Ten years. You'd probably find that odd.
The master of this mansion was away for a full ten years?
That's right.
He really was gone for ten years.
The last time I saw his face, I was about six.
"I will be back shortly."
With those words he left me behind in a place filled with nothing but the golems that maintained the mansion.
He said he'd be back "shortly," so I thought a few days at most. Who knew it would turn into ten years?
'I hear the lifespans of Demon Realm natives vary wildly.'
Some, like goblins, live ordinary spans of a few decades, while others lose their bodily functions within a mere handful of years.
And among them.
'Five hundred years.'
There are also beings like Enoch, who live out long ages.
To a man like that, ten years might literally be "shortly."
It definitely wasn't for me.
In any case, today was the day Enoch's long outing came to an end.
-The master is scheduled to return at six o'clock in the evening.
After hearing the answer from the golem that managed the mansion, I went back to my room and threw myself onto the bed.
Partly to shake off the day's fatigue, but mostly because I needed to put my thoughts in order.
'One hundred thousand KP. With this I can create the trait I had in mind.'
It had been a long road.
From the simple quests that handed out 10 KP apiece back in my newborn days, to the recent ones telling me to hunt Void parasites.
I had endured for a very long time.
Holding down the urge to take revenge on the Heavenly Realm even a day sooner was no easy thing.
But whenever I recalled them invading the Middle Realm, even at this very moment, my anger management problem solved itself.
'You can't throw yourself into a fire pit on willpower alone.'
Right after I became a newborn and realized every stat I'd held before the regression had been reset.
The first thing I did was take stock of what was left to me.
The Empire's support.
The Holy Nation's forces.
The Hero's standing.
My own personal might.
Not one of them remained.
But I realized I had been given the one thing I'd never had in my past life.
'Time.'
In my past life I'd been too busy chasing the main quest…… no, more precisely, the route of the game's scenario.
Dimension Contender was famous for a story packed so tightly there was no time to rest or regroup.
But after the regression, all that was left to me was time.
So how to divide and spend that time was a fairly important matter for me.
'The first thing to reclaim is my own personal might.'
But I had no intention of taking the same route as in my Hero days.
No, it would be more accurate to say I couldn't.
Because I lacked the "Empire's support" mentioned earlier.
Before the regression, I could wring all kinds of rewards out of the Empire for even trivial commissions, so I shot up in strength on elixirs, artifacts, and high-grade equipment.
And now?
As you can see, no.
The Demon King's son?
What kind of support would there be for a child left alone for ten years?
'Still, just surviving here in the Demon Realm without dying is lucky enough.'
Anyway. Unlike before, when I'd grown easily on every sort of support, now I had to find a road to growth on my own.
'And the preparations for that are finished.'
What remained now was.
A faction.
There was no way I could take on the Heavenly Realm, that vast celestial dimension, by myself.
And while I was at it, to clear the main quest.
I needed to make the Demon Realm my faction.
And the start of that.
VWOOOOOOM—
Was a talk with my father, who came in scattering an immense energy.
***
When I stepped out of my room on time and came down the central staircase, the mansion's enormous doors were slowly opening.
The golems that had looked after me for the past sixteen years and tended this mansion without pause stood in a row to welcome its true master.
And beyond the mansion's red carpet.
I saw a man walking toward me with the sinking sun at his back.
A height reaching two meters, and snow-white hair falling below his waist.
And the presence of an immense magic power that bore down on me even at this moment.
The seventy-second Demon King, Enoch.
He had returned to the mansion after ten years.
"……You're back."
The words came out a little awkward.
Naturally so, since this was the first time I'd seen him since the age of six.
Enoch had picked up a human child lying blankly in a dungeon and taken me in as his adopted son, but…….
In truth, neither of us thought of the other as parent or child.
For my part, because I knew the Enoch who had sat on the throne of god in my past life.
And on his side, because he had never once properly spoken to me since picking me up.
We were a father and son of a kind you wouldn't easily find anywhere.
"You have grown a great deal."
"Yes…… well."
Which was why I had no idea how to treat him, meeting again after ten years.
