episode_0019

“I, I finished everything…! I, I did well. Leah…?”

“All kill order, completed.”

As the elves’ screams and lives began to die down, Han and Hira came up and calmly announced the end.

The sound of light footsteps can be this light. With light steps, I slowly descended down the World Tree with Abel’s help, and then threw Nia to the ground.

“Now unmask me, Abel.”

“…Ah, ahhh… ahhh…”

Even though the blocked mouth was released, no words of wisdom were heard, and Nia sobbed while hugging the corpses of her kind and the World Tree.

The elf named Elder still had a place to go, so he dragged Nia to sit next to him.

No, it would be a bit misleading to say that I dragged him. I don’t know what his intentions were, but he obediently followed the direction I was dragging him. Otherwise, I would have had to lend him a hand.

The grip on the sword Abel had given him was vivid. It was completely different from the feeling he had when he was a warrior, but it was enough to kill an elf.

“Lastly… I’ll give you one more test.”

“What are you trying to do again…!! Leave me alone now!”

Nia tried to push me away, swearing. Her attempt was blocked in vain by Abel.

“There will be only one elf left alive here. Do you understand what I mean?”

Either you live or that elder lives. How selfish is yours? The answer came to me faster than I thought.

“…Kill me. Nia still has a long life ahead of her, but this old man-”

“Me…! I’ll live. Please save me…!! Shit, I have to live anyway…!! We still have feelings for each other… Save me..!!”

The reactions were mixed. The old elf, the elder, calmly closed his eyes and accepted death, while Nia grabbed my leg and hung on, even bringing up events from the past.

-Pfft!

I kicked Nia, who was hanging on my leg. Unfortunately, she was hit and flew away, but did not roll away.

“Ugh… Ugh…”

“Personally, I wanted the two of them to fight and get ugly.”

Still, my heart was purified after seeing Nia’s ugly appearance until the end.

Mainly, it meant that now that I had seen all the way to the bottom, I felt more comfortable swinging my sword without hesitation.

There was no sympathy to begin with.

-Phew.

Leah’s sword pierced Nia’s stomach like the one in Uncle Tong’s game.

“…Ah- Aaaah …

“That’s right- I was going to kill you no matter what you said in the first place.”

I had to raise my voice quite a bit to avoid being drowned out by Nia’s screams, but it wasn’t that hard. My voice was already rising naturally in the joy of revenge.

” Aah!! Aaaah- ugh… Ah, ugh…”

-Phuk, slurp. Phew, phuk.

I tried stabbing a sword into my vocal cords, lowering the sword all the way to my stomach, stabbing a sword into my arm, and stabbing a sword into my leg.

“…Ah, uh, ah…”

-Pok, pok. Phew, phew.

Even as the fountain of blood soaked me, I continued to thrust my sword repeatedly until Nia’s screams stopped.

-…Thud.

Until Gearconia’s head drops and her breath stops.

There was no sympathy. Nia had done too much first.

The mangled corpse was staring at me with wide-open eyes, as if cursing me.

But so what?

No matter how long I have left to live, or if I am stricken with mistrust of humanity…

“Leah, what are you doing there?”

“Teabagging.”

Because there are people waiting for days like this.

I will absolutely be happy, even if I have to lie to myself.

I held Abel’s hand and walked toward the setting sun.

Hira and Han waved their hands to greet us, while being backlit.

“Let’s go back.”

For dinner tonight, I wanted to eat a warm soup like my mother used to make.

And now, there was no longer an elf who treated me like a slave, demanding every meal of gourmet salad that would be difficult for anyone but the middle class or rich to afford, and instead, if I wanted soup, there was a demon lord right next to me who would storm into the cafeteria and change the menu for the day.

“…Hug me.”

Even when I throw a tantrum like this, they just accept it without saying anything.

My legs might have been a little sore, but I was held in Abel’s arms.

Well, it was warmer than I expected.

The warrior who knew nothing now knows the price of salad.

And the soup might not taste like the memories Leah knew, but it would taste like new memories.

*****

“Leah? What’s that in your hand…”

As soon as I brought the alcohol from the kitchen, Abel asked me a question.

“Alcohol. I want to try putting it in soup.”

There’s also a soup with pasta noodles, so how could this not taste good? Since I’ve already settled one enemy, I wanted to eat more of what I wanted today.

“Was there any alcohol left? I finished all the alcohol left.”

