Ishura - Volume 3 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Shiki, Enemy of All

The glow of a single camp light flickered along the roadway.

Even without a horse, as long as you skillfully divided up the distance, the trip to Aureatia didn’t require an overnight camp. That day, however, the calculations were thrown off a little bit.

Yuno the Distant Talon still wasn’t accustomed to traveling. Journeying together with a visitor who couldn’t adapt to the common sense of this world, Soujirou the Willow-Sword, they were wandering through various regions under Aureatia’s orders.

This time, Soujirou was apparently nominated to act in Kazuki the Black Tone’s stead, after she failed to conquer the Free City of Okafu, and headed out to present himself to the Twenty-Seventh General Hardy, in command of said operation. However, as soon as the two arrived, there had been some sort of understanding reached higher up the command chain, and Soujirou never had the chance to participate in the operation to conquer the city. A complete waste of a trip, for Yuno as well.

The man she shared her journey with was covered up with a simple sleeping bag, a bit removed from where she was. Beside him, a Nagan training sword was offhandedly lying on the ground.

“…I wish I had studied more. About what tools you need to make camp or about gathering plants and berries… I never had left Nagan before, after all.”

“Hmm? Don’t seem like a big deal to me. Ain’t no beasts around, neither. Just relax and get some sleep; it’ll do ya good.”

Soujirou seemed very accustomed to suddenly setting up camp like this. For Yuno, having heard the civilization of the Beyond was far more advanced than in her world, it was a rather surprising fact about him.

Yuno asked a question that suddenly popped into her mind.

“…What was it like before you came to this world?”

“Huh?”

“You’ve taught me about it before, didn’t you? The M1 Abrams… You said it was a tank from another country, right? I just wondered what the Beyond was like…including that tank stuff, too.”

“Ah well, see… Truth is, I ain’t really know much myself.”

“……?”

Twenty-one years earlier.

The True Demon King appeared, spreading despair across the land, and it was the final era where people held some hope that, someday, someone would appear to end their torment.

“S-stop… Stop, please! I’ll die! I’m going to die! You’ll kill me!”

There were ruins where the voices of the living had long died out. A crazed wurm chased after a young boy, its rough scales smashing through the ruins of the city like a fire. The other residents who had lived there up until a small month ago, though still minian in appearance, were no longer minian in their hearts and minds.

Up ahead of where the boy desperately tried to make his escape, a mountain of crumbling debris blocked his path.

“Aaaaaaah?!”

He roughly scratched at his vibrant red hair.

This was going to be the end. He truly believed this was it.

The wurm, exuding a stench of blood and rotten flesh, opened its mouth wide…and it was impossible to hope that any help would come to his aid. This land was under the control of the True Demon Lord, after all.

“Aaah… Gaaah, enough! I really will die!”

A track of light rushed in far faster than the wurm could consume its prey. The spearhead seemed to have grazed the inside of the wurm’s mouth as it flew by it.

The young boy landed, pulling a small trail of blood spatter behind him, and the colossus, still under the momentum of its attack, dug into the earth before it came to halt.

“Hah…hahhh… Dammit………! What the hell am I supposed to do if I die, huh?! I’m doing my damn best out here, too, you know… Right? I’m working hard. Nothing but this, every day! Everyone under the stars comes at me trying to kill me… What reason is there to do this to me?!”

Using his red spear to prop himself up, he panted. A young genius of spear craft. At the time, there weren’t many who knew the name Alena the Benighted White Wind.

“Hwah, hee-hee-hee-hee!”

On top of a stone fence was a young girl who had watched over the fight sequence. She remained seated as she clapped her hands together and laughed.

“Whew, you’re as impressive as ever, huh! You really sure you’re a minia?!”

“Lu…Lumelly… Were you watching the whole time?! Watching me?! As I almost died?!”

“‘Almost died’? Gimme a break.”

Her black hair, giving her a sense of composure, swayed as a nasty smile crept across her face.

She was a young elf girl known as Lumelly the Poisoned Ground. She didn’t appear to be too far apart in age from Alena. Though, elves were a race that maintained an outwardly youthful appearance for a long period of time, so even her traveling companion Alena had no idea if they were close in age.

What he did know was that Lumelly was an arts caster of truly unfathomable ability, and that was apparently the reason why she was driven out of the village she was raised in—and nothing more than that.

