Volume 2, Chapter 7: Fortis’ Courage, Part 3: I won’t… Lose
Heroes are but weapons.
Once chosen, they were given an expansive amount of Mana, and the ability to turn that into pure destructive Energy. They were human-shaped weapons to turn all creation to ash.
They were the weapon the human race devised to destroy any enemy that stood before them. The Holy Sword was nothing more than one of their methods to carry that out.
By its pure simplicity, it held no weakness, and therefore it had the power to destroy both Light and Dark equally.
The light cleared.
The inside my mouth was parched. Even when I hadn’t died yet, I couldn’t breathe. My throat was blocked up.
“Well, well, well, it seems you’ve still yet to understand…”
“Eh… why…”
After the light was dispelled, what was revealed was Gloria standing with the exact same expression as before.
Her body, and those tattered rags she wrapped around herself as clothes weren’t damaged at all.
That isn’t… possible.
I’m sure it was a direct hit. Gloria hadn’t moved a single step.
A decapitating blow at an unperceivable ungodly speed. That truly was fearsome. Bu this one… far surpassed my prior shock.
Superbia.
Of all a Demon’s Seven sins, it held a high offensive potential, and an overwhelming level of Speed.
If so, then what is with that defensive capability? If I had failed to kill her from too low an output, I could accept it, but…
A single blow with all the power of a Hero… the power that had brought ruin to three Demon Lords before. It’s surely impossible for her to be unscratched. Unthinkable.
… Like this, it’s as if she’s not a Superbia, but a…
『Serge Serenade has Died. Cause of Death: Decapitation』
My mind went white. On the display that suddenly popped up, my response was a beat later than before, but I somehow managed to select YES again.
I revived. Around me spread a vast empty ground. I used my left hand to prop myself up, and rose. There aren’t any followup attacks coming gown on me.
“It looks like you want to ask ‘why,’ Valkyrie.”
Gloria’s expression, her features that had been put in place like a fine work, were slightly bent.
I’m not sure if the reason behind that face of hers was hatred, or perhaps compassion.
“If you had been placed under my charge, I would have trained you up from the ground again… but, you’re not bad, I guess.”
I had let out all the power stored in the sword. A second shot will take some time.
But without even jumping at that opportunity, she let out calm, and knowing words.
No, I doubt she even had to wait for a chance from the start. In the past few minutes, I don’t even know how many tens or hundreds or thousands of times I’ve been killed. That’s how big the difference in power was between us.
I gradually began replenishing my power. The time I need is around ten seconds.
There’s no way a former Angel didn’t know about that, but as I thought, her expression didn’t change.
“Hey, Valkyria. Do you not know of it? No, there’s no way you’re oblivious. The 『Superbia』 authority, the power to 『Overrule』 all things in creation.”
“…!!”
Recharge complete. I concentrated every nerve in my body to fire it off again.
As expected, Gloria showed no signs of dodging. The air distorted, and the destructive energy tore through the wind, as it swallowed up her small body.
But in response to that, all that returned were some disinterested words.
“… So you really don’t get it. There’s no way I’ll be defeated by you. No, it precisely because it’s me, that there’s no reason for me to lose. I don’t even have to dodge. Serge Serenade, why is it that you, a mere 『Valkyrie』, the lowest possible rank of Angel, believe that your attack can get through to a former Saint Lord Class like Gloria Seidthroan?”
I cannot listen. It’s all a fabrication. She’s just trying to break my heart.
But it’s not as if I had a chance to cover my ears, so those words jolted my brain.
But from the battle theory that I had forged over countless experience, I was quickly able to discern her meaning.
『Overrule』
Of course, I knew of it. It was a Pride Demon’s prideful way of dealing with things.
… And it included the power to nullify powers they thought of as beneath them.
“Ah… eh…”
Certainly, if you go by that logic, then all of my attacks would… just be nullified by her Overrule.
“… Eh? Then…”
“Even if you repeated one hundred million attacks, that blade will never reach me.”
