So this is how I go to the Demon God’s side.
Leaving only a misunderstanding with Xion?
Without even getting a chance to explain?
This anticlimactically?
“As I thought, you were here, burlap-sack farmer. I—”
From beyond the door came the Hero’s awful voice.
If the Hero took even one step inside, it was over.
I should run now.
I should smash through the window and run, but my legs wouldn’t move.
Xion opened his mouth to answer.
He was clearly about to welcome the Hero in.
“Get lost.”
BAM!
“…?”
Reinhild, who’d been sprawled on the floor, raised his head in bafflement and looked at Xion’s back.
“…Huh?”
Didn’t Xion just say “Get lost”?
And slam the door in the Hero’s face?
Was that really Xion standing there?
Xion turned his back and walked toward Reinhild. Wearing the same gentle, warm smile as always, he dropped to one knee before Reinhild.
Like a knight making an oath, Xion stroked Reinhild’s tear-streaked cheek.
“Why are you crying like that, Rein?”
Reinhild’s face was drenched in tears.
I was crying, huh.
He hadn’t even noticed tears falling.
“I showed such a shameful side.”
What was he talking about…
Chasing the Hero away… He’d looked as cool as could be.
Reinhild wanted to throw his arms around Xion, but his strength had fled. He couldn’t move.
He felt as if he’d already set foot halfway down the road to the underworld and been yanked back to this world by Xion’s hand.
Perhaps reading Reinhild’s heart, Xion hugged him instead and patted his back.
Once the tension melted from his body, Xion’s arms felt cozier than ever.
Xion really can protect me.
Even if the opponent is the Hero.
In that moment, being at Xion’s side felt a little safer.
Bang, bang, bang!
“I’m conducting a search with the village chief’s official permission!”
The dogged Hero kept pounding on the door without tiring, ruining the good mood.
“To defy my word is to defy the West ducal house…”
Yadda yadda.
The Hero was squawking and shouting something or other.
Reinhild snorted toward the door and ignored him.
“I could hold Root Village responsible for all of this!”
But the next words couldn’t be ignored.
A noble holding commoners “responsible” was nothing to laugh off.
The opponent was a ducal house.
In the worst case, they could wipe out the entire village.
If a tiny rural village like this disappeared, no one would care.
This village could be erased?
Xion’s home?
The only truly safe place I have?
Unease welled up again.
Xion didn’t just stand by while Rein grew anxious.
First, he had to remove the source of that anxiety.
Before he could be stopped, Xion strode forward and opened the door.
“So you’re finally willing to talk. I—”
“I challenge you to a duel.”
“…A du—what?”
It wasn’t only the Hero who was taken aback by the challenge.
No…! The opponent is the Hero…
Reinhild nearly bolted out, forgetting he was the Demon King.
But Xion was a little faster.
He snatched up the umbrella standing by the door and swung it straight at the Hero.
“Don’t!”
CLANG!
The Hero, Jake, reflexively drew his sword and blocked the blow.
It was definitely an umbrella colliding with a sword, yet it rang like clashing steel.
Not only the sound—an impact traveled up his arm exactly like having parried a blade.
“Ghh—what strength…”
Xion didn’t even allow Jake time to mutter to himself.
He knocked aside Jake’s sword and drove the umbrella forward with a speed that left no time to defend.
A precise thrust at the heart.
Thup,
“H-huff….”
Jake expelled the breath he’d been holding all at once.
If Xion hadn’t eased his strength at the very last instant, Jake’s chest would have been pierced through.
By an umbrella, not even a sword or a spear.
“What is this….”
Again, Xion didn’t wait for Jake to finish.
Thwack—
Jake took the umbrella across the head and dropped like a stone.
“I only knocked him out. I’ll spare him this time, but there won’t be a second.”
Xion jerked his chin at Elijah, who stood behind, and gave him permission to take Jake away.
Then, without even staying to watch what followed, Xion shut the door.
Bang!
“…”
It had all happened in a flash.
Reinhild couldn’t close his gaping mouth.