“You start groaning, ‘No, no, I’m gonna die’ whether you’re facing off against a dragon or a damn mouse. Who the hell’s gonna take that seriously, huh? Go really get yourself killed for a change, will ya.”

“Hey… I’m always fighting for my life out there. I don’t want to die, and that’s why I trained every day, let out one hundred percent of my full power nonstop, until I was finally able to move this fast, okay? It always feels like I’m shaving off two or three years of my life every time. I’m not some carefree genius like you, Lumelly.”

“Oh, you got the gall to treat me like some genius, huh? Dang, you are a helluva funny guy! Ah well, maybe it’s better if you think of me like that, eh? Hwah-hee-hee-hee-hee!”

Lumelly the Poisoned Ground was, without a doubt, a genius.

The legend that she had fought a Word Arts battle against Izick the Chromatic, said to be the strongest and most wicked demon king, was common knowledge to everyone in the Western Kingdom by that point. There wasn’t anyone else who could manage such an extraordinary deed.

He had seen the light of the Thermal Arts she casted, black and corrosive.

She was a girl who used an irreplicable superpower, interfering and overwriting the Word Arts of others.

“If you’re here, I’m guessing the others are, too?”

“Yup. That damn Izick was dragging his feet about some stupid preparations of his or whatever, so I came to flush him out myself… Finally.”

Still squatting on top of the fence, she was glaring at one of the fortresses.

She must have hated them more than anyone else in the party.

“The True Demon King. Finally be able to kill ’em dead.”

The young girl seemed to sneer at justice, morality, and all the values esteemed by general society. Like Alena himself, she also didn’t appear to be fighting with the sort of aspirations befitting a champion.

Why was Lumelly trying to challenge such a terrifying opponent as the True Demon King?

Alena wondered if the day would ever come where he could ask her. Maybe if they truly managed to defeat the Demon King.

“…Hmph. A wurm is dead.”

A different voice.

“Get mixed up in another fight, young Alena?”

Casually turning out of an alley was a man of unrefined features, wearing round glasses.

He was named Romzo the Star Map, another one of their traveling companions.

“C’mon, Master, these aren’t petty little scraps we’re talking about here! Would any sane minia pick a fight with a wurm?! Everyone under the sun says not to get involved with the Demon King Army, and I even tried to run away, too, but I… Today I really did think I was seriously going die for real, honest!”

“It’s all the same.”

Behind Romzo, there were residents scattered on the ground, fallen and without any power to stand back up.

He was a veteran master, capable of neutralizing those at the edge of madness, fully transformed into the Demon King Army like this, without causing any harm…and more importantly, without ever being swallowed up by the fear.

“Whether it’s a brawl on the outskirts of town or a Demon King Army riot. Lay your troubled mind bare, and it will simply fan the emotional flames of your opponent. That’s why it’s so easy for you to get wrapped up in misfortune.”

“Th-that’s got nothing to do with it, though. I can’t do anything about being scared, can I? I should’ve stayed behind with Psianop, too…”

“That’s true. You had that option. In that case, why are you trying to take on the True Demon King?”

“Well…”

He wondered why. Some in this world had to do it. There was no doubt of that. But did Alena the Benighted White Wind possess the convictions necessary for the deeds of a champion?

Even now, he couldn’t help wondering. Despite his journey coming to an end where he stood, right at the True Demon King’s doorstep.

“All right, the three of us can go together. Izick’s getting impatient.”

“…Okay. Let’s go.”

“He’s the one who’s kept us waiting this whole damn time! Guess that bastard’s not gonna learn unless I beat the piss outta of him, huh?!”

Twenty-one years ago. There were seven people, known as the First Party.

Going from servant to champion solely off his skills with a bow, Fralik the Heaven.

A fighter who mastered the martial arts of his tribe, passed down uninterrupted through the ages, Neft the Nirvana.

A black-hearted arts caster, forsaken by the world, Lumelly the Poisoned Ground.

An unparalleled child prodigy with a spear, clad in trouble and bad luck, Alena the Benighted White Wind.

A self-proclaimed demon king feared for performing the evilest deeds the land had seen, Izick the Chromatic.

A visitor who controlled dark arts handed down from the underworld, Yugo the Moving Decapitation Blade.

A pioneer in medical techniques who understood all the meridians of the body, Romzo the Star Map.

