A rush of icy-cold wind blew past us through the graveyard at the base of the hill.
“—and it’s the reason why you grew up here.”
◆
Though numerous titles existed to refer to that king of demons, there was no one who knew his true name. He was called the Undying Bladefiend, the King Among Kings. The Purest Evil, the Inexhaustible Darkness, the Rider of Warstorms, the Cackler...
The High King of the Eternals.
Two hundred years ago, the continent of Southmark, which had been enjoying long-standing peace, was invaded by a demon king who went by that title, and who commanded an army of innumerable demons.
“It was global pandemonium stirred up by the demon kings of the Abyss,” Mary said. “They had designs upon this plane, and they had been biding their time, awaiting their chance.”
“High-ranked demons you really don’t wanna see often. Kings, Generals, all those guys—they all came crawling out of the woodwork.”
The demon kings had conspired together to launch one hell of a riot. To give an idea of the sense of scale, the vraskus, who I had defeated before, was classified as a Commander. General was the next rank up, and King was the rank above that.
Based on my experience with the vraskus, I thought I could possibly handle one General surrounded by Soldiers, if I were prepared to accept significant risk. Against a King, though, I probably stood no chance, not without making some completely unrealistic assumptions like fighting one-on-one.
If those kinds of demons had poured out like an army of ants, well, it wasn’t hard to understand just how terrible that would be. Society wasn’t entirely made up of people like me who’d undergone combat training. And dispatching a group of Soldiers took time and physical energy, even if you did have that experience.
“On top of that,” Blood continued, “those Generals and Kings that spilled out into our world conducted a number of grand rituals to their god, the god of dimensions. They offered that god huge amounts of flesh and blood. You probably learned geography from Gus, but, uh... my advice is, don’t go thinking it’s still the same today. Wouldn’t surprise me if there were massive holes blasted in the land and now it’s sea, or if the sea dried up and now it’s land.”
“As if they’d been waiting for all of this to begin,” Mary said, “the minions of the god of tyranny, Illtreat, and the god of undeath, Stagnate, also became active all over the world. The good gods expended a lot of energy to oppose them. There were many such battles, which raged fiercely enough to change the map forever. Information became quite confused and chaotic. The different regions completely lost contact with one another.”
I found it a little difficult to imagine chaos on that scale. Anyway, basically, the world became a confusing mess.
“So... thanks to that, we’re pretty much clueless about what the other continents were like back then,” Blood said. “The only stuff we know is about the High King, who was the main one going berserk in Southmark.”
“He had some pretty worrying nicknames,” I said.
“Yeah. Don’t get me started. That guy was so screwed in the head, I wanna add a few more. He didn’t look like much—just a brat with cruel-looking eyes. But...”
But?
“First off, when his blood was spilled, it’d turn into Soldier demons. When his flesh was sliced off, it’d turn into Commander demons. He could keep on making them forever.”
“Again, are my ears playing tricks on me?”
“I could say it all again if you want.”
“Hax...”
“Hax?”
“I mean... he’s a cheater!” He could just keep multiplying his forces infinitely? What kind of a bad joke was that?!
“Nothing but blades could hurt him, either. Blast him with magic or shoot him with arrows, he wouldn’t take so much as a scratch. And not only that,” Blood sighed, “but his favorite sword was Overeater here.”
I blinked.
“You get the point. He was insane. He was constantly cackling as he cut down his enemies and got cut himself, multiplying his army as he did.”
“I’m speechless.” What a freaking cheater.
Mary took over. “The reason that he came to be called the High King, meaning the King Among Kings, was because of his performance in battle, which was outstanding even among the King-ranked demons. It was far above and beyond the norm.”
Her voice dropped to a mumble. “Many cities were consumed by the demon hordes. This was one of them. It was an important hub for lake transportation, but even with the combined determination of the humans and the dwarves to protect it, it was barely a few days before it fell.”
She gazed over the ruined city with distant eyes. “And it was this city where the High King remained, producing demons. They took control of all of the nearby water transportation. Vessels full of Soldier and Commander demons used the water routes to invade settlements in various places. It was day after day, night after night of bloodshed and arson. Because there were so many refugees, the cities which were still safe had to deal with internal struggles. Sometimes they couldn’t take them all, and had to turn people away. There were riots. The rioters were slaughtered in droves...”
I felt sick just listening to it.
“No one could kill him. The collapse of Southmark was thought inevitable. And not only that, but the High King’s reach would easily extend across the strait and intervening sea separating Southmark from the continent of Grassland to the north. Everyone had almost accepted it,” Mary smiled, “when Gus—the Wandering Sage Augustus—declared that now was the time to strike, and put forward his plan to destroy the High King.”
My eyes opened wide. “Now was the time? Wait a second. The High King is surrounded by an infinite horde, he can’t be killed by arrows or magic, and the only thing that works on him, the sword, causes demons to be born from his spilled flesh and blood. And he has a demonblade that heals him when he counterattacks back.”
“Yes.”
