‘But why?’
No… here, ‘how’ was the better question.
He couldn’t make sense of it.
It was Xion who had put the impurity into Reinhild’s mana stones.
Which meant it was also Xion who had erased the lake.
“That makes no sense.”
Having arrived at the right answer, Reinhild then went hunting for another.
Had one of the hero’s companions been the one stuffing strange mana into the stones?
How?
What could you possibly do so that a stone that was pristine in the storeroom got contaminated on the way back to the house?
“Ugh.”
Realizing the impurity pooled inside the stone was none other than mana imbued with the High God’s power, Reinhild shuddered and tore the necklace off.
He could feel a faint trace of the same thing at his heart.
“Something vile has invaded my body.”
He raked his nails across his chest.
He felt them scrape against the thick fabric of his clothes.
He didn’t bother reaching under to claw at bare skin.
That would only hurt.
‘So that’s why my recovery’s been slow.’
Trying to mix divine mana into Reinhild’s own, already thick with demonic miasma—it was only natural his recovery would slow to a crawl.
Mana plus mana didn’t work like one plus one. It was a minus… no, it was practically cutting what he had in half.
The only relief was that this power differed a little from outright holy power.
If what had burrowed into Reinhild’s body had been true holy power, he wouldn’t be having trouble recovering mana. His insides would have melted away.
Judging by the way a little mana still managed to accumulate despite the massive losses, Xion must have shoveled an absurd number of stones at him.
“Ha.”
Reinhild cursed himself for ever suspecting Xion.
Xion hadn’t given him tainted stones to sabotage him.
He’d simply had no idea what he was doing.
Xion might know Reinhild wasn’t human, but clearly he didn’t know he was demonfolk. Some companion of the hero, priest or whatever, must have approached Xion and lied to him about mixing divine power into mana.
Xion must have heard somewhere that holy power helps you recover mana faster, and for Reinhild’s sake he’d accepted the offer. The hero’s companion had duped Xion and mixed that filthy, God-tinged mana into the stones meant for Reinhild.
‘So that’s it.’
Naive Xion had been deceived by the hero and his companions.
To trick Xion… how sad he would be when he learned the truth. Reinhild couldn’t bear it.
It was infuriating enough that foul mana had invaded his body. Worse still was that he had no way to purge it right now.
Scowling openly, Reinhild glanced down at the palm that had touched the ground.
It tingled as if he’d been shocked.
‘This feels like when I grabbed the basement door.’
That cursed basement seal probably had something to do with the hero’s party as well.
Now it made sense why touching the seal had hurt so much. If it was connected to the hero, of course it would be harmful to Reinhild.
Reinhild hadn’t been so feeble that he collapsed from a mere seal. He’d simply run up against a bad elemental match!
‘…Hm? That doesn’t add up.’
As he sorted his thoughts, he found a contradiction.
The crazy human had come into the house and set a seal?
When?
Reinhild hadn’t seen anyone enter the house, crazy human or otherwise.
The only time people had come in was when they showed up to help repair the place.
But even a hero’s party wouldn’t slap a seal on the basement while other people were watching.
‘Did they prepare it before I ever came to this village?’
That didn’t make much sense either.
A hero is appointed with the birth of a Demon King.
The moment Reinhild woke from his seal was when this era’s hero first received his mission and began to move.
In that tiny window with Reinhild getting expelled from the Demon King’s castle and being rescued by Xion, the hero had supposedly gathered powerful companions, come all the way here, and installed a seal…?
And how would they know Reinhild would come here?
No matter how great the High God, he couldn’t grant humans the power to see the future. You sometimes had charlatans claiming to catch “glimpses,” but they were all frauds.
Even if the High God tried to tell humans the future directly, the restrictions were so severe that he could only deliver a twisted, 100-characters-or-less riddle.
Which is to say, the hero’s party had no way to learn Reinhild’s path unless they made the path themselves and lured him to walk it.
‘They lay out the road I’ll take, ahead of me.’
Reinhild replayed everything that had happened since he woke from the seal, step by step.
And suddenly, he realized.
He hadn’t walked to Root on his own feet.
He’d collapsed and when he came to, he was already here.
What if the hero’s party had brought him here?
‘They tethered me to this place to keep watch on me!’
It wouldn’t have been hard to hinder his mana recovery and make him indolent.
A warm house, good food, and one human to observe his every little move and report back—that would be plenty.
“…No way.”
Maybe the hero’s party hadn’t approached Xion because he saved Reinhild.
Maybe they had approached Xion first so that he would save Reinhild.
‘That makes everything line up.’
The hero’s party approached Xion who pretended to be poor but was really wealthy, and who was a supposedly ordinary human with certain unusual abilities and tricked him.
Then they found the collapsed Reinhild and had Xion bring him home.
He’d thought it odd that, no matter how hard he’d run, none of the many demonfolk had found a trace of him.
The hero’s party had erased his tracks so the demonfolk couldn’t pursue.
So does that count as help from the hero?
No. It was a trap.
They would have ordered Xion to look after Reinhild. They probably put the seal on the basement then too.
To make him suffer.
Seen that way, all of Xion’s care had not been for Reinhild’s sake.
The tenderness, the bright smiles… every bit of it had been for the hero’s party.
‘Maybe he wasn’t duped. Maybe he was one of them from the start.’
What if Xion was one of the hero’s companions?
“Haaa!”
Reinhild blew out the breath he’d been holding.
“That’s absurd!”
Just thinking it made him feel like he would go mad.
Xion wouldn’t do that.
He wouldn’t…
‘Was Xion really trying to hinder me?’
Reinhild’s mood plummeted.
Once he linked Xion with the hero’s party, he couldn’t stop thinking it.
While Xion pretended ignorance and kept him tied down, the hero and his companions would have been training to grow stronger.
Even the smiles aimed at Reinhild would have been a stratagem to make the Demon King slothful…
Maybe the hero being smacked by an umbrella was all an act, too.
Right… put that way, it didn’t make sense otherwise.
A hero who knew better than anyone how weak he was. Why would he come here alone, without any companions?
It had all been a plan to show Reinhild a feeble hero.
So Reinhild would relax and grow lazier.
And at the same time, it gave Reinhild more chances to trust Xion while, behind the scenes, they sabotaged Reinhild’s mana recovery.
They’d widen the gap between Demon King and hero, little by little, and then strike him from behind at the moment he was most off guard.
‘Now that’s a perfect plan.’
Perfect enough to make all of his own meticulous “perfect plans” seem trivial.
“You fiendish hero…”
Reinhild praised the hero through gritted teeth and stood up.
This was no time to sit around.
If Xion truly was using him under the hero’s orders, then he needed a countermeasure.
A way to win Xion’s heart over!
‘If he learns how magnificent a Demon King can be, he’ll join my side.’
Moping over Xion being in league with the hero wouldn’t change anything.
Maybe it had been an act at first.
The words and the looks he’d given Reinhild might have been fake.
‘But there’s no way the promise to be together was a lie.’
He could still vividly recall the feeling of that moment.
Xion’s voice, his expression.
It might have been acting before then, but at that moment Xion had been sincere.
Because Reinhild had felt it.
A feeling strong enough to move a Demon King’s heart couldn’t have been false.
Xion was wavering between Reinhild and the hero.
So all Reinhild had to do was shake him harder, and more often.
Until he crossed over to this side.
Maybe, for now, Xion would take the hero’s part… but in the end, the hand he would take would be his, Reinhild’s.
He vowed it, clenching both fists tight.
He set about, in earnest, to conjure a brand-new harebrained scheme.
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