Chapter 44
“Safety comes first during vacation! Got it, everyone in Class 3-6?”
“““Yes!”””
The third week of July.
Vacation had arrived.
Summer vacation, with its sweltering heat.
Even the teacher, usually worn down with exhaustion, looked excited.
“■■! Can I come over to your house and play?”
“Hmm…… Sure! But you have to be quiet, okay? My mom gets really scary if you wake her up while she’s sleeping!”
“Yeah!”
Here, there is a boy welcoming vacation.
And the friend sitting in front of him had asked to come over to his house.
They seemed very close.
They were probably childhood friends.
-Patapata!
And so, the two little friends entered a somewhat dark semi-basement. It was unnervingly quiet inside.
Judging by the number of shoes in the shoe cabinet, the boy seemed to come from a single-parent household.
Garbage bags were piled in the shoe cabinet, and fruit flies buzzed around them.
The boy carefully closed the door and let the friend inside.
“Whoa, this place is really interesting!”
Surprisingly, the boy’s friend didn’t seem bothered by the house.
The friend was too young to sense the strange atmosphere inside.
They tossed their bags into a corner and started playing hero.
Imitating the Indomitable Hero, a popular character from a game that was all the rage, made the time fly by.
The red sunset slipped through the security bars of the semi-basement windows.
Evening had arrived.
“Hey, it’s already evening. Aren’t you hungry? Let’s make something to eat!”
“Hmm, then I’ll make you some fried eggs. But after you eat, let’s go play outside. My mom’s probably going to wake up soon.”
To make dinner for the friend, the boy took two eggs out of the mini-fridge.
Then he got out a greasy frying pan and turned on the gas burner, which looked like an accident waiting to happen.
-Tick, tick, whoosh!
Luckily, it seemed to be working properly.
Frying the eggs should make for a pretty satisfying dinner.
Just as the boy turned on the burner and was deciding whether to make the eggs runny or well-done,
“Then I’ll add the oil—uh?”
-Swaaash!!
Oops.
The friend who’d come over accidentally spilled the oil.
Unfortunately, the lid had fallen off.
The oil was sputtering everywhere with a crackling sound.
“Hey! C-Careful!”
Luckily, the boy who lived there calmly told the friend to back away.
A fairly large flame had appeared in the pan, but it wasn’t anything to worry too much about.
If they just covered it with a lid, it would probably go out on its own.
“S-Sorry! I’ll put the fire out!”
That would have been the case just a few seconds earlier.
“Huh? Hey, hey!!”
The sound of water splashing.
The friend poured about 500 ml of water from a nearby bottle into the pan, which was full of oil, to put out the fire.
It was water from the bottle nearby.
The friend had surely acted out of a pure desire to put out the fire.
But unfortunately, that action became the start of an irreversible disaster.
-Whoooosh!!!
With a roar, flames began spreading in every direction.
The kitchen, which took up half of the semi-basement, was instantly engulfed in flames.
The friend panicked and fell backward.
The boy watched the scene for a moment, then came to his senses and led the friend outside.
Once outside, the boy saw the friend in a panic.
Judging by the movement of the friend’s lips, they seemed to be trying to apologize.
The boy comforted the friend, then headed back into the semi-basement.
To look for someone.
“M-Mom……. Let’s go outside together……”
-Knock, knock.
There was only one small bedroom in the semi-basement.
On the bed inside, a woman lay with her face twisted in pain.
She was the boy’s mother.
A pitiful woman suffering from bipolar disorder after her husband went missing.
As time went on, she began to hate the boy.
And yet, once, she had been a kind woman.
They say parents are a child’s whole world.
She had been the young boy’s world.
Even if that world was horribly twisted now.
But then.
-Grab!
“It’s all your fault!! That he disappeared! That I’m in this miserable state now!”
“Eek……. K-Keh, kegh!”
Even in this situation, she took her anger out on the boy.
She grabbed the tiny boy by the collar and lifted him up.
This was bad.
At this rate, he might lose consciousness and burn to death right there with her.