They were the hope of all life that still breathed in this land. The seven who first harbored the courage to challenge the True Demon King. Each of them transcendental champions, possessing equal strength, they sometimes squared off against one another and sometimes joined forces to fight against the Demon King Army, but at long last, today was the day they would head for their final battle.

A man with a black scarf covering his mouth came to meet Lumelly and the others as they arrived.

“Lumelly. Haven’t seen you since our fight in Tileet Ravine.”

“Yugo…! I still remember that promise you made, you know. I’ll be a big help, I swear. ‘Conceal the blade of your heart.’ You said that to me, didn’t you?”

Yugo the Moving Decapitation Blade nodded mildly at his former enemy’s words.

He wasn’t the only one. Right now, every one of them except for Psianop was assembling in front of the Demon King’s castle.

There was only one among them who was sitting cross-legged on the ground. He was a middle-aged man wearing a green overcoat, appearing to have seen better days.

He was peering into the castle with a window he made with his fingers. With the same aloof and detached attitude he always had.

“Hrmm, hoo boy, this is baaaad news! Oh yeah, this is gonna be a reeeeal tough one.”

“Hey, Izick! You asshole!”

“Ow!”

Lumelly mercilessly kicked him in the back. Her demeanor the complete opposite of how she had spoken to Yugo.

“What did I tell you this morning?! Quit moaning and whining about every damn little thing! No chickening out now, asshole!”

“Now, now, Lumelly dear, I’m not scared at all, you know. Uh… Ahhh, actually, I might’ve lied. I might be a bit scared honestly. Strange, isn’t it? Cold and heartless Izick the Chromatic, scared.”

The True Demon King, their mere presence enough to stain a whole area with madness.

No one had seen their true form before. Anyone who approached them, and those they approached, were all driven insane.

Courage was needed to face off against the unknown terror. Without true power that could sustain oneself, like the seven gathered here together, they wouldn’t have been able to get this far.

There was a terror that made one want to turn away and run.

It should’ve been a completely normal fortress of a local lord, and yet one look made it clear that the True Demon King was there…

So powerful was the clear terror given physical form that lurked inside its walls.

“What should we do, Fralik? Attack or not? If a man of Izick’s caliber is saying so, truth may be that our chances aren’t good. I’m fine either way, myself,” Yugo asked, still with his arms crossed.

“……Mrm.”

Fralik the Heaven only replied with a brief momentary grunt, his gaze fixed hard on the castle.

His throat hadn’t been functional ever since it was crushed while he was still young. Short verbalizations were the only way the man could express his will to others.

“Ah.”

“Fralik’s saying he’ll go. Then, I’m going, too.”

“Grrrrrf… Killing them today is our only option. A city lies just ahead. If we let the Demon King invade, it’ll be ruined. Surely none of you here intend for that to happen.”

Neft the Nirvana. The last hero of a lycan village as their race was slowly being ousted by the minian races.

Izick reluctantly stood up.

“Whatever, guess it doesn’t matter to me. I’ve been doing whatever horrible thing I’ve wanted to make sure I don’t die with regrets for a while now! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! If it’s kill or be killed then, I want the end to be as flashy as it can be! Let’s have some fun, eh?!”

“Mhn.”

Fralik smiled. He didn’t speak with his words, but he was always the center of their party.

They then all stepped into the castle. Into the jaws of death.

Indeed. It was the jaws of death. Much like everyone in later eras knew, the First Party was defeated.

Completely powerless, just like many of the champions who would follow in their footsteps. They were completely destroyed, along with the hopes of everyone of that age. Of course, the current seven were unaware that this future lay ahead of them.

“……I can tell. The True Demon King…… They’re up ahead here.”

Izick guided the party, using a homunculus he created to scout ahead. The homunculus, no bigger than one’s ankle, went terminally insane just from approaching the room. Any beings with a soul, even constructs, would meet such an end.

Every one of the seven could feel a mysterious and unknown premonition of death.

Alena the Benighted White Wind was the one to put their hands on the door in front of them.

“I’m opening it.”

He concluded that was what he needed to do. He needed to open up a line of fire for Fralik’s arrows and Lumelly’s Word Arts.

Everyone had received Rozmo’s pressure point technique and was now capable of displaying powers of concentration beyond their normal limits. Nevertheless, this technique wasn’t enough to endure the intense pressure of the terror facing them, capable of driving an ordinary person instantly insane.

