Ishura - Volume 5 - Chapter 18.2

Among the Final Party, there was only a single person who, in the truest sense, challenged the True Demon King.

He was Olukt the Drifting Compass Needle. This man didn’t carry a weapon.

Following the obvious presence of terror, he had arrived at a singular abode.

A completely ordinary residence. Red roof. White walls, and a green garden.

Any signs of the residents had long disappeared, and amid the dilapidated residential street, this house was the only one that maintained a rather trim and neat look to it.

There appeared to be a thin, dried-up corpse collapsed in the garden, but that was the extent of it all.

It was the Demon King’s final stronghold.

“…Sheesh, what the hell are they eating to survive around here?”

Olukt tried to sarcastically crack a smile, but nothing beyond a muffled hoarse whisper escaped his lips, and his facial muscles couldn’t possibly keep up.

I haven’t gone mad. Not yet. I’ve still got time.

He desperately tried to convince himself of his sanity.

In that case, maybe even I’ve got the qualities of champion, too. Right? I mean, I’ve gotten this far, haven’t I? That’s not something anybody could do.

Now there wasn’t a single companion to whom he could display such false bravado.

Nevertheless, he needed to put on this brave front for none other than himself.

He placed his trembling hand on the door leading into the room.

If it had been locked, that would have been enough of a reason for him to turn right back around.

However, it wasn’t the case. The door easily swayed open.

“Gwah, bleeerg!”

Olukt vomited. He couldn’t stay standing in the face of such terror.

The True Demon King hadn’t even showed themselves yet. Their heart, not of a champion, had been completely hobbled.

His body tried to flee, faster than his thoughts could keep up. He felt like he had to get away from this room as quickly as he could.

“Bleh, hngh… Ha! Ha-ha-ha… Ha-ha…”

It was a laugh of resignation. He had realized that it was already impossible for him to turn around now.

There was no other path for anyone who had reached this destination.

Faced with this danger he was meant to immediately flee, his body went stiff. Circumstances that he couldn’t let himself ponder instead filled up his thoughts completely. There wasn’t a single shred of rationality within the phenomenon at all.

He had accepted something he was meant to avoid. He was being forced to do something he shouldn’t be.

Olukt couldn’t defeat them, either. Nor could he flee.

Because it was frightening.

There was a common anomaly that was more familiar, and more inescapable, than any other in the world.

Even though there wasn’t anyone out there who wished to fear, the faculty dwelled in everyone’s hearts.

The emotion of “terror.”

“…Is it—? Ha-ha, is it really…this h-hopeless…? You’re kidding… Ha-ha-ha-ha… Bwa-ha-ha-ha!”

Laughing out of despair and misery, Olukt continued unabated, crawling along the house’s corridor.

Completely understanding the fate, gruesome above all, that would come for him, it was the only thing he could do.

“Gah…my voice… Dammit, my voice’s…gettin’ hoarse…”

The hallway connected into an average, everyday living room.

The furniture had all been left as is. The chairs surrounding the table, along with a wooden chair two sizes smaller than the rest.

It must have been a happy family living here. Olukt could tell.

In one of the chairs, she sat.

Black, long, and glossy hair.

Not making any movements, she was looking at the blue sky beyond the window.

“It’s nice out, isn’t it?”

The black hair smoothly traced along her cheek as she slowly turned around.

Amid the ghastly hell, she alone remained herself.

Long black hair, still maintaining its luster. Skin without the slightest blemish.

There wasn’t a single fray to be seen on her black sailor outfit.

That was how she was.

An existence that should not be.

Her eyes, seemingly absorbing all the light around her, looked at Olukt, and she smiled.

“What’s your name?”

Olukt repl—

He had to remember how to breathe.

“Glrng—”

A gurgling sound was the only thing out of his lips.

Bubbles of blood.

He realized that the terrible tension in his muscles had caused one of the blood vessels in the back of his throat to burst open.

“…Y-you’re— Glahak!”

The True Demon King was a powerless, normal young girl.

Olukt had known that from the beginning.

To those maddened with terror, his songs were able to provide a brief…and ephemeral moment of soothing.

He could encourage them to speak the truth, impossible to broach, while gripped with terror.

Olukt had heard the truth of the True Demon King from one of the extremely few cases of someone witnessing them and managing to return home—Romzo the Star Map from the First Party—and it was from that moment, he set off on his journey.

Olukt had begun it from the hopeless knowledge that the all-consuming fear bringing ruin to the world was, without reason, from nobody special.

A journey unthinkable to anyone else: to defeat the True Demon King.

“…Have you… Have you heard songs before…?”

“……”

He remembered—

With the power of his songs, able to move the hearts of all living things, he tried searching for the hero meant to defeat the True Demon King.