'I need to coax this man somehow.'
The problem was that I didn't know what he intended.
I didn't even know what on earth he'd left the mansion empty for ten years for.
Even when I asked the golems about it.
-He is fulfilling his duty.
……was the only answer that came back.
Look at him even now.
That gaze.
So utterly cold it felt like a dagger flying in and lodging itself in you.
Even thinking about it now, I have no idea why a man like that took me as his adopted son.
"Rest."
"……."
How is it that after ten years, all he has to say is "You have grown. Rest"? Two lines, and that's it.
And then he turned around and walked off, as if his business were finished.
I was about to open my mouth to somehow strike up a conversation when.
'……The smell of blood?'
A thick stench of blood lingered where he had passed.
Had he been fighting something for all ten of those long years?
'One thing's certain. It isn't the smell of human blood.'
That smell in particular, I happen to know well.
Anyway, the many dolls that had been guarding the mansion moved after Enoch as though attending him.
In a little while, I'd be the only one left in this hall.
"……."
If I let him go like this, another wait with no end in sight might be waiting for me.
Or he might vanish without a word, just as he had ten years ago.
Even so, my mouth wouldn't open easily.
It was hesitation, and a piece of a complicated heart.
'Demon God Enoch…… what are you?'
The one I most needed as an ally, and at the same time the being I understood least.
I still couldn't feel any certainty about that bastard.
***
I still remember it.
A time when I hadn't been carrying the Hero's mission for very long.
The day I was first thrown onto a battlefield under the pretext of gaining experience.
On that battlefield, Demon Realm natives eroded by the Void and countless Imperial soldiers desperately resisting them were locked together in a melee.
And.
He was there.
The Demon God Enoch. His "avatar."
'Damn it, it's still vivid.'
A single stroke of the sword.
With that alone, every existence before my eyes was erased.
Demon Realm native or Middle Realm native, all of them spilled blood and fell.
There was only one reason I survived that site of mass slaughter.
The Holy Sigil carved into my soul as the Hero.
Whether Enoch's avatar was satisfied with just that, or whether a mere avatar couldn't bear that power, after the single stroke it vanished like mist.
And so I had no choice but to be left utterly alone on that battlefield.
But I.
I had known this would happen.
It was counted among the most shocking scenes in the entire game.
I knew.
Even though I knew…….
I couldn't move from that spot for a long while.
Yes.
That was probably the moment I came to accept this world as reality rather than as a game.
***
The time was just after the regression.
When I was still a newborn.
That is to say, not many months after Enoch picked me up as I lay bawling waah-waah inside some suspicious basket (I wasn't crying out of sadness; that was the scene of me shaking with the sense of betrayal).
At an age when a normal baby would just be learning to roll over, I was dying.
A magic power rampage.
An energy not permitted to Middle Realm natives.
That energy, which had filled my body from the moment I came to my senses, was wrecking it bit by bit.
Every night I boiled with fever, and a frail infant's body began to fail to endure it.
'I have to live……!'
I held on somehow with that single thought.
I circulated the magic power ceaselessly, leaving it no capacity left over to run wild.
But unlike mana, magic power moved only when I controlled it directly.
Which meant there was no way to stop my body from slowly collapsing during the hours I wasn't awake.
For a newborn who already spent most of the day asleep, it was nothing short of the worst possible environment.
[Sudden Quest!]
[Survive for the time limit!]
[Quest Reward: 10 KP]
The KP that came in from crap quests like this was so small I couldn't even use it.
'This is going to drive me insane.'
So back then all I could do was drop obscenities on the system window and wait for the day I'd die.
'One day left, huh.'
I felt death drawing gradually nearer.
At this rate I wouldn't make it through the night.
However much I wanted to put off sleep, this infant body wouldn't allow even that.
At that moment my two eyelids were heavier than a dragon's tail swipe.
When my vision finally sank, and I felt death approaching on that raging fever.
"Ngah?"
When I opened my eyes again, my body was strangely light.
The magic power that had been gnawing at my body, unable to contain its own vigor, had been perfectly calmed.