His heart pounded; the inside of his mouth went dry.

It was cold. He had a hard time breathing. He was terrified.

Alena trembled from fright. He had only ended up here because he had gone along with the flow. Surely the other champions, who had reasons for being there, didn’t feel this way.

…The True Demon King.

The door opened. A shivering cold air caressed his nerves.

The chant of Lumelly’s Word Arts that reduced all to ash raced out of her mouth. The gem on her finger grew more radiant. That was how things should have went.

“Rumeyry io halese. Hamsuwaka baal, morteka zuorurg.” (From Lumelly to Haresept’s eyes. Strumming verdant ripples, of hollow light.)

Her incantation stopped.

Fralik’s bowstring, which should’ve twanged faster than anyone could act, didn’t move.

Yugo, who should’ve exploited the shadows to sunder everything in two, was also frozen where he stood.

Why?

As he feared the ceaseless throbbing of his own heart, Alena tried to look for the reason why.

A reason so apparent that no search was even necessary.

They were terrified.

“Oh. Do I have guests?”

Alena thought that it was a pretty voice. Its owner sat rather normally in a chair within the bedroom, reading a book just like a typical minian scholar would.

A breeze blew into the room. Just like what blew in the world outside…the same wind from a world without this enormous dread in front of them.

The long black hair smoothly swayed, and the pitch-black pupils looked at the party.

She smiled.

The terrifying Demon King. A ruinous demon that crushed all behind them.

Or perhaps a shapeless phenomenon of pure destruction itself.

It was none of the above.

It was simply a young girl.

The True Demon King was different from the seven gathered there in only one regard.

A white line running over simple, machine-sewn black fabric. A red scarf prominent on her chest.

…It was the clothing of a different culture from someone far, far beyond their own.

“Hello.”

It was known as a schoolgirl sailor uniform.

“You don’t know? About your own world?”

Yuno was suspicious of Soujirou’s vague reply.

Was he seriously trying to tell her he didn’t understand anything about his own world?

“…What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hmmm, I dunno how to put it, but my country, right? It got really messed up a long, long time ago, with all these guys from a bunch of other countries showing up, see. It was nonstop fighting, so I don’t really know.”

“Wait, so…there was a war then… Right? So your country was already…”

“Yeah. I guess that’s what it was. Things were like that since I was a kid, so I only heard ’bout it.”

Of course. When Yuno thought it over, it was obvious. Soujirou had fought against another country’s weapons. She didn’t need to hear from him to know what his situation was like.

This swordsman from another world had long ago tasted the type of ruin Yuno had experienced in Labyrinth City.

“This girl called Shiki Aihara, ’pparently she destroyed it all.”

The sun over the Free City of Okafu was low in the sky, and the lights of bustling nighttime activity began to pop up here and there below him.

Looking down at the scene from the terrace of the central citadel, Hiroto the Paradox suddenly muttered.

“Miss Kazuki Mizumura said something.”

At long last, even Kazuki the Black Tone had come to meet her end.

Thirty years ago. She was the champion who Hiroto saw potential in, already having shifted his base of activities to another continent and entrusting her with his guns.

“Mr. Morio Ariyama. She said she had something she wanted to inquire of you. Now I know…what she was frightened of and what she wanted to ask you.”

“…To us here in Okafu, Kazuki the Black Tone was a mortal enemy up until the very end. At that point, any sort of bargaining with her would’ve been totally impossible.”

“She probably thought as much, too. That was likely why she tried to fight against you as an enemy until the bitter end.”

Hiroto’s calculations didn’t always play out perfectly.

He thought: If only he had prepared a place for negotiations on that last day he saw Kazuki.

For these past several decades, there were far fewer instances where he had been able to handle matters without losing anything than those where he hadn’t.

“So then, what did that woman want to know?”

“She only gave me a few hints to go on. Why exactly have all the visitors who’ve shown up here recently been people from our country? Or perhaps, she might have been thinking that the conclusion my surmising has led me to was dangerous information.”

“……That’s right. You might have a point. You’re different, but Kazuki, Yukiharu the Twilight Diver, and I—we’ve all arrived in these past twenty years.”

“And that’s why I had Mr. Yukiharu investigate things for me.”

