by Fuse
The tale he wove couldn’t have possibly painted him in a better light. I was impressed.
But, man, he just kept on talking forever. I wanted to counter his excuses with a little logic of my own. My intention was to show my innocence, prove that my actions were justifiable, and then crush Clayman, after all. That was why I was sitting here politely and hearing him out, but my patience was reaching its limits.
Could we maybe get started soon?
Listening to his tale, I had noticed a pretty decisive hole in his logic—his evidence. His entire dossier of evidence was made up of testimony, all from a single witness—Mjurran, the ring finger, who had sworn absolute loyalty to Clayman. It made me laugh. Not only was she alive, but the Mjurran-related evidence he presented was as flimsy as a plastic bag. I suppose he ran out of time to fabricate anything more substantial than that.
All in all, it seemed like I could build a pretty credible case for myself. I already had all the evidence I needed.
“…That concludes my case,” Clayman bellowed, looking all self-important. “Hopefully, everybody in the room now fully understands that Rimuru, that trifling magic-born over there, is nothing more than a charlatan posing as a demon lord. I believe that a purge is in order here…”
The other demon lords must have been pretty darn patient if they were willing to put up with all this prattling. Some of them had already nodded off, it seemed. I guess it was okay, as long as you didn’t bother anyone. The only rule, I surmised, was that you had to shut up and listen to the guy who convened the Council to start with.
Now we were all free to state our own opinions—and I was ready for it. Raine, who must’ve been taking the emcee post, turned her eyes to me.
“We will now listen to testimony from our visitor.”
Ugh, finally. I had been patient long enough. No more of this clowning around.
“So, um, Clayman, right? You’re a liar.”
“What?”
“I mean, honestly speaking, I don’t give a crap about demon lords. That story about Carillon luring me into this is a load of BS, and Farmus attacked us out of their own greed. Those two things aren’t related to each other at all.”
Clayman gave me an irritated sneer. “Ha! Who would ever believe trite excuses like that? One of my most senior advisers has been killed!”
Here we go. Just what I’ve been waiting for.
“Yeah, Mjurran, right? Well, I didn’t kill her. In fact, she’s alive.”
“Pah! Of all the ludicrous—”
“Whoa, whoa, hear me out. Pretty much all of that speech was based off verbal testimony and your own conjecturing. And maybe that’d be enough to deal with some rank and filer, but it won’t work on me. Mjurran, your supposed tipster, is under my protection. That’s why I’m not letting you mess with me, and that’s why your testimony has absolutely no credibility whatsoever.”
Going into that much detail made even Clayman go a bit pale. But he had no intention of ceding his point.
“Heh-heh. You’re willing to stoop to such lows, then? Did you meddle with her corpse and install some evil spirit inside?”
It was a spur-of-the-moment accusation but not an insane one. In a world as rich with magic as this one, you could even make the dead seem alive if you wanted. Talk about freaky—and another reason why you couldn’t trust oral testimony like that.
“Well,” I said, “I wasn’t planning to believe anything you said anyway. That’s why I figured I’d come over there and beat you up myself, but I wound up changing my mind. Before this Council began, my forces gathered some evidence of their own.”
I flashed a smile as I attempted to show him up. This enraged him, I could tell. He was easier to toy with than I thought.
“What are you trying to say? If you want to die that badly, just come out and say it—”
“Calm down a sec,” I said, cutting him off. “I told you, I have evidence.”
I then produced several crystal balls from my pocket, teleporting them to the center of the round table and magically triggering them one after the other. Each one contained its own video image, including one featuring me fighting the orc general and another shot from Gelmud’s point of view. Shuna had found them all in the ancient castle Clayman called home.
One of them, meanwhile, contained footage from the battle fought just today. It was taken by Benimaru, from his vantage point overseeing the entire landscape, and it contained some really juicy stuff.
“S-stop! Stop that! Please, Sir Clayman, stop this at once!”
Right there, in the ball, Clayman’s field general was screaming and being transformed into an incomplete Charybdis. And that wasn’t all.
“…This is quite a surprise. I was expecting Yamza to turn tail and flee. But imagine…”
“Clayman’s forces are destroyed. The mission’s a failure—the losses immense…”
“…Well, Laplace warned him. Clayman can’t blame anyone for it but himself. We’ll need to brief him about this…”
That conversation between the two weird jesters Geld and Phobio had witnessed was all on video. Probably Footman and Teare from the Moderate Jesters, I assumed. With Laplace’s name popping up, it had to be them. That and “him”—I thought Clayman was behind all this, but it seemed like there was someone else. Maybe…
Understood. It is estimated that all of this is connected.
…I thought so. Whoever it was that tried to make me fight Hinata was also controlling Clayman. That explains the timing—while I was busy fighting the Western Holy Church, this figure had Clayman spur Farmus into combat, and then that whole tragedy unfolded.
Maybe I could understand all this, even if I didn’t appreciate it much. But you went too far, Clayman. So I’m taking you down. Don’t resent me for it. In this world, it’s survival of the fittest.
I proudly beamed at him. “This is what real evidence looks like, Clayman.”
