The villagers’ murmuring grew even louder.
Pushed forward by the others, the poor village chief shuffled out, shaking.
“K-K-Knight, sir. W-we have never i-insulted the Hero. A short while ago the Hero suddenly disappeared, and…”
“Silence! The Hero was carried to the ducal house with one leg broken. Will you claim that too was someone else’s doing!”
When the knight roared, the chief trembled and slunk back to his place.
‘Th-that liar…!’
What a brazen pack of liars!
Xion hadn’t attacked the Hero’s leg.
He’d only struck his head and knocked him out.
The Hero had fallen in the process, yes, but a fall like that wouldn’t break a leg.
‘What, was the Hero made of sugar biscuits? Trip and the leg snaps!’
I want to rush out there and argue, but I hold back—because I’m the Demon King.
“If you’ve harmed the Hero, it means you’ve something to hide. Starting tomorrow we’ll search this village from top to bottom. You will cooperate.”
He said “cooperate,” but his tone was pure command.
A threat-laced order that made it seem he’d swing the sword in his hand if they didn’t obey.
The villagers must have thought the same; they only shivered and couldn’t answer.
‘Where is Xion?’
Xion wasn’t visible among the trembling townsfolk.
But he had to be somewhere in there.
Reinhild worried Xion might be shaking like the others.
“When we find the ringleader who attacked the Hero, everyone connected to him will be executed by beheading.”
Beheading…!
“Anyone who interferes will likewise be deemed an accomplice and punished severely.”
With that, the knights moved off in a mass and disappeared into the forest.
Did they know there are no inns in Root?
They seemed intent on camping in the woods and returning in the morning.
In truth, the knights hadn’t withdrawn out of consideration for Root’s lack of inns. Nor had they chosen the forest because they enjoyed camping.
They went to the woods to keep watch on the village—
—to make sure no one slipped out during the night.
This was a method the House of West often used to pressure commoners.
They’d show up in ornate armor with conspicuous weapons. Coming late with a mass of torches was likewise to terrify the villagers even more.
Intimidated and bullied in that guise, the villagers would spend the whole night steeped in fear.
Those who had done wrong, afraid that everything would be exposed the next day and they’d be executed, would very likely attempt to flee under cover of night.
The knights encamped around the village would kill any fugitive on sight.
Even if it was merely an ordinary villager maddened by fear, they didn’t care.
To them, sacrificing a few commoners for the great cause was nothing.
Then they’d fling the corpse before the villagers, prattle about collective responsibility, and the terror-stricken villagers would spill everything, down to the petty details.
Whether it was true didn’t matter.
The West knights would keep squeezing until they heard the answers they wanted.
But Reinhild, who didn’t know any of this, was busy hatching a plan to run away tonight, no matter what.
‘What do I do?’
They were probably after three things: the Demon King.
The human who hid the Demon King.
And the human who slammed the Hero. Those three.
If they learned that two of those were the same person, the knights would rejoice at having less work; Reinhild was not pleased at all.
‘No one in the village saw Xion throw the Hero.’
At times like this, it was a blessing that Xion’s house sat in a corner of the village.
Otherwise, by now the whole village might have been blaming Xion as the cause of this mess and pelting him with stones.
If stones were all, that’d be lucky.
They’d already have tattled to the knights that Xion was the culprit.
All the way home, Reinhild clutched his head and fretted.
No matter how he wrung his thoughts, he couldn’t see a way out.
‘At this rate Xion and I are both in danger. We really have no choice but to run.’
Just when things seemed like they might finally quiet down.
To end up fugitives again like this.
He remembered fleeing until he collapsed, hounded and attacked by demonfolk.
Truly a painful memory.
He’d never wanted to go through that again.
He’d thought that, with the Hero problem solved, he would never have to run again.
Still, at least this time he wasn’t alone.
Xion was with him.
If he fled with Xion, at least…
“…So I have to run away with Xion.”
Reinhild, running toward the house, suddenly stopped short.