He placed a scrap of torn fabric on the desk. Almost all the inhabitants of the world would be unable to grasp the meaning behind the article.

Morio looked at him with a complex expression, not quite anger nor animosity.

A rotted section of a student uniform—a schoolgirl’s sailor uniform.

“I likely don’t need to go into the full account of how this was obtained from The Land of The End. Mr. Yukiharu Shijima. Zigita Zogi. I was the one who sent them both there. I took the liberty of joining in on Okafu’s operation.”

“……Information on the True Demon King…… Kazuki was after it, too, then.”

“That’s right, Mr. Morio Ariyama. I believe you wanted to ensure that one piece of information wasn’t known by anyone else, yes? That’s why you feared The Land of The End the most of all. You were always tense, enough to intervene with a small farming village’s request to clear out the land.”

Hiroto immediately used the light of a candlestick to set the scrap of cloth on fire.

“Didn’t hesitate to light it on fire, huh.”

“Indeed. I felt that was the best thing to be done.”

The existence of this material evidence had been his final trump card to get the self-proclaimed demon king Morio to agree to direct negotiations.

However, it was no longer necessary. It was an all-too-dangerous fact not only to Morio, but to Hiroto himself as well.

“The True Demon King was a visitor, weren’t they?”

From a certain period of time onward, it was only individuals from their country who were transported to this world as deviants.

…Hiroto had knowledge concerning the superhumans who were introduced here from the Beyond.

Pilots and soldiers who left inconceivable military exploits in the wars there. Or warriors in history who performed superhuman and unbelievably strenuous feats of battle. Drawing on individual concrete examples was beyond necessary. Even if their abnormality didn’t reach the level of total world divergence, it still meant there was an environment there that birthed superhumans who eclipsed all human understanding.

Both Morio the Sentinel and Kazuki the Black Tone had been soldiers in the Beyond. It was these very wars, bringing chaos and death, these ages of chaos where no one would take any notice if someone disappeared entirely, that gave birth to these deviants from the world—these visitors, these shura.

In which case, it would mean the Beyond had to be in a continuous widespread maelstrom of war, beyond anything Hiroto could imagine.

“Let me make it clear that, even in this country, I’m the only one who knows. Even those guys I had sealing off The Land of The End weren’t filled in on anything outside of the scope of their mission. I erased any of them who tried to find out themselves. Since this is something that concerns all of us.”

“I know.”

The True Demon King was a visitor.

This single fact being brought to light would be enough to upend the world once again.

The Word-Maker who guided visitors from another world and established the heavens and earth. The knowledge of visitors who had already permeated this society’s civilization in various forms. The foundational base behind the sense of values held by all the current living beings in this world would be feared and expelled.

As a result, at the very least, it would no longer be a world where the Order or visitors could live.

Miss Kazuki Mizumura didn’t intend on telling anyone about it, either, then.

I’m just fulfilling my obligations to this world. As a champion.

Hiroto no longer had any way of knowing how exactly, when faced with this fact, in what way Kazuki planned to carry out her atonement to this world.

He knew, however, that in the face of a monumental disaster like the True Demon King, thinking so nobly was a very difficult thing to do.

…Miss Kazuki Mizumura. You were exactly the champion I expected you to be after all.

To Hiroto the Paradox, unable to become champion himself, it was impossible.

Though, I’m sure you would deny it yourself.

The True Demon King.

Yugo the Moving Decapitation Blade understood the moves he needed to bring an end to his enemy.

Throw his short sword low, skimming the ground, and cut her ankle. From his low throwing stance, like he was crawling on the ground, immediately jump to the ceiling. Force her attention on the ground and use that chance to split her skull with a descending sword slice. A technique he called Smoke. That would kill her.

If she tried slashing at him from the front, he’d be able to take the initiative. He had a technique, Darkness, where he slashed sideways while deceiving his enemy to think he was swinging his sword down from above. That could kill her, too.

In the back of his mind, he imagined his various moves. Opening. Soot. Sleep. None of the numerous techniques Yugo had mastered would fail to kill this girl in front of him……

I should be able… to kill her.

Yugo the Moving Decapitation Blade’s feet weren’t budging a single inch.

It wasn’t that they were restrained. Nor was it from pain or exhaustion. He stayed kneeling down on one knee and wasn’t able to fully stand up. He was supposed to move faster than anyone else in the party, and yet he hadn’t at all.

