Ch.189Demon King (2)

There was no time to hesitate.

I immediately fired a spell directly at the opening in the cocoon.

Believing that Pia would handle the finer adjustments, I quickly chanted a spell formula focused solely on power and speed.

The powerful fireball that erupted from my hand flew toward the cocoon like lava shooting into the air.

But the fireball never reached the cocoon.

Countless flying insect-like creatures appeared from somewhere, surrounding the cocoon protectively, intercepting the fireball and falling to the ground.

“…Damn it, what are those things now?”

Silvia, who had fallen to the floor, rolled away from beneath the cocoon to avoid the falling fireball.

She quickly got to her feet and said while watching the flying insects with confused eyes:

“Be careful, Ash. This doesn’t look good.”

“Silvia, were these flying insects around the Demon King when you came before?”

“No… I’ve never seen them.”

Silvia kept her gaze fixed on the cocoon as she slowly walked toward me and said:

“Flying insects… Is that what they look like to you?”

I focused my attention on the flying insects.

Indeed, upon closer inspection, these creatures looked very different from ordinary insects.

No, they weren’t just different from insects—they didn’t resemble any living creature in this world.

These bizarre life forms, ranging in size from a thumb to a palm, looked like human heads with skin torn apart haphazardly.

However, where there should have been holes for eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, there were densely grown spines and protrusions, which intertwined with each other and flapped like large wings.

If I were to describe what I saw, I could only call them small spheres of flesh erratically rotating and flying around by frantically flapping their seven or so grotesque wings.

But not wanting to voice such a disturbing description, I shook my head slightly and said:

“Looking closely, they’re not really insects, but I can’t explain what they are. They’re just incredibly disgusting. You can see for yourself.”

“Actually, to my eyes, they just look like blurry bubbles of air…”

“…What?”

“Like Pia.”

“…!”

Only after hearing Silvia’s words did I realize the true identity of these bizarre creatures.

“Are they spirits?”

“Yes.”

Pia nodded in response to my muttered question.

I was slightly shocked by Pia’s calm voice.

The only spirits I had ever met were Pia and the Green Lady, so I had never once imagined that spirits could take such grotesque forms.

In fact, since spirits are closer in nature to the natural world itself, it might be only natural that they appear in forms unrelated to human common sense or aesthetic sensibilities.

But still…

The bizarre appearance and movements of these spirits surrounding the Demon King’s cocoon were so creepy and grotesque that they raised goosebumps upon goosebumps.

“What kind of spirits are those…”

“I don’t know either, Ash.”

Pia spoke softly, shaking her head.

As always, despite being a spirit herself, Pia knew almost nothing about spirits.

She didn’t even know much about herself beyond being my guardian spirit, and the spirit arts she had taught me were merely explained through her own instincts and senses.

But now wasn’t the time to lament that fact.

I said to Pia:

“It’s fine, that doesn’t matter now. Let’s just hit it with another—”

That’s when it happened.

“…!”

“Ugh!”

“…ha,”

Pia, myself, and Silvia.

All of us standing on the floor in this room simultaneously hunched our bodies.

A chilling sensation, like icy needles severing each nerve along the spine one by one, spread throughout our bodies.

Though I had never felt such a sensation before, I could clearly understand what it was.

Terror.

It was closer to witnessing the pure source of fear itself, rather than the fear that results from mediators like death or pain.

A massive tremor that I had never felt before but was too clear to ignore ran through my entire body.

My whole being could feel with terrible clarity that within the fluttering of those disgusting chaotic spirit swarms, in the gaps of that writhing, terrible cocoon, the dimness of a dawn where the sun would never rise and the chill of a nightmare that would never be forgotten were thrashing about miserably.

“Sil… via…”

The demonic energy piercing my lungs clawed sharply at my chest, and tears flowed from my wide-open eyes.

Through my blurry vision, clouded with moisture, I could see the flying insects surrounding the cocoon slowly sinking to the floor.

No, more precisely, something was crushing the insects as it slowly descended.

Like someone with their ankles trapped in frozen mud, I stood frozen in place, fervently watching that terrifying scene.

Even Pia had stiffened with her ears and tail fur standing straight up, looking almost like someone about to be struck by lightning with static electricity.

Only Silvia could move her legs and raise her voice amidst that tidal wave of fear.

Perhaps no one else could have done so.

“Damn it, Ash. Run away right now!”

“…”

“Snap out of it! Run, I said!”

Silvia’s cry was almost a scream.

But despite her desperate shout, I quietly shook my head and remained rooted to the spot.

Of course, it wasn’t some noble power of love keeping me from leaving her alone.

I simply couldn’t move.

I couldn’t take even a single step.

“Ash!”