His travels with Ozonezma, the only one who had never laughed at his preposterous and romantic plan.

The countless moments of danger, the times he was saved by the chimera’s strength.

Then…encountering the possibility he had long sought, like a miracle.

He remembered having Ozonezma listen to more songs than anyone else.

The bard was never going to be saved by weaving songs all by himself.

In which case, Olukt’s journey, always with someone to listen to them at his side—

“…Or…maybe it’s just…? Y-you forgot…all about songs, huh…?”

With trembling fingers, he grabbed the dinner knife lying on the floor.

Olukt understood what he planned to do.

Tears bubbled up from the awful terror. He wanted to make her listen to his song.

If Olukt could just sing, he may have been able to move this young girl’s heart, too.

“What a pitiful man.”

Then he lacerated his own windpipe.

The throat that had woven the most brilliant songs in the land, the voice capable of resonating with soulless beasts, was rent by the dull blade and transformed into nothing more than a hideous tangle of muscle fiber.

Breath leaked out from his respiratory tract like a cruel, miserable flute, and it was no song.

“Songs? …Oh, right, songs…”

The True Demon King simply looked down at the man, robbed of his greatest pride and dying in agonized despair.

With an ironically pretty voice, she absentmindedly murmured:

“…I’d like to hear one again.”

Olukt’s journey was over.

Without leaving anything behind. Without any reward to speak of.

All except for one.

A silhouette appeared in the residential window.

Destroying the whole wall along with it, an enormous creature leaped into the room to protect Olukt.

It resembled a colossal wolf, but its fur, shining bluish silver, was unlike any wolf in the wild.

“OLUKT!”

Ozonezma looked at Olukt’s pitiful corpse.

His bravery had come too late.

Just moments before Ozonezma appeared, he had slit his own throat.

His songs were gone forever.

“DEMON KING. CURSE YOU. AAAH!”

Ozonezma went to slice up his enemy.

“AAAH…”

He realized there wasn’t a single thing he could do.

The True Demon King. A powerless, delicate young girl was right before him.

He was close enough to kill her, if he just reached out his leg slightly.

Ozonezma didn’t need limitless courage. He only needed enough to do this.

This chimera didn’t possess any innate courageous faculties.

Nevertheless, he had managed to get this far.

“HNG, AHHHH! AHHHHHH!”

He remembered—

—that this bard had sung more songs than anyone else.

Grand stories of legendary champions defeating powerful beasts and fiends.

The nobility in the powerless being able to stand up to the powerful.

He remembered songs of courage.

“DEMON KING…! HOW DARE… HOW DARE YOU! HNG, GWAAAH!”

Thus, Ozonezma felt it was fair, just this once, for a miracle to happen.

Courage.

With his mind long since given in to the terror, nevertheless, Ozonezma tried continuing forward.

His feet didn’t advance a single step.

The True Demon King wasn’t even facing him.

She continued to look down at the dead bard on the ground, as if curiously examining an oddity.

“MRNGH… MRRRRNGH…!”

He was close enough to kill her, with just a small extension of his hand.

However, that slight distance was the infinitely unreachable yonder.

Thus was the True Demon King.

The ultimate terror couldn’t be overcome with the power of one’s heart.

If the very idea of courage was to overcome such fears, then—

—it meant that those with courage felt fear.

Such strength of will was needed to fight against her, and yet the essence of that will, the heart and soul, gradually descended into ruin.

The efforts of everyone in their world had all been meaningless.

Unparalleled techniques that slew enemies far and wide, minute and limitless planning, an enormous amount of gunpowder, a small dagger, strength, weakness, the mind, the body. All the means in the Beyond, and all the means in their world.

Everything. All of it. In totality.

“AAAAHHH! KILL…DEMON KING…! K-KILL… KILL HER…!

—However.

Faced with this terror, was there really nothing he could do?

No, that wasn’t it. There was one sole thing that everyone had been able to do.

Everything and anyone was clearly able to wish for it.

“KILL HER FOR US! SETERA!”

Ozonezma was no exception.

He was able to entrust the task to someone else.

Simply believe that it wouldn’t be himself…but that the Hero would defeat the Demon King for them.

“Ahhh, songs…”

The True Demon King…went to say something, as if she had suddenly remembered something.

The chimera’s enormous back gapped open.

From within a gray ogre, small enough to fit inside Ozonezma’s body, emerged.

The True Demon King turned around at them for the first time.

An unbelievably beautiful yet lonesome face.

A visitor, her existence impermissible to both this world and her own.

The young girl’s lips opened.

“—”

The boorish club split the girl’s head in two.

Setera’s single swing pierced through flesh and bone, even leaving a crack in the floorboards below.