“C’mon, now… I mean, c’mon, guys.”

From behind him, Izick the Chromatic was mumbling.

“Say something, would you?! For this whole damn time, I was acting weird, wasn’t I?!”

His voice was mixed with laughter like usual, however, he was emphatically terrified.

“Why…didn’t any of you notice? It’s strange, right? I mean, the moment I realized where the enemy was… Why didn’t I, y’know…tear down the whole town with locust revenants or something?! I’d totally do that, right?! Of course I would, you all know!”

“…Izick.”

“I-it’s almost like… Ha-ha…… Like I got cold f-feet or something… Must’ve thought trying would’ve been pointless, that it’d be the end for me, and chickened out… Right?! Quit screwing with me!”

He tried to send out a fleshy tentacle from the inside of his sleeve. A living weapon that corroded any living creature and disintegrated them—but this, too, came to a stop without reaching the girl.

She hadn’t done anything. It was Izick himself who prevented it from reaching his target.

Though the tentacle had no will of its own, its wielder dreaded it.

“……Gotta be kidding…… Impossible…”

Lumelly was also dumbfounded by the scene in front of her. Even while seven champions stood before the True Demon King, not a single one of them could even attempt a single, misguided attack.

None of them was capable of doing what they needed to do.

As if they were nothing more than a gathering of fools.

“Word Arts!”

The shouting voice seemed to belong to Alena.

“Lumelly, overwrite things with your Word Arts! With you Word Arts, just maybe!”

“Th-that’s not it… That’s not what this is! What’re we even supposed to do…?! This—this isn’t from Word Arts at all!”

Yugo’s thoughts raced as he desperately tried to bring his breathing under control.

That’s right. This isn’t Word Arts or any kind of special technique. This phenomenon isn’t some compelling force. It’s simply……our minds feeling this terror. That’s all there is to it.

He could move his body. He could feel hostility toward the True Demon King.

Just my fingertips is enough. Two fingers to lob a needle at her. That’s enough to kill her. It’s clear now that the True Demon King possesses no fighting abilities. This is the perfect chance. Right now… I have to kill her quick.

Yugo’s physical constitution would have revealed if this was the result of a vampire infection or any type of poison or illusion. Naturally, it wasn’t Word Arts, either. There wasn’t a single reason why he couldn’t kill the True Demon King on the spot.

“…Hey, you there.”

The True Demon King bent down in front of him and looked up into his eyes.

She had approached him with the footsteps of any normal young girl. In the time it took for her to stand up from her chair and walk over… What had Yugo been doing while he watched her?

Her thin fingertips gripped his hand, and she handed over a small metallic rod.

Into the hands of a man who boasted of speed faster than the eye could see, who had never let any enemy get close to him, into Yugo the Moving Decapitation Blade’s hand.

“You want to try stabbing with this?”

Yugo looked at the item lying in his own palm. It was some sort of something, its point crushed and stained with blood and brain fluids. It was an implement originally known as a ballpoint pen, however, even for someone with knowledge of the items of the Beyond like Yugo, it was difficult to identify it at all.

If I’m this close. Her eye. My weapon’s in my hand. Finger… I just need to move one finger. Then I can kill her. Her black eyes. Her voice. Kill… Kill the True Demon King. The true. Terrifying, terrifying. She’s terrifying.

His breathing was staccato. He couldn’t maintain his breath control. He couldn’t hear the world around him. He could see, and yet it was only her dark pupils that were visible. Terrifying. He wanted to escape. There shouldn’t have been any reason to feel such dread. She was looking at him. She was smiling. It was frightening enough to tear out the back of his brain, to make him go mad. Scary. Horrifying. Terr—

A sensation of something popping open ran through his body.

At some point, without him realizing it, he had stabbed the ballpoint pen into his own eye socket. He gouged the live eyeball and scraped it out with his own hands.

Despite knowing it was horrifying, even though his conscience was screaming that he needed to stop, he continued, unmistakably doing so of his own volition.

Frightening. Terrifying. Why exactly did he have to do something like this?

“Ah, aaaah… Aaaaaaaah! Hngaack! Aaaaaaah?!”

“There we go. I’m glad. Tee-hee.”

The True Demon King looked at him and laughed, whatever she found so amusing an absolute mystery.

