The Turning Point of the Journey (2)
Mobia's Haste granted my legs a speed that was almost impossible to control. To the Demon King, it might have still looked like the crawl of a snail.
In just a few seconds, I collided with the thick leg of the horse the Demon King was riding.
…Because there was no way I could sprint across the snowfield at that velocity and stop on a dime.
“Ouch……”
A tiny scream escaped me. I felt the Demon King’s gaze sweep over me once. That alone sent chills racing down my spine.
But that was all. The Demon King lost interest in me. He simply turned his attention back to Azalea and parried the holy sword strike she unleashed.
The fact that neither the Demon King nor the massive horse he rode paid me any mind made me a little angry. It filled me with spite.
‘Tch… Let’s see if you can ignore this.’
I leaped with all my strength and clung to the Demon King’s leg.
And then… I thought in silence. I focused solely on the Demon King’s leg I was holding.
I wanted to see whether he could still look at me like a bug after losing that leg to a blade of time that was sharp and without thickness.
‘Rewind.’
And… it… didn’t… rewind…?
‘No, I definitely felt it. That sensation I get every time I turn back time—the indescribable feeling of causality warping. Is it ineffective against an opponent this overwhelmingly strong…?’
“Wait, Kaira! What are you doing?!”
Azalea, who had been exchanging blows with the Demon King, panicked when she saw me clinging to his leg in confusion. Her sword path grew erratic.
The Demon King’s mace flew toward Azalea, who was wrapped in sacred flames. Just like the others, she was sent flying. Though her holy power protected her body, it was clearly no light injury.
Only then did the Demon King turn his attention to me. If you could even call it attention—he simply shook his leg once to fling me off.
I tumbled several times across the snowfield before looking up at the Demon King with terrified eyes. My trembling gaze met the burning red eyes glowing from within his inscrutable helmet.
The Demon King stared down at me for a long moment with an unreadable look, then dismounted and set foot on the ground. He began walking toward me. One step at a time. With every footfall, a heavy vibration rumbled up from the earth.
“D-don’t come near me……”
Still sitting, I scrambled backward in an ugly retreat, muttering words the Demon King would never heed. He reached out with one massive arm and lifted me by the throat.
“Congratulations, mage.”
“Kgh, ugh, hrrk, k-hek……”
Being strangled, I couldn’t even manage a simple reply.
“You made me dismount my horse. A feat none of your powerful comrades could accomplish, yet you—a pathetically weak creature—achieved it. You may be proud.”
The Demon King looked straight into my pained face and spoke in a voice that seemed to resonate in my very bones.
“You use strange magic. What was that desperate spell you cast at the end? It is a power unknown to me. The moment you did whatever it was, the great divinity of the ‘gods from beyond’ dwelling within my body twisted violently for an instant.”
“Kh… ah, agh… ugh……”
“I know that distortion originated from my leg—the one you were desperately clinging to. It was a change that can only be described as the very laws of the world being shaken. Had it been an ordinary subordinate… even one of my ‘heads,’ they would not have survived such a bizarre power. Speak. What did you do?”
When it seemed my consciousness was about to fade, the Demon King hurled me back to the ground.
“Ugh… khk, cough, cough……”
“You are unmistakably weak. The weakest among those present. You must be an elite force dispatched by the leader of some race—most likely the human emperor—with the intent of assassinating me. As such, for mortals, your comrades were exceptionally strong. But you… you are so frail you do not even deserve to stand among them. As an assassin, you are worthless.”
The Demon King leaned slightly over my fallen form.
“…Yet you carry a nostalgic scent. A grateful fragrance that reminds me of the long-forgotten joy of eating. Yes, that power and this pleasant aroma both suggest you will be of great value as my subordinate. Tell me. What was that peculiar power?”
I averted my gaze and remained silent. The Demon King’s hand drew closer until it filled my vision.
“It is fine if you do not speak. Enjoy the honor of receiving the blessing before any of your comrades. You shall serve me.”
At that moment, something like dark mist engulfed my face.
“Ugh?!”
The Demon King’s boundless demonic energy forced its way into my body. An immeasurable malevolent will, the Demon King’s own intent, scrambled my mind. It gnawed away at my body, my brain, my soul—little by little—trying to steal my personality.
‘N-no… I can’t…’
But I instinctively understood. There was no resisting in the face of such overwhelming will.
Had all the people we had killed, all the humans corrupted by demonic energy, gone through this same process?
It would have been better to die. Because death would take me to the relay point. There was no need to fear death. There would be a next life.
