CH 209

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

Spitting out a mouthful of blood on the spot, I respond to Tia with a smile. Despite being unable to use my banishment skill, I can’t feel anything wrong with my body anymore.

“But you used a rather potent healing potion. Are you sure that’s okay?”

“Of course because If it was me, who got blown away like you did, Ed, would you be stingy and use a mediocre one?”

“Hahaha, you got me there.”

In response to Tia’s joking words, I involuntarily give a bitter smile. If I’m using it on myself, I’ll just use the bare minimum, but I would definitely use the top-grade for Tia. My ‘too precious to use’ warehouse would blow up.

“So, what happened, Ed? Ah, did you lose your strength again…!?”

“That’s right, but it’s okay. Continue looking after Harris-san.”

“Really? I understand.”

Tia showed a moment of hesitation but then quickly returned to Harris’ side and they began moving forward again. I immediately follow them, but then countless snowballs begin to rain down from the sky again.

“Whoa!?”

One of them hits me, causing my banishment skill-disabled body to easily take flight. If I let myself be slammed into the ground like this, I’ll just repeat the same situation… But of course, I have countermeasures in mind.

“I’ve been waiting for this!”

In the midst of the snowballs, I deliberately extend my arms and legs, exposing as much of my body as possible to the snow. While doing this, I’m focusing on the exchange of my… the Demon King’s power.

When I was consumed by the Demon King in Amelia’s world, I learned my limits. It’s easy to reclaim the power, but if I absorb it all at once, my body will shatter under the strain.

So, what should I do? It’s simple. Just adjust the absorption to a bearable level. It’s quite a challenge to do it in a situation where I’m winning just a little bit while using all of my strength, but fortunately, this snowball is just a fraction of a fraction. The Demon King Tree, a one-hundredth of a fraction, is attacking with a power that’s just tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of a fraction. So…

“Su…haa!”

I take a deep breath and suck in the contents of the snowball without leaving any behind. Then the force blowing me away ceases, and a tiny bit of the power of the banishment skill returns to my body. What I regained was… the banishment skill [Grass Eater[ which allowed me to enjoy the grass growing on the road just a little bit!

“He-busht!?”

“…Ed? Are you really okay?”

“I’m… I’m fine. I’m fine.”

Hitting the ground in a normal manner, I take a random healing potion from my waist bag and drink it, then give a thumbs-up to Tia, who stopped for a moment and looked back. It seems I was a little unlucky this time.

Well, I guess it’s a useful banishment skill in a world where food is hard to come by, but what I need right now isn’t this. Without being discouraged, I keep charging into the enemy’s attacks, getting blown away each time, slowly regaining my power…

“Here it comes!”

I rolled on the ground seven times, and on the eighth time, I regained the banishment skill [Hermes Dash] Once I regained this, there’s no need to go get hit by snowballs one by one anymore.

The moment I touched down on the ground, I instantly activated it  and dashed. I overtook Tia and Harris, who were moving up to the Demon King’s Tree, in an instant, and then touched the trunk of the massive tree that would take dozens of adults holding hands to encircle.

“Now, I’m going to take the rest back!”

A direct confrontation between the main bodies. Not only do I intend to take back the power here, but if I can seize the power of the Demon King’s Tree, there’s also the possibility of weakening it like the Demon King in Gou’s world. Frankly, I have no idea how Harris will bring down such a huge tree… or how it would be judged as defeated, so I want to proceed both cautiously and boldly…?

“Huh? What’s this?”

A power I’m intimately familiar with. Yet within that black torrent, I felt a strange presence from a tiny shard.

In the dark sea, it felt like a shiny pearl floating. Despite its relatively tiny size, it emitted a power so intense that I could not ignore it. Since I’m absorbing the power of the tree, this thing was approaching me, but I didn’t want to incorporate such an obvious foreign object.

(Ugh, what is this? I absolutely don’t need this, but what should I do?)

If this were reality, I could scoop around the grain and toss it somewhere. However, what I’m feeling is merely conceptual, so I don’t know how to isolate this particle of light and do something about it. My body has been divided by a god, but just because it’s been divided doesn’t mean I know how to divide myself.

(…Well, it’s okay)

If I can’t do anything about it right now, I’ll put it on hold. Since the particle of light has come pretty close to me, I decided to consciously stop absorbing power. I was thinking of dealing with it slowly after defeating the Demon King’s Tree, but the moment I tried to sever the connection of power, the particle of light moved in an instant and haphazardly jumped into me.

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“Ah… Gah…!?”

It feels as if a stone with thorns was rolling around inside my body. As I was losing consciousness from the intense pain, another surge of severe pain forcibly kept my thoughts connected.

“Wait, Ed!? What’s happening now!?”

I completely lost control and my body slumped heavily onto the ground. Then Tia, who caught up with me, held my head on her lap and shoved a recovery potion into my mouth again, but this time it showed no effect.

“The potion isn’t working!? Ed! Hey, what should I do, Ed!?”

“………..Ah………..”

My vision was turning red from the corners and something was spilling out of my open mouth. But I barely managed to move my eyes and see that a large change was occurring in the Demon King’s Tree, possibly due to the particle of light moving towards me.

Boom!

“Kuh, what is this!?”

The Demon King’s Tree, which had become a huge single tree as a result of several thick trees coiling and intertwining with each other. As its branches rotated furiously and unraveled as if a tied rope was being undone, the branches gradually dissolved into light from the tips and disappeared.

“What a force! Both of you, get down!”

“Kyah!? Ed, I’m sorry!”

In the face of the gusty wind that made the previous blizzard look like child’s play, Harris fell down alone, and Tia fell down on the spot as if to push me down. Meanwhile, my eyes, which remained open and facing upwards, continued to stare intently at the changes in the Demon King’s Tree… When all the intertwined branches unraveled and disappeared, what was left at the center was a small, dead tree with a reddish-black color.

Ah, that’s… that form…

“Phew, finally the wind has settled down…”

“Is that the real form of the Demon King? It used to be such a huge tree, but the inside is quite small, isn’t it?”

“…!”

No. It’s bad. Leave right now. I desperately plead in a voice, but unfortunately, I can’t make a sound. And due to the event of the appearance of the Demon King’s main body, the gaze of both Harris and Tia was turned towards the Demon King.

“Oooooooo…”

From the main body of the Demon Tree came a ghastly sound. Yes, it only sounds like noise. Maybe it’s close to the sound of wind blowing through a cave?

But I know that it’s a voice. That twisted tree was… a human. Probably a human with the same face, the same form as me, twisted, contorted, crushed into the form of a tree. A wave of resentment comes from the hollowed-out mouth. Eyes shining deep in the twisted bark were looking at me.

Despair, destruction, the pure power of the Demon King that ends everything, was about to be unleashed from it.

“Ah…AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!”

I painted over the intense pain with more intense pain. I activated [Limit Break] and swung my immobile arm, blowing away Tia, who was holding me, and then kicked the ground hard to charge into Harris. My arm twisted in an impossible direction and both of my legs broke into pieces, but somehow I managed to pull everyone away from the Demon King…

“Ooooooooooo!!!”

The next moment. The area around the true Demon King Tree was filled with ‘the end’.