“Destroy him... How? In the first place, who’d even be capable of killing—hm.” I stopped mid-sentence. A light bulb was flickering inside my head. I felt like I almost had something.
I thought it over. A demon army. Arrows and magic don’t work, only swords. Blood and flesh become demons. Demonblade. City. Underground city. Blood’s battle techniques. Mary’s benediction. Gus’s strategy...
“Aha.” An idea shot through my brain like an electric current. “I’ve got it.”
Yeah. Yeah, this was it. There was a chance this way. He could be killed, if it was done correctly.
“Whaddaya mean, you’ve got it?”
“Have you really figured it out?”
“Yeah. Probably.” I touched my hand to Overeater, which was hanging from the sword belt around my waist. In theory, this should work. It should be possible to kill him this way. “Gus probably planned to have an elite team infiltrate the city through the underground.”
This city had a complex underground quarter filled with dwarves. There were likely secret passages there, too, though I lacked the talent to find any. If they could get inside through one of those, it was possible that they could slip by the demon forces and strike directly at the center.
“And he’d probably use some locating magic to pinpoint the location of the High King beforehand. That’d probably be really easy for Gus.” I got the sense that Mary and Blood were surprised. It looked like I was right so far. “And then—”
My chin in my hand, I went over the idea that had flashed into my mind one more time. The question was how to kill him. Arrows deflected off him, magic couldn’t scratch him. He could be slashed with a sword, but demons would well out from him infinitely, and if you took a single hit from his demonblade, all the wounds inflicted on him would be healed. There was probably only one way to do something about that.
“Steal his demonblade during the fight.”
I’d been told that Overeater recovered your own life force when you cut your oppone
nt. Judging by the name, it probably sucked life force from them or something. The point was, the whole problem started because the opponent had that sword.
The enemy could only be damaged by slashing, and that blade let him keep hitting you while recovering his wounds and generating an endless stream of little guys. There was no way to win. But the demonblade, which was one of the premises of this “unwinnable” situation, was just an object like any other, and could be handed over or stolen. It wasn’t one of the abilities inherent to the High King. It wasn’t something he’d been born with.
“Once you stole his demonblade, the High King’s own peculiarities would be his undoing.” The more you cut him, the more little guys would spring out ready to heal you. And hadn’t Blood told me that in a melee, you could just swing this sword around brainlessly and be the last man standing?
You’d be able to keep slashing at the High King, using the weaklings flowing out of him as a source of healing. The High King, on the other hand, wouldn’t be able to recover anymore, having lost the demonblade, which was his healing item.
“If it came down to an endurance contest, the High King should be the one who’d give up first...” I muttered thoughts incessantly. “As for how to steal it... First, Gus would clear out the guys around him with a large-scale magic spell. The High King can’t be hurt by magic, so that’s perfect for us.”
We’d just need to get him into a one-on-one battle, even temporarily. “Then Blood, you’d go in for the attack. Mary would heal both you and the High King with benediction. That would stop any more demons from appearing.” If his flesh and blood would turn into demons, then healing the wounds themselves should stop that. The aim of this first phase wouldn’t be to injure him—it would just be to steal his weapon.
“We’d probably need some help stopping the demons coming in at us from the outside. A few dozen... Actually, maybe a hundred or so?” These people, too, would probably be pretty talented elites, but the numbers I imagined surrounding them couldn’t be underestimated. Our forces would presumably be gradually whittled down.
“Then you, Blood, you’d use your rib-cage trick, or grapple with him, or cut his fingers or hands off, basically whatever you have to do to get the demonblade from him. This part definitely worked.”
“Hey, hold it,” Blood said. “How can you be so sure?”
“The fact that you have the demonblade in the first place proves you managed to steal it from him, right?” Silence from Blood. I thought I was right. “And that’d be checkmate.”
The High King’s abilities were so unfair he was basically cheating, but theoretically, he could be killed this way. There was no way Gus would’ve overlooked an opportunity like that. He’d have gathered a team of elites together somehow, and pulled through.
“The High King... died, I guess. But there’d still have been hordes of demons left over. Enough to crush our small squad...” And everyone died. Basically, a mutual defeat. What a sad conclusion. But even so, the continent was saved—
“No, Will,” Blood interrupted.
What?
“You really are a genius. I’m surer now than ever. But your conclusion,” Blood said bitterly, “is wrong.” Blood looked disgusted with himself.
“We... I... couldn’t kill the High King.” His words were filled with deep despair and resignation.
◆
“You... couldn’t kill him?”
Blood’s head was cast down, toward the floor. Mary nodded in answer to my question.
“Will, you imagine things correctly. All your guesses have been astonishingly accurate in describing exactly the strategy Gus decided on. Just as you imagined, Gus clawed back the possibility of killing the High King, making use of every factor visible to him. And in fact, his plan was successful,” Mary said calmly.
“But...” Her voice sounded distant, as though she was gazing at something without substance far away. “But the High King had more to give beyond the factors visible to Gus. He was a monster beyond even Gus’s expectations.”