If they ran now, they’d never escape being fugitives.
In a small village where everyone knows everyone, if someone goes missing, it’s obvious who.
The villagers would immediately realize that Xion had fled.
Then, trying to save themselves, they’d inform the knights that Xion had run.
The House of West would name Xion as the one who harmed the Hero and hunt him for the rest of his life.
Then Xion would have to flee mankind, suffering, until the day he died—
just as Reinhild had fled in despair and fear with nowhere to turn.
“…”
Ever since Reinhild came here, Xion couldn’t even work; he had to care for him.
His good reputation had sunk to the bottom, and he was on the verge of expulsion for failing to meet his quota.
And to protect Reinhild, he had even antagonized the humans’ hero, the Hero.
For a commoner, defying nobles, something that leads straight to death, was as good as staking his life.
Xion had risked his life to protect Reinhild.
He may have done it without knowing Reinhild was the Demon King, but that didn’t matter.
Reinhild was afraid, and Xion protected him.
And now, because of that, he was set to be hounded by the House of West for life.
Having turned the Hero’s house into an enemy, he’d be treated as the enemy of mankind; every human he met would throw stones at Xion.
The people who once visited out of concern when Xion was ill to share their crops would now spit on him, curse him, and heap abuse.
‘All because of me…’
Xion had brought Reinhild the peace humans prize most.
But in return, Reinhild had given Xion the thing demonfolk love best: despair.
It was, truly, worthy of a Demon King.
He didn’t feel particularly pleased.
‘It’s not over yet.’
There was a way to solve all of this.
Simple.
The root of the trouble just had to disappear.
The West knights were chasing three targets:
the Demon King, the Demon King’s helper, and the one who attacked the Hero.
Bundle those three into one.
Make it so the Demon King’s helper never existed, and that it was the Demon King who attacked the Hero… then the three suspects become one.
Of course, Reinhild intended to be the protagonist of those three.
‘I can’t let anyone else play the Demon King.’
That way, Xion would be cleared of all suspicion.
And the method wasn’t difficult.
He just had to go to a somewhat larger city and spread the rumor that the Demon King won his first battle with the Hero.
Human rumors spread fast.
And if the House of West didn’t believe it, he knew how to make them.
Slip into the rumor a line that only the actual assailant could know.
“In the village of Root of Audrit, the Demon King met the Hero and his adventurer companion(s) and attacked them, and the Hero’s leg was broken.”
A perfect sentence.
‘I have to be careful. If I’m sloppy, they could accuse Xion of being the Demon King.’
It would be awful if the cowardly Hero pointed to Xion as the Demon King who attacked him.
When spreading the rumor, he’d add: “He cast a spell on an innocent person of Root Village and controlled him.”
Then humans would regard Xion as a victim controlled by the Demon King and protect him.
It might even make Xion, once he learned Reinhild is the Demon King, believe he himself had been bewitched by the Demon King.
Thinking that made him a little sad.
But perhaps it would be better if Xion thought so.
Better than missing a Demon King who isn’t there.
There was a story like that among the books Xion had brought about a human named Joseph who loved a human named Hannah so much he left her.
Joseph, who had lured Hannah countless times with the word “love,” left without a word and drove a nail into her heart.
He’d thought that deceiving the other in the name of love and truly blindsiding her was very demon-like.
Watching Hannah sob and suffer, he had even lavishly praised Joseph, saying he should be a model for demonfolk.
Now he felt he could dimly understand why that human Joseph had left Hannah.
Reinhild still didn’t know what humans meant by “love.”
But the foolish feeling of “leaving because something is precious”… that, just a little, he could sympathize with.
Xion was precious to Reinhild.
More than the treasures hidden in the Demon King’s castle, more even than the owlbears he’d watched from the window.
Enough to make him want to live by Xion’s side rather than return to the Demon King’s castle and reclaim all he had once enjoyed as Demon King.
And so Reinhild resolved to leave Xion’s side.
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