In the rocky mountains on the edge of Ludberg in the kingdom of Johann, a small army had gathered. Most were paladins, clad from head to toe in heavy plate mail and carrying shields that weighed more than they did and a variety of highly decorated weapons, most seeming too large to be effective. They stood in a quarter-circle formation around the mouth of a large cave, shields pointed inwards.
Standing around the paladins, in a much less orderly fashion, was a varied assortment of adventurers. Unlike the paladins, whose suits of armor and armor and weapon decorations matched, the adventurers came in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors. Some had swords, others had spears, many had intricately carved staffs topped with gems, and a few had bows or crossbows.
Standing in the front, there was one paladin that stood out among all the others. While most of them wore bulky silver armor, this one wore a slimmer suit, and it was plated with gold. He held the same large shield that the others had, but his sword was much smaller and simpler than the ones that the others were wielding. To the naked eye, it just appeared to be a slightly above average sword with an unusually sharp edge, but anyone with [Mana Sense] would be able to tell that the sword was anything but ordinary. It pulsed with mana, distorting the ambient mana in its surroundings to such an extreme degree that it was difficult to see anything else when focused on it. From underneath his visor, his golden eyes almost seemed to be glowing with intensity.
He stood next to an elven woman whose eyes matched his own. She stood out from the rest of the company as well, though for the opposite reasons that the paladin did. She was the only one there not wearing armor, instead opting for a loose-fitting short-sleeved shirt and pants, and she had no visible weapons. While the others were all tense, and focused on the cave entrance, she appeared to be relaxed, and was levitating lazily above the paladin with a grin on her face.
“Hey Alexei, did you hear what happened to your sister?” she said.
Alexei glared at the smiling elf, but didn’t respond.
“How rude. Is that any way to treat your own grandmother?” She made an exaggerated pouty face.
“We’re about to fight a Demon King, Natalya,” he said gruffly. “This is not the time for idle chatter.”
“Oh, come on, this is exactly the time for idle chatter,” said Natalya. “What else are we supposed to do while we wait for that fatty to come out?”
“Prepare for battle.”
“You’ve been prepared for battle for the past month and a half. And it’s not like I need to worry about anything. Why not indulge in a little bit of gossip? Don’t you want to hear what happened to your sister?”
“I don’t care about her,” said Alexei.
“Huh. Well it makes me feel a little better about your rudeness if you’re this rude even to your twin.”
“If she wanted me to care about her, she wouldn’t have betrayed us like that,” he said, with a hint of bitterness.
“Oh, boo hoo, she quit her job, big deal. Get over it,” said Natalya.
“She didn’t just quit her job!” Alexei fumed. “She-” He cut himself off when he saw his grandmother’s amused smirk. “Nevermind. It doesn’t matter anymore. Stop distracting me.”
“No thanks. I’m gonna tell you what happened to her anyway.”
Alexei hmphed in anger and looked away, pretending to ignore her.
“I hear she got stabbed.”
“She what?!” said Alexei, snapping his head back around to look at her.
Natalya laughed loudly. “I thought you didn’t care.”
“Shut up. Tell me what happened. This could be important. Anyone strong enough to stab her could be a serious threat. And after hearing the Saintess’ prophecy, we need to take every step to investigate such threats.”
She laughed again. “Oh, so just because someone stabbed your sister, they’re a Demon King?”
“Yona is almost level 90!” said Alexei, almost shouting. “Anyone capable of harming her is someone who needs to be taken seriously!”
“Ah, relax, it’s fine,” said the elf, waving him off. “They’re not that strong. She just let her guard down. Again. She was doing a rank up exam for a new adventurer and the newbie launched an unexpectedly suicidal attack that surprised her so much that the blade got through.”
Alexei took that news in silence for a moment.
“And since I know you want to ask, but won’t, Yona’s fine. The knife didn’t go in deep enough to hit anything important. She’s probably fully recovered by now.”
The paladin hmphed again. “Still, that warrants an investigation. A new adventurer who’s able to harm someone as strong as Yona is not someone to be taken lightly.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Your great grandfather is already keeping an eye on her. If she does anything, he’ll be there to stop her.”
“He is?” asked Alexei looking surprised. “I can’t believe that old recluse would take the initiative to do something like that.”
“Oh, he’s barely doing anything. She actually approached and befriended him. She’s basically keeping his eyes on her for him. From what he’s told me, she’s actually a very interesting person.”
“How so?”
“I can’t tell you that. But I might give you a hint though if you call me ‘Grandma.’” She eyed him expectantly.
Alexei narrowed his eyes at her, internally weighing his options before hmphing for a third time and looking away.
