Chapter 7: Superbia, Part 2: At least leave it Supreme
The Demon World.
Where the strong are respected more than anything, Demons work to fulfill their desires, and Lords fight and steal over the limited resources.
Without any debate, it’s all worthless.
Greed
Lust
Wrath
Gluttony
Envy
Pride
And… Sloth.
I have but one goal.
While training, Overruling and struggling, I understood it clearly.
The territory increases. The magic I wear increases. My Pride Tree advances.
As if mowing down grassroots, a simple task.
Demons of course, as well as Heavenly Assassins, and occasionally foolish warriors who come from the outside world to subjugate a Demon Lord.
Everything yielded to me. To my power. And my master’s power.
My basic abilities were high from the start.
There’s no way that one made by the Lord of Sloth, who’s basically just a lump of power, could be weak.
And I repeatedly trained.
I forged my own power. Physical power, magic, wisdom, leadership. To eliminate the million to one chance of me tasting defeat because of some foolish reason.
That was my first goal, and the primary factor that increased my power with Pride at the base.
Other Lords’ desires are fragile when compared to my lord’s Sloth.
Like a flying arrow, time passed.
Eventually, a castle was made.
Around the house too small to be called a house my Master lived in, ramparts extended for miles.
The tower built in the center pierced even the heavens.
Named the Castle of Shadows, the Lord of Sloth’s bedroom boasted an overwhelming width and majesty that surpassed the castles of any kind of Demon Lord.
My Master’s castle. I’m not satisfied. If he’s the man who will stand over me even if it be temporarily, a castle of this extent isn’t enough.
Demons gathered.
The Demons that yielded, the Demons I forced to yield.
I led the useless rabble, and put an army in order. Supreme soldiers that would surpass any Demon Lord’s armies.
As time passed, they came to be famous.
Leigie of Sloth’s Strongest Legion.
Even if I didn’t force them to submit personally, foolish Demons who lowered their own heads at us gathered.
Their numbers increased, and the army grew. First Brigade, Second Brigade, Third Brigade.
But no matter what Demon came in, none of them could even reach my feet.
Weak. Much too weak.
Even without me 『Overruling』 them, they had Overruled themselves, and they were all too weak to amount to an enemy of me.
Unlosing and absolute.
I have no losses, and as such, my master has never faced defeat either.
The more I defeated, the higher I rose, the more the years passed, the stronger my power became.
A Pride Demon’s strength is proportional to their battle experience.
Strength is the proof of having overcome. To those you’ve defeated once, you’ll never lose again.
The more you learn, the more you understand, the more distant defeat seems.
The more the years go by, the further defeat becomes. No matter how much desire they pile up, I haven’t fallen low enough to lose to any young Demon. I accumulate absolute confidence in myself.
… But at the same time, that means I’m granting time to the Lord of Sloth.
Eventually, the Great Demon King came, seeking our surrender.
Unlike the definite gap between Demon and Demon Lord, the Great Demon King is simply the title given to the Demon Lord in possession of the greatest territory.
But the fact that they lead such great forces within this Demon World means they have desires to that great of an extent.
I met him. My Lord did not have to go out.
The Sin this King governed was Pride. A Demon like me with Overruling as his foundation. And at the same time, his goal was subjugating the Demon World. Putting the warring Demon World in order, and leading it, he would take in the world above, and even the Heavens. A man with large ambition unbefitting his level of power.
After seeing him with my own eyes, I concluded. He wasn’t anything special.
At the point I met him, I 『Overruled』 that King. Meaning he was no match for Leigie of Sloth.
It seems it’s been a long time since he first came to be, but the King was foolish, and he didn’t even reach my level. In the end, he was just a Demon Lord that was slightly competent.
If I make him yield, will my Master’s position rise?
It was a useless notion. For a Demon Lord of this level, there’s not even any worth in annihilating him.
As A Demon Lord of Pride, if I make him submit, his power level will fall. There’s not even any use in taking him into the army…
My Master’s depraved state simply continued to deepen.
His authority doesn’t grow in the slightest, but his power alone continued to grow, and that form was truly befitting a Lord of all Demons.
I ask him Questions.
He always returns the usual response.
No matter how many years pass, it never changes from those two words.
The Great Demon King requested a meeting with my Master.
And after they met, he lost his power, and the Demon King seat shifted.
It was too great of a gap between him and a fellow Demon Lord. The will of the transcendent being that merely laid around like a rock was incomprehensible to those around him.
The Great Demon King changed. It changed time and again.
In the end, the Demon World never showed signs of unification.
Demon Lords are born, and Demon Lords die.
The names of famous Heroes change, as they continually try and invade the Demon World.
A large-scale invasion was launched by Heaven. A Large majority of the Demons died out.
… But the Castle of Shadows continued to sleep.
My Master continues to live in his slumber. Never moving, and with that, his power continued to grow. To a height no Demon or Demon Lord would ever reach.
At the same time, the one born from him, my power continues to rise. Without me being able to fulfill the long-cherished desire of my Pride.
The Lord of Sloth who can’t be scratched at all.
The Doll born from his skill is peerless.
Over months and years, the dolls he made to kill time scattered across the entire Demon World. Without knowing their master’s name, those Dolls simply moved across foreign batttlefields.
Leigie the Depraved eventually came to be known as Leigie of the 『Slaughterdolls』.
By the merits of the original body.
A clan of Demons in service to my Master sprung up. I can’t comprehend them. But let it be so.
For my master, having a clan like that isn’t bad. No, it’s natural for there to be one.
Inspectors from the Black Order start to be dispatched.
Let it be so. Observe my Master however you like. In the end, people with your lowly level of power won’t be able to scratch Leigie the Depraved.
Subordinates die. They die one after another, and our personnel continues to shift.
