by Fuse
He started screaming, but I had taken pains to keep him alive again, so I let him be. No need to cauterize the wound or anything; I just cast Dark Flame to burn off the relevant blood vessels, so nothing came out. A pretty useful way to keep someone alive, I thought.
I then realized things had grown awfully quiet around us. I scanned the field, only to find the remaining soldiers kowtowing before me, too awed by the horror to do anything else. They had watched this whole exchange with bated breath, and seeing our talks get (literally) cut off filled them with despair. Some of them were half praying, half pleading for their lives, giving the proceedings a suddenly tragic air.
Sadly, there was no point in pleading now. My normally generous heart had been fully drawn over by the scrawls of rage. And I had just happened to finish analyzing that Merciless skill I got. Turned out it allowed me to seize the souls of anyone begging for their lives or seeking help from me. In other words, if they ever lost the will to fight, it meant death for them. It didn’t seem to have a vast range of uses, really, but something told me it’d help out a bunch right now.
Question. Use the unique skill Merciless?
Yes
No
If I had accumulated the necessary number of souls to evolve into a true demon lord, I could have always left these guys alive. But, sadly, it looked like I still didn’t have quite enough.
YES, I thought. My heart was calm. There was no pain, no real sense of guilt I could find lurking in some corner. And an instant later, everyone except for Reyhiem and that guy with him (whom I had specifically defined as out of range) was exposed to the tyranny of Merciless. The knights all fell, unable to pose any resistance, and with that, the nearly ten thousand soldiers still alive all breathed their last.
Merciless, huh…? You’re damn right it is. It was safe to merely fear me, I guess, but the moment I fully broke their hearts, I could launch it. It was like they just handed their souls to me on a silver platter. I was free to choose whether I let them live or die—and if I let them off the hook, they came back home, and then they started plotting revenge against me, I could flip the switch on their lives any time I wanted.
Plus, the real surprise when I used this was that it worked even on the soldiers already fleeing me. It applied to everyone I had identified as an enemy at the beginning—in other words, everybody I watched over, up there in the sky. I know I talked a big game about “killing everybody,” but even I expected to lose some of the more prudent ones who decided to ditch this scene early. They were fleeing in all directions, too much of a hassle to track down one by one—but the moment I launched Merciless, the survivor count reached zero.
Just crush an opponent’s heart, and the fight’s over. Whoa. Maybe this is more useful than I thought. I have a feeling I’ll be tapping it again in the future.
The waves of chaos and terror that permeated the battlefield neatly dissipated. I had made all the pain and fear go away, which I suppose was one way of showing a little mercy—even if it meant my two survivors were about to experience even more pain and fear.
Then the World Language echoed anew.
Report. Checking the number of souls required for evolution… Confirmed. The required conditions have been met. The Harvest Festival will now begin.
As the voice rang through my mind, I could feel vast amounts of power suddenly flow away from my body. Whether I wanted it to or not, my body was transforming, rebuilding itself. I was becoming a true demon lord—one recognized as such not just by me but by the very world itself.
My body fell lifelessly to the ground, reverting to slime form.
Oh crap. I could barely keep my eyes open. Like, this wasn’t gonna just be a nap or anything. I was freakin’ exhausted.
My vision was starting to fade around me, which I assumed was because Magic Sense was starting to falter. I was even getting dizzy. I mean, yeah, they said I’d have to go through evolution and stuff, but I was seriously worried that my consciousness would fly away from me. I sure as hell didn’t want to sleep in this field full of stinking corpses.
Let’s get back to town. I still have my two conspirator friends safely captured here. My mission was accomplished. There was no harm in returning to Tempest.
As I tried to console myself with that thought, Magic Sense picked up something. A single person. If they were still alive, it meant I hadn’t broken their heart yet. Better be careful. God, as tired as I am, and there’s still someone left…? I gotta do something about this fatigue—
Report. Once triggered, the Harvest Festival cannot be halted.
Well, shit. I’m, like, in real trouble, aren’t I?!
Hurriedly, I called for Ranga. Lucky thing I had him in my shadow, just in case.
“Ranga, you there?”
“Yes, my master.”
He was! Nice. He appeared smoothly out from his hiding place. Seeing him offered so much new promise for me. I sighed contentedly.
“Ranga, this is a top-priority order. Keep me safe and carry me back to town! And bring these two people along, too. Tell everyone there they are not to be touched, and definitely make sure nobody tries to kill them. You can ask Kabal’s crew or whoever to take care of them until I wake up.”
Oop. Here we go. I was now having serious trouble keeping my mind together. Spatial Motion would’ve gotten me there faster, but I was afraid I’d blow myself up if I tried it now.
“Yes, Master. What should I do with the surviving enemy?”
Oh. He must’ve noticed, too. I had to think about it. There was someone there, pretending to be dead. Merciless told me after I used it that there were no survivors. So did this guy die then come back to life? It meant his soul was still safe in there. I couldn’t treat this lightly.
Ranga would probably win, I imagined, but I opted for a more careful approach. Safety first and all that. But just turning tail and fleeing didn’t seem right, and it’d be a pain if this foe decided to give chase.