'Did a trait grow or something?'
An awakening in the face of death's adversity?
The Hero buff after all?
Of course, that delusion didn't last long.
'The smell of blood.'
A faint smell of blood at the tip of my nose.
It was the same smell that had come off Enoch when he picked me out of the basket after I first fell into the Demon Realm.
It meant Enoch had saved me as I lay dying through the night, then gone back.
"Ngah……."
How was I supposed to take this?
Chaos descended on my head.
The archenemy of my life.
The enemy I'd had to bring down over ten years had saved me. How was I supposed to accept that?
Even now, sixteen years later, I hadn't decided.
The Enoch who had saved me when I was a newborn.
And the Demon God who had wrought mass slaughter on the battlefield.
I understood the difference between the two perfectly well, but the ten years before the regression, spent as if brainwashed, stood in the way of that choice.
Whether I'd simply put it off because I didn't want to think about it.
Or whether there had simply been no opportunity.
But if there was one thing that was certain.
"Father."
It was that I couldn't keep putting it off any longer.
"There's something I want to say."
I called out and stopped Enoch as he was about to return to his quarters.
***
Thoughts chained to the past, the resolve that I couldn't go on like this forever, and the impatience of knowing that if I missed this chance there was no telling when the next would come.
At my call, loaded with those tangled feelings, Enoch stopped, turned, and fixed his eyes on me.
"There's something I'd like to consult you about."
"……."
I mean, I called out to him carrying this much complexity in my chest.
So give me some kind of answer!
It's frightening, being watched like that by a man wearing a blood-soaked sword.
But he only kept staring at me without a word, so in the end I was the one to open my mouth again.
"Controlling my magic power is a little difficult. Could I get some advice?"
What followed from me was a request for help.
I could hardly blurt out, 'In the future you become the Demon God, get swallowed by the Void, go off to invade the Middle Realm, and get smacked down by me. Got it? So let's look for a way out together,' now could I…….
'Above all, I need to know what goes on in this man's head.'
Now was the time to get a read on the being called Enoch.
So I'd have to work it out slowly, after we'd grown closer than this.
And along the way, pick up a few crumbs off the rice cake while I was at it.
"……."
Not long after I asked for help.
Enoch said something in reply.
But his voice was so faint I couldn't make it out, so I leaned in.
"Magic power……."
"Yes, magic power."
"Is it hard?"
"……? Ah, yes. It's hard. I go out every day and face demonic beasts, but I still can't get a feel for it."
"……."
Enoch said something again at my answer, but once more it didn't reach my ears.
What is with him?
"Father. I can't hear your voice well."
"……."
Wait, he says?
A voice audible only very faintly.
Come to think of it, I'd never held a conversation with the Demon King this long before.
Around six I was in the thick of the magic power rampage's aftereffects, and after that I never saw Enoch at all.
Then and now, Enoch was still a taciturn sort.
'Don't tell me.'
It only occurred to me now.
In this mansion there were Enoch and me. Beyond that, not a single living creature existed.
The golems that were here only answered the questions put to them; ordinary conversation was impossible.
And "they," living outside the mansion within the fortress, never came near this place.
They merely hid in the ruins like sewer rats.
'And Enoch is the one who has guarded this dungeon for five hundred years.'
Across that long history, Enoch had probably never lived talking with anyone the way he was now.
Then the reason his voice was so small and his speech so slow…….
'Was it because he simply lacks the ability to converse?'
Oh, system almighty.
To think the Demon God who would become the trigger of the world's ruin suffered from a communication disorder.
What lunatic could ever come up with that?
'I must be nervous after all.'
Seeing as I was indulging in absurd delusions like this.
Then why was cold sweat streaming down my back?
"You wanted to control your magic power?"
As if putting a period on my ridiculous imaginings, Enoch asked, and I nodded before anything else.
"Yes. I can only use the energy in varied ways if I wield it properly."
In reality, what I needed to handle magic power properly was KP.
But there was definitely a way to use that KP more fruitfully.
And the answer that came back from Enoch to my question was.
"Very well."
Permission, out of nowhere.