by Fuse
Understood. The ranking system, as defined by the human race, makes its calculations based on the quantity of the subject’s magicules. However, even if two subjects with the same quantity of magic fought each other, the competitor with skills and Arts that consume this magic more efficiently would have a decided advantage. A subject’s “level” is an arbitrary figure, with no official method of calculation, and is thus not reflected in an individual’s ranking.
Ahhh. So levels didn’t count as far as the Sage was concerned. Not like you can really say what “level” you are in life, and have anything to back that up with. This wasn’t a video game, after all—some things you could only figure out by actually fighting dudes and seeing how you stacked up. Maybe that was why Hakuro, already high level to start with, exhibited such a startling change in physical strength with his evolution.
You could have all the power in the world, and it meant nothing if you couldn’t harness it. Gelmud proved that much. I couldn’t lose.
“Ya know,” I said tauntingly, “you can go around calling yourself a high-level magic-born all you want, but you don’t look like much of anything to me. Or do you have some kind of last resort you’re hiding?”
Yeah, what kinda skills does he have? ’Cause I didn’t feel like I was in any kind of danger, but I wanted to glean as much intel as I could. I wasn’t letting my guard down—my mind was on the orc lord’s potential moves, but he still didn’t seem interested in moving at all.
“All right,” he said. “I will let you join my cause. Soon, I will—”
I punched him.
Does he listen to anything people say?
“Agh! S-stop, stop! Wait a minute! I have the backing of a demon lord behind me! You will not get away with this—”
Oh, now he comes out with that. Man, what a pain in the ass.
“So?” I asked. “And what’re you gonna say when you run back crying to this guy? You don’t think he’d actually let you stay alive after this, do you?”
Gelmud began visibly shivering, face painfully tense.
“Gaahhhh!! Get away from me!” He stammered the words as he crawled backward. “You’re dead! The demon lord will never forgive this!!”
The demon lord, huh? Leon, hopefully—I had a date with him already. I doubted I could take him right now, really, but I was curious how strong he was.
I knew there were multiple demon lords running around, but were they all about the same, power-wise? This guy seemed to know a thing or two about them, and I’d love to pick his brain for a while, but I’d hate to blink once and have him slip through my fingers. I had to think about that as I interrogated him. Hopefully he’d stay just as loose-lipped as when he revealed his role in all this.
A pity I couldn’t just consume him and gain all his memories. That worked for magical knowledge, for some odd reason, but even that was kind of the luck of the draw. I could always extract skills from that, though, which almost seemed like cheating.
Speaking of that, I quickly decided to use my Sticky Steel Thread skill to keep Gelmud in place before he got any funny ideas. He had already been levitating into the air, chanting something—probably attempting to fly off, I assumed. But that was no problem now.
“Damn you!” he shouted, attempting to unravel himself as I approached him silently. “S-stop, get away! Hey! Orc lord! Over here! Help me!!”
Now he was seeking salvation from the very orc lord he called a fool and a dunderhead a moment ago. Talk about a lost cause. I always respected a leader who had the high regard of his staff, but I hated the opposite. Especially when they treated the people under them as disposable. I was merciless against that.
He probably had a lot of juicy skills on him. No need to waste any more time. But having the chance to speak to Gelmud beforehand made the thought of eating him more than a little unpleasant.
The heaps of corpses that now surrounded him made his heart cry out in pain.
—I’m hungry…
—Hungry…
—You? A high-orc kid? Why don’t you just die already, you worthless brat?
—All of us are starving now… O great magic-born, grant us your mercy…
—Don’t touch me! You’ll get your grime all over my clothes… Hmm? Wait. You…
—Is it all right if I eat this?
—Of course. No need to restrain yourself. Eat until you’ve had your fill, so you can grow big and strong.
