“Yes! I did it!”
Reinhild threw both arms up with a roar of joy.
Oops. He mustn’t have shouted and woken the humans.
Watching for any sign from the humans snoring away inside the house, Reinhild quietly lowered his arms, opened the sack, and took out the mana stones.
The plan had only just begun.
Reinhild hadn’t opened Rebecca’s door and uncovered the hero’s secret. He had merely dragged the mana stones here without Xion noticing and reached his destination.
If someone saw Reinhild now, they might have sneered at him for celebrating a “success” over something so minor.
But Reinhild was simply thrilled, feeling as if he had, for the first time, struck back at the hero.
“Good feeling right from the start.”
By now, Xion was probably struggling to wipe off the sticky strawberry jam.
He had no idea how hard it was to clean off the magic circle drawn with strawberry jam. The cloth kept sticking to the floor, the tackiness wouldn’t go away, and it was terribly fussy and irritating.
He felt bad for making Xion go through that, but there was no helping it if he needed to take up Xion’s time.
Before Xion finished wiping the jam off his clothes, noticed Reinhild was gone, and came here, he had to finish everything.
Reinhild took out the small knife he’d prepared in advance.
It was the knife Xion used to peel potatoes.
“I don’t like pain… but it can’t be helped.”
He drew a deep breath and cut his left palm with the knife.
This was not breaking his promise to Xion that he would absolutely not get hurt.
The term of that promise lasted only until Xion went out for the repair work and returned.
Until Xion came home, Reinhild had neither waited for him nor gotten sick or hurt; he had taken a good rest.
He had no memory of renewing the promise not to get hurt afterward, so he was absolutely not breaking it.
“Ugh…”
The most effective thing for smashing a seal imbued with the god’s power was, of course, the Demon King’s blood.
Even if he had lost his power, a Demon King is a Demon King.
The demonic energy in his blood would lend strength to the magic circles.
‘It does feel a bit nasty, though.’
The power the hero’s party had forcibly crammed into Reinhild’s body might interfere with this plan.
Clearly, they had anticipated a situation like this from the start and injected that filthy divine power.
Meticulous hero bastard.
A little sloppiness would have been nice. It made his teeth chatter with rage.
“Focus.”
He drew as many magic circles as he could around the house—at the front door, on the windows, the walls.
The larger and more elaborate a magic circle was, the better the effect.
The more of them there were, the greater the power they could exert.
But if you asked whether bigger, flashier, and more numerous was always better, the answer was no.
The stronger the circle’s potency, the more enormous the mana consumption; the most important thing was to draw circles of a size one could actually withstand.
In his current state, Reinhild could hardly handle even a single magic circle.
But to seize this one and only chance, this much was necessary.
‘With the help of the mana stones, I shouldn’t die.’
He shook out the sack stuffed full of mana stones and scattered them around the house.
Using the mana stones the hero’s party had gathered to break the hero’s seal turned out to be more fun than expected.
“Hoo, I can do this. I can do it!”
With a shout to steel himself, Reinhild pressed his bleeding left hand to the door.
His stomach was already heaving, and a wave of revulsion surged up. His body even shook as if crying out to him to take his hand away this instant.
What let him bear it, ironically, was the Chief God’s power wrapped around his heart like armor.
Stupid hero.
They must have forcibly injected this power to suppress his demonic energy and weaken him, but thanks to it, breaking the seal had become a little easier.
Reinhild laughed at the hero and closed his eyes.
“Hoo…”
He would not die here.
Never.
Rrrrrumble—
When Reinhild pushed mana into the largest magic circle drawn on the front door, the circle glowed faintly in response.
The magic circle and the seal collided, and the door shook violently, as if it might shatter at any moment.
The trembling spread from the door to the entire house. The sound of the house shaking as a whole was so huge it was like thunder crashing and a landslide roaring down—a noise big enough to make the humans leap from their beds at any moment.
But Reinhild couldn’t stop.
If he stopped now, the mana flowing into the circle could backflow and make his body explode.
“Kh…!”
At last, the mana stone clenched in his right hand shattered with a sharp clink.
Shard-like splinters bit into his palm, but he couldn’t even feel pain of that degree.
It felt like his heart was being ripped to pieces.
As if to demand, in the midst of pain, why it alone had to suffer, his wildly thrashing heart began to fling mana madly throughout his body.
Reinhild stood there holding together a body that might collapse at any moment by sheer force—his condition was, literally, a wreck.
He clenched his lips tight to keep any sound from escaping, and blood burst out between them.
‘It hurts.’
It hurts.
Feels like I’ll die.
