CH 128

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“…Could it be that the Demon Lord-san…drowned and died just now?” (Maki)

My breath stopped at the way too outrageous words of Maki. 

The Tragedy of Poseidal surfaced in my mind for an instant, but I quickly shook my head to the sides. 

No, no matter how you think about it, there’s no way a Demon Lord would die such a gag manga death. 

“There’s no way something like that can happen. In the first place, if the Demon Lord has died, the curse should have been lifted—” (Souma)

The moment I was about to say that, a familiar voice entered directly into my ears suddenly. 

(I am so happy I could marry Souma in my last moments. I—wait, w-where’s this place?!!) 

“Eh?! Ina?!” (Souma)

The voice of Ina, who should have been frozen in the Nekomimi Mansion, made me shout out loud unconsciously. 

Ina began talking to me as if at her wit’s end at my state. 

(I-Is that you, Souma-san?! Eh, this is weird!! I should have been on top of a tree just now, and yet, I am suddenly in the room of a mansion and…

Also, this weird crawling sound…hya!

There’s red handprints on the wall!! Steadily getting close to me and…

K-Kyaaaaaaaaa!! A woman came out from inside a box!!

A-Aaah…this time around, it is a whole lot of dolls coming from outside!! 

W-What’s this?! What’s going on?!! 

H-Help me! Please save me, Souma-sa—) (Ina)

That’s when the call of Ina was cut off. 

(…Crap. I forgot to warn the ones in the mansion to not scare Ina.) (Souma)

Cold sweat gushed out from me. 

It is in part because of Ina having a horror experience, but it is mostly the painful gazes of my comrades. 

“U-Uhm…” (Souma)

The voice of the Communication Ring doesn’t reach the other people. 

The only one who heard the voice of Ina should be me, and yet, because I said the name of Ina in the middle, my comrades must have discovered that the one I was talking to was her. 

They are all looking at me as if seeking an explanation.

Unable to endure that pressure, I had no choice but to raise my fist and say…

“…Alright, the plan was a success!!” (Souma)

A cold blizzard raged on in the volcano. 

—The Tragedy of Poseidal. 

There was an incident that can’t really be called an incident in Nekomimi Neko that had such a name. 

The stage was set at the underwater city where we got the Water Dragon Rings.

Even though there was certainly a piece of information about a boss monster protecting the treasury room, when the players actually arrived at that place, the place before the treasury room was empty. There were several such reports in the forums related to Nekomimi Neko. 

Not only that. After digging through information about this boss, there wasn’t a single player who had met the boss of the underwater city. 

…A clear bug. 

But if that’s the case, it could be taken as them forgetting to set the boss monster there, or they published the wrong info about the underwater city. 

That said, this became a big talking point because there’s a big open space before the treasury room which serves just right for a boss battle, and there was a Magic Seed dropped there which is a drop item that will always drop from a boss. 

Depending on the type of Unique Boss -which only appears once- they will drop either a Power, Magic, Defense, or Mind Seed. 

Putting it in another way, there’s rarely any other way to obtain seed items.

Because of this, the Nekomimi Neko players guessed that there was a boss in the underwater city, but it died for some unknown reason before the players arrived. 

Of course, we are talking about the Nekomimi Neko players who have pointlessly high curiosity. 

They of course showed interest in this mystery and moved in order to uncover the reason for this. 

However, no matter how fast they found the underwater city and arrived at the treasury room, they couldn’t encounter the boss. 

Unless there’s concrete confirmation, a rumor will stay a rumor. 

The talk of the underwater city boss weathered out with the passing of time, but after that, the truth was made clear with a new patch.

After the patch of ver 1.03, the boss Poseidal began to appear, and it was ascertained that that boss drops a Magic Seed.

The Nekomimi Neko players, who are in a sense more persistent than the Nekomimi Neko developers, moved in order to confirm the reason for this, and found an excerpt in the updated info from the patch. 

-Fixed an issue where some bosses didn’t have the underwater attribute properly applied to them.

By underwater attribute, they are referring to underwater aptitude, and they are saying it wasn’t applied properly, so basically: ‘We forgot to add the underwater aptitude to the boss’. The Nekomimi Neko players judged that as a confession. 

Monsters with no underwater aptitude had their speed underwater drop, and will get ticks of HP percent damage.

This HP percent damage is the biggest deal breaker here. It doesn’t matter if you have the highest max HP or not.

Even a boss monster like Poseidal that has a massive pool of HP had died from the persistent damage due to having forgotten to set the underwater aptitude. 

And this is the reason for feeling something was off just a moment ago. 

It is a factor that I overlooked after forming my plan, and the cause of death of the Demon Lord this time around. 

The Demon Lord has the Perfect Resistance, so I thought that there’s no way it would die from being sunk in water, but it looks like that was a hasty conclusion. 

It is often misinterpreted, but underwater aptitude is completely different from the elemental resistances and status ailment resistances. 

Poseidal, who died from not having this, had complete resistance to water. 

I somewhat assumed ‘the Demon Lord has Perfect Resistance, so it must have underwater aptitude too’, but it looks like that wasn’t the case at all. 

In the first place, sinking the Demon Lord Castle in water was possible because the world has become real. The Demon Lord being submerged in water is obviously impossible in the game. 

Thinking about it normally, giving underwater aptitude to a monster that wouldn’t be underwater to begin with would be strange. 