So I chose to summon some demons, who’d hopefully at least delay my foe for a while. It’d really suck if word about Megiddo got out—it worked best only if the adversary wasn’t aware of it—but my safety had to take priority.
“I will leave that to the others. They will bring the foe to you if they can capture them. Meet up with them for me.”
“I shall, Master!”
I pooled together what little mental power I had left. Dispelling the Anti-Magic Area, I worked to summon a demon, offering the piles of corpses spread before me. I thought about using Glutton to eat them, but it wasn’t like they’d have any useful skills or anything.
There was no telling what kind of demon would result, but hopefully it wouldn’t be a waste of twenty thousand bodies. It was exactly the kind of thing a selfish demon lord would do, I suppose, but it was the thought that counted. I hope.
“Come to me, demon! I have something for you to eat, so…come on up and serve me now!”
I sounded like I was trying to call my dog back from the yard. It was such a hassle to stay conscious that I could barely even pull off the summon correctly. Any demon willing to get summoned with something like that must be one damn curious idiot.
But maybe I shouldn’t have let such passing thoughts bother me. In a moment, three demons were there on the field. Just three? And here I thought thirty or so bodies were enough to summon a Greater Demon. Thousands of times that, and three is all I get. Ugh.
Well, at least they’re Greater Demons, ranked A-minus. Certainly no trio of monsters to sniff at. Plus, I did kind of pluck the souls out of all these corpses.
Ugh. Daaamn. I had never felt so wasted since I came to this world. My head barely even worked now. I wasn’t so sure these guys could find this enemy, this needle in a haystack. But whatever.
“Hey. Guys. There’s someone hiding here, pretending to be dead. Capture them alive and bring ’em to Ranga here.”
Three Greater Demons, bossed around by a slime. To an outsider, it must’ve been a surreal sight.
I couldn’t help but marvel at it. I was getting deliriously loopy as the dizziness grew. Simply keeping my body together was getting tough.
I needed to get somewhere safe…
“Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee. The birth of a new demon lord! Quite an old sensation but a familiar one. What a truly wonderful day! Such an offering—and the very first order from our lord, no less. This is such an honor; I couldn’t possibly be more enthusiastic about this. Would it be all right to continue serving you in the future?”
I suppose one of the demons was greeting me, but I was so out of it that I didn’t even recognize half of it.
“We’ll talk later. Just prove you can be helpful to me first. Go.”
That was all I could sputter out.
“It shall surely be done. Do not worry for a moment, O great Master…”
I ignored the trio as they kindly saluted me, my mind being enfolded in the darkness. This was my first bout of full unconsciousness in this world—the Initiation, if you will; the sleep that predated the evolution…
…and the birth of a new demon lord.
CHAPTER 5
THE UNLEASHED
After Rimuru set off for battle, the residents of the town assembled in the central plaza and began to pray. It wasn’t out of sentiment, but for real work reasons. Shuna was commanding them, as part of her efforts to keep the barrier up.
The stronger ones were set in place so they could better protect the fringes of town, out of concern for intruders. At the same time, Shuna released a stream of magical force within the barrier, boosting the number of magicules in the air.
All of them had a firm grasp of their role—and all were deadly serious about carrying it out.
In the middle of the plaza, the bodies of Shion and the other victims were laid to rest, kept in good condition by Shuna’s magic. There was a throne in the middle for Rimuru, an enshrinement site for his demon lord–evolution ceremony. The hope was that performing the evolution as close to the victims as possible would make it that much more likely they’d be resurrected.
The townspeople surrounded the whole site—Shuna among them, standing next to Mjurran. And as she stood there, Shuna couldn’t help but think: Rimuru seemed to care a great deal about being a former human…but that’s such a trivial issue. To Shuna and everyone else, soul-to-soul connections mattered the most, and the connection she shared with him gave her an absolute sense of security. She wished Rimuru would realize that as well. The eternal euphoria he provided filled her soul, nourishing it. If that went away and Rimuru disappeared, she thought it might drive her crazy. Just imagining it produced such a profound sense of loss that she shivered.
“Sir Rimuru,” she whispered. “As long as we have him, that’s all that matters. But even missing one of us could upset his mental balance greatly.”
Benimaru, just back to the plaza, nodded at this. It made sense to him. The transformation that the usually gregarious Rimuru made, he was convinced, might impact that balance heavily. To him, he wanted to believe that life would go back to what it was someday.
“I just hope he doesn’t turn into a different person as a demon lord. Going berserk on us…”
With the barrier destruction work done, all of them—Benimaru, Soei, Hakuro, Geld, Rigur, Gobzo, even Gabil—were now surrounding the throne. That was on Rimuru’s orders; he’d asked them to kill him at once, should he lose all sense of reason and turn into an uncontrollable beast up there. No matter what, they wanted to keep that from happening—all of them.
“It’s because you keep on sleeping there, Shion,” Benimaru whispered before returning to his prayers. “Just wake up already…”
His faith wasn’t in some god up above. It was in a single slime. That faith had never betrayed him before, and it shouldn’t this time. Everyone believed that; no one doubted it.