The room felt like a giant water tank.

Silvia’s cries reached me muffled, not striking my eardrums forcefully, and the fear filling the room like water in a tank pressed down on me.

Under the weight of that fear, I couldn’t muster the strength to move.

“…Damn it all.”

Silvia cursed and stood in front of me, gripping her sword.

What would happen next was obvious.

The Demon King would appear.

Was she trying to protect me, or did she want to feel my warmth one last time in case of the worst?

Silvia slowly backed up, pressing her back against me to shield me.

But I continued to watch that horrifying scene over Silvia’s shoulder.

Just as instinct tells you it’s foolish to turn your back on a predator, a warning screamed in my mind that I would die the moment I looked away.

“Ah…”

As the flying insects followed the object falling to the floor, the cocoon suspended in the air gradually became visible.

The cocoon was horrifyingly empty.

Whatever was falling to the floor now must have been the contents of that empty cocoon.

Splash.

The sound of something wet hitting the ground echoed throughout the room.

The flying insects gradually revealed the being they had been concealing with their grotesque wing-flapping and scattered in all directions.

This is the end.

We finally faced it.

The natural enemy of humanity and the nightmare of demonkind.

The Demon King.

“…”

The body that finally revealed itself slowly rose, steadying its legs that staggered like a newborn fawn.

Its face had an elongated snout befitting the derogatory name “lizardman,” but it had no eyes or nose—only a small breathing hole at the end of its cylindrical face.

Even that hole repeatedly contracted and expanded, with a madness-tinged red eyeball squirming in and out of it.

Its body, seamlessly connected to that face, was covered with sagging pale skin, and that drooping flesh looked more like moist jelly with no elasticity unlike human skin.

The skinny arms and legs protruding through the slimy skin, and the fingers and toes at their ends were so long and thin that it seemed unstable just standing.

After a moment of shock at its incredibly ugly appearance, I suddenly felt my mind growing distant.

Barely holding onto my consciousness that felt like it might fly away at any moment, I said in a trembling voice:

“That’s… the Demon King…”

Silvia nodded and answered:

“It’s gotten uglier than before, but there’s no doubt. That’s the one.”

“It… didn’t look like this before?”

“Back then, it looked like an ordinary lizardman.”

At Silvia’s words, I looked at that hideous form once more.

The Demon King’s appearance was unnatural.

It was a form that could never be called normal by human standards, or even by demon standards.

That form, which froze my entire body with fear upon its appearance, was slowly adapting to gravity.

“…Then that appearance,”

What could that hideous form mean?

It was unlikely that a lizardman would transform into such a creature just by usurping the Demon King’s position.

Most likely, that terrible appearance was clearly the result of the cocoon it had been in until just now.

“…Ha, looks like reattaching that severed head didn’t go so well, huh?”

Silvia sneered mockingly.

Though her voice contained clear derision aimed at her opponent, I could clearly sense the desperate attempt to overcome fear buried within it.

But at the same time, Silvia’s taunt was also stating an obvious fact.

The fact that the Demon King, whose head had been cut off by Silvia, had somehow survived but lost power and weakened was something the Green Lady herself had told us, so there was no room for doubt.

In other words, that hideous form was probably some kind of error that occurred during the Demon King’s recovery process.

Hearing Silvia’s voice, I too forced myself to gather courage and spoke:

“Pia, get ready.”

Although I was terrified and felt like I might collapse at any moment, I couldn’t run away.

The Demon King had to die.

For humanity, for revenge for Sister Maria, for my parents who were sacrificed for that monster’s revival, for my poor sister Laila who got caught up in this cursed fate, for Sister Alice, and for all the happiness and compensation deserved for Silvia’s entire journey and suffering under this damned curse.

We have to defeat this terror here.

“…”

Despite my body still being frozen stiff, my mind slowly began to work.

Had this monstrosity grown stronger since it was cut by Silvia’s sword in the past?

Or had it weakened, like its unstable appearance suggested?

Silvia seemed to be pondering the same questions.

But no matter how much we both thought about it, we couldn’t glean any useful information from that appearance that defied human common sense.

In the end, there was only one way to find out.

“Can you move?”

“I can’t exactly jump around, but I can use magic.”

“Good, bind its legs, Ash. Even if it’s just for a moment.”

“No problem.”

“That’s right, Ash has gotten stronger.”

Silvia slowly lowered her legs and waist, like a compressed spring ready to burst forth at any moment.

“I’ll give the signal. We go on three.”

Silvia slowly extended her sword arm behind her back.

She seemed to be planning to strike as she charged.

“One, two…”

“Pia,”

“Three!”

As I began to chant my spell, the gust created by Silvia’s kick as she dashed forward made my hair flutter.

*