—Thank you, o great magic-born!! I will never forget this—
—It is fine. From today forward, you may consider me as your father. Ah yes. Let me give you a name. Your “name” shall henceforth be—
Scenes from the past flashed in his mind. Memories of the first time he was picked up by the magic-born who adopted him. And now he was following his adopted father’s orders, hoping to repay the favor any way he could.
The two shared the same mission—to transform the Forest of Jura, this bountiful place, into a second paradise for the orcs. So they could abandon their own starvation-racked, disease-ridden homeland, so barren of anything that even the demon lord no longer paid it any mind.
If he could only gain control of the forest, his father would have his talents recognized by the demon lord. He would become part of the demon lord’s leadership, and once that happened, he promised that he would provide aid to even more of his allies.
But to do that, he needed power. He needed to consume the higher-level races of the forest, gain more strength—and build a new paradise for the orcs, a safe haven to build upon. The forest’s blessings would ensure their comrades never had to think about starving again. The other races might suffer, perhaps, but they would have to accept that “survival of the fittest,” that absolute, incontrovertible law, applied to them, too, in the end.
This war, after all, was a struggle to find the seeds capable of survival.
…It should have all worked out that way.
—If only you would’ve evolved into a demon lord already…
What did he mean? What did his father, Lord Gelmud, want from him?
For the one called the orc lord, all he could do was stare at his adoptive father, with his dull, yellowish eyes.
Gelmud, paralyzed by fear, fired bolt after bolt of magic at me, materializing them out of thin air despite having his hands restrained. A very skillful act, but it didn’t help him. They harmlessly bounced off my Multilayer Barrier—the bolts counted as a melee attack, I guess, so they couldn’t penetrate my defense at all. I knew that from my previous Analysis, so I knew I no longer had to bother Predator-ing them.
The former sneer on his face was replaced with a gasp of despair.
“Dammit!” he shouted. “Help me, orc lord— I mean, Geld!!”
Ah. So he had named the guy after all. I suppose he wanted to conceal his relationship to the orc lord, for reasons I couldn’t surmise. He said he was “forbidden to meddle” before, which I imagined had something to do with it.
That, at long last, stirred the orc lord to action. Did he want to help Gelmud? Well, all right. He was free to do whatever. I promised Treyni that I’d take him out anyway. It looked, externally speaking, that he was little more than Gelmud’s puppet, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t like picking off the guy behind the scenes was gonna neatly end all of this.
I had no reason to hate this orc. But that didn’t mean I could let him live.
Watching him as he closed the distance between us, I gauged the situation. None of this felt threatening in the least. I couldn’t estimate his magic stores since I hadn’t made physical contact with him yet, but I figured it wouldn’t be too far from Benimaru’s. And that was still around half of Ifrit’s. If I gave this a serious effort, it shouldn’t be too tricky. My main concern was what would happen once all these orcish soldiers were leaderless.
“Well, it’s about time you stood up, you good-for-nothing idiot. Ha-ha-ha! I don’t know who you think you are, but you’re about to get a taste of real strength! Get him, Geld! Show him w
hat it means to defy me and—”
With a wet, squishy-sounding thud, Gelmud’s order was cut off mid-sentence. His head rolled along the saturated ground a few feet. The orc lord had done a marvelous, if somewhat forceful, job of chopping it right off his shoulders.
Crunch, splish, splorch.
Ugh, gross… He’s eating the dude.
The orc lord, upon walking up to Gelmud, had not hesitated a moment in using his meat cleaver–like weapon to decapitate the man. Once that was done, he started to slash away, carving the body into small, bite-size pieces that he immediately hurled into his mouth. It was a low-born, pathetic, and all-too-suitable ending for Gelmud.
So this pig-guy wanted him dead, too, huh? Or was this his orcish instincts at work? Either way, it wasn’t exactly great news for me. The dull, yellow eyes now had the glint of youth and intelligence to them. He had regained his sentience, something he had once lost to the power he gained from all the different races he had tasted. I wasn’t anticipating this… Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
The resulting aura was like nothing I had experienced so far today.