What on earth just happened?
Xion had opened the door, and the Hero had been there.
Up to that point, it was as expected.
It was surprising that Xion slammed the door in the Hero’s face, but not impossible. Not every human praises the god and the Hero.
But he took down a Hero with a mere umbrella?
A farmer from a rural village?
Maybe that man just isn’t a Hero?
There’s no way a Hero would fail to swing his sword even once against a village farmer and get felled by an umbrella.
Mm, right. He’s clearly not a Hero.
As if.
He was a Hero.
You could just tell instinctively.
That faint, unpleasant feeling and a face that seemed seen somewhere before.
That clingy voice you’d dread to hear in a dream.
He was definitely the Hero.
He mentioned the West ducal house. There’s no doubt.
Heirs of the West ducal house had been chosen as Heroes for generations.
If an obnoxious human came invoking House West and wasn’t a Hero, that wouldn’t make sense.
Then Xion really defeated the Hero?
For real?
Five hundred years is a long time, but still… can a farmer who’s never handled a sword be that strong?
More to the point, if the farmer got stronger while the Hero didn’t, that’s odd.
Perhaps…
“Ah!”
A thought struck him.
One of the facts he’d forgotten flashed back, perhaps triggered by meeting the Hero.
A Hero can never grow stronger than the Demon King of his era.
This is a rule that never changes, no matter how the times and the world change.
The Demon King and the Hero must be so close that victory or defeat is decided by a hair.
This generation’s Hero couldn’t become strong. Because I’m weak.
He hadn’t needed to fear the Hero from the start.
If Reinhild was so weak he couldn’t even fell a goblin, then the Hero likewise couldn’t fell a goblin.
This generation’s Hero was born with the same ceiling as Reinhild.
Unless Reinhild grows stronger, the Hero can never grow strong.
That is the “rule” between Demon King and Hero.
“Ha… haha.”
Suddenly life felt worth living.
What had all that anguish and worry been for?
All his worries vanished in an instant.
Even if the Hero came to again after waking, he felt he could take him down on the spot.
Ah, not quite.
If the Hero came to and returned, he felt he could win or lose by a sheet-of-paper’s difference.
In any case, the Hero no longer felt threatening.
Serves you right, Hero!
He should’ve memorized that face, but he’d been too rattled to get a good look. What a shame.
No. It’s better never to see it again.
Preferably, never for the rest of his life.
Even if we do meet again, it’s fine. I have Xion.
The only one Reinhild could best was the Hero. If the Hero gathered a heap of strong comrades, Reinhild wouldn’t stand a chance.
He had no demonfolk to face the Hero’s party.
But Reinhild wasn’t alone now.
He had someone he could trust and rely on.
Though not a demon, if it was Xion, he could believe in him.
“Rein.”
See?
Even his voice sounded that reassuring.
Xion seemed to sparkle.
Was this a special effect earned by dispatching a Hero?
He looked at least twice as cool as usual.
Handsome!
He nearly blurted out the exclamation.
He mustn’t.
A Demon King had to maintain his dignity.
In front of his underlings, he should show only majestic composure.
Before he knew it, Reinhild was treating Xion like his right-hand man.
The one who prepared food for him, warmed water and clean bedding, comforted him when he was tired and reached out a hand when he was weary.
A single human standing in for hundreds of demonfolk.
“You have nothing to fear.”
“Mm!”
Reinhild threw his arms around Xion’s neck and clung to him.
Dignity, majesty… He’d tossed all that out the day he was driven from the Demon King’s Castle.
And Xion wasn’t some “right hand” of the Demon King.
Then what is Xion to me?
…A butler?
Who knows.
But it didn’t matter.
Reinhild wanted to stay in Root.
For as long as Xion was with him.
“Shall we go eat now?”
“Okay.”
Dinner was a gigantic loaf slathered with jam and butter.
Reinhild was able to stretch out both legs and fall fast asleep for the first time in a while.
It was a peaceful day.
He was starting to almost like the word peace.
May this peace continue a little longer.
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