At the thought that Xion was trying to kill him, Reinhild turned pale.
He had believed it must be a misunderstanding, that Xion would never do such a thing. For the first time, he had trusted a human… and to be stabbed in the back like this….
The feeling of trust toward Xion turning into anger happened in an instant.
Anger not at Xion, but at his own stupidity.
‘I never should have trusted a mere human.’
Much less the hero. If this got out, even a passing owlbear would point and laugh at him.
Part of him wanted to attack Xion right away and repay the shock he’d just received twofold, but for now he needed time to think.
He had to steady these confused emotions.
Reinhild tried to flee by taking to the air.
For a Demon King to show his back and run from the hero was something that must never happen, but right now Reinhild didn’t have the confidence to cast magic at Xion.
“Kh— hak!”
The instant he turned his body, something seemed to snag his ankle and yank him down, and Reinhild crashed straight into the ground.
He tumbled roughly two and a half times along the dirt before coming to a stop.
Fortunately, he hadn’t been flying high, so the impact wasn’t severe.
But too much had happened in too short a time for him to make sense of any of it.
Lifting his dazed head, he met eyes with the mage standing at the hero’s side.
Feeling the aura of mana from the hand stretched toward him, he realized the mage had used a binding spell.
Only then did he understand why the hero had left the other companions behind and brought only the mage.
When a sword-wielding hero and a magic-using Demon King clash, the sword is at a disadvantage.
From the start, they’d meant to use the mage to close the distance between Demon King and hero.
So the hero could point his blade a little more easily.
‘…How foolish.’
Reinhild’s face flushed more from shame than anger.
The hero was serious about this fight.
He had come here sincerely intending to subdue the Demon King.
And yet there he’d been, waiting for the hero without knowing anything, even happy to think the mage had been brought to treat him. He felt like an idiot.
Seeing the hero take a step closer, Reinhild sprang to his feet and swept his arm.
A towering wall of fire roared up to block his front.
At the same time, a pain like a sharp poke stabbed his heart.
He’d thought he was fully recovered, but the more he used mana, the worse his condition became.
In this state, he would struggle not only against the hero but even against the mage at his side.
‘This won’t do.’
As bad luck would have it, other demons and monsters had moved their dwellings to the back side of the castle, so there was no help to be had.
Had even the arson that drove them to relocate been part of the plan?
Thinking that, the anger that had been directed at himself a moment ago shifted to Xion.
‘From beginning to end… there isn’t a single thing that isn’t a lie.’
Clenching his teeth against the surge of emotion, Reinhild gathered mana in his hands. Even trying to use a little mana made his heart hurt, so he couldn’t cast anything big.
For now, he needed to focus on escaping this place.
The best option would be a binding spell to immobilize the two humans for a moment, but given how unstable his mana was, a simple, high-power attack spell was better than one demanding delicate control.
Among attack spells, the one with the least mana drain and the strongest power was, of course, fire.
He wanted to rain down Hellfire, but his fiercely thudding heart screamed that he mustn’t.
‘Then I’ll set the demonic energy ablaze and make it explode.’
Just as the hero had set off holy flames here.
He’d already prepared everything he needed to raise the wall of fire.
Rising a little higher to brace against the hero’s attack, Reinhild hurled a sphere of gathered mana packed with miasma.
KWHOOOOM—!
The wall of fire blocking the hero and his companion swelled as if to swallow the two humans whole.
As the demonic energy combusted and spread through the air, the hero would be forced to retreat.
For a party blessed by the god, dense demonic energy would be fatal.
If luck had it accumulate in their hearts, they would feel a crushing tightness, so suffocating they could hardly breathe…
‘…Huh?’
As Reinhild followed his train of thought, a sense of wrongness pricked him.
The symptoms he’d just listed were all ones he himself was experiencing.
Which meant…
‘Holy-power intoxication…!’
Grimacing, Reinhild clutched his chest.
He had finally discovered the true cause of the pain squeezing his heart.
Why was he only realizing it now?
When he’d been confined to the castle, the butler had warned him over and over to be careful, but perhaps he’d let it go in one ear and out the other—why worry about it already when there was no hero yet?
