That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Vol. 6

by Fuse

  “The way Clayman puts it,” Leon replied, “he’s just a self-styled demon lord. Personally, if he has the strength to back it up, I have no problem with him.”

  “Ah. So you think Rimuru is qualified to be a demon lord? I was just wondering, since Ramiris, of all people, is involved. If someone’s piqued her interest that much, it should be a lot of fun for me.”

  Although this Walpurgis was convened by Clayman, Ramiris had made the additional proposal of having Rimuru himself attend. By Guy’s estimate, Ramiris must’ve had something to say about Clayman’s actions here.

  “…Ramiris? I have trouble dealing with that fairy. She makes fun of me every time we meet. I’ve thought about strangling her to death countless times…”

  …But if it was Ramiris making this request, Leon had to agree with it. He couldn’t help but feel like he owed that much to her.

  “Ah-ha-ha-ha! Better not. If you kill her, you’d be making me your enemy, you realize.”

  “I’m sure. I wasn’t being serious. Besides, there’s no way I’d win in a fight against you.”

  That was no lie. Leon was no fan of Ramiris and her big mouth, but he didn’t actually mean her harm. And to be honest, he had no hope of beating Guy. They were both equal in demon lord rank, but the difference in strength was like night and day. Leon was closer to Mizeri and Raine than Guy on that score. There was just no comparison.

  “Mm? I wouldn’t be so sure. Maybe you’d kill me one in a million times?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not interested in a fight I’m not guaranteed to win.”

  “Quit being so modest. There aren’t many people who could wound me. The mere fact that you have a chance of killing me makes you more than strong enough, Leon.”

  “Pfft. The truth’s the truth. You and Milim are on a different echelon from us. And speaking of that…”

  Leon was reminded of something—the reported resurrection of Veldora, the Storm Dragon. And when he told that story, Leon managed to honestly shock Guy for the first time in his life.

  Just then, an icy, shrill voice echoed across the terrace, cutting them off.

  “Oh my. I am very interested in that topic.”

  The voice was a perfect match for the beautiful woman it belonged to. Her skin was like porcelain, her eyes a fascinating sort of cold, glowing blue diamond in color. Her pearl-white hair cascaded past her cheeks, where the light-green shade of her lips drew the eye.

  She was allowed to move and speak without Guy’s permission, shining more beautifully than any crown jewel. She was praised as the Ice Empress by some, but to the rest of the world, she was known as Velzard, the Ice Dragon—one of only four dragon types to exist, and the demon lord Guy Crimson’s friend and partner. Just like Leon, she was on equal footing with Guy.

  “Ah, Velzard,” Leon said, dripping with sarcasm. “I suppose there was a dragon type here, wasn’t there?”

  “My, cold as always, aren’t we? But I’m glad to have the chance to see you.”

  “Are you? Well, it’s a great honor to have a glimpse at your face.”

  There was little real emotion behind this exchange.

  “You never did get along with each other,” Guy observed with a groan. Not that he had any interest in mediating. Normally, this would kick off a series of back-and-forth put-downs, but today Velzard changed the subject.

  “So the topic you were discussing? Sir Leon, my younger brother has awoken?” Her blue eyes were shining as she asked for details on Leon’s big news. “You are sure of that, Leon?”

  “I stopped feeling his presence two years ago, so I assumed he had met his end, but…?”

  If Veldora had resurrected himself, it would’ve been obvious. His massive, out-of-control aura would’ve changed the world’s weather patterns. But none of that happened. Guy and Velzard could be excused for their shock.

  “It’s no mistake. A spy I sent to the Western Nations reported as much to me.”

  “Oh…? So why is that evil dragon acting so obedient? Has he weakened to the point that he can no longer replenish his magicule stores?”

  “And who would’ve undone the seal placed upon him? I don’t think he could’ve broken out by himself…”

  The Hero had sealed Veldora away—and Velzard had done nothing to save him from it. To her, this was a good way to teach Veldora a lesson for all that selfish rioting. She figured she would spring him out before he disappeared for good, once he was a bit more mature. But then he really did disappear, which perplexed her. It happened much quicker than she anticipated.

