Ch.188Demon King (1)

*

The door was open.

As Sylvia placed both hands on the door and stepped forward one step at a time, the massive door yielded without resistance despite its size, revealing the room it had been concealing.

Before she knew it, Sylvia’s feet were stepping on the marble floor that distinguished itself from the corridor.

Thanks to the door opening so quietly that not even a creak could be heard, the sound of her footsteps on that hard, cold floor echoed unnervingly loud.

“…”

Sylvia silently pushed the door open as if flinging it away, then instantly drew the sword at her waist.

In her straight-backed silhouette as she faced forward, there was no longer any trace of the fear or tension—those weak emotions—that had been visible just moments ago.

There was only a refined coldness that seemed to prove with her entire being that she was humanity’s final bulwark chosen to kill the Demon King, a specialist in slaying magical beasts.

And a rough-textured anger that seemed no less intense than that of Sister Alice.

“It’s here.”

Sylvia muttered briefly.

Even without a subject, I could understand perfectly what she meant.

I tried my best to ignore the sensation of goosebumps rising all over my body, but there was nothing I could do about the cold sweat suddenly pouring out and my throat drying up to the point of stinging.

Sylvia slowly moved her steps forward.

As she had asked, I followed her into that large room, keeping some distance behind her.

I considered asking Pia to go ahead and hide, but decided against it.

If the Demon King was a spirit mage, he would be able to see Pia too, so I judged it unreasonable to try using a spirit’s characteristic invisibility to others’ eyes as we had with Balder.

I walked slowly forward with Pia close by my side.

And immediately frowned, shaking my head slightly.

“Ugh,”

Different.

From the texture of the air, I could immediately tell something was different.

It felt like a vast wasteland without even a hint of breeze…

No, it was more than that.

It wasn’t just that no wind was blowing; it was as if the air in this room wasn’t moving at all.

Despite opening that large door and advancing with thick, solid iron-plated boots and leather shoes striking the hard floor, not a single speck of dust could be seen dancing in the moonlight streaming through the window.

Slowly, something came into view over Sylvia’s shoulder as we moved forward.

In the center of the marble room adorned with luxurious decorations, a large, writhing peach-colored sphere was floating in the air.

I muttered quietly.

“…What is that?”

The sphere had a diameter larger than the height of a human, and its surface was covered with thin blue lines, densely but faintly etched all over.

It looked like a tangled mess of blue cobwebs, or perhaps like blood vessels pulsating inside the sphere.

Around the sphere, dark and murky magical energy was so thick that even my dull eyes could see it, and that energy hung in the motionless air as if printed in midair.

My eyes hurt.

A stinging pain spread from the tip of my nose to the depths of my lungs.

This sensation was clearly due to that dense magical energy, but it was also partly the primal fear of a weak human facing death.

When I tore Balder apart alive, when I burned my sister.

No, even before that, when I burned the resurrected Layla to death with my own hands, or when I killed all those innocent people because of a curse.

I’ve experienced plenty of terrible things in my life and seen horrific scenes several times, but I could instinctively feel that this flesh-like sphere before my eyes at this moment was the most terrible and hideous thing I had ever witnessed in my life.

Every time the sphere twitched irregularly to some steady beat, I felt a chill run down my spine.

Then Sylvia quietly spoke.

“It’s an egg.”

“…An egg?”

That hideous meat sphere is an egg?

Then what could possibly be inside it?

Ha, a question that didn’t need asking.

Him.

The Demon King.

The Demon King must be sleeping inside that monstrosity.

Sylvia gripped her sword handle firmly and said:

“This is good.”

“…What is?”

“We’ve made it to his inner chamber, and he’s still sleeping inside the egg… It means the Demon King hasn’t fully recovered his power yet.”

“…Is that… so?”

“…”

Sylvia, keeping her gaze fixed forward, extended one arm back toward me.

A signal to stop.

“Let’s find out.”

With those words, Sylvia briefly bent her knees and lowered her upper body, then instantly shot forward.

It almost looked as if she had been launched from the solid ground.

Like an arrow shot, Sylvia rushed forward in the blink of an eye and sliced the floating sphere in the center of the room with a single stroke.

From the halved sphere, a grotesque yellowish mass of flesh flowed out, splashing onto the floor.