So, to survive,
-Zzzzt!!!
He pulled a stun gun from his pocket, pressed it against the woman’s neck, and turned it on.
It was a self-defense tool his father, a police officer, used to carry.
The boy had carried it around like a talisman, and now—
“I should’ve never given birth to you……”
He heard his mother’s last words.
“……”
Thanks to that, the boy survived.
By bringing his own world crashing down.
The boy stared blankly at the collapsed woman for a moment, then slowly started walking outside.
Perhaps because his face was covered in soot, it looked a little dark.
-Whoooosh……
The flames raged, completely swallowing the semi-basement.
Black smoke and a sour stench drifted out from inside.
The boy took in the sight.
Strangely, he felt a peculiar sense of liberation.
He heard a sniffle behind him.
It was his childhood friend.
The boy opened his mouth to speak to the friend.
“It’s okay.”
Then he closed his eyes and said it once more.
‘It’s okay. Nothing happened.’
He told himself.
And so, the boy was okay.
Because nothing had happened.
He’d probably be okay from now on, too.
Because nothing had happened.
The sky overhead was very beautiful.
Because,
nothing
had happened, right?
***
‘Hmm, what in the world happened?’
Yubel, who’d been making such a racket, fell silent in an instant.
And didn’t move.
Yubel looked just like a puppet with its strings cut.
The Demon King was left at a loss for words, too.
“What? Why’d Yubel suddenly go like this?”
But in the midst of that silence, a figure obliviously crept out.
It was none other than the Succubus Queen, Lilith.
“Good grief, you were muttering to yourself, and now you’re pretending to be a corpse. Well, I’ve waited this long, so you don’t have any complaints, right? I’m taking your body now.”
Even among succubi, Lilith held the rank of queen, and she could live forever by borrowing someone else’s body.
Through the species’ innate skill, 'Possession.'
The Demon King knew this, but didn’t take any special measures.
The Demon King could turn Lilith to dust the moment she entered the body.
“Then I’ll enjoy my meal, khk—!”
-Shrrrraaaak!!
Just then, pitch-black chains suddenly shot up from the ground.
They wrapped around Lilith’s neck and entire body in an instant.
“Kagh, kek, kgh!”
Slump.
A moment later, Lilith lost consciousness.
She couldn’t withstand the force strangling her neck.
[……Huh, what in the world is this?]
A question tinged with astonishment.
This was a spell the Demon King herself had used before.
Chains that bound their target with a force impossible to escape.
It was surprising enough that Yubel had used a spell she’d never been taught, but that wasn’t what puzzled the Demon King.
‘Right now, she shouldn’t have any magic power, let alone a trace of demonic energy. How could such a wonder have occurred?’
This was an empty, deserted space.
There was no Hero to serve as a means of temporarily restoring magic power, nor any core of Kardin left for the Demon King to absorb demonic energy from.
Then how had Yubel used magic?
‘Could Yubel have used my life force……?’
Using magic was a kind of equivalent exchange.
You exchanged your own magic power to bring about a wonder.
But magic power wasn’t the only thing that could be used as a substitute.
You could use yourself—the vessel that held your magic power—as the price.
[Stop! I don’t know how you figured out that method, but you know you’ll be in danger, don’t you?]
It was a lie.
The Demon King couldn’t die unless her demon heart was destroyed.
The same was true of Yubel, who had entered the Demon King’s body.
Even if Yubel paid with the body’s life force, she’d be resurrected at the Demon King’s Castle several decades later.
So this was just a trick to scare her toy, Yubel.
There wasn’t any other intention behind it.
‘Hmm, Yubel’s not reacting, so this isn’t any fun…… Hm?’
Just as the Demon King was considering stealing some more memories, the toy had shaped a hand like a gun and pointed it toward her.
The Demon King couldn’t make sense of the unfamiliar gesture and simply watched. But soon, she sensed something unnerving in the magic power gathering at Yubel’s fingertip.
[You! What in the world are you doing right now?!]