With eyes as if she was lecturing an incompetent student, Gloria declared as such.
It wasn’t a problem of output, but of principle.
It was law. Just as water was to flow towards the earth, my attacks were never to get through to this woman.
My vision went dark again.
It wasn’t just an illusion. The message displayed before my eyes was proof of that.
Within that darkness, the floating YES and NO.
All of my attacks will simply fall flat?
I definitely cannot win?
My base attack power, and speed. The effort I piled up, and the power I’d tempered. Our base statuses as Demons and Angels were too far apart. It was hopeless.
After staring at those words for several tens of seconds, I…
Slowly, timidly selected YES.
Light came to my eyes once more. With the same fed-up expression as before, she was there to greet me.
You won’t die? … How incorrigible. Is that courage, or thoughtlessness…“
“…”
That piercing glare, and the feelings of scorn contained in it.
I swallowed up the fear extending from my feet, and the basic fear I felt as a warrior.
… I won’t lose.
My defeat is unthinkable. Impossible. My inability to understand when to give up was the only thing that never lost out.
The moment I became a Hero, I had already resolved myself to swallow down all feelings of loss.
If something of this extent… were to make me accept defeat, I would never have been called to Heaven, nor would I have become a Hero.
My breathing had been cut off for a while. My own tension, and the intimidating air Gloria let out stiffened my body.
Even when I should have fully recovered, I felt it difficult to move.
Within my mouth, I wordlessly encouraged myself.
I had always been fighting alone. No matter how hopeless the challenge, I took them on.
I can win. I won’t lose. There’s no such thing as absolute. Yeah, that’s right. If giving up means death, then I am immortal. I’ll come back no matter how many tens or hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of times it takes. I’ll destroy you.
Serge, you’re strong. Strong. Strong. Stronger than anyone.
Overrule?
That surely is powerful. At Demon Lord Level, overcoming that is close to impossible by normal means.
But there should be some way around it.
No, the very fact that she needs to use Overrule to render my attacks useless means that if she didn’t use it, it would be possible for me to inflict damage on her. That fact I was able to give her a slight cut on my first attack is proof of that.
… With all things taken into account, it’s not like she has defensive capabilities to get out of everything without a scratch.
I’ve a countless number of experiences of having defeated Demons of Pride. I even know their weaknesses.
The countermeasures for Superbia.
The greatest one is… having them feel fear.
As Gloria recognizes me as an existence below her own, I need to give a Skill with an output enough to threaten her, and make her wary.
I licked my dry lips, and got my breath in order. I calmed my pulse, and sharpened my awareness.
Gloria’s unbelievable beautiful eyes of gold continued jeering intently at me.
The emotion within them was contempt. The way one with absolute strength would look down on a lesser being.
I bit my lip, and shut off the incessant ringing of my instincts not to fight the one before me.
I pretended not to notice my fright. I fooled my own heart. All the way to now, that’s how I always fought. Back when I was human, and there henceforth. Fear was my enemy, and my friend.
I clenched the hand holding my sword. What I need is my attack with the highest firepower. An attack with the sword itself would be best.
I stored all my energy into it, and instead of emitting it, I collected it around the edge… I’ll cut her up directly.
Normally, actually hitting her with a swing of this sword would be the most difficult option, but right now, this woman is being negligent.
And in that, there was a small, ridiculously small chance for my victory. And as long as there’s a chance… I won’t break.
But at that moment, the moment where I stepped forward for the sake of that slim piece of hope, Gloria curled her face into a smile.
“Still… that power… even if it isn’t to get through to me, perhaps it may work on that man… but I’ve no time to paint her my colors…”
Gloria’s wings opened up wide.
Those ten appendages were likely the vestiges of back when she was an Angel. Something one wouldn’t find on any ordinary Demon.
They fluttered a little, and her body gently rose into the sky.
“Struggle all you want… just how far will that power of yours go… how far can you prove your recklessness on these lands…”
My thoughts took a turn.
She’s running away. Can my wings catch up?
