In the end, after that, I never had to butcher any more servants of the Demon King, and Shirogamine never had to stop me.
Inside, the building looked like the immediate aftermath of a slaughter. The ones still alive were in no condition to attack intruders. They had been carved up by small blades; some of them were literally sprouting knives from their chests or stomachs.
With a mess like this inside, no wonder the guy posted outside had been such sloppy leftover help.
“That explains it.”
I moved quickly down the blood-soaked corridor, groans echoing around me.
“That Yukine Indo girl seems more capable than you. She’s efficient, and she doesn’t hesitate much.”
“Yukine…”
Shirogamine tilted her head and, unusually for her, seemed to choose her words.
“She has her circumstances.”
“Don’t care. Her ether perception—teleportation, was it? It’s damn powerful. Any number of street punks wouldn’t be a match for her.”
Shirogamine had said she could see the gaps in space. In older terms, teleportation. Users were rare, but even a complete amateur could be dangerous with it.
The biggest advantage was probably how thoroughly it neutralized guns. Indoors like this, nobody could fire properly without worrying about friendly fire or ricochets. If some idiot panicked and pulled the trigger anyway, the damage would only spread. Hence this mountain of dead and wounded.
I had expected to be forced into two or three more serious sword fights, but this was turning out smoother than expected.
That said—
“As for whether Yukine Indo can beat <Briar>…”
I took the stairs at an ordinary running pace. I was still on guard—though against me on <E3>, surprise attacks barely meant anything. My ether perception was at its best on the defensive side. At the moment, though, there seemed to be no one left who could even move to intercept us.
The top floor was close.
“She can’t. She’ll lose for sure.”
“Do you think so?”
Shirogamine ran up beside me, shooting me a skeptical look.
“May I ask why?”
“Lord <Amber Briar>’s ether perception is a bad matchup for teleportation-types.”
<E3> was working beautifully. Even after running up all these stairs while talking, I felt no shortness of breath, no fatigue. The drug—or rather, ether itself—reinforced the body by making physical law irrelevant.
“You know Lord <Briar>’s power, Master?”
“As long as you keep calling me that, I don’t want to tell you anything.”
“But in the decisive battle with Lord <Briar>, if I can do even a little—”
“Do nothing.”
I was mildly appalled all over again. I repeated myself.
“Do nothing. I thought that went without saying.”
“I cannot do that. A disciple’s duty is to support her master in battle—”
Her tactic was transparent.
“You’re trying to force the disciple thing on me again.”
“Yes!”
“I’m starting to get pissed off by how honest your answers are.”
Kill the Demon King and go home. That was what I wanted. Things were going smoother than expected. At this pace, I should make it. Wrap this up fast, then return to alcohol, games, and friends I couldn’t stand. That world.
The truth was, simple desires like that—instinctive, but kept a little distance from raw animal appetite—were important to Heroes. They were a way to resist the bestial urges to attack and destroy that <E3> forced into you, a way to keep your head from going off the rails. They pinned your mind back to ordinary life.
That was how I barely managed to avoid sinking into something even lower than a piece of shit.
“I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with claiming you’re my disciple. Are you plotting something?”
“Yes!”
As expected, Shirogamine’s answer was refreshingly direct.
“The reason I volunteered to become your disciple, you mean. That involves a complex—no, if I were to explain it, there are several issues—no, excuse me. Strictly speaking, they are not issues, but rather a shared—”
“Got it. Shut up.”
I sharpened my tone a little. Partly because Shirogamine’s explanations had no end, and partly because we had reached the top floor.
The layout was simple. A corridor ran straight ahead, ending in a door. A ridiculously grand wooden door, done up in some medieval European style.
No doubt about it. That was the private chamber of Demon King Lord <Amber Briar>.
There was a reason bastards like him took grandiose names and lived in absurd places. Image strategy. Demon Kings sold fear. To make themselves seem even a little more unknowable, to give everyone around them the proper impression of a Demon King, they erased their names from official records, fussed over their appearance, and staged their own might.
The door to this chamber was practically a symbol of that manufactured terror. I was probably grimacing as I drew my sword and reset my grip on the hilt with both hands.
“Shirogamine, I’ll ask this first.”
“Yes!”
“Your ether perception. What can it do?”
“Yes, I—”
“Well, I don’t actually care. The point is, whatever it is, do not use it.”
I had only asked as a personal act of harassment. Sure enough, when I cut her off before she could answer, Shirogamine gave me a disgruntled look.
“I hate having my work interfered with. And if you screw up, I die.”
“But Master, I have—”
“One more important thing. I also hate being called Master.”
“Even so, Master, please listen. My ether perception can—”
Shirogamine was probably trying to say something important. Important to her. Probably. Maybe.
But the situation moved faster than that. There was no time to get mentally ready, and no room to hammer the warning into Shirogamine properly.
Specifically, the wooden door blew apart, and a small human figure came flying out through the wreckage.
A familiar figure.
In other words, Yukine Indo’s unbearably bratty-looking face.
She had several wounds across her body, large and small. None looked fatal, but at the very least she was badly spent. Exhausted.
“Oh.”
Shirogamine made a wonderfully carefree little sound. That was about all she could manage.
I had a single instant to decide whether to catch the flying Yukine Indo or dodge her.
For me, a single instant could amount to dozens of seconds. Minutes, even.
Yukine Indo was not going to be able to brace herself before she hit the floor. Maybe she had been caught off guard. Maybe she had hurt something.
Fine.
I am the kind of man who picks up an empty can rolling past him and puts it properly in the trash. Even a piece of shit has that much moral fiber.
So this was my conclusion.
I caught Yukine Indo in midair and seized her by the front of her uniform.
“You learned one important lesson.”
“You—”
Yukine Indo looked at me with dazed eyes. Whether she actually remembered my face, I had no idea. What I did know was that she looked extremely displeased. No, hateful.
“You’re stupid, you’re weak, and all you can manage is butchering a few dozen ordinary humans. You’re a killer who hasn’t even reached Hero level. Remember that. To avoid any misunderstanding, I’m almost the same.”
Then I dumped Yukine Indo onto the floor.
“The difference is, I can kill Demon Kings too. Not just ordinary humans.”
She groaned, and I could tell Shirogamine was rushing over to her. I had no interest in that, so I looked past the shattered door and into the room beyond.
Or more precisely, at the thing standing in the center of that too-large room.
It was, naturally, a man in an absurdly overdone black robe. Arms as thin as dead branches showed at the cuffs. Everything above the neck was even stranger. His complexion was a bluish white, but his hair was even whiter, and long. His gaunt face was cracked like mud left too long to dry, and his eyes were red. Colored contacts, maybe. Or the result of some surgery.
I knew that face from the wanted photo.
“So many visitors today.”
The man spoke in a hoarse voice. The kind Demon Kings often had—raspy, yet carrying well. He had probably practiced it.
“After the Academy brat, what stray dog are you? For disturbing my night, you deserve ten thousand deaths.”
“Like I care, dumbass.”
There is one trick to facing a Demon King as a Hero.
Do not get dragged onto their rhythm.
<E3> was working well. From that hard-to-read Demon King face, I caught the faintest flicker of agitation. When he saw me, he definitely blinked twice.
I held my sword in my right hand and shoved my left into my coat pocket.
“Demon King Lord <Amber Briar>.”
I stepped slowly into the room.
For the sake of tonight’s beer, this bastard had to die.