Since being born a Demon King, he could count on his fingers the times he had felt this kind of pain, these sensations.
And most of those had all been after waking from the seal.
Except for when the hero pierced his chest five hundred years ago.
He vividly remembered waking from the seal for the first time, opening his eyes, and going to the Demon King’s castle.
Frightened, in pain, feeling like he was going to die.
The memories of wandering in the worst agony he had ever felt were followed by his meeting with Xion.
After that, he had fallen ill and collapsed several times.
But aside from those, he had been able to spend his time in peace.
Because Xion had been with him.
This pain was beyond imagination, like his heart being pounded and his limbs being torn off, but it was what Reinhild had chosen.
A Demon King choosing pain for the sake of humans.
If the demonfolk learned of this, they wouldn’t stop at mere punishment.
Even as blood streamed from his nose and mouth, Reinhild let out a faint, wry laugh.
KABOOM!
With a tremendous roar like a bomb dropping in the middle of the village, the front door blew off as if it had exploded. Every window with a magic circle drawn on it shattered to pieces.
Of course, Reinhild, who had been standing in front of the door, was caught in the blast and flung far away.
From the other humans’ houses around him came shrieks and a growing murmur. Terrified, they didn’t come out, but they pressed to their windows to look outside and grasp the situation.
It was fortunate that the moon was hidden by clouds and the night was especially dark. Unless they came out of their houses, they wouldn’t see the ruined home.
Even after being struck by the door and tumbling far, Reinhild felt relief and groped his way to his feet.
‘The seal… the seal…?’
Pain as if his whole body had been beaten…
His veins felt as if they were burning like a body held over fire, but if he had achieved his aim, it didn’t matter.
“Cough.”
A mouthful of blood surged out and spilled from Reinhild’s lips.
He forced his trembling legs to move and approached the door.
The door had been torn off; he reached a hand toward the empty front entry. Blood streamed down from his outstretched palm.
Wouldn’t it be dangerous even for a Demon King to lose this much blood?
‘Ah, Xion will worry.’
Thinking that silly thought, Reinhild swept his arm through the air into the house.
The seal was gone.
“Ha… haha.”
He’d done it.
He had removed the seal.
It was his first achievement as a Demon King since losing his power.
A flood of feelings welled up, and he felt like he might cry.
Of course, a Demon King doesn’t cry over something like this. Not that he was one to talk, after bawling his eyes out in front of Xion already.
Staggering, Reinhild stepped into the house.
“…ld!”
From far off, a familiar voice reached his ears.
Xion… was that Xion?
His ears had been ringing with a constant hum for a while, so he couldn’t make out other sounds well.
But if Xion was behind him, he needed to move quickly. He might have come with the hero.
Without looking back, Reinhild hurried into the house.
Fortunately, there was no need to search the place. Rebecca’s house was empty.
There wasn’t a single piece of common furniture; not even a carpet lay on the floor.
In the silent mansion without a single light, something giving off a soft glow caught his eye at once.
Hanging in the center of the living room wall…
was the hero’s sword.
Thud!
If there were a sound for a heart dropping, it would be this.
The shock Reinhild felt was greater than when he had forced out mana to break the seal, greater than when his palm had been split, when he’d coughed blood, when he’d been smashed by the door and sent flying.
“U-agh…!”
It wasn’t just that he was startled.
Reinhild was in actual, terrible pain.
It felt as if his head were going to split open.
A pain like his brain was cracking into pieces inside his skull and someone was forcibly gluing it back together. He couldn’t breathe.
‘That… sword… why…’
The hero’s sword that had stabbed his heart and brought him to death five hundred years ago.
Swallowing the pain, Reinhild took a step toward the sword.
But he couldn’t move any farther.
Because of the presence he felt behind him.
“Rein.”
The voice that always sounded so pleasant was, peculiarly, sunken.
Reinhild turned his poorly moving body and looked back.
With a look of urgency, Xion was reaching out a hand toward him.
He seemed to be saying something, but Reinhild couldn’t make it out.
Was he telling him to go back together?
In his heart, he wanted to take that hand.
But the pounding pain in his head intensified, and he could do nothing.
“Urgh!”
When Reinhild clutched his head in agony, Xion dashed forward.
And the moment he stretched out his arms to pull Reinhild into an embrace—
Reinhild regained his memories.
“…Xion.”
Reinhild drew ragged breaths and slowly raised his head.
Meeting that gaze, Xion could no longer approach him.
Eyes with a mood quite different from what he usually showed.
It was a face he was seeing again after five hundred years… a face he had missed.
Reinhild, with the same look as back then he hadn’t seen in so long, opened his mouth again.
“…Rexion West?”
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