“Ah, go… Galbain said he bought it…’ Anyway, the Demon King’s cooldown will end soon, so if I don’t tie him up with Leah, I’ll just have to look for corruption, and if I do that, I’ll end up messing around here and there, and I’ll get caught for permanently moving some of the reagents and chests, and then I’ll have to go to the casino to make up for the lost money, which is annoying,’ he said… ”

…Hira? Didn’t you just get caught? The secret (embezzlement) that the Four Heavenly Kings tried to hide by even doing errands for you? What kind of grudge did you really have…

“Oh, thank you. Hira. Galvein, you know? Read the book of grimoire… …You weren’t there? ”

“Oh, oh, oh… I was going to Dironga… I…predicted that I’d get caught… at the casino, s…cheating… No, I guess he was trying to practice mental magic to read the opponent’s… mind… right…?”

…Now that I think about it, I haven’t eaten yet.

Suddenly, when Abel realized that his soup (although I had added alcohol to my soup) was getting cold and he hadn’t even touched it, I thoughtlessly scooped up a spoonful of soup with the spoon I was eating it with, and then picked out a particularly large piece of meat from the garnish and placed it on top.

It was undeniably a series of actions that were quite elaborate, and where the spoon went was-

“Abel, I’m sorry I’m in a meeting about something important, but can you open your mouth for a second?”

“?”

As Abel opened his mouth obediently, expressing his curiosity, I quietly put the spoon in his mouth.

“! …!! !!!”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say, but eat and talk. If you do it while starving, I’ll worry again.”

Abel looked as if he was about to say something, but then realized the food in his mouth, chewed it, swallowed it, and spoke.

“…This is an indirect kiss…”

“?! Oh, oh, no…!”

I, I was just trying to take care of you for real this time…! An indirect kiss…?

Leah, whose face turned bright red as a carrot and steam was blowing out of her ears, soon began to flap her hands like a penguin and whimper.

“I… I took care of that for you! Is that all you can think of? I won’t take care of you again!!”

Of course, no one at that table believed that.

Since then, as soon as we finished eating, I would wipe Abel’s mouth with a handkerchief, saying that he would always have something on his mouth.

*****

“Ugh…”

Han Soo-jin was finally able to exhale her breath after they left.

“What… What is this… What the heck…”

The water’s pupils were trembling endlessly, and the brain was unable to understand the current situation.

“Just now, the Demon King… annihilated the elves… airstrike… gasp, ugh.”

I was just thinking about grabbing Leon, or rather Leah, by the leg, but I ended up seeing something on a scale that needed to be reported to the Empire right away. No matter how much I breathed, I couldn’t calm down.

“What I saw… wasn’t a hallucination? Really?”

The charred bark of the World Tree was underfoot. It was the only thing that proved to Su that all of this was not an illusion, and it certainly wasn’t good news.

If all the things he saw weren’t hallucinations, then the last ‘thing’ he saw was also real.

“Why… Why are you making that face in someone else’s arms… You… You should love me as much as I do… You should forgive me…”

Leon, who is smiling happily in the arms of someone other than himself, the Demon King. Leon, who is talking nonchalantly to the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon King’s Army and the traitor who caused my life to fall into the abyss.

“You should know how hard it is for me…!! You said you’d wait for me!!!”

First of all, it was absolutely not something that Su should have said, abandoning Leah. When Su was already blinded by money and turned her back on Leah in the worst situation, such a promise was as good as broken.

However, Su, who had already been pinning his hopes on Leah without even her consent, rationalized it again.

“Haa… Haa… Yeah, it’s all because of the Demon King… Anyway, it’s because of the Demon King… He must’ve brainwashed me or something…!”

He didn’t realize that he was no different from Nia herself in that he shifted responsibility without thinking about his own actions at all. The only difference was whether he shifted the blame to Leah or Abel.

After rationalizing for a while, Soo soon came to the conclusion that he had to report first, no matter what.

I shook my head with all my might, trying to erase Leah’s happy smile from my mind.

*****

“Galvein, what’s the situation there?”

“You’ve recently wiped out the Elf Forest. And I think you’re starting to suspect me, too.”

“Because of absolute loyalty?”

“Yes. Please make the restrictions a little lighter-”

“If you add up all the things you stole, it’s equivalent to several years of wealth of an upper class person in the demon world, right?”

“…Khuh-hum.”

Galvein and someone were talking in a deserted back alley.

Someone was standing on top of the wooden crates stacked high, with jet-black hair flowing down from the boxes and blue eyes darting around.

“Up until now, you’ve done very well as I told you. Now, if you just do this, I’ll take care of the rest.”

“What should I do, Your Majesty?”

Sigh, someone who was laughing very familiarly said in a self-deprecating tone.

“Not anymore. Anyway… This is my last request.”

Black leather boots clacked against the ground with each step.

“Make me a very, very, very, very strong core. As fuel… enough to hold one ‘Demon King’. And also…”

Her blue eyes, hidden in the veil of night and plotting a scheme, stopped rolling and turned their gaze towards the direction of the Demon King’s castle.

The blue horns and uniform shone in the soft evening moonlight.