It’s no good. She’s running away. If I want to kill her, this is my last chance. There’s a high probability the speed of those wings of hers exceeds mine.
There’s no way I can catch her if she takes flight.
Those spread wings of darkness. Unlike when she was an Angel, their form and color had become much more sinister.
I took a step forward. I took to the sky. I kicked the air. I brandished my sword. Gloria’s body moved. My target vanished from my sight. She appeared again ten meters to my side.
It’s no good, I still can’t see her. Even in the air, those movements of hers were still in good health. I have no means to give chase.
She’s running away. No, perhaps I’m the one being spared? They’re both the same.
By the time I noticed it, the words were coming out of my mouth. It wasn’t to buy some time, but out of honest curiosity.
Always alone, I barely let my voice out since coming to the Demon World. The sound I let out after all this time was terribly cracked.
“Wait, Gloria! Please, answer me one thing!”
That Angel was surely one of the brightest stars in the sky.
A single holy Angel, who embraced strong trust from God.
A woman who earned much reverence from her brethren. Enough that, when we never even talked, she remained firm in my memory, a woman whose names wrung across the Heavens.
And why…
“Why are you alive!? I’m certain that you were…”
Without waiting for me to finish, she climbed up higher and higher.
I didn’t follow, but simply looked up, and shouted.
“… felled in a battle against a mighty Demon Lord.”
Gloria Stopped.
In a brief moment, her expression underwent a complete change.
Her eyes were directed at me once more.
“… What?”
… From a crooked smile, to an expressionless face. An expression I had never seen before.
“Demon… Lord…? Felled in… a battle with… a Demon Lord…?”
Her frightened voice rung out higher than the heavens. Her small form blurred.
My breath became short. Those golden eyes appeared before my eyes, and finally, I realized I was being clasped up by the neck.
But the one who had lost their composure wasn’t me… but the woman before me.
Black emotions swirled in the depths of her pupils. Disorder, or perhaps hatred.
“A Demon Lord, you say!? What nonsense, at the time, Heard Lauder was…”
“Herd… loader…?”
The bones of my neck let out a creaking sound. I can’t breathe at all.
I’m going to die. I’m going to be killed. My neck’s going to be wrung out to death. My field of vision flickered on and off, and my soul raised a wail.
Within that uncollected consciousness, I thought about the meaning of those words.
It was a name I had some recollection of.
A name on that list of powerful Demons that had been circulating about heaven.
A Superbia Demon who held the epithet of the Prideful Kaiser. He stood at the forefront of the army, and slayed a number of Angels. An infamous Demon.
But that’s wrong. That’s not how it is. It’s different from the rumors I’ve heard.
In the first place, there’s too much a difference between a General Class Demon, and a Saint Lord Angel. Even more so with the Angel commander being the greatest anti-Demon Iustitia Angel. Even if they came with an army of Demons, such a difference wasn’t so easily overturned in a head-on battle.
But at the same time, it was the talk of the town back in heaven. That’s why I remember it well.
Gloria Seidthroan engaged in battle with the army of the Lord of Depravity.
She was able to repel the General Demon leading their main forces, but…
“What does this… mean? I lost to… a Demon Lord? I. Was. Defeated!?”
My body was swung around. It was as if she was a child throwing a tantrum.
More than me, the woman herself was much more confused.
She was letting out the presence I couldn’t sense at all before. That smothering atrocious presence of a Demon Lord saddened me, in proving well enough that the woman before me was no longer a Lord of Angels.
A chance.
If I were to attack right now, wouldn’t the damage get through? I tried to lift the hand clasped around my sword, but I couldn’t put any power into it. Angels and Demons didn’t require respiration all too much, but even so, the throat was still a single vital point.
With all my might, I glared at her. But while Gloria’s eyes seemed poised in my direction, she wasn’t looking at me.
It was a hollow glance as if she were staring into a world of dreams.
Why… just what is it that she’s seeing…?
Suddenly, the crushing feeling about my neck disappeared. Power returned to my body.