By a small bit of negligence, the man that was my right hand died. A foolish one. There can be no negligence on the battlefield.
Even without old age, there are many casualties among Demons with the natural instinct for battle.
Demon Lords famed for their strength are done in by other Demon Lords, and the weak climb up the ranks to Lordship.
All that prospers must decay.
Enemies and allies, one after another, faces continue to change. Information about various Demons and Lords flood the library, and a second, and a third library are built.
A majority of them are ones I Overruled long ago, unnecessary documents.
Once a year, the symbol carved on the wall fills the room, and covers the hallways.
I taste the feeling of being a rock.
All that doesn’t change is my Master’s existence, and the Demon World’s pale blue moon.
Even still, I’m no match. I can’t see the end.
I selected Demons of Sloth, and launched attacks.
Most of them were normal Demons. They were nothing to talk about. They didn’t use any skills worth noting.
No matter how many decades, centuries, millennia pass, another Demon Lord of Sloth doesn’t rise.
Are they resting somewhere under the earth somewhere like Leigie the Depraved was?
Or could it be that Sloth Demons are simply not reaching Demon Lord status?
That is left unknown.
Heaps of bodies, streams of blood.
It’s become troublesome to even count the number of Demon Corpses that have piled up, but the impact I felt when I first saw Leigie of Sloth never dulls, no matter how much of an eternity goes by.
Inferiority. That is a 『Superbia』 Demon’s greatest enemy.
Even more months pass.
Information gathers. I polish myself. I repel enemy seeds.
By the time I realized it, there was plenty of prey out there, but no one to be my enemy.
As long as there’s no one for me to Overrule, Pride’s power won’t grow. Pride without its foundations is close to worthless.
I had reached the peak. I master my skills, draw my body to the limit, and hone my magic, but my Pride Tree stops one step before reaching Demon Lord Level.
My final and greatest wall. The wall known as Leigie.
… But that ends today.
Medea’s disposal did not even pose a warmup, let alone a rehearsal.
In the end, she’s just an Invidia, capable of nothing but imitating others.
Trying to imitate my Master’s skill was pure stupidity. For a Sloth Skill with low offensive power, it barely has any power once a Greed or Envy Demon takes and uses it.
I sigh. My soul and my gear have been raised to top class. Even the hazy combat experience from the corners of my mind have surely accumulated in a place I don’t know about.
I open the door.
Because it was frequently burned up by that lass Kanon’s subordinate, the often changing room had been renewed. It gave off a faint lewd smell.
While I knew this beforehand, while he should have sensed my presence already, Father doesn’t raise a single word, or stir a single inch.
He slept still as if he were dead.
You sure have fallen… Leigie the Depraved.
You used a skill just to help a single lowly maid.
On top of personally going to battle, you got a scratch from the likes of Zebul.
Moreover, you left yourself to be defiled.
Your recent acts have been much too wretched for my Master.
… No, perhaps it’s about time for you.
It really has been a long time. A stupidly long one.
And Father is supposed to have experienced an even longer time alive. Even if I pile up all my experience, I cannot predict them.
Right now, how many are there out there who know the same Demon World as you?
The magic I feel from his body is immense.
Even if you grouped together all the average Demon Lords, they won’t be a match. But I had a definite understanding.
… Leigie the Depraved is weakening.
A rare sight in the thousands, tens of thousands of years I’ve spent with him.
He went against the 『Acedia』 he governes.
All of it is… as expected.
The more time a 『Sloth』 spends in sloth, the more powerful they get. Contrarily, the more they decide to move of their own volition, the more their power will drop.
I stand by the bed. On my master’s face, with his eyes closed as if he were dead, I see nothing besides nihility.
I take up his limp hand. In his bony fingers in which I can’t even feel the T of Training, his white transparent corpse-like skin had light blue blood vessels running across.
“Father… it’s been many years, hasn’t it.”
“…”
Leigie doesn’t give a response. But I can tell.
Father isn’t sleeping right now. To the Lord of Sloth, whether he be awake or asleep, everything is but an ephemeral dream.
As such, I continued on.
It really was our first conversation in a long time.
You’ve fallen, in a way appropriate for me to call a disappointment. Leigie-sama likely has no interest in the reason, though.
In the first place, this was something inevitable since the moment I was born here, long, long ago.
Father is a sharp man. While he governs Sloth, he also has parts in him aside from it.
That is the clear difference between him and other Sloth Demons, and that’s likely the main reason Leigie of Sloth was able to live perpetually.
I have much that I want to say, but I don’t need words.
Of how I increased his followers, and made them the greatest power in the Great Demon Lord’s army.
Of how he foiled countless assassinations from Heaven, and had those assassins fall to Demonhood.
Of how, while still sleeping, he repelled a raid launched by a dozen Human Heroes.
Of how the former Great Demon King’s daughter, that little girl who didn’t even harbor any desires, Kanon, rose up to be the Great Demon King.
Of how I amassed tens of thousands of deaths, and being separated from the flow of time.
Of how not a single Demon Lord from when I was created still remain.
Of how friends, companions, enemies died, new ones were born, only to die as well.
With no emotion, and ignorant to the passing of time, father was a perfect Depraved King by nature.
And having been born from the Supreme Demon Lord, I can be nothing but the strongest Demon Lord myself.
Next to father, I get down on one knee, and lower my head.
This is resolve. Today, I will become a Demon Lord, and never taste defeat for the rest of my life. No, even if I am to be defeated…
… The kneeling is unnecessary.
But this is the only compensation I can give father as the Prideful Kaiser, Heard Lauder.
“You’ve done enough. Let me bring an end to it. While this may sound arrogant, I will see to your end personally.”
“… I see.”
… So at least stay Supreme until you fall, Leigie the Depraved.