Now I really was lost for words. I didn’t even have it in me to call him a cheater again. What was this guy?
“The High King tore away his childish appearance, and revealed his true nature, taking the form of a hideous and grotesque warrior. And, um... well...” Mary faltered, as if it was hard for her to say the rest.
Blood finished for her. “When the High King got serious, he was a better swordsman than me.” He was looking into the distance. I wondered if he was remembering his fight with the High King.
He spoke again. “Nothing worked. I’d fought big guys like that a bunch of times before, but this was the first time in my life that I just could do nothing.”
It was beyond imagination. Blood was no match for him? What level of skill must this guy have had? What would a person need to amass, and how much, to have a hope of reaching such dizzying heights?
“My demonblade was slicing nothing but air, and he was cutting me apart with some lousy demonblade he pulled out with the Word of Dispatch. Meanwhile, farther out, our allies who were acting as our wall from the demons were getting crushed.” He spoke of it with a feigned smile, like it was a cheap nightmare. “I can make excuses till the cows come home, you know? He was the boss of the demons. King Among Kings. His body’s abilities were like nothing I’d ever seen. The demonblade I stole was a single-handed sword, handled different to the greatsword I always used. And so on. But you know what? I had enough support. I had Gus’s magic, Mary’s benediction. The High King was injured enough, too, from his kid form.”
His opponent could make excuses just as he could. Battles were often like that in the real world, he told me glumly. “And he wasn’t a lot better. Just a little. Probably just one step higher, that’s all. One step further up, to a height I couldn’t reach while I was alive.”
It probably cut a terrible wound deep into Blood’s heart. I’d never heard him sound this depressed before. He was normally so bright.
“I still think about it. What I was lacking, what I could’ve done...”
Mary lowered her eyes in silence. It looked like nothing she said would be any comfort.
“But it’s too late now. You know it like I do. This is as far as my sword will ever reach.”
The undead didn’t progress.
No matter how much Blood thought about it, no matter how much he swung his sword, he would never be able to climb that one last step, where the High King stood above him.
Blood fell silent. After a short while, Mary sensed that he didn’t want to talk anymore, and continued where he left off. “When it seemed likely that we were going to lose, Gus and I used all the techniques available to us to place a seal on the High King. It was at least something we could do.”
That meant they’d abandoned the possibility of Blood winning. I knew well that the three of them deeply trusted one another, and had respect for each other’s personalities and skills. This was the moment when they should have been most relying on Blood’s full potential to do what he was capable of doing. To go ahead with an action that was as good as telling him, “You’re incapable?” How must he have felt?
“Fortunately... it succeeded. A miracle from Mater split the ground, and with the High King bound by Gus’s arts, he was swallowed into a giant chasm. We sealed him deep beneath the earth.”
That was the end of the High King of the demons, who had conquered the majority of this continent.
“We knew that it was nothing but a play for time. Among the demons, there were a lot of sorcerers proficient in the use of the Words, and powerful priests who served the god of dimensions. The people we had in charge of the outer wall had already been taken down, and it was only a matter of time before the demons closed in on us.”
And once the three of them were defeated, what then?
“Then all the demons would gather, and they would have all the time in the world to break the seal on the High King. Our desperate, last-ditch attempt would achieve nothing.�
�� Her tone was laced with despair and deep regret. “When it came down to it, at the very end, we weren’t able to trust in Blood.”
No matter how low the probability, they should have kept believing in the chance that Blood’s sword would find its mark, until the last possible second. Mary’s voice clearly communicated that.
“And then...”
A frosty wind picked up. We’d been talking for so long that I was chilled to the bone.
“And then, as if to mock us...”
A shiver ran through my body.
“An Echo of the god of undeath, Stagnate, appeared before us.”
An Echo. An incarnation of a god...
“The evil gods are not a monolithic entity. They all operate under different philosophies, and will cooperate if it’s in their interest to do so... and vice versa.”
“The High King probably wasn’t great for the god of undeath.” Blood seemed ready to talk again. “That guy was too strong. Godly Echo or not, the High King with Overeater in his hand could’ve cut him down and killed him, cackling as he did it.”
The High King would conquer the entire continent of Southmark as Dyrhygma’s minion, and his greedy fingers would extend to the next. His army, which would only swell as time went on, would probably accomplish the conquest of a second continent, and maybe the entire world. And the demon, the monster capable of this, was one that even the gods struggled for a way to kill.
“If anything, it was good news for the god of undeath that the High King got sealed. So he came to us with a deal.”
“What did he say?”
“He said we were skilled, and asked us to become undead and join his forces. In return, he’d wipe out the horde of demons all over the city. And then we could watch over the seal as undead for as long as we liked.”
“The god of undeath, Stagnate, was once allied with the forces of good. He strayed from that path when he could no longer stand seeing the tragedies of life and death. His desire is to create an eternally stagnated world without tragedy, by turning talented souls of all kinds into the undying. He scouted us out,” Mary said, voice positive.
The Boy in the City of the Dead Page 14