Losing my support, I began to plummet, but before I hit the ground, I managed to move my wings, and raise myself.
I took a deep breath, and corrected my posture. When I had gotten myself in order, a bizarre spectacle entered my eyes.
“Ah… no, nonsense… wha… this power is…”
Frozen in midair, Gloria’s eyes were wide open.
But that position of hers was my chance.
Her wings weren’t moving at all. No, more than that, it looked like her entire body had been glued fast to space. As if there was something locking her to the air.
But the strangest thing of all was… her face.
Without surprise, without scorn, her expression was surely… what one would call impatient.
The words flowing out of her mouth were the emotions of rage she had never directed at me, even as I held a blade against her.
Her golden irises seemed to be searching for something, as they made large swaying motions.
And Gloria’s body shot off.
Without even moving her wings, she started gliding down diagonally with fearsome momentum, collided with the ground head-on, and bounced a couple of times before coming to a halt.
No, rather than gliding, she crashed and burned.
Raising a cloud of dust, she crashed, but she immediately corrected her stance, and landed properly, before lifting herself into the air again.
The hair that reached all the way to her feet was standing on end, and as if something had grasped her, she floated aimlessly around space.
It was a scene I had never seen before. An unknown phenomenon.
I mean, for a Demon who could easily brush off all attacks, and moved at ungodly speeds unperceivable by the eye, who would think she would let herself be grasped like that?
Gloria’s eyes were locked on empty space. There was absolutely nothing in that direction, but her gaze was surely seeing something.
“I see… so it was you who…”
Without finishing her sentence, her body began to rotate with her hair at the fulcrum, before she flew off again. This time, it wasn’t to the ground, but parallel to it. As if that small frame of hers was a bullet leaving its chamber, she shot forth, and raised a tuft of smoke at the horizon.
What was that phenomenon… wait, phenomenon?
No, that’s wrong. Gloria was definitely directing her words at someone.
It was without a doubt that her actions held intent. She was trying to attack something.
I remained vigilant. But within the web of my perception, I could only capture the three large swaying powers a few kilometers away, and a number of smaller forces, a flock of Demons coming closer.
Even at the moment Gloria flew off, I couldn’t see anyone around me.
An invisible enemy… no, a long distanced assault?
An enemy launched an attack on Gloria, but nothing on me. I don’t get their standards.
I can’t see. I can’t see anything. It wasn’t something like Gloria’s speed that exceeded my dynamic vision.
Built on a different principle than Pride, a power of invisibility.
… That power didn’t align with any of the abilities I had learned about in Heaven.
And to the one who took it on… even Gloria herself seemed to be in an abnormal state.
“LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGG
GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!!! WHAAATT’S THE MEANING OF THIS YOU BAAAAAASSSSTTTTTAAAAAAAAAARD!!!”
That voice of resentment that seemed to come straight from the depths of hell made the air shake.
Like the howling of a beast. Despite having been blown across the horizon, Gloria returned before my sight in an instant, and a following her, a delayed strong wing swept over the scenery.
While there was some black dirt staining her joints, there weren’t any notable wounds on her body.
But her eyes had completely snapped.
The face of a devil. Her pupils had opened completely, as she glared in every direction to find this unseeable enemy.
Her power had completely been freed from its previous concealment, and her idiotically high Mana stirred up the miasma, scattering pebbles left and right.
As if a curtain had been lowered over it, the world grew darker.
Perhaps noticing this abnormality, the three large clashing forces put their movements on hold.
My thoughts haven’t caught up the present situation. I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I’ve too little information.
There’s no doubt it’s the work of some third party. But I can’t see their form. There must be a meaning to it. That’s what Gloria, who’s swinging around her malice left and right goes to prove.
It must be…
Sensing something Gloria gave her wings a large flap, and drew a spiral in the air, as she ascended higher and higher.
At just about the same time, the ground began to shake violently. If my legs had been on the land, I would have felt an unbearable earthquake.
Along with the tremors, some parts of the ground were projected up, and cracks began to spread.