The magic appearing on Yubel’s index finger was none other than the mind magic the Demon King had taught her.
However…… it wasn’t ordinary mental magic.
Mind magic surging up from the depths of repressed emotions.
To give it its proper name, it was a spell called ‘Soul-Shattering Mind Collapse.’
One of the ultimate grand spells that shattered the soul and broke the mind.
It was the kind of grand spell even the Tower Master, a master of mind magic, would struggle to pull off successfully.
And yet it was being conjured by a novice who’d only just learned basic mind magic.
Aimed at Yubel herself.
-Tsht-tsht-tsht!
Tiny motes of energy clashed at Yubel’s fingertip.
Compressed spells tangled together, condensing a mass of information far too vast for a living creature’s mind to withstand.
With the aim of shattering the mind.
‘Th-This is dangerous……!’
The Demon King felt the fear of death throughout her entire body.
Because this, too, was a way to kill the Demon King.
There were two broad ways to kill the Demon King.
One used the body, and the other the mind.
After all, a living being could only survive if those two elements were in harmony.
So it wasn’t strange that there were two methods.
Anyway, the first method.
Find the Demon King’s heart, hidden somewhere, and destroy it.
This was a direct way to bring about death.
However, only the Demon King knew where her heart was, making this method extremely difficult to carry out.
Then there was the second method.
Use powerful mental magic to reduce her to a vegetative state.
Even if she didn’t truly die, a Demon King whose mind had been destroyed would be an empty shell, alive in name only—in other words, in a vegetative state.
This method might sound easy.
But it, too, was nearly impossible.
The reason was, first, that there were very few mages in this world.
And the grand mages capable of wielding mental magic of that caliber could be counted on one hand.
Besides, the Demon King wouldn’t sit back and watch. Anyone who tried would probably be saying goodbye to this world the moment they began.
That was why it was nearly impossible, but……
The situation was very bad right now.
‘Why isn’t control shifting to me?!’
Over the several months in the Holy Nation, the Demon King had devoured around 80% of Yubel’s remaining memories, except for the ones she wasn’t allowed to access.
She’d already secured enough of a foothold to take over Yubel’s body whenever she wanted.
That had put the Demon King at ease.
She’d been looking down on Yubel all along, watching Yubel with interest, but……
For some reason, she couldn’t take control of the body now.
[Stop this right now, or we’ll both meet our ruin! Have you lost your mind?!]
“……”
Yubel didn’t move a muscle.
Threats weren’t going to get through to Yubel now.
The Demon King realized that, too.
[It was my mistake! I was too careless to ask! I’ll never bring up this topic again, so please listen to me! I-I promise—no, I’ll enter into a contract never to peek into your memories again!]
“……Too late.”
[Wouldn’t that be all right?! I can’t talk to anyone else, after all! I’m only here for you…… Fine, I’ll even forgive you for calling me a parasite!]
The Demon King was desperate enough to allow even insults directed at her.
No matter how weary of life she became, no matter how boring everything was, she’d never once wanted to die.
Now that the possibility of actually dying was right in front of her, an unprecedented anxiety began gnawing at her mind.
‘If Yubel would just let her guard down, I could take control right now and erase the memories!’
-Crack, zzztzzztzzzt!!
Meanwhile, the spell was complete. There was no one who could stop it now.
Realizing that, Yubel slowly smiled, then—
“Bang.”
[You crazy bitch!!!]
-KWA-BOOOOM!!!!!
The ceiling came crashing down.
At the same time, someone came dropping in.
“Yubeeeeel!!!”
-Hug!
“Hyeet!?”
The Hero had appeared.
And just like in the mental world, the Hero hugged Yubel.
Wrapped in the ‘pheromone’ that charmed its target.
Thanks to that, Yubel’s spell, which seemed impossible to dispel, was undone.
And this instant became a priceless opportunity for someone.
-Swaa……
“Hwaah! Th-Thanks, Se-on♡ You came to save m—”
“Who are you?”
“……”
Huh.
Nothing ever goes right.