Having this stuff with me definitely made things proceed more quickly, but even if I didn’t have it, it would’ve turned out the same way. I was gonna crush him with my own force anyway, so all I really needed was something to shoot down his lame excuses with. It wasn’t a matter of good or evil—it was all about keeping up appearances. Besides, I had real evidence here, and I saw no reason for anyone to complain about that.
“You, you couldn’t! All of this was fabricated! Fake images, built with magic, to prop up your lies! How could you be so base, you slime?!”
“Lies? They aren’t lies, you dummy. Your army’s all done. And you’re joining them next.”
Clayman turned toward me, face scrunched up in anger.
“Ev… Everyone, you can’t listen to this trickster! This slime, Rimuru, is a notorious bluffer. He undoes the seal on Veldora to destroy the Farmus force, and then he parades around pretending he did the act himself. He’s just a little slime, all bark and no bite! And it is simply outrageous that he dares to deceive us all in the proud demon lord family!”
It was an impassioned speech. As if he wasn’t the one relying on others to save his ass. As if he wasn’t the little one. If he was acting right now, like I said, he was a pretty good actor.
“Look, Clayman…”
This was Daggrull, his voice just as grounded and dignified as his appearance. Wasn’t expecting him to speak up.
“Didn’t you say just now that Rimuru goaded the kingdom of Farmus into attacking? If the news of Veldora’s resurrection is true, why would he execute it in such a roundabout fashion?”
“…All right. Allow me to explain.”
Clayman looked lost for a moment but then opened his mouth again, ready to commit to this tale—the story of the attempt to collect people’s souls to awaken into a true demon lord. I suppose he wanted to keep that under his hat so that the other demon lords wouldn’t get the jump on him, but Daggrull had forced him to fess up.
“…This low-class, unwitting slime must have had the incredible good fortune to acquire the traits of a demon l
ord. But he must have let it go to his head, for he then traveled to the human realms to investigate the truth behind what he obtained. That drove him to set off a war with the humans on a whim, using the banished Veldora to stage a brutal genocide.”
He was doing his best to convince the table, complete with overblown, theatrical hand motions.
“Leaving someone like this free to maraud again would damage our very reputations as demon lords. I believe he must be purged, but what is your opinion?”
“So cough up some evidence,” I retorted. “Not that you have any, do you? Everything you said was just a bunch of ‘wouldn’t it be nice if…’ junk, and you still think they’re all gonna swallow it?”
Clayman gave me another unamused glare. It didn’t bother me. I was already sick of putting up with his pathetic accusations.
“Ngh… Why does some slime claiming the might of a dragon for himself think he has the right to defy us?! There is no way you could ever become a demon lord!”
“Whether I’m a slime or not doesn’t matter, and besides, Veldora’s my friend. I’m not here to listen to you go on with your bullshit, all right? Can we get to the point, please? Just admit it. Phobio, the magic-born in that video, just showed us how Charybdis was resurrected at your demand, right? As those jesters guided him to. And now one of your own men transformed into Charybdis and went insane. That’s what I’m talking about when I say solid evidence. If you think I’m bluffing, go right ahead, ’cause you’ll be thinking that all the way to the grave.”
I shot to my feet, kicking up the adjacent seat as I did, and tried to look as threatening as possible. Casually, I placed my hand on part of the round table in front of me—and in an instant, the large table disappeared. Nothing to be surprised about. I just stored it in my Belzebuth. Now we had a decent-size space to work with.
The chair I kicked up sailed in the direction of Clayman, smashing against the wall behind him with a loud crash. This didn’t faze the demon lords, either. Only Clayman was unnerved by it.
“All of you are willing to put up with this reckless violence?! He is making light of us all. Should we not be exacting our judgment upon him at once?!”
What, all of them? I always knew he was a wimp. I walked to the middle of where the table used to be.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. Like I said, I don’t care about you demon lords at all. All I want is to build a nation that I can enjoy living in. I need the humans’ cooperation for that, so I decided to offer my protection to them. Anyone who gets in the way of that, whether a person or a demon lord or the Holy Church, is my enemy. Just like you are, Clayman.”
I explained my ideals to the group with far more passion than Clayman could ever manage.
“What?!”
“And if you call that reckless violence,” I said as I sized him up, “what would you call taking over someone’s mind while we’re all chatting at Walpurgis?”
Did he think I wouldn’t notice? In the midst of that whole speech, that little sneak was launching mind-control attacks at me. If I had to guess, he was trying to dominate my consciousness. Too bad it didn’t work; Raphael was guarding me the whole time, so I had it fully taken care of.
At least I had a justifiable cause on the table, so to speak. That was now in the ears of all the demon lords, and Clayman had already started trying to strike me. If any of them wanted to oppose me, it was now or never.
Time to switch over to real action.
I had asked the question to Clayman, but it was answered by someone else—Guy, the red-haired demon lord seated on the far side of the chamber.
“Indeed,” he said with a charmingly attractive smile. “In order to keep things fair, we are only allowed to appeal to others through our own voices.”
“But, Guy, he is insulting us all—”
“Shut up,” I interrupted. “If you don’t like it, then it’s between you and me, isn’t it?”