Confirmed. The orc lord’s magical energy has expanded in quantity. He has begun the evolution process to a demon lord seed… Evolution complete. The individual Geld has completed the evolution to an Orc Disaster.
Ooooh… That was the World Language talking, wasn’t it? Neat.
Wait. Stay focused, man. He’s really done it now. There I was, figuring I could whip him anytime I wanted, and now look. Cut me a break, man.
This was completely my fault. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten so cocky. Gelmud was so much weaker than I anticipated, and I figured killing the main guy behind all this would wrap everything up, neat and clean. Boy, was I wrong. Too bad I didn’t kill him when I had the chance.
Okay, new rule from now on. When you can kill a guy, just do it. I’d have to keep that in mind. No point making mistakes if you never learned anything from them, after all.
But getting back to the point. What should I do with this guy? I couldn’t stew in my own juices forever. He’s gonna have to be taken down, one way or the other.
Things were now moving along by themselves, regardless of what I thought. Reality wasn’t willing to wait for me.
“Graaarrrgh!! I am an Orc Disaster, the devourer of all! My name is Geld— Geld, the demon lord!!”
To Geld, I suppose, he was just bringing to fruition what Gelmud wanted for him this whole time. Gelmud wanted him to become a demon lord, and he simply selected the quickest way to evolve into one. Just as Gelmud wanted. No servant could have been more loyal to his master, and I sadly didn’t notice that in time. All I could do there was groan out “What a monster…”
His eyes were now youthful, full of sparkling energy and intelligence. His mere presence was intense, severe, on a scale like nothing Gelmud had ever achieved.
This was a demon lord. A monster whose magic energy had multiplied into something almost overwhelming. He certainly deserved the title. The World Language suggested this was a demon lord seed, too—the real evolution had yet to happen, maybe?
I better kill him right now, I realized, or else he really would become a disaster for the world.
* * *
Benimaru and the other ogres were positioned for battle. They could see how much of a threat the demon lord Geld was. Their easygoing smiles were gone, replaced with stern, serious frowns.
“Sir Rimuru!” Benimaru said. “Let us handle this!” Shion, meanwhile, didn’t even bother to speak. With a flash, she whipped out her large sword and swung it home, putting all her strength behind it, enhanced further by the extra skills Steel Strength and Strengthen Body.
Geld attempted to block it with one meat cleaver–equipped hand. Even for him, it wasn’t quite enough. He brought up his right hand now, too, doing his best to resist Shion’s incessant attack.
“You think some dirty pig can be a demon lord?!” Shion shouted as she landed another strike from up high. “Don’t you dare believe that!” Kurobe’s expertly crafted blade now had a visible aura around it, as it landed with a dull thud against the demon lord’s body.
Both took a step back before clashing once more. Longsword slammed against cleaver, raining sparks upon the battlefield. It looked like an even match, but before long, the differences between the two became clear. Every muscle on Geld bulged, his very armor pulsing as if it were part of his body.
It was the demon lord who won out in the end. His muscle outclassed Shion’s, even with Strengthen Body and all of that. The evolution had greatly enhanced his physical body. It made me want to sigh in despair.
Shion was tossed back, and Geld pursued her. Realizing the danger, she attempted to deflect the blow while leaping backward to reduce the impact. The damage upon her was clear nonetheless. She winced in pain—it’d be a while before she was ready to move again.
But Shion wasn’t the only one here. As Geld landed the follow-up attack, a middle-aged samurai stood strong behind him.
It was Hakuro, and with a speed even I was just barely capable of following, he drew his sword from the staff it was hidden in.
The blade glowed with a constant light, energized by the battle force housed inside the wielder. Its brightness indicated exactly how focused Hakuro was on this. No one could block or dodge him now. A streak of metal ran across the demon lord’s body, cutting it cleanly in half and even slicing off the head on the way back up.