“Awww, you can’t even do it once. Please? You’re one of my top ten favorite grandchildren. It would mean so much to me if you just called me ‘Grandma’ once.”
Alexei continued to ignore her.
“How about this: I’ll skip the hints and just tell you everything-” Alexei twitched. “-if you just say ‘I love you, Grandma.’”
Alexei did not respond. Natalya floated closer to him and flipped herself upside down and stared him straight in the face. Alexei tried to ignore her, and shift his head so that he could see the cave around her, but she shifted with him, continuously blocking his view. He opened his mouth to say something, but before the words left his mouth, the smile suddenly vanished from his grandmother’s face, and she flipped back up and turned to face the cave entrance.
“He’s coming,” she said.
A palpable tension spread throughout the company, as they all froze and stared at the entrance to the cave. Then, Alexei, began to notice a slight trembling in the earth. It was faint at first, but as he listened, he soon began to hear the rhythmic sounds of footsteps growing louder and louder as they approached the edge of the cave.
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“Get ready,” said Alexei. He said it softly, but the people around him were so quiet that none had trouble hearing it.
A moment later, a voice echoed out from the cave and broke the silence.
“I surrender!” it said, “Don’t attack! I give up! I don’t want to fight anymore!”
“Hold!” shouted Alexei, as the footsteps grew even louder.
The man who emerged from the cave could be described as nothing other than massive. He was the tallest man Alexei had ever seen, and was nearly as wide. He was dressed in rich fabrics that had been dirtied and torn beyond recognition, and with every step he took, rolls of fat could be seen jiggling through the holes. If Alexei did not know that he was a Demon King, he would wonder how the man was even standing at all, considering how much excess weight he was carrying. He held his arms in the air, trembling as sweat glistened on his brow and tears welled up in his eyes
“I surrender,” he cried. “I don’t want to fight. I never wanted to fight.”
“If you didn’t want to fight, then you shouldn’t have harmed so many innocents.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I couldn’t help it! The Demon God! He was controlling my mind!”
“Viscount Ludberg, we have proof of crimes that you committed long before you became a Demon King.”
“Those were just normal crimes! Fraud! Tax evasion! Libel!-”
“Human trafficking,” chimed Natalya.
“All nobles dabble in slavery! But that’s not a punishment worthy of death, is it? Please, I’ve come back to my senses. I surrender. So please, let me live.”
“I cannot do that,” said Alexei. “I cannot allow a Demon King to live, no matter how repentant he is. The best I can offer you is a painless death.”
“Please! Imprison me! Take away my senses! Cripple me! Just let me live, please!” cried the corpulent Demon King.
“No,” replied Alexei.
An odd look flashed across the viscount’s face, but it was gone almost before anyone could notice it, and was replaced by an expression of contrition.
“A-alright. Okay. It’s probably for the best. I-if I stay alive, the Demon God could start controlling me again, then then I-I’d start hurting people again. And I know better than to fight with one of the Orderbound Blades. Please, m-make it quick.”
“It’s a trap, sir,” whispered one of the paladins behind Alexei.
“Most likely,” he muttered back. “But on the off chance it isn’t, this would be a much better way to resolve this.” He took a deep breath. “Hold your positions, but be ready! I will now execute the Demon King.”
Alexei slowly walked towards the trembling viscount holding his sword out in front of him. The viscount fell to his knees, causing the ground to shake, but made no other movements. Alexei stopped within sword’s reach of the man and held still for a few seconds, watching the fat man closely.
“Praise be to Themis,” he finally said. “May you find peace in your next life.”
He raised his sword to deliver the killing blow, and at that exact moment, the Demon King suddenly lurched forwards, arms outstretched with his hands poised to grasp Alexei. A demonic aura erupted from him, and his eyes turned red as he opened his mouth impossibly wide and screamed.
Alexei had been prepared for such a move, but he was not prepared for the speed at which it came. The viscount moved faster than should have been possible for a man of his size, even if his [Agi] was incredibly high. Alexei leaped out of the way, but he wasn’t fast enough. He was only saved when the Demon King seemingly hit an invisible wall, and Natalya’s voice shouted from overhead.
“Ranged fighters, attack!”
Immediately, a huge assortment of spells flew at the Demon King, but they all broke harmlessly against his skin which had turned from its original pink flesh to the color of steel, and gained a scaly texture. Activating this defensive measure seemed to have immobilized him though, so Alexei and a small, pre-selected group of paladins charged in, swinging their weapons.
However, their attacks passed through empty air, as the Demon King disappeared. It took no time at all to figure out where he went though, for he reappeared as quickly as he had vanished directly above the floating elf. As he fell towards her, he reached towards her with his mouth open the same way that he had jumped at Alexei. His hands found nothing, though, as Natalya pulled the same move he did, and vanished, reappearing above him.
