CH 126

Chapter 126 – The Demon King Who Escapes From The Capital

“…What is that?”

A strange creature appeared from behind a man dressed in an ink-colored military uniform.

It looked like a huge, crumbling mass of flesh in the center, with long, thin things with tassels swinging… on either side. What is that?

I couldn’t see anything more than that, even through my binoculars, and when I asked Myrril about it, she tilted her head.

She is always rather calm, but she is frozen with her mouth open with a pale face.

Hey, what’s the matter?

“Hey, Myrril-san. What’s that thing moving on the terrace?”

The hatches of the T-55s on either side of us opened, and the old dwarves from the green tank #1 and the white tank #2 emerged from their captain’s seats.

“…What the hell was he doing?”

The inexplicable situation makes me look down at my feet, and I see that Minya is also frozen in the gunner’s seat of the third tank, Tiran. Yadar just shook her head with an uncomfortable sigh, though.

What the hell, that. What is that? I feel like I already know the answer somehow, but hey!

“Myrril-san, could it be… or, if not, was that the king of Saliant?”

“Precisely, that was the king. I don’t know if it’s a fusion or an adhesion, but I guess… the ones attached to it are the queen and the princess.”

Ugh, gross! Are you saying that they are all naked in a mass of pink? No, I’ve seen them naked before, but I don’t want to see them naked again.

What’s more, what? Are they stuck together as a family? The queen and princess are like totem poles with tassels.

“Greetings are useless.”

“It’s a little late for that. I was prepared for it to be free for all.”

“Yoshua! Get in the shield!”

“Attack magic, here they come!”

The old dwarves warned as they dived through the hatch into the T-55’s interior.

Around the time of their voices, hundreds of arrows of light rained down on us. I could see hundreds of arrows overlapping each other as they came flying at us. Arrowheads can be stored, but as expected, attack magic cannot be stored…

…Can’t I do that?

“Storage!”

The rain of light and iron that flew in the form of a surface attack disappeared just in front of us as if it had been cut out of the sky. The length, width, and depth are about 10 meters each. The distance may be limited, but it is a good insurance policy for the time being.

“As expected of Your Majesty the Demon King. You can even nullify offensive magic, can’t you?”

With a slight smile of dismay, Myrrill looked at me. I nodded lightly and held out my hand to her. As if accepting an invitation to a ball, she gently places her fingertips on it.

“Then, we’ll be off. I’ll see you later.”

“””Roger.”””

When we left Casemaian, we had only one goal to accomplish.

Complete elimination of short-term threats.

We would destroy, crush, kill, and obliterate anything and everything that stood in the way of our survival this winter. No selection, no mercy.

And I.

I have decided to leave behind everything I don’t need. The past, regrets, resentment, and hatred…

I stood in front of the main gate of the royal castle with Myrril. The iron gate was still open. The guards are nowhere to be seen.

It was probably about 100 meters to the castle door.

We know that nearly 100 archers and mages are hiding in the bushes and behind shields. The castle door is open. Is it an invitation, or did someone who came out neglect to close it?

I remember as if it were only yesterday that I had made the desperate short-distance teleportation from that door to the outskirts of the noble district, which is now behind me.

I will forget that, too. From now on, I don’t need those memories anymore. All I need is the encounter with Myrril.

With Myrril at my side, I take my first steps. Slowly and steadily, I start walking toward the castle.

“Kill him!”

A high-pitched, hysterical voice repeats from a distant terrace. The 7.62mm NATO rounds from the MAG general-purpose machine gun fired by Minya are bounced by the defensive magic and spark violently around the terrace.

Neither the archers nor the mages attacked me as I glared at them through the castle’s main gate.

“…A-ah.”

The archers and mages who had formed a dense formation by the castle wall, and the heavily armed infantrymen with shields protecting them, froze with expressions of astonishment as they held up their equipment and let out inaudible sobs.

These men are soldiers of the kingdom’s army, not the imperial army.

So I’ve seen them. They understood what they saw and what it meant.

Behind us, on either side of the intruders who had entered through the main gate, the corpses of kingdom soldiers appeared one after another, piling up high in a heap. Countless deaths, their faces contorted with fear and pain, struggling to raise cries of rage and pleading for their lives, or frozen in a state of blank disbelief, were entangled in a solid mass.

This was the end of their fellow soldiers, who had not returned from their triumphant invasion of Casemaian, claiming to defeat the barbarians.