Blaming this as a bug would be way too unreasonable. 

Even when placing all that logic on it, it really is hard to believe that the Demon Lord has drowned to death. Unfortunately, all the hard to believe abnormalities until now would be explained with that conclusion. 

First, the off sensation that I felt before raiding the Demon Lord Castle. 

I imagine that was from the Demon Lord having reached a critical state in its HP and activating the Serious Mode. 

It really took a lot of time to fill this big volcano with water. 

The Demon Lord Castle should have had water go in since before it sunk completely, so the HP of the Demon Lord must have been downed quite a bit since the moment the Demon Lord Castle had sunk completely. 

And then, after 10% HP, the Demon Lord enters Serious Mode and the attack patterns change. 

When that happened, you would feel a powerful bad feeling even in the game, but that wasn’t my instinct noticing something, but mostly a game cutscene. 

If that bad feeling was the Demon Lord entering its Serious Mode, that Demon Lord was already as its last dregs by that time. 

No matter how much attack power and defense power the Demon Lord gets an increase of, it doesn’t have anything to do with the percentage damage from water, so I can imagine the Demon Lord died soon after that. 

In that case, the pillar of light that happened a little after that bad feeling is also explainable. 

When the Demon Lord died in the game, it let out a powerful light as a death animation. 

Because of how close it was at that time, it was so dazzling I couldn’t see it directly, but it was probably the light pillar we witnessed just now. 

You normally don’t see it since you are inside the Demon Lord Castle once you defeat the Demon Lord, but the pillar of light from the death animation pierces the Demon Lord Castle, goes all the way to the sky, and erases the clouds that are the symbol of the Demon Lord’s power. 

…Putting work in even the areas where you can’t see sounds nice and all, but if you have time to do such pointless work, I would rather you put that energy in eliminating at least 1 bug with that time.

Well, that’s a reason why ‘Nekomimi Neko quality’ was a popular catchphrase. 

In the end, the credits didn’t roll. We defeated it in such a manner, so it somewhat doesn’t feel right, but there’s no doubt we defeated the Demon Lord with our efforts. 

We have to do things like gather the items from the Demon Lord and the Demon Lord Castle, but we decided to leave that for later and headed back to the city.

Mitsuki used a Teleportation Stone to report to the King one step faster, and I leisurely go back with the remaining members. 

On our way back, strange strong feelings began welling up in me. 

“Thinking about it now, it feels like things passed in the blink of an eye…” (Souma)

I mutter this to no one in particular. 

“Right. We left the mansion proclaiming we would defeat the Demon Lord-san, but it feels like yesterday now.” (Maki)

Maki responded earnestly. 

“…I am not going to retort to that, okay?” (Sazan)

Sazan said this with a tired expression for some reason and faced away. 

“…Ah, split hair.” (Ringo)

Ringo was looking at the back of the Bear and saying something completely unrelated, and the Bear ran away hurriedly. 

The loose exchanges we usually have. It is hard to believe that we were all raring to go and defeat the Demon Lord with our lives on the line not that long ago.

I am happy from the bottom of my heart that I can pass the time like this. 

(But…) (Souma)

If I had to say something about this…

If Mitsuki and one other person…

“…Souma.” (Ringo)

Just when I was going to sink in my thoughts, Ringo gently called me back. 

I raised my head and the northern gate of the capital was already at the far view.

…No, that’s not all.

At that northern gate, there’s two…people. 

One of them is the cat eared girl I am well acquainted with. 

And the other one is…

“…Ina.” (Souma)

The person I was wishing to reunite with the whole time. 

But when I saw that, my legs suddenly halted to a stop. 

Even though she is the person I wanted to meet the most, my emotions were overflowing and I didn’t know what to do. 

But there was someone who pushed my back.

“…Go…for her.” (Ringo)

Ringo’s small hand was pushing my back earnestly. 

Even when I looked back, I couldn’t see the expression of Ringo who was hanging her head down. 

“…Hurry.” (Ringo)

Even so, I once again walk on as if urged on by those words of hers. 

At the same time, I could see the cat eared girl pushing the back of the small girl, and she began to nervously walk her way here. 

I slowly began to clearly see the appearance of Ina…her face. 

The distance between us was slowly decreasing…slow to an irritating extent. 

As if we couldn’t endure that moment, our legs began to increase their pace, and it soon turned into a run. 

“Souma-san!” (Ina)

I caught Ina who jumped at me. 

I hugged Ina tightly into my chest as she bawled her eyes out, and I spoke out the words I have wanted to tell her this whole time. 

“…Welcome back, Ina.” (Souma)

And in this way, my story with the Demon Lord closed its curtains. 

However, this story still has a bit of an after story. 

—The Demon Lord has drowned to death!! 

These shocking news that you wouldn’t see in past or present times had spread like wildfire through the whole city…no, to the whole world in one night. 

The next day, the King had called us, and what welcomed us was the endless thunderous applause and cheers of the people in the whole capital…and their cramped smiles. 

The people were praising us as saviors for having defeated the Demon Lord, especially when we are the ones who saved the city when the monsters attacked, received a medal of honor from the royal family, and I am famous for being on good terms with the princess. This time around, we defeated the Demon Lord by drowning it, so we have become true heroes. 

As such, the people called me like this with deep gratitude and admiration…

—Savior of the Nation, Sinking Prince Souma.