He continued to fall, and the group of paladins below scattered in all directions to get out of the impact zone. When he landed, he simultaneously used some kind of earth magic skill, and the ground shattered beneath him, sending out shockwaves that sent some of the weaker adventurers flying.
He then stood up and opened his mouth again, but this time, instead of screaming, he unleashed a stream of white-hot flames. An unlucky adventurer who had been knocked down by the shockwave was the first target. The moment the fire hit him, he was vaporized, without even having time to scream. The Demon King moved his beam to the side to point at a group of paladins who had just regrouped after scattering. They locked their shields together, forming a wall to stop the attack, and the flames were absorbed and nullified.
Seeing that his attack was failing, the Demon King closed his mouth, and then leapt at the group, his fingers extending in to long claws as he did so. The shields blocked the claws, but they did not hold against the sheer mass of the attacker, and the line broke. By that time though, Alexei reached him as well, and slashed at the Demon King with his sword. The blade made contact, and left a wound a foot deep, but that was not enough to get through the thick layer of fat.
Just after this, Natalya launched an attack of her own. She pointed her finger at her enemy, and an almost invisibly thin beam shot out from it. It did not appear dangerous at a glance, but the Demon King evidently sensed the immense mana within the attack and dodged out of the way. He was not quite fast enough, though, and his left arm was severed and fell to the ground. He snarled as the stump of his arm bubbled, and a split second later, a new arm had been regrown.
The battle raged on for an hour, and it seemed like the Demon King used a new skill every few seconds, sometimes casting ranged spells of immense power, and at others growing additional appendages like tails or wings or stingers. At one point, Alexei managed to sever his head, and they thought it was over, until the stump bubbled like the arm had, and two new heads emerged. The breath attack that followed took out a half dozen paladins who had let their guard down.
By the end, the landscape was irreparably scarred. The ground was equal parts broken, charred, melted and frozen, and the cave entrance had collapsed and was now covered by a wall of rubble. In the center of the battlefield, the Demon King was impaled on the massive earthen spike conjured by Natalya that had delivered the finishing blow.
His body was mutated beyond recognition. Wings from a dozen different creatures sprouted from his back, some leathery, some scaled, some feathered, and some the shining gossamer of insect wings. He had 3 tails, one long and thin with a blade-like point, one thick and strong and scaled, and one shaped like a scorpion’s. His main arms had extended so that they now hung down past his feet, and an additional 5 sprouted from various spots on his torso.
One of his heads, of which he now had 3, had dozens of eyes, and mandibles like a spider. Another was elongated into a canine snout filled with long, sharp teeth. Only the center head could still be recognized as his own, but even that one had scaly skin and sharpened teeth.
There were only 70 survivors, less than half the original number. Many of the paladins had survived, due to their teamwork and preparation, but only a fraction of the adventurers remained. The only one uninjured by the battle was Natalya, but she had exhausted nearly all of her [MP], and was forced to return to the ground. The last drops of her mana were used up to create a portal to the healers that were on standby in the nearby town so that the survivors could receive medical attention. Ordinarily, the paladins would be able to heal themselves, but some of them were unconscious, and others were too badly injured to do much more than survive.
A few hours after the battle, once the survivors had been treated, Alexei found himself sitting on a rock looking down at the battlefield with a blank expression. He had taken off his armor, and without it, he looked strangely small. A pair of footsteps approached him from behind, but he ignored them. He did not even react when Natalya sat down beside him.
They stared at the battlefield in silence for an hour as the sun set before Alexei finally spoke.
“Are all the Demon Kings that strong?” he asked, his voice hollow.
“No,” said Natalya. “Some will likely be stronger. This one’s strength was about average.”
Alexei didn’t respond.
“However, in terms of how difficult it was to deal with it, this one is one of the easiest. He was stupid, and let himself get caught. The smart ones will hide their nature and bide their time. No one will notice that they are Demon Kings until they are strong enough that even a dozen Orderbound Blades could not handle them. That is how the nation of Vampires was wiped out. A Demon King emerged from among them, and they didn’t notice until it was too late.”
Alexei didn’t respond to that either, and the pair sat in silence once more until the sun had set and the stars emerged.
“How are we going to deal with 6 more of these?” asked Alexei suddenly. “How many-” His voice broke. “How many more will have to die?”
He stopped for a few seconds.
“Klaus, Arne, Ralf… They were my brothers. Now-” His voice broke again. “Now I can’t even bring home their bodies.”
Natalya didn’t respond for a moment, then leaned towards him and put her arms around him. He pushed her away weakly, but she only drew closer.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “You don’t need to hold back. Just let it out.”
Alexei pulled her into a tight hug and wept.