It wasn’t from relief or joy, but an innocent and pure laugh, like a child’s.

“Y-you… What the hell’re you…?! Dammit, d-dirty coward… If I just… If I could just use Word Arts! M-my voice, so hoarse, dammit… Daaaaamn you…!”

Lumelly’s voice hadn’t actually gone hoarse at all.

It was but a very mundane phenomenon—her voice caught in her throat from her dread.

The True Demon King strolled among the champions, frozen where they stood.

“I’m just human.”

She then turned her sights on Neft.

“It’s okay. You don’t need to be scared at all. Feel free to relax…… Okay?”

“Stay away. Grrngh… Stay away……! Stop! D-don’t look at meeee!”

Neft rent his stomach with his arms. Not even using his axes, completely with his bare hands. He spat up blood, regenerated with Life Arts, and tortured his body even further.

His live viscera dribbled onto the floor, and as he continued to reduce his cellular life span by his own hands, Neft continued to writhe in the anguish and fear his own immortality tormented him with.

“Hraaaah! G-gahk, gwaah… Aaaah…!”

“Aw. And what do you want to do?”

“Ah… Eek…!”

The black pupils turned Alena’s way next. He couldn’t even sit himself down, still with his spear in his hand. He simply remained standing, looking at the True Demon King.

With a giggle, she took his hand.

“Look. You can do whatever you’d like. You all are my guests here.”

“F-Fralik… I—I want…”

Alena raised his spear. Despite knowing he definitely didn’t want to do anything like it. That a simple thrust of his spear would put an end to the terror for good.

The fact that he didn’t do so in front of her… That he couldn’t stop himself from being tainted by the greatest despair and tragedy he could think of—was terrifying.

“…t-to kill him… Help… L-let me, kill him…”

“…Is that so? Well then, go right ahead.”

The True Demon King gently smiled.

She never gave a single order.

It would have been so much more of a saving grace for them all if she compelled them with commands like “kill yourself,” or “kill your comrades.”

Izick the Chromatic was making his own revenant’s tentacle choke up his windpipe, and he didn’t move.

Yugo the Moving Decapitation Blade continued gouging out both of his eyes with the ballpoint pen he was handed.

Romzo the Star Map crushed Lumelly’s bones as she remained unable to move.

Every one of them was in tears shrieking. Driven mad under their own will, they injured themselves.

“Hnngh…! Mrn…unh……”

Even Fralik the Heaven was crying, his voice unable to scream.

Alena tore the honorable man to pieces, turning him into eternally unspeaking flesh. The one performing such a deed was none other than himself. It all felt like a nightmare. Alena was terrified.

Aaah. Why—why did people convince themselves to try being brave?

Why did they know the terror and still try to confront it? Even when they themselves knew most of all that terror was there waiting for them?

They went and actually reached their destination. Despite every single instinct as a living being shouting at them nonstop to avoid it, not to come in contact with it.

“Sorry… I’m sorry, Fralik! E-eeaaaugh…!”

“Mnnnh! Mng, aaugh! Augh!”

“No, no… I hate it, I hate it, I hate it… I can’t take it anymooore! Aaaaaaugh!”

The sensation that came to him through his spear shaft was unmistakably Fralik’s flesh. It was fat. The spinal cord and blood vessels tangled around his red spear were severed.

Alena possessed the skills necessary to avoid killing someone in one stroke, to make them suffer as long as possible before they died.

It was hell. He wished that the always righteous Romzo would guide him once again.

“Aaah… Aaaah… Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy.”

The Romzo who still continued to punch Lumelly long after her head had been torn off.

The elf, the ultimate Word Arts caster as far as Alena knew, died unable to do anything whatsoever.

Neft continued to die in unending toil. Izick’s cursing was long gone.

Terror. Terror was all there was.

Terror. Terror. Terror. Terror. Terror. Terror. Terror.

“Oh, that’s right. I need to read what happens next in my book,” the True Demon King said as though nothing had happened.

Amid a scene of complete waking hell, she alone remained a normal young girl.

There had to be some reason.

Some thoroughly mastered psychological technique—an undiscovered system of Word Arts or superpower would have been enough.

It must’ve just been because they weren’t strong enough. That’s why they wanted to believe they could lose. There was some unfathomable contrivance at work, that she herself had some sinister motive, and was thus spreading terror over the whole world.