“Yoshua, you’ve gone too far. We can’t see the enemy.”

“It’s all right. Soon the enemy will be gone.”

Myrril and I continued walking toward the entrance to the castle. Several thousand corpses form a thick wall on either side of us, and they continue to appear and rain down from the void. Attack magic and arrowheads rained down sporadically, but the wall of flesh prevented them from grazing us.

As we continued walking, someone appeared at the entrance of the castle.

“Hey, it’s been a while. You look so different. I didn’t recognize you at first.”

The lump of meat did not react to my words in the slightest. It even seemed to have little intelligence left in it as it tilted its head with a rather dubious look on its face.

Or perhaps that was the case from the very beginning.

“…Demon… King.”

To my surprise, the mysterious former king frowns and glares at me. He seems to be trying to maintain his dignity, but his eyes are dark and gloomy.

“Have you come… to destroy… my kingdom?”

“No. The kingdom was already destroyed. Because of your stupidity.”

“…Get out of here…!”

The king’s arm slid out. It was pink, long, slender, and flexible, coated in a moist mucus that resembled a tentacle, and it was shriveled.

Tentacle attack from the old man to another old man, who would benefit from being shown such a thing?

When Ithaca’s shotgun blasts the tentacles away, the monster that was once a king screams and warps, splattering its body fluids.

A UZI .45 fired in pursuit gouges out its eyeballs, and the monster convulses as it falls flat on its back.

The monster is not dead, perhaps due to an unusual durability value, or perhaps a defensive magic spell was cast on it. The lump of flesh clad in the remnants of the king struggles desperately to stand up.

In the corridor of corpses piled up to the castle’s entrance, we and the former king faced each other. There was no one in our way. Being overwhelmed by the constant stream of corpses of the kingdom’s soldiers, it was difficult to defend ourselves. In the first place, it is doubtful that anyone even recognizes the slime-like object writhing in front of us as the king of this country.

“…Kill… you…!”

Ignoring the idiot in military uniform shouting from the upper floors, I hang my stash in the corner in front of me.

The short screams went up in succession. In an instant, the base of the royal castle was scraped away. The top of the castle, floating in midair, seemed to stand still for a moment, but then it began to fall at once, like a daruma drop.

The castle turned into a pile of rubble with dozens of knights, soldiers, butlers, maids, unfortunate mobs, and my “souvenirs” that had been bounced out of storage and were floating in the air.

Myrril and I teleport back to our friends.

Tiran and T-55 were in the middle of a battle with the onrushing army. The coaxial machine gun and Tiran’s MAG general-purpose machine gun were smashing the swarming enemy into tiny pieces. Hundreds of corpses were built up, which were trampled down by the crawler tracks, creating a reddish-black quagmire under the tank bodies.

“Move out! Minya and Yadar, get in the tank at once!”

“Y-yeah!”

Myrril takes the cockpit of the Tiran and starts the engine.

“We’ve done our job. Let’s go back!”

“””Roger.”””

There is no one left to stop the Casemaian armored unit as it deploys and heads home. I was able to return all the depressing surplus supplies that had been stuck in storage to them. There are no more regrets in the royal capital.

“Uyaaaaaaaaa…!!!!”

I turned at the sound of a wild, victorious voice and saw someone standing on top of the rubble of the royal castle and the countless piles of corpses.

I can’t see much more than that. I don’t want to see it.

“It was a skinny guy in a black military uniform. He, too, seems to be trying to merge with that something that was once king… They are truly irredeemable.”

The tanks escape while bombarding the Holy City, playing and crushing the soldiers of the Kingdom and the Empire who appear and stand in our way as if they had just remembered.　

“The distance is one mile. There is some shielding. Are we good now?”

“OK, all hands prepare for impact.”

As I grabbed the switch, a roar sounded a beat later. The homemade explosives I had mixed with the rubble of the collapsed castle exploded, scattering tens of thousands of corpses and the dead who had joined them across the entire area of the “holy city.”

The roar and impact reached us, who had reached the outer edges of the city. The tremendous shaking and blast pushed down the soldiers who pursued us.

The debris and fragments that had been launched high into the sky above us fell in pieces and struck the bodies of the tanks. I looked out over the center of the cleared city, storing the debris and building materials that flew in front of me as needed.

“Farewell, city of dreams…”

Myrril muttered in a surprisingly broken voice.