimson Mage didn't know, but the Great Demon King Belphegor did.
Beelzebub's minions, the Diptera.
At the sight of the human-sized fruit-fly monster legion, strength instinctively flowed into the hand gripping my staff.
"...Lucius. From here on, all I have is book knowledge too."
"Huh?"
"I haven't experienced it directly, but I've read about it in books."
It was a lie, though.
"Those look like the minions of a Demon King other than the Great Demon King."
"...Another Demon King?"
"Yes. It seems a Demon King other than Belphegor has been summoned."
My head was starting to hurt.
Putting together the traces of Beelzebub that had appeared so far and Acedia's movements, the worst possible assumption came to mind first.
"...Perhaps Acedia is controlling a Demon King."
"Is that possible...?"
"Nothing's impossible. I explained it last time, didn't I? The True Name Contract. If a Demon King-class being was subjected to that, they'd have no choice but to be helpless."
Even I, the greatest in the Demon Realm when it came to Mind Magic, was nearly caught.
My case was a little different, but if I had been summoned by my 'true name'—something I could never resist under any circumstances—I might not have been able to abandon my body and switch to another one.
"...What a pain."
-Strike when the enemy is resting.
The enemy was using the Demon King Army's core tactics exactly as they were.
Putting everything together, it seemed the worst-case scenario had occurred.
Zepar is controlling the Demon King Beelzebub.
Even if this is just my speculation, it doesn't matter.
Even the second-worst case would be at the level of 'the Demon King Beelzebub is helping Zepar.' Whether controlled or helping, that is nothing but the worst possible enemy for me, a current member of the Hero Party.
If.
If those are the ones I know.
"Run to Liliez right now and tell her. She needs to raise the barrier's strength to the maximum."
"Understood!"
Lucius didn't say anything like 'Huh?'
Rather than questioning my order, Lucius carried it out first and acted immediately.
"Liliez! A message from my master! She says to raise the barrier's strength!"
"Huh? What's this all of a sudden...."
The problem was that while Lucius obeyed me without question, Liliez did not.
'Lucius really is the best.'
Seeing him carry out orders so briskly, Lucius was the top pick.
Both Bareness and Liliez had their own experience, so in situations like this they tried to respond proactively rather than passively.
To be precise, they questioned my orders before following them perfectly.
And the moment that timing was missed, the enemy's attack would begin.
Skreeee!!
The Diptera screamed and clung to the barrier.
One by one, they latched onto the ice barrier created by the Holy Sword's power, drove in their sharp claws, and began flapping their wings wildly.
"!!"
"Too late, Liliez."
I flew out through the window.
Of course, Lucius running like the wind was faster than me flying, so he had delivered my order to Liliez, but she had missed that brief window.
"It's too late to try to strengthen the barrier now. Those things are usually...."
Scritch, scritch, scritch.
The Diptera shoved their bodies into the ice wall.
Whether their bodies froze or not, they forced themselves into the ice wall and pushed through.
"The kind that make it impossible to strengthen the barrier."
"No way...."
"Do you feel mana from them?"
"...I definitely feel mana. An incredibly evil mana I've never felt before."
"If that's how it felt.... Haah, I'm sorry. I only closed my eyes for a moment and just got back up, so I'm a little irritable."
I had only just started circulating the mana flowing through my body, so I had become a bit testy.
"...Those Magic Beasts over there. Those."
The bodies of the Diptera that had burrowed into the barrier began to glow red, slowly.
"They're bombs."
KABOOOOOOOOOM!!!
They exploded.
The Demon King Beelzebub.
Authority.
Turns creatures made into his minions into explosives.