But to have my brain devoured like this, to become a puppet stripped of personality, to obey the Demon King’s commands, to attack the empire, to kill my own parents… to live on as a soulless shell… that was worse than death.
‘N-no, I’m scared… like this, so meaninglessly… to Master…’
My thoughts twisted and warped chaotically. Terrible ideas of wanting to submit to the Demon King bubbled up like foam, shaking my head. I had to regain my senses.
‘Master… no… he’s an evil… Demon King…’
But I couldn’t shake it off. The Demon King’s will burrowed into my brain like tentacles. Behind the terror of losing my personality, a sweet pleasure at being denied and eroded in every way reared its head.
I let out a heated moan. A vulgar sigh laced with strange sensuality slipped between my lips.
“U-uh… ah, haa……”
Lying there, my hips bucked upward of their own accord.
‘W-what is this… feeling…? No way…? How could it…’
Overwhelmed by the fear of annihilation and the pleasure of submission, I reached climax pathetically and wet myself. The travel pants and skirt I wore beneath my robe grew warm and damp, then quickly cooled in the snowy wind.
It was my first time experiencing a woman’s orgasm—sudden and unexpected.
The memories of my previous life, when both stamina and desire had begun to wane at the tail end of my youth, had suppressed any adolescent curiosity. As a result, living as the bakery girl Kaira, I had never taken any interest in sexual matters.
The moment such a body was forcibly injected with ecstasy, my will began to collapse in an instant.
‘I want… to serve… this person…’
My vision blurred. Words that were not my own spilled from my lips as if in a trance.
“Master… nim……”
‘No… I can’t… become the Demon King’s puppet…’
But…
Why… exactly was I not supposed to live as a puppet…?
Unnecessary things like personality and free will should be discarded. The intense urge to serve the boundless powerhouse who extended a hand before me—to live for him, to die for him, to be resurrected as a soulless shell even after becoming a dead corpse and continue serving until my body shattered in the final moment—melted my brain.
It felt blissful.
If only I could remain like this for the Demon King…
No, that name was wrong. He was simply Master. The true owner of the world.
I had to offer myself completely to Master, devote all my abilities, sweep away the human empire, the unnecessary church, and all the other worthless races, and deliver victory to Master—the only one qualified to possess the world. I had been born for that purpose.
‘Ehehe… Yes, that’s right… that’s what I must do…’
“I… am Master’s… female… pet… slave……”
I had to cleanse the world of the filth that defiled it, solely for Master. The two-legged species that boasted of their intelligence had to disappear without exception.
That was the truth of the world, the will of Master and the sacred beings known as the ‘gods from beyond.’
“I shall… serve… I offer… everything I have……”
Even as I recited this declaration of self-abandonment, one final thread of something stirred within me.
Foolishly, the part of my filthy free will that had not yet received the blessing—and the unconscious influenced by that will—moved my left hand in a gesture. The gesture to manifest Kaira’s Secret Diary.
I had to stop it. I must not rewind the blessing. This power had to be used only for Master. Thinking that, I tried to move my right hand—which was still twitching in resistance, unaccustomed to Master’s blessing—to block my left arm, but…
Before I could, my left hand had already finished what it intended to do. It pressed gently against my chest, where black blood was beginning to stain the veins a ashen color, and made the final thought my pathetic free will could manage.
‘Rewind… go back……’
And,
It went back.
It was the first time I had ever rewound my own time. I had been too afraid to try it before.
‘Ugh… my… head… hurts……’
It had been a reckless gamble, but it succeeded. The demonic energy that had been devouring my body vanished as if it had never existed, and the mind that had been completely overtaken and controlled by the Demon King’s will returned to my control.
‘Haa……’
The magic I had created—Kaira’s Secret Diary—had faithfully recorded even the memories of my consciousness being invaded by demonic energy and the lingering aftertaste of climax. Because of that, I had to catch my breath, still panting from the dark pleasure of corruption, and cool my heated body.
The Demon King flinched slightly, apparently surprised that the demonic energy he had injected had vanished. His figure appeared blurred in my hazy vision.
Right after that, a sharp cry pierced through the buzzing noise filling my ears.
“You trash! Get away from Kaira!!”
With a resolute shout, someone enveloped in flames hot enough to melt all the surrounding snow came flying like a ray of light, aiming for one of the Demon King’s arms. The Demon King’s gauntlet was slightly torn by the burning blade.
And that was all.
The blow Azalea had unleashed with all her remaining strength, burning with rage, dealt no further damage to the Demon King. He slowly rose, turning his head toward the panting Azalea. Then he spoke in a low voice.