  “As the spy put it, Clayman’s scheming was the cause. He had impressed upon the Western Nations, and the larger kingdom of Farmus in particular, to defeat and destroy the Great Forest of Jura Alliance this Rimuru character has established. The results cost Farmus its entire military force and caused Rimuru to place his hat in the demon lord ring.”

  “You know much about this, Leon.”

  “Of course I do. I’m a former human, unlike you. I’ve also just recently learned that Veldora was apparently sleeping right in the middle of the most intense combat. Just before his soul disappeared for good, he was exposed to vast amounts of blood, and it awoke him. That is the truth.”

  The Farmus troops were subsequently massacred by his rage, he went on to explain, although Rimuru escaped injury.

  “So that’s it? The seal just undid itself?”

  “That much, I can’t tell you.”

  Velzard nodded at this. Leon could be right, but a single spy’s report wasn’t enough to make a policy decision from. The Hero’s unique skill Unlimited Imprisonment encased its target in a dimension of an imaginary number, shutting out any access or interaction with the real world. But now Veldora was exercising his presence here, once more?

  “Perhaps the Hero’s seal wasn’t so complete after all…”

  This made sense to her…before Leon corrected her.

  “That’s possible, yes, but I have another theory. What if someone swallowed Veldora up, seal and all, and placed him in another subspace of their own making?”

  Guy smiled giddily at this. “Ooh, I like that! So someone did undo the Hero’s seal, then! The seal’s too interwoven with the Hero’s own abilities to be undone by any normal skill. Perhaps you or I could do it…but if this person exists, then he must be as powerful as us. How fun!”

  “It is just a possibility, keep in mind.”

  “And you think this person might be Rimuru, Leon?”

  “…Exactly.”

  “I see, I see. Then we definitely do need to size this person up.”

  Now it made sense to Guy. No wonder Leon wasn’t showing his typical reluctance to attend a Council. Clayman was engaged in reckless violence; Milim was acting unusually strange; Rimuru undid Veldora’s seal and declared himself demon lord. What if all these events were actually connected? At the very least, it’d make this Walpurgis a hell of a lot of fun.

  A longing smile erupted across Guy’s face. “You know,” he whispered, “why Veldora is acting so obedient, then?”

  “…I think he’s been weakened,” replied Velzard. “I’m receiving only the tiniest of reactions from his presence. Nothing like before.”

  Even as a fellow dragon type, Velzard had to concentrate to receive even a weak blip from her younger brother. If his energy had been drained, that would explain that.

  “Strange that he hasn’t acted out at all, though. With his personality, violence is practically what he lives for.”

  Velzard was having trouble making sense of all this, too.

  “Well, be that as it may,” Leon matter-of-factly replied, “I’m not terribly interested in Veldora. If you want to try to drag an old friend of yours back here, be my guest.”

  While Velzard was family, and Guy had torn his hair out figuring out what to do with Veldora in the past, Leon had no connection to Veldora. As long as this dragon didn’t mess with his domain, he had no intention of being involved. That’s how dange
rous Veldora was to him.

  “Are you leaving?”

  “Yeah. That’s all you needed from me, right?”

  “Well, one moment. No need for all the rush. I wanted to ask: Have you made any progress in pursuing your real goal? You know, targeted summoning?”

  Guy was referring to the experimentation Leon had spent much of his life working on. He was just as interested in the subject as Leon.

  “…Not quite yet on that, no. I changed up my plan and tried having them perform summons at random, but that ended in failure as well. It just attracted too much attention, you see. I brought the theory of ‘incomplete summons’ to the Western Nations, but the Free Guild interfered with me. It’s already a horribly inefficient way of going about this business, and it’ll face another obstacle in the future. Once it does, I’ll just have to find another way.”

  To put it in an extreme way, Leon really didn’t care about the Council or the new demon lord. He was simply trying to pick out young weeds before they grew and got in his way.

  “Obstacle?”