A terrible and wet crunching sound covered the area.

There had been an enemy to all, who terrorized the entire land.

A singular enemy whom no one could oppose, who brought nothing but terror and slaughter to their world.

The True Demon King had now, from the top of her head to her waist, changed into a nondescript mass of flesh and bone.

Her porcelain legs, still standing on the floor, finally collapsed in a heap.

“HAAAAH, HAAAH! AH… AHHH…”

Ozonezma was frightened, his breath ragged. He continued to be frightened.

Setera had killed the True Demon King.

He had achieved the truly remarkable triumph that all others had feared, had been unable to achieve.

“IMPOSSIBLE, IT CAN’T BE…! SETERA…”

Nevertheless, he was still in fear.

Since now he understood.

Who exactly Setera was. What exactly Olukt had accidentally accomplished.

The Demon King’s final words were in a language that Ozonezma didn’t understand.

A power that didn’t allow Word Arts communication had activated.

In which case, that moment that he jumped out from Ozonezma’s back, Setera should have negated any and all supernatural phenomena. The single glance he made should have negated all the terror.

Yet the terror of the True Demon King carried on. Even now.

A terror without any cause or origin couldn’t possibly be negated.

“SETERA… Y-YOU’VE…”

Setera the External…was simply looking down at the Demon King, now transformed into fragments of red flesh.

Quiet, he looked to be deep in thought, as if in mourning.

The experiment was a success.

What had Olukt long been putting to the test?

His songs were music capable of reaching the souls of living creatures far and wide.

Those driven mad by the Demon King’s fear. Supposedly, even soulless beasts.

If, perhaps…the heart that feared the Demon King and the heart susceptible to soul-stirring song both shared the same identical origin.

If he, simply wandering from town to town and playing his songs for the people, had something he truly sought after. It hadn’t been this invincible ogre who negated any supernatural powers and defeated his enemies with his tremendous physical abilities.

He had observed the whole time. It wasn’t a reaction to his songs. The opposite.

He realized there was one who, even while able to hear his songs, deep down in their heart, didn’t react to them whatsoever.

“OLUKT… A-AHHH…! I AM SORRY… FORGIVE ME…!”

Facing the long-dead Olukt, Ozonezma apologized over and over again.

He hadn’t made it in time.

Ozonezma didn’t have any courage whatsoever. Nor did Setera the External, either. In their world, there wasn’t a single person who possessed the true courage to oppose the Demon King.

Otherwise…such a terrifying idea wouldn’t have ever flickered in the back of Ozonezma’s thoughts.

He himself was doing something terrifying.

“NGH… NO! AHHH, AHHHH!”

Something terrifying enough to drive him mad.

“NO…! NO…!”

Where Ozonezma looked, there was a white arm torn off and sent flying alongside the wall.

Unlike the hideously crushed body…

…it was an incredibly well-preserved and beautiful arm.

Even if it was conjoined with someone else’s body…

…it was surely in good-enough condition to make movement possible.

“AHHHHH…! NOT THIS— THIS IS…SUCH BLASPHEMY… FORGIVE ME, OLUKT…!”

Setera was greedily devouring the True Demon King’s corpse.

He was eating the thing he’d killed by his own hand.

An absolutely impossible feat for anyone who felt the slightest hint of fear.

He, beyond a shadow of a doubt, possessed a singular, personal will. Not a construct or machine with his intentions controlled by others. He could freely decide for himself what he would do.

That was why Ozonezma and Olukt had entrusted their wish to slay the Demon King to this ogre.

However…he was a presence that normally should have been wholly inconceivable in their world.

Setera the External. Philosophically speaking, he was no different from the dead. From the very start.

“…………”

“SETERA! SETERA! AH, AHHH, AUUUUUGH!”

The chimera tearfully wailed.

He understood the words would never ever reach the heart of another.

“TELL ME, WHY…?! WHY?! WHY…DID YOU COME THIS FAR?!”

…Three years ago. There had been a man named Olukt the Drifting Compass Needle.

It was a black age. He was one of the innumerable champions who had been slaughtered by the True Demon King.

Unable to make his singing voice ring, he ended up dying without leaving his name behind.

However. He had, at least, found a hero.

One who should have never existed, unable to comprehend the Word Arts that all minds communicated with.

—Truth is, that guy… He hates all of it. The whole world and everything in it.

—“When you killed people, was it painful?”

—“Uhak. You have a soul inside you. A soul just the same as anyone else’s.”

He perceived the world without understanding the concept of innate Word Arts.

He possessed the true power to dispel, thrusting the same reality he saw onto others.

He was a simple ogre, equipped with the grim reality of strength and size.

And he was, from the very beginning…

…Hero. Ogre.

Setera the External.