“Woman favored by the god of day and wrath who pretends at holiness. You have just lost your final chance to live and serve me.”
The Demon King picked up his mace. Azalea, too, raised her massive two-handed sword over her right shoulder.
The next instant, Azalea charged first. Lying helplessly in the snow, I saw it clearly. The moment their bodies crossed, the torn gauntlet on the Demon King’s wrist was completely severed and fell away.
And then, the sight of Azalea’s head shattering into pieces, scattering brain matter, and the sacred flames that had enveloped her body rapidly dying out.
From the headless corpse that had once been Azalea, demonic energy spread rapidly through her veins.
The corpse that had been Azalea would rot away in the blink of an eye under the influence of that demonic energy. Or, if the Demon King felt capricious… it might rise again as a headless puppet that obeyed only his commands.
The Demon King looked down at Azalea’s darkening corpse with the gaze one might give an insect he had stepped on, then approached me once more.
The wrist severed by Azalea’s sword revealed bare skin, from which a little red blood trickled. Red blood—different from the black blood shed by his subordinates.
That was probably the only indicator that the Demon King had once been human. That warm, red blood must be the last remnant of his humanity…
The Demon King looked down at me and asked.
“What was it you just did? What I bestowed upon you moments ago was an overwhelming blessing no mere mortal trash like you could possibly resist. How did you shake it off?”
His question was only a question in form. In truth, it wasn’t one at all. He simply needed to bestow that so-called ‘blessing,’ corrupt me into his servant, and then extract the secret.
The Demon King extended his arm once more, the broken armor dangling from it. Drops of his blood fell from his fingers toward my face. One drop. Two drops.
The Demon King’s blood was red and warm, just like ours. Unlike the corrupted humans. Unlike his subordinates, he alone retained body heat and red blood. I thought quietly as I watched him.
‘How selfish.’
With that thought, I slowly reached out with both hands toward the source of that blood—the wrist where the armor had been stripped away, exposing the skin beneath. Then I clasped the Demon King’s blood-slick hand tightly with both of mine and squeezed my eyes shut.
The opportunity was now or never. I had to do it now. Feeling the pocket watch I still carried preciously against my chest ticking against the thin skin over my ribs, I moved my lips directly and cried out desperately.
“Rewind… rewind, rewind! To the time when you were an ordinary human, or whenever! No—go back to being a fetus, become an egg and die!! Whether you become fertilizer in a wheat field, cosmic dust, or anything else, it doesn’t matter. Whether it takes thousands of years, hundreds of thousands, or billions of years, I don’t care—just rewind, right now, rewind!!!”
And,
It really…
rewound.
When I opened my eyes at the sound of clattering metal ringing across the ground, the Demon King was gone. All that remained was his enormous suit of armor. Inside the collapsed armor, there wasn’t even a wisp of smoke or a single speck of dust.
Whether he had truly been sent back millions or billions of years as I wished and become cosmic dust, or whether the powerful demonic energy he called the blessing of the gods had collided with my time-distorting ability and caused mutual annihilation…
Or whether he had simply sensed that my ability was dangerous and temporarily evaded it by some unknown method, I couldn’t tell.
Had the Demon King truly disappeared?
Whichever answer was correct, it didn’t matter right now.
I had to rewind Azalea… I had to undo her death.
I staggered toward the headless corpse that had once been Azalea, now completely blackened by the demonic energy that had spread through her veins.
I collapsed to my knees in front of it and closed my eyes. The biting cold of the snow seeped through my urine- and blood-soaked skirt and robe, but I didn’t care.
The sensation at my fingertips—the touch of a corpse contaminated by mysterious demonic energy and cooled in the frozen snowfield—was far colder than mere snow.
Could I do it? Or not?
‘I can.’
The feeling of facing a corpse I had been too late to save was something I could never get used to. I had never succeeded in resurrecting the dead. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t tried once or twice.
Still… still…
Was resurrecting someone who was truly dead truly impossible with my power?
Had the sense of powerlessness at having allowed people to die been clouding my unconscious, preventing me from using my full potential?
‘I have to do it.’
Yes. It wasn’t a question of whether I could or couldn’t. I simply had to do what needed to be done. That was all.
Clutching the pocket watch I had kept so carefully inside my robe with one hand, I murmured in my heart. As earnestly as Azalea had once prayed and communed with the gods when she was still alive.
‘Rewind.’
I never got to see what happened. I lost consciousness right then and collapsed onto the cold snow.