  “Yeah. This one apparently saved the lives of some kids who were just waiting to die. Before I could pick them up, no less.”

  “Ah. So they were forced into rescue before you saw any results? And you’re sure you’ll continue being interfered with?”

  “Seems likely. He got angry about all these nations summoning children, so he may start applying pressure to each of them. So it’s time to clear out that experiment. If we go any further with it, he’ll find out that I’m there, behind the scenes.”

  “Hmm. Could you perhaps rub out this hindrance?”

  Guy hinted with his eyes that it’d be all too easy for Leon. But his friend simply sighed.

  “Well, this ‘hindrance’ is the exact Rimuru we were just discussing.”

  “What?! That’s no coincidence, is it?”

  “Funny, isn’t it?” Leon nodded, face dead serious. “That’s why I wanted to meet him for myself sometime.”

  Of course, he still could’ve afforded to ignore this Rimuru person, if only Ramiris hadn’t chosen to stick her nose in…

  “All right. This seems to be getting more curious all the time. Perhaps Milim is thinking along similar lines, too. She may be a moron, but she’s got quite the instinct for this kind of thing.”

  “Perhaps. Tonight’s Walpurgis could be a rather raucous occasion.”

  “Hee-hee! No doubt about it.”

  Leon and Guy exchanged smiles as the gentle blue eyes of Velzard watched over them. They proceeded to chitchat a little more before Guy changed the subject.

  “By the way, I had been wondering about something else. Who is this collaborator of yours providing your information?”

  “I don’t know much about him. He seems to be a human from the Empire, and he calls himself a merchant.”

  Summoning an otherworlder required vast amounts of magical energy, exacting conditions, and convoluted rituals to work. The pickier you were about who you summoned, the longer you had to wait before you could attempt the summon again. To get around this, Leon did some business with this merchant, who then conducted the summons for him.

  “And this merchant can be trusted?”

  “Trusted? Trust never needs to be involved. All I’m doing is using him.”

  “Ah. Well, if that’s fine with you, I have no complaints. But be careful, all right? I don’t want you dying on me.”

  “Heh. You, worried about me? That’s a rare sight from you, Guy. But don’t worry. I have no plans to die until I’m finished with my goals.”

  “Again with those ‘goals.’ It’s that important to you?”

  “It sure is. I’d put them ahead of well near everything else in this world.”

  “Hmm. I’m starting to feel jealous.”

  “Don’t give me that nonsense. But I will accept your warning. See you tonight.”

  With that, Leon left the terrace. Guy refrained from stopping him this time, as Leon left a single shining crystal and used Spatial Motion to set off.

  A pair of eyes watched him go.

  “Talk about impatient. I know that’s how Leon is…”

  Guy grinned a little as he spoke softly.

  “It feels to me that Leon is leaving himself uncharacteristically open to attack,” Velzard observed in her icy voice. “He’s working with people without even knowing who they are. Should I investigate for him?”

  “Nah,” Guy replied, unconcerned. “Meddling in Leon’s affairs would just offend him. I don’t want my friends to hate me.”

  To him, Leon was a trusted friend, someone whose personality he was keenly aware of by now. He knew about Leon’s talent more than anyone else. If Leon wasn’t looking into his cohorts’ backgrounds, it must have been because he saw no great need to.

  “If he asks us for a favor, you can help him out then.”

  “All right.”

  And that was the end of their conversation.

  Now the attendees of tonight’s Walpurgis were set in stone.

  Clayman proposed the Council; Frey and Milim signed on to it. Ramiris, with her additional proposal, was also attending, as was the homebody Leon.

  Speaking of homebodies, there was another demon lord whose location was a complete enigma. Guy had reached out via their specialized demon lord connection, all but demanding that one’s attendance.

  Beyond that, there was his old friend Daggrull, along with… Hmm. What about that other guy? He should be coming. Daggrull promised to bring him along. And that just left Guy himself. It’d mark the first Walpurgis in a while to have all the demon lords show up, except for the missing Carillon.