“…”
After a few seconds, a strong wind began to blow. From up to down.
I struggled to fight against the bizarre wind flowing towards the land.
I looked up at the sky, kicked the air below, and moved my wings.
In my widened vision, the blood red blinding sun. A wide-open sky. Not a single cloud to be found.
I soared through the sky. To Angels, that was a natural action akin to breathing. After a few seconds, the wind ceased, and I looked back at the ground to understand the intent of the attack.
… No, the ground hadn’t risen at all, it had caved.
Spreading many meters, indented soil as if it had been crushed underfoot.
I wonder what sort of Skill would have to be used to bring about such a result.
No, it it’s just boring into the earth, then Gloria, and likely a majority of the other Demon Lords could do it. I’m sure I could as well.
The problem was, that I couldn’t discern the means ot attack, and I couldn’t see the form of the third party that had accomplished it anywhere.
A mysterious attack. A power to control the wind? No, if you think about the nature of the attack Gloria took on…
Right below me, Gloria stood on the land. Her attention was completely removed from me.
“S-show yourself… Leigie! Why, are you…!? All of this is your…”
Bloodshot eyes. Her expression held no disdain, and what it displayed was an anger close to madness. The Sin Breaker that had manifested in her hand was recklessly cutting countless lines in the air.
Out raced countless shockwaves of light. The air pressure senselessly rended the earth, and as if it were crying out, the wind played out a high pitched sound.
Those slashes flew out. A few of them came at me, but passed by my sides.
The reason they didn’t hit was because they weren’t something aimed at me. But if one of them had shifted just a little, I would have likely had my wings ripped off.
I was no longer in Gloria’s eyes. No, there wasn’t anything reflected in them.
Her screams and malice were certainly directed at something, but I couldn’t see what.
There was only one thing I knew.
More calmly than even in this chaos. The theory I had always been reminded of made me issue my judgement. It’s not like I haven’t seen it play through enough times.
That was what Demons were. I felt an illusion of all the blood in my body freezing over, and shook my arms.
… There’s always someone greater.
Without a doubt, there’s someone higher.
One called Gloria, of the highest Rank of Angels, and now Gloria Seidthroan, one who held the authority of both an Angel and a Demon. There was someone much greater than she.
Otherwise, there’s no way Gloria would display so much rage.
I’ll run. I have to run. I have to report this.
Even if her characteristic may be Pride, with me falling so far behind her, the chances that I won’t be a match for this new challenger are exceedingly high.
While that power has yet to be directed at me, I’ll return to heaven, and report…
I moved my wings with all my might, and started rising up to the sky. The spiraling chaotic miasma to my back, I rapidly closed in on the sun. The wind I felt all over my body instantly dried off my cold sweat.
The point to connect the Demon World and Heaven wasn’t a specific place.
I stopped one high in the air, and looked back down at the ground.
The small speck that was likely Gloria. The three Demon Lords I had been sensing for a while.
As I thought, even when I look from up high, I can’t see any new enemy. I can’t feel anything.
… But there was one thing I figured out.
“… This is…”
The attack’s… identity.
No, I still don’t know that. I have no idea where the attacker’s authority lay.
But the marks left in the earth by coincidence or inevitability, had taken on a form I was familiar with.
Five long trenches, with a wide area connecting them… right, that center. There was one large cavity at the base of all of them. The hollowed out ground, and the slight differentiation of color made it all too clear. From the ground it was something too big to make out, but that form I hadn’t expected was…
“… The palm… of a hand…!?”
An absurdly large palm.
It was as if I was seeing a dream. I widened my eyes, and climbed higher.
It’s… big.
Its scale was off the charts, but I’m sure that’s… the shape of a human hand. That caving I had been a witness to, that denting of the ground had… only been but a single finger. I can’t think any of this is without meaning.
As I stared in a daze at the unexpected situation, the ground raised a tremor.
The remains of that attack dotted that black wasteland again and again. An intense sound, as if to indicate the end of the world, made me forget the thunderous wail of the wind racing past my ears.