“He is correct, Clayman. If you call yourself a demon lord, then use your powers to defeat that magic-born. And you—” Guy looked straight at me. “Do you intend to declare yourself a demon lord?”
“Yep. I’m already leader of the Great Forest of Jura, and as far as anyone on the ground’s concerned, I am one.”
No matter the path we had to take to get there, I imagined they would all accept that I’d teamed with the Storm Dragon to rule the forest. There was no point denying that Tempestians were already calling me demon lord.
“Very well. And we have an array of witnesses here as well. If you can win against Clayman before us, I will allow you to adopt the title.”
So beating Clayman ties up all these little strings, huh? This was exactly the development I hoped for.
Clayman began to laugh, just as suddenly as he regained his composure a moment ago.
“Heh-heh-heh… How exasperating. I simply attempted a little trick because I didn’t want to dirty my own hands, and now look at the storm I’ve unleashed. What a mistake.”
He was smiling the whole time. Did he have a screw loose? His thin, almost inhuman smile was still clinging to life as he looked at me. And then, quietly:
“You’re up, Milim.”
Tension raced across the chamber. Even the demon lords were nervous, although some were maintaining perfect calm as always.
My eyes turned to Milim. There was the source of Clayman’s confidence—the belief that he had her under his control. Control that he exercised right at that moment.
So she was…?
“Wow. What a bigmouth. After everything you said, you’re relying on someone else? And bringing in Milim after you punched her out to make her do your bidding?”
I tried provoking him a little, but not even Clayman was stupid enough to bite.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I will be fighting, too, of course. Is there any issue with that, Guy?”
“Not at all, Clayman. If Milim is aiding you on her own free will, I will not stop her.”
This…wasn’t good. Clayman I had a handle on, but Milim was deadly. With Guy so readily granting permission, there was no way I could dodge having to fight her. Even with what I could do by now, I didn’t like my prospects against her—and besides, I wanted to help her out. No, I will help her out!
Just then, the unmoving, doll-like Milim made two fists and struck an overwrought, triumphant pose…or so it looked like to me. Maybe not. It was just for an instant; I dunno.
Man. Poor lady. Don’t worry, Milim, I swore in my heart. I’ll get you out of there.
“Well, all right. I was planning to rescue Milim anyway, so I think I’ll just undo that brainwashing trick you pulled on her—by force, if I need to.”
“Enough of your prattle! You will die in despair.”
“The only one dyin’ here is you, Clayman. I think one of my officers would make a better match against the likes of you. Fighting you myself would just make me a bully.”
Clayman’s face stiffened. A thick, black aura began to float out of him, perhaps generated by his anger. You can’t be a demon lord unless you know how to intimidate your foe, I guess. Not that it was that impressive—but between his rage and panic, that should open up some weak points to exploit. Shion would be fighting him in my place, and I was sure she’d be able to take advantage of that.
I motioned with my eyes to Shion. She immediately sprang into action. In a moment, she was upon Clayman, launching an attack. Concentrating her aura around her fist, she used that single instant to land a good thirty or so blows on him. Then she turned back at me with a look of relief and asked, “Is this all right?”
…Um, aren’t you supposed to ask before you start clobbering? All I did was give you a sidelong glance. That was supposed to be a “You get it, right? Clayman’s all pissed off, so get ’im while he’s off guard” kind of glance. I wasn’t expecting you to beat the crap out of him before I blinked again. Does the expression off guard mean anything to you?
Well…so be it. What’s done is done. The force of the
strikes propelled Clayman right in front of me, in the middle of the circle. “You, you, you bastard!” he shouted as he stood up. He was tougher than I thought.
That black aura around him thickened, instantly healing his injuries. It was far faster than what the orc lord could do, but that was pretty much normal for a demon lord. Either way, it made Clayman accept Shion as an enemy, so we were still more or less sticking to the script.
“If that’s what you want,” he said, “then I’ll kill both of you.” Then the fox that had jumped down to his feet swelled up in size.
Report. This is believed to be the Nine-Head mentioned by Mjurran.
Oh yeah, she did say that, huh? So it was another servant of his, not some pet. Then another figure emerged from Clayman’s shadow, wrapped in a black robe. He had two servants, and I had Shion in battle mode. Ranga was similarly enlarged now, ready to pounce.
Wait. Hang on. We’re outnumbered if Milim is joining in… Nah. No need to panic yet. That’s what Beretta is for— Huuhh?!
The moment we all stepped into the circle where the table used to be, it was shut away from the audience by a barrier. The area within it exploded in size, the surrounding chairs seemingly far away and distant. They must have installed some kind of enclosing barrier to protect the other demon lords.
I kind of expected this, given that they created that whole fancy event space and everything…but Beretta, one of my supports, didn’t make it in.
Oh, crap, I didn’t see that pitfall coming— But just as I thought it, Clayman started screaming.
“Milim, kill him!!”
And she was ready to do just that.
There was no doubting the fist coming my way. The force behind it was deadly. But after expanding my senses a million times over with Mind Accelerate, there was a chance I could avoid it. It wasn’t impossible, but I didn’t have much leeway to mess up.