That was what it had to be. There was assuredly some reason to it all.

If there wasn’t, then what could anyone hope to do?

“Psianop.”

The body that had preserved its youth long past its prime in a single day was pushed to the limits of decrepitude and senile decay.

Romzo. Alena. Izick. Even bringing the others—who weren’t beyond saving—with him as he escaped, he had been able to survive. Since the True Demon King hadn’t even tried to finish them off.

However, he wouldn’t be able to escape for the rest of his life.

The True Demon King’s terror would always haunt his mind.

Forever sullying his champion’s pride and heart… A genuine terror too hideous to speak of.

“You shall not challenge her. You cannot beat her. That monster……”

He measured the vitality of the cells that were being continuously revived with his Life Arts. Two years, no, less than one year left.

“…Th-there isn’t anyone who can beat her anymore…”

Neft the Nirvana. He went on to stand watch in the Gokashae Sand Sea and protect the only comrade he had left in this world.

Protecting him not from outside enemies. He was protecting him from the same hopeless death they met, challenging an opponent he had no chance of defeating.

There was the shabby-looking figure of a man wandering on the outskirts of the Assiel Fiefdom.

“Piss off… Ha-ha…! I… I’m the Demon King Izick, dammit…! Hrnk, y-you think this is enough to make me give up?!”

It was a self-proclaimed demon king, at one point called the evilest in all the land.

He continued on aimlessly, the whole while vomiting up the viscera he had burned raw with his own techniques.

What he could do by not giving up, no one knew.

“I’m still alive… I-I’m… I’m gonna kill you, got it…? Ha-ha… I’ll create the strongest construct of all time…! Next time… N-next time, for sure…! Koff, bleeeerg.”

Coming out from the mountain road appeared a group with a similar appearance as Izick.

Stained in the blood of their own family, smeared with tears of despair, they were monsters wearing the same expression Izick now had on his own face. All of them were originally minia. They were still minia even now.

“Ha-ha-ha… Don’t play with me…”

He wore a stiff, twitching smile.

As if drawn in by his fear, the Demon King Army flocked to him.

“Come on! Come and get it! Like some ignorant gutter trash like you, don’t make me… Ngh, hahk, gauuuuuuuuugh!”

“Oh… Easy. To think it was s-so easy…… Hee-hee. Hee-hee-hee-hee.”

Romzo the Star Map returned to the city, looking hollow and empty.

No one’s words seemed to reach him, and he simply repeated the same mumblings over and over again.

He was the only one who returned back to civilization from the fight with the True Demon King without any injuries. Together with Neft the Nirvana, they were designated the only two survivors of the First Party.

However, unknown to others, in Romzo’s case, his psyche had broken down.

Three years later, and despite outwardly appearing to have recovered his senses on the surface, this remained so.

“It was—it was this easy.”

Ever since that day, any minian coherence had disappeared from his heart.

As it was gradually reduced to the heart of an unruly beast, unable to believe in any sort of faith or justice, he eventually began living a life of retirement, casting away everything.

“K-killing one’s comrades, was so easy. Tee-hee.”

Within Romzo’s eyes, he always saw his own hands, stained with blood.

“I’m scared. Scared. Scared. Scared. Scared. Scared. Scared. Scared—”

A sole silhouette tottered along as he walked through the lifeless ruins.

His mouth was dirtied with human flesh and blood, telling a story of a fall into depravity he could never recover from.

He had been reduced to the same state as every other living creature in this land. Dragging a red spear wrapped up in entrails behind him, it let out a hollow rattling sound.

“Scared… I’m scared. Help. Someone…… Someone!”

Save for the two sole survivors, none of the champions who challenged the True Demon King were considered to have survived. All wound up like him.

Those whose true genuine courage led them to be confronted with true genuine terror.

“Scared… I’m scared! Scared! The Demon King’s watching! I can hear that voice!”

Therefore, there was nothing more to be told about this man’s story.

The whereabouts of Alena the Benighted White Wind were unknown to all.

She was without any past or motive, endowed with no power or skills.

She didn’t possess any Word Arts or superpowers, without even the power of magic tools at her disposal.

She was just one single minia, and not every and all phenomena had a reason behind them.

Nothing more than a ghost from the past, long since defeated. She was already dead.

Archenemy. Minia.

Shiki, Enemy of All.