If this truly is the work of a single lifeform’s hand, then there’s no doubt its weilder is large enough to reach for the heavens. Greater than any lifeform I’ve ever happened on before…
Compared to the marks left behind by it, both me and Gloria, with our statures of less than two meters, were nothing more than ants. The scale was too extreme.
Gloria’s body was picked up, and was sent flying again. As she was shot off, she used her wings to correct her posture.
Now I can understand it. She truly was being thrown about. By invisible hands.
And taking the attacks, Gloria herself realized as well.
The blade she swung around absurdly was to counteract those hands.
And she wasn’t doing that good of a job at it.
Whether it was possible or not to do anything about it was another story. Gloria should withdraw. She should flee. Whether there’s a means or not, the way she flailed about meaninglessly no longer had any of the level-headed thought she displayed when taking me on.
I concentrated my eyes. It seems Gloria has yet to take any actual damage.
She was in distress trying to evade those unseeable, and wide-scoped attacks, but the blows from those hands didn’t boast too much firepower. Regardless of how many times she took those attacks, there weren’t any notable injuries on her body, and as a Demon Lord, her light wounds would heal in no time at all. It would likely take quite a long time for an end to be drawn to this.
A small waver was produced in my mindset for retreat.
What should I do?
Its identity was one thing, but I didn’t know its objective.
With the size of that hand, unless there was a specific intent to avoid me, I should have been crushed as well.
The master of that power… is Gloria its only target?
Should I observe for a little longer?
Gloria and the hand’s master. At the very least, there are two out there outside the recognition of heaven. A little, just a little is enough. I need as much information as possible.
I flapped my wings, and made it so I could run at any time.
At that moment, the responses from my perception disappeared.
For a brief while, the presences of the three Demon Lords that I always kept wary of in a corner of my mind went out, before appearing again. No, it wasn’t just those three that had disappeared.
It had been but a short flicker. Just the blink of an eye, but the scenery before my eyes had, in the pause it took to go over a single comma, changed entirely.
What had made its abrupt appearance was a countless number of Demons. Besides Gloria, and those three Demon Lords, a flock of Demons below Demon Lord Level had gathered before I realized it.
I looked over them with my enhanced vision. I could even make out the expressions on those Demons that were like specks of dust from up here. Perhaps they hadn’t expected it either, as they all seemed to be dumbfounded.
The situation just kept on changing.
I couldn’t move. I hadn’t the time to avert my eyes.
I hadn’t the time to feel the stir of the wind, or that repulsive and wild miasma act up. I hadn’t even the chance to determine whether or not a Skill had been used.
My field of vision was filled by darkness. Within it, I was finally able to regain my self-awareness.
My feet shook, and my soul froze over.
I grasped my situation. I looked over my surroundings in a daze. I made my decision.
It’s not like what I saw had changed. It’s not that those Demons had disappeared.
Gloria and the others hadn’t gone away… but I myself had been transported.
A horridly gloomy corridor constructed of jet black stone. As if placed to measure its depth, the candlesticks stationed at regular intervals. This heavy and cold air.
The dim light put out by the candles contrarily made the places that remained unlit- the nooks of the corridor, and the corners of the ceiling- give off a deeper sense of darkness.
What I had definitely sensed before, the presences of Gloria and the other Demons were no longer there. In their place… I felt a somewhat nostalgic aura.
As if pierced by an icy sword, the inside of my brain gave a cold pain.
In a past beyond memory, it was a presence I’d felt twice before.
My hand creaked.
Without my notice of it, I had begun clenching my sword with all my might. I was putting in enough power for my knuckles to turn white.
Ah, there’s no way I could forget it. I didn’t even have to try to remember.
No matter how long ago it may have been, even if it was in my time of humanity, my era as a Hero that I had almost completely lost my recollection of to the flow of time, ‘That’ was something I could never forget.
It was a bitter memory.
What I fought as a Hero, my final enemy.