Just then:
Report. The individual Rimuru Tempest’s Harvest Festival is about to begin. Upon its completion, all monsters in his genealogy will receive their due gifts.
The World Language echoing in the hearts of every monster gathered in town sent a shock wave of tension across the land. Everything had gone as planned; Rimuru had successfully crushed the invading force and begun his evolution. Now it was everyone else’s turn to pitch in.
“Brace yourselves! Our master is victorious. Now is the time for us to wield our own powers!”
Everyone on hand voiced their approval of Benimaru’s words. Things had begun to move. Losing Shion and the rest could very well destroy Rimuru’s heart forever. They all needed to do everything they could right now to prevent that.
After some time, Rimuru returned, carefully ferried over on Ranga’s back. As directed, he was taken to the throne and laid to rest.
Benimaru took this moment to think about what he would ask Rimuru when he awoke, to ensure he was still in full grasp of his reason.
“All right,” he’d suggested at the conference earlier, “I will ask you, ‘What do you think of Shion’s cooking?’”
“Sure,” Rimuru had muttered. “And then I’ll say it’s shitty, right? How’d you come up with that question? Is that really the best thing to ask…?”
It had been Benimaru’s idea, of course. He hadn’t forgotten about how he was always having her latest creations tested out on him—and the boundless pain and suffering that resulted. But now…if Shion could listen to that conversation and it enraged her enough to wake her up…they could hope for nothing more. Beyond that, all they had to do was carry out the duties they’d discussed earlier.
And that was why Benimaru missed it. He was too worked up with performing the procedure exactly as planned to think at all about what these “gifts” might be. But even that was quietly beginning its preparations, ready to manifest itself in reflection of his subconscious thoughts…
Rimuru was in a deep sleep. His consciousness was gone; he was an irregular, unresolved blob, not even able to retain his usual streamlined form. And there, in the deep, deep darkness beyond the reaches of Rimuru’s consciousness:
Report. The Harvest Festival has begun. Your bodily structure will be reconstructed in order to evolve you into a new species.
Confirmed. Super-evolution from type “slime” to type “demon slime”…successful. All bodily attributes have been greatly enhanced. The material and spiritual bodies are now freely transformable. Intrinsic skills Infinite Regeneration, Control Magic, Multilayer Barrier, Universal Detect, Universal Shapeshift, Lord’s Ambition, Enhanced Replication, Spatial Motion, Darkflame Lightning, and Universal Thread acquired. Reacquiring resistances…completed. Cancel Pain, Resist Melee Attack, Cancel Natural Elements, Cancel Ailments, Resist Spiritual Attack, and Resist Holy Attack acquired. Evolution is now complete.
Then, as if responding to its master’s command, the unique skill Great Sage—which never demonstrated having a sense of self before—requested its own evolution.
Report. Re-executing skill acquisition requested earlier. Unique skill Great Sage attempting evolution… Failed.
Failed.
…Re-executing.
Failed.
…Re-executing.
Failed.
………
……
…
—ENDLESS—
Report. Unique skill Great Sage attempting evolution, using Deviant as a sacrifice… Successful. Unique skill Great Sage has evolved into Raphael, Lord of Wisdom.
The Great Sage attempted it without sacrificing anything several hundred million times—and then, after a trial-and-error process that seemed like it would last for all of time…
…it obtained its Harvest Festival gift—conquering, and evolving, into an ultimate skill, the loftiest height possible in the world.
The chances of this working were thought to be so small that it wasn’t even worth considering. It almost seemed like a reward provided for the infinite effort involved with the attempt. Succeeding made it more likely that it could carry out its master’s request, but the
supposedly soulless conceptual intelligence bore no happiness. It could never understand emotion.
But—despite the lack of emotion, the lack of happiness—somehow, it felt fulfilled. And then, with its evolved skill, it carried out its master’s request once more. The way it acted, working incessantly to make its master’s dreams come true, could even be…
The evolution continued.
Glutton consumed Merciless to become Belzebuth, Lord of Gluttony, perfectly honed to more effectively handle its master’s desires. There, deep in an abyss beyond what Rimuru’s soul could detect, the skill softly, deeply evolved itself—all to make his own dreams come true.
But the Harvest Festival still wasn’t over.
The gifts meant to celebrate Rimuru’s evolution were passed out to everyone who had been named by or evolved from him. A raucous festival, indeed—a gift for the one who had evolved from demon lord seedling to true demon lord. And the party was just getting started.
Razen lay in hiding, concealing himself with all his might.
He was lucky to have died once back there. Having fully commandeered Shogo’s skills, he was brought back to life over time by Survivor. Before his brain could even comprehend the unbelievable events taking place before him, his instincts understood and made the right call. They told him: Here was a foe who no one in human form could ever beat. Folgen, his sworn friend, was rendered helpless and killed—not even able to stand before the monster, much less shield King Edmaris.
He wanted to go and rescue his king but stopped himself, knowing that going right now would be a waste of life. So he kept his breath low, playing possum until the masked magic-born left the scene, looking for all the world like a demon lord. He had no access to magic and was facing an attack he couldn’t identify, so fleeing would be difficult in itself.