  “It should be a fun one, for sure. You want to join me?”

  “Hmm…” Velzard reflected on this. “No, I think I won’t. Perhaps if my brother were there, but otherwise, I have no interest in demon lords.”

  “No? All right. Keep the lights on for me.”

  “I would be glad to. Now, time to prepare.”

  Velzard stood up, leaving Guy to brood over the upcoming Walpurgis as he gazed at the aurora covering the frigid land.

  A demon lord working behind the scenes, head full of schemes.

  A newer demon lord, but one that could crumble at any time.

  An old friend who was starting to get surprisingly active, considering he hardly left the house.

  And then the potential birth of a new demon lord.

  So exciting! His heart hadn’t sung like this for hundreds of years.

  He needed real change like this. Demon lords weren’t friends; they were supposed to be competing with one another. There was no artificial limit placed on their number—there were times when a dozen existed at once, even more. Whether it’s ten or a hundred, anything was fine. If they weren’t strong enough, they’d get pushed out of the picture the next time a Temma War came around, every five hundred years.

  It’s just that each time that happened, this new crop would fight for a piece of the pie, and to combat this, the maximum number of demon lords was finally set at ten. The human world, once they became aware of this, started calling them the Ten Great Demon Lords. Guy was firmly against it, but it became a sort of tacit agreement among them. The humans didn’t mind the demon lords picking one another off until they were a more manageable number. Ten was enough.

  But Guy figured it was time to put an end to that. The weak didn’t deserve the title demon lord. Perhaps it was time for a new era of rule to unfold—one, he thought, where real demon lords held sway.

  Guy was one of the seven Primal Demons, and the first demon lord to be summoned to this world as an Arch Demon. Each of these demons had a primary color associated with them, and his was Rouge.

  He was an unnamed demon unleashed upon the world, fulfilling the wishes of the powerless human who summoned him and destroying a nation that the human was apparently at war with. He followed that up by destroying his human’s own nation as well. That earned him his name—Guy, pronounced “ghee.” A
n unpleasant-sounding name, like the shrieks of the doomed and desperate as he crushed them.

  Upon being named, Guy realized he had awakened into his new class of “true” demon lord. He thought it needless at first, given that he believed he was already the strongest out there—but this evolution also affected the Primal Demons Vert and Bleu, summoned alongside him as errand girls. They, too, were given physical bodies to work with, as well as the brand-new class of Demon Peer.

  On a whim, Guy decided to make them his servants and gave them names. For Vert, Mizeri, reflecting the misery of mankind. For Bleu, Raine, the rains of blood that fell wherever he strode. They had been faithful to him ever since.

  Just after Guy awakened to demon lord-dom, another one did the same. That was Milim, a girl conceived by a human in this world and the first of the four dragon types that ever threatened it. That dragon had paid for its strange dalliance by losing the majority of his power to his own child. The act had been reviled as taboo ever since.

  Upon losing his power, the dragon type dispersed his body, came to the surface to attain a physical form, and became the founder of the dragons as they existed in this world. This led to dragon types as being defined as the self-sentient propagations of natural spirits, the prototypes, and all the dragons that existed and thrived in the world came from this first father—Veldanava, the Star-King Dragon.

  One day, the Star-King Dragon gave his daughter a pet, a young dragon that would serve as his next incarnation someday. This “pet” was killed by a certain foolish kingdom that ignited Milim’s rage, causing the very heavens to tremble as the nation was destroyed. This made Milim awaken, and the resulting new force sent her wholly out of control, almost wiping all life away from the world.

  It was Guy who stopped her. The battle took place over seven days and seven nights, the most severe anyone had ever seen, turning the bountiful fields of the west into an utter wasteland.

  In the end, no winner could be crowned. The battle ended once Milim regained her senses. It was Ramiris who did this, back then a leader of spirits who sacrificed her own power to neutralize Milim’s rage. She paid a heavy price for this. Being exposed to the auras of demons and dragons sapped her force and made her fall to the world’s surface, becoming a continually self-resurrecting fairy.