At that moment, I forgot about Gloria and the other Demons, and even the prophecy, as I thought back to a time passed.
If I had been a true Hero, then the bards’ songs would have ended with a triumph, or perhaps a noble sacrifice, yet this tale only ever found its close in one-sided defeat.
＊＊＊＊＊
The Hero and the Demon Lord.
That pairing that I’m sure every human in the world thought of as equal was, in truth, not equivalent at all. I knew that more than anyone.
As a hero, my sworn enemy was the Demon Lord, but that was the one who had climbed to the surface. The one of the Demon World wasn’t something to be dealt with by human hands.
The Under Ground.
It was a sort of taboo. In order to avoid mayhem, there were barely any who even knew of its existence, the world’s greatest haunt of evil.
A hell that only existed in bed-time stories. A hell bad kids were sent to for disobeying their mothers.
It was an abyss of a world, where the highest class of Evil Spirits, Demons stood at the summit.
Those fields with miasma swirling about incomparable to what one would find on the surface gave the Demons that already boasted strong powers unsurmountable enhancements. The powers of whatever ones you could find on the surface were something like scraps. When compared to Demons of the Demon world, they wouldn’t even reach their feet.
That fact was one that I, as a hero having devoted my life to forging an enormous power, and having racked up my achievements of dispelling any and all evil I could find, learned after finally being permitted to set foot into that world.
Heroes were hope. Against ones who sided with the powers of darkness, defeat was not permitted.
Among the world’s few Heroes, the reason that information was passed to me was likely because I was the Hero who threw myself into and triumphed over hopeless situations at a rate incomparable to the others, but still, in the end, I was nothing.
Just as the words implies. Nothing.
I closed my eyes.
What I grasped in my perception was a Mana gloomier, and quieter than all.
As if to show it off, that power pulsed.
I’m being watched. This Demon Lord should already know of my presence. Even so, he doesn’t move. It was as if he were telling me to come over to him.
There was no malicious intent, and that power held no impurities, but in size it was larger than anything.
Perhaps… it was even greater than the piercing Mana Gloria displayed at the end.
It wasn’t sharp at all. That power merely hung heavily over me. I finally noticed. The identity of what had been stirring my blood and soul when I confronted the Fallen Angel. The presence I didn’t notice because of all the Demon Lords mixed in.
I felt a meaningless pressure. Within that, I went forward, step by step.
My memories pumped up, one after another. The power I felt when I fought him as a Hero. It had far exceeded that now.
But my heart was frighteningly calm.
I had conviction that he hadn’t been killed off yet. But at the same time, I doubt I would find it strange if he was.
The Demon Lord followed the law of the jungle. Unlike the Angels, that generally never waged wars among themselves, the faces of powerful Demons changed too often. No matter the case, the probability of a Demon that offered absolutely no resistance living such a long life can’t be too high.
The passages branched off like a labyrinth. Black walls. The systematic markings carved into them. Perhaps I’m in a Demon Lord’s castle.
Within myself, I continued to hone my power, as I disinterestedly walked forward.
They’re not here. The overflowing amount of subordinate Demons one would usually find in a Lord’s Castle were nowhere to be found.
But even that felt natural to me.
I refined my power.
It was perhaps the only regret I still held for my past life.
For one who cut down all manners of Evil Spirits, all manners of Humans, all manner of sinners, the girl who continued to save the world for her own sake alone, the only lingering attachment to this world.
The reason why, even when I didn’t actually like to fight, I chose to continue down this path, even after death.
There wasn’t a single one before me to hinder my advance.
What I arrived at was the deepest chamber. A giant set of doors.
The power I felt by putting myself against one of them made me close my eyes. I took some short breaths.
I see… it’s on another level.
I finally began to grasp why Heaven dispatched me here.
This must be fate… no, destiny.
I am a hero, and he is a Demon Lord. I’ll risk every bit of life I have left in me as a Hero, to take back the defeat I suffered long ago.
In a split second, I had finished mustering up all my resolve, and opened up those doors. Just as I did once, long ago.