He’d failed to consider holy-power intoxication, one of the most powerful causes of defeat among past Demon Kings.
The pain like a hand squeezing his heart. The feeling of heat, as if blood were boiling up beneath cold skin. The prickling, aching mana circuits and the sharply reduced total mana reserve.
All of it was due to holy-power intoxication.
And his state was fairly bad. As if he’d been intoxicated for a very long time…
‘Since when? When I was stabbed by the hero’s sword?’
No, the symptoms suggested it had been far earlier.
‘Don’t tell me… when we did mana absorption?’
There had been a time when, like a child’s prank, he and the hero had touched lips, calling it a greeting for when one was hurt.
He had stolen the hero’s mana infused with holy power exactly once, but something that minor wouldn’t cause intoxication.
Perhaps the hero had kept making contact afterward under ridiculous pretexts, infusing him with holy power.
No… that was certainly it.
Otherwise, his body wouldn’t have been this ruined.
He didn’t want to believe it, but now he had no choice.
Hero Rexion West really had been hurting Reinhild.
He had truly been trying to kill him.
“Ha… hahaha…”
Past astonishment, a hollow emptiness washed over him.
Time spent with the hero flashed through his mind unbidden.
Realizing that every last one of those moments had been groundwork to kill him made everything feel futile.
At the same time, a fierce desire to live flared up.
By no means did he want to die at the hero’s hand, just as the hero wished.
Before the fire laced with miasma died out, Reinhild twisted his body to flee.
Just then, something came hurtling in at tremendous speed and struck Reinhild in the back.
It was a fist-sized stone.
They weren’t shooting a bird from the sky. Trying to take down the Demon King with a mere rock? It felt like mockery, and he burned with resentment.
But before Reinhild could vent his anger at it, the holy power wrapped around the stone instantly spread over his body.
“Aaaaaagh!”
Racked by pain that slammed his whole body, Reinhild cried out and fell to the ground once more.
As the tightening in his chest choked him, blood surged up and spilled out.
“Hah— h-huff… ha…”
Fortunately, perhaps because the amount of holy power he’d contacted was small, he settled down quickly.
As Reinhild caught his breath through the pain, Xion slowly approached. Seeing him unscathed, it seemed the Demon King’s dying struggle had inflicted no damage whatsoever on the hero.
A futile battle.
It hardly even counted as a fight. From start to finish, Reinhild had danced in the palm of the hero’s hand.
Truly, it had been so short and simple that one could hardly call it a battle between Demon King and hero.
You deceived me for a long time just to make this moment today so simple.
His heart hurt terribly.
He was in agony; he was resentful.
“…”
The hero said nothing and stood before Reinhild.
He wished he would at least mock him an ask how it felt to have been duped all along. Anything but just stand there looking at him as if he were nothing. He wanted to be sneered at, wounded, cursed.
Even the hero’s subdued gaze constricted Reinhild’s breath.
More than death itself, Xion’s eyes on him hurt his heart worse.
This pain was a little different from that caused by holy-power intoxication. But there was no time to decide what it was.
In the end, as if giving up on everything, Reinhild slowly closed his eyes.
The hero did not speak a word, even at the very last moment.
Looking down at Reinhild, who was lying on the ground, face gone cold, the hero slowly raised the hero’s sword.
❖ ❖ ❖
Rein, Reinhild.
My precious Demon King.
Xion cried out again and again in his heart.
While controlling himself so that none of it showed outwardly.
Facing Reinhild’s face twisted with resentment, he was seized by the urge to pull him into his arms and explain that it wasn’t so.
If he hadn’t been continuously suppressing his emotions by steady mana injection, as agreed with the mage, he surely would have done just that.
‘Please wait just a little, Rein.’
Xion swallowed every word he wanted to say.
Even if he wanted to explain, he couldn’t.
Because the gods would be watching all of this.
This plan had to proceed without any information being conveyed to Reinhild.
Thud—!
The hero’s sword…
Xion’s sword… pierced Reinhild’s heart.
Leave a Reply