Sylvia, landing on the floor, shook off the residue on her sword and immediately raised her head to glare at the sphere.

The sphere remained floating in the air, split in half.

“…”

Surprisingly, nothing happened.

There was no scream, no torn corpse pouring out.

Only that slimy yellowish liquid was oozing out, emitting a foul smell.

Sylvia stared at the cocoon warily, watching for any developments, and I too looked at the sphere while covering my nose with my sleeve.

Eventually, the halved sphere smoothly rejoined, then began to writhe with even larger and stronger contractions than before.

Sylvia cursed while maintaining her guard.

“What’s about to happen, you damn lizard?”

“…Wait.”

At that moment, I strangely felt that this sight was somehow familiar.

For reasons I couldn’t explain, looking at the writhing egg of the Demon King made images of the Goldfield domain flash through my mind.

Goldfield.

A prosperous domain famous for its vast agricultural lands.

Most of its territory was farmland, and most of its residents were farmers.

Its finances were stable, but it didn’t have developed bustling areas like the capital where the Academy was located or the city where the Papal See existed.

Because of that, I grew up like a country boy in my childhood.

I would run out to play in the mountains or fields, and when I returned to my small wooden house, I would take long naps in the shade of the large tree visible from the window.

Why?

Why am I suddenly reminded of those memories?

“…Ah,”

I had seen it in my childhood.

I had definitely seen something similar to that hideous sphere before.

I muttered:

“It’s not an egg…”

“What?”

Thinking about it, that made sense.

No matter how powerful the Demon King was, he couldn’t possibly be alive with his head completely severed.

If the Demon King could survive intact, he should have recovered instantly like Sister Alice.

But such abnormal regeneration and recovery is the power of the Goddess, which demons cannot use.

They might somehow avoid death, but they cannot instantly regenerate their bodies like Sister Alice.

In other words, the Demon King was definitely defeated by Sylvia.

How could such a Demon King recover his body again?

Perhaps because of the derogatory “lizard” term Sylvia always used, I had a silly image in my head of a new body sprouting from the Demon King’s severed neck.

But that wasn’t it.

“A cocoon…”

The method the Demon King chose was more similar to that of an insect than a lizard.

And the fact that the cocoon was writhing so violently meant…

“Sylvia, you need to keep cutting it!”

“…?”

“That’s not an egg, it’s a cocoon. Sylvia! That foul-smelling liquid that just flowed out is the Demon King’s body!”

It wasn’t a matter of forcibly reattaching the severed head to the body, nor was the body sprouting from the head or the head from the body.

He put the severed head and body into that sphere, dissolved them, and was reconstructing his body.

That was the method of resurrection the Demon King had chosen.

That’s why the Demon King had been lying low for so long.

The cocoon was writhing violently.

It meant the time for hatching was near.

Sylvia immediately leaped up with her sword.

Because of her platinum blonde hair and silver armor, the afterimage of her ascent flashed like a beam of white light.

A flash of light instantly flying toward the cocoon.

However, that flash stopped abruptly in front of the cocoon.

Sylvia looked surprised at her suddenly halted body.

It didn’t take long for her to realize that a thin, long arm that had emerged from the bottom of the cocoon, from a blind spot beyond her field of vision, was grabbing her leg.

The arm pulled Sylvia’s leg downward with a limp movement.

Sylvia plunged headfirst onto the ground.

“Sylvia!”

I ran toward her.

Sylvia, who had hit her head on the marble floor and was bleeding profusely, staggered to her feet and shouted:

“Don’t come!”

I stopped abruptly as she said.

At that moment, Pia spoke to me.

“Ash, above.”

Pia was pointing at the cocoon.

Following Pia’s finger, I saw that thin, pale arm slowly pulling open the cocoon.

“Ugh,”

My heart pounded heavily.

I felt a pain like sandpaper scraping the inside of my body.

It was a familiar pain I had felt before.

The pain of my body being destroyed by magical energy.

The holy power that Sister Alice had left me was still there, but it seemed the dense magical energy was breaking down my body faster.

Perhaps if I were an ordinary person without holy power, I might have died instantly from the magical energy alone.

I clutched my chest and carefully exhaled.

Sylvia wiped away the blood that kept obscuring her vision and gripped her sword again.

And watching her, red eyes quietly glowed from between the torn and opened gaps of the cocoon.