That had to be enough, I thought, but I was still being far too optimistic. Geld’s body reconnected itself, thanks to a yellowish aura that regrouped all the parts with tentacle-like tendrils. The completed body then leaned down, grabbed its head off the ground, and reattached it like nothing was amiss.
The horror movie–like scene silenced everyone for a moment. Even Hakuro was obviously surprised.
Now I knew the most fearsome thing about the demon lord Geld was his otherworldly healing skills. For now, this monster wouldn’t have any resistances, but once he gained them, he’d be impossible to kill.
Then:
“Demonwire Bind!”
Soei used his Sticky Steel Thread to apprehend Geld. He had been lurking within Hakuro’s shadow, waiting for the perfect timing to restrain the demon lord’s moves.
“Get him, Benimaru!” he shouted. Benimaru was already on the move, suddenly unleashing a Hellflare strike. Only a small dome opened around Geld—whether he was deliberately keeping it small or was short on energy after deploying four of them, I didn’t know.
Geld, restrained, had no means of escape from the barrier as it became engulfed in high-temperature flames, doing their level best to incinerate the demon lord. The power of the heat was unaffected by the size of the dome, giving us a guaranteed death.
Or so we thought. Several seconds later, the dome was gone—and Geld was just casually standing there. Benimaru grimaced at the sight. Hellflare was a powerful move, yes, but it was designed for efficiency. It was focused on doing its deed within only a couple seconds; it was incapable of keeping the burners on for extended periods of time like Ifrit could.
Generating Ifrit-style temperatures with relatively little energy was an impressive feat, don’t get me wrong. But a target with enough resistance could easily focus on defending itself to survive the blast, I suppose. If Benimaru could make it last longer, the flames would eventually overcome any resistance or regenerative skills. That, or maybe he could focus further to make the fire even hotter, capable of burning anything in the world. But no.
It wasn’t wholly ineffective, though. Geld had no heat resistance; his skin was burned horribly. The resistance his aura offered was all that kept it from being a lethal blow. He had probably gained something along the lines of Self-Regeneration, like what I had in slime form. The burned skin was already sloughing off, with new skin being generated from underneath. And the moment Geld whispered something, he began to heal quicker than ever.
He must have inherited—or seized—
Gelmud’s own healing skills. Combined with his own inherent abilities, he could probably heal almost as fast as me with Ultraspeed Regeneration.
The battle continued as I watched and analyzed. Ranga aimed an extra strike at Geld before he could fully heal from Benimaru’s damage. He focused his Dark Lightning on a single point and released it, much as I had before. Nothing fancy; just a killer amount of force. It hit Geld directly, freezing him. He was burned and blackened, and as we watched, he fell to the ground.
This time, I was sure we had won. And why not? Not even I was sure I could withstand that kind of attack. If it were a Replicant of mine, it’d be burned to a crisp.
I guess we all wound up pitching in on this kill. Hope they don’t think any less of me for it. I doubted any of the ogre mages could’ve taken him on solo and had any chance. That attack just emptied Ranga’s energy, too—Dark Lightning consumed a ton of it, with obvious results. He was now curled up on the ground, unable to move. I wish he could’ve kept a bit in reserve, but I couldn’t blame him for not doing so at a time like this. Besides, it was over now, right?
Then I heard something.
“So this…is pain.”
The blackened, charred demon lord was back on his feet.
Guess not, then?
“No way,” I whispered.
This monster was totally beyond all common sense. I wasn’t sure this was reality any longer.
Before my eyes, the demon lord had just ripped off both his arms and eaten them.
An orc general ran up to him.
“My lord, let my body join yours…”
They nodded at each other, and that was that. The orc general was killed, then casually cannibalized.
Man… And with every bite, that charred skin fell away, revealing yet another fresh layer underneath. Then he grew entirely new arms, driven by the muscle and fiber gained from what he consumed. He could use that to cast Self-Regeneration on himself as many times as he wanted, I imagined.