Chapter 29 : Zespine
Chapter 29: Zespine
It truly had been a coincidence.
Right after he released the hero squad, Ernan came to find Berje.
“I have a favour to ask.”
“You don’t seem to be in any position to be asking for favours.”
“I know one of the secret vaults of a high-ranking noble of the kingdom.”
“Just say it.”
“I need Seniel Powder.”
“The powder for spirit contracts?”
“Yes.”
Hundreds of years ago, an elf named Seniel had defected to a human kingdom. At the king’s request, she created a supplement to help humans form smoother contracts with spirits, and that was Seniel Powder.
“Isn’t your blood more effective?”
But that was merely an auxiliary used by those with insufficient spirit sensitivity. Ernan, who already contracted with spirits and demonstrated outstanding talent, had no need to use it.
“I’m going to mix it with my blood. As you know, the tower had almost no mana, so I can’t avoid needing some help.”
“Are you planning to contract with a new spirit?”
“Yes.”
“A mid-grade one?”
“Who knows.”
Her answer was vague, but Berje could guess.
A high-grade spirit.
‘If I remember right, things got quite noisy around this in the previous life too…’
There weren’t that many spirit sorcerers among humans. Even fewer had contracted with high-grade spirits—few enough to count on one hand.
And she formed a contract with such a high-grade spirit at the young age of twenty-seven. At the time, Hilderan had heavily publicised her achievement, and human spirit sorcerers from across the continent flocked to Hilderan—at least as he remembered.
Yet now, she was saying she would form the contract a whole three years earlier.
‘What changed?’
This time, she had been kidnapped—something that didn’t happen now.
She had lived in the tower for several months.
But wasn’t that actually a disadvantage?
He watched her, but she simply returned a bright smile. Well, what did it matter. It wasn’t that important.
“Here is the advance payment.”
“It’s in the Felsen region of the Acan Kingdom. There’s a secret mansion in a fortress called Peltora. The vault is in its underground.”
“They hid it quite far away.”
“That way, even if a problem arises, it won’t get seized.”
“And you somehow knew.”
“Spirits see and hear quite a lot, you know.”
She divulged more details about the noble’s vault.
“It’s the secret vault of a top-ranking noble who basically runs wild in Hilderan. There’s probably a lot of embezzled money accumulated in it.”
“Is it alright for a princess of the kingdom to tell a Demon King something like that?”
“Since it’s practically the kingdom’s assets being smuggled abroad, I think it’s fine.”
‘I guess I’ll have to move myself.’
He wanted to check how the continent was changing personally. Fortunately, as Demon King, he had remained hidden from the outside world, which made it possible.
“You’ll be able to acquire Seniel Powder fairly easily in the Acan Kingdom.”
Spirit sorcerers were never common among humans. Naturally, facilities for them were lacking, and only a magic-oriented kingdom like Acan could supply what was needed without difficulty.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Thus, he descended the mountain.
* * *
“If I’d known you were slacking off like this, I’d have made you do it.”
“What? How on earth does this look like slacking…?”
“And who are you supposed to be?”
The mercenary who had cornered Granada finally managed to steady himself. His grip tightened on his sword.
“The owner of the slave you’re harassing.”
“Nonsense!”
“Not nonsense! It is nonsense!”
The mercenary and Granada shouted one second apart.
The mercenary ground his teeth.
It felt like watching an extremely childish play. The fact that someone of that level was supposedly a slave was ridiculous, and the fact that they kept insisting on it was just as absurd.
He could only see it as them toying with him.
‘Who the hell is he? Why would someone this strong be in some backwater like Hortonwork…?’
“And who are you then?”
“...”
“So you have no intention of answering. I answered you, though.”
Berje laughed. The killing intent hidden between his laughter made the mercenaries tremble.
A newly summoned Demon King was weak. Dimensional interference made it so. It suppressed invaders and empowered heroes in order to stabilise the dimension.
There was only one way to remove that interference: twist the interference power through the tower and the Demonic Points.
Or he could have used elixirs or Demonic Points to strengthen himself and raise his total power even if it meant being restricted.
Berje had no such luxury.
All Demonic Points had been sent to the Demon Kings for money, and the only things he had managed to consume were a few elixirs. What he gained from those was only a small amount of demonic energy.
But.
That had been enough.
Not all strength was suppressed. It was proportional. Ten percent of someone strong and ten percent of someone weak were bound to be different.
And Berje was—
A Demon King who had received the title of “unprecedented in history” at the Demon King Military Academy, which had continued for thousands of years.
Naturally, even his restricted power had to be extraordinary.
And he was not merciful enough to tolerate an insolent “human” who dared to glare straight at him.
“If you take a shot, you ought to expect one back. That’s basic courtesy.”
The Demon King’s flame flared lightly.
Where the flame subsided, a sharp claw took its place. Dark-red scales faintly spread across his skin.
“A, a demon...!”
The mercenaries recognized the demonic energy flickering with the flames. They fell to their knees under the crushing dominance pressing down on their bodies.
‘Is it really okay to reveal demonic energy this openly?’
It was blatant enough for Granada to think so. Blatant enough to send chills down his spine.
Within that storm of tyranny, only one person could resist.
Crack—
“You filthy demon bastard!”
A brilliant blue aura wrapped around the mercenary’s entire body. It pushed back the demonic energy and drove his body forward.
The honed blade rose far larger than before. It sliced through the flow of demonic energy. The mercenaries freed from the pressure gasped roughly for breath.
But helping his subordinates had not been his goal.
Clack—
Thick military boots struck the earth. His muscles swelled to the extreme.
Boom—
He launched forward, shattering the ground.
As if in a blink, the distance between the two vanished.
The moment Berje saw the man’s movement—
A line was drawn.
The compressed aura exploded. Space was torn apart.
It was impossibly fast. Impossibly sharp and destructive.
‘Where the hell did someone like that come from...?’
Granada shot to his feet before realizing it. This was not the level of an ordinary mercenary. Certainly not the sort who would rot in Hortonwork hunting shabby monsters that occasionally wandered down.
‘He’s not going to lose, right?’
A faint, very faint impatience stirred. He did not actually believe the Demon King he knew would lose, but for a moment the opponent’s strike was so fast and precise he instinctively thought so.
And then—
Craaaash—
When the shattered fragments from the shockwave scraped his cheek and vanished—
When he saw the calm silhouette standing amid the clearing smoke, he realized it had indeed been needless worry.
“As for me.”
The blade was caught in Berje’s blackened hand. The aura that could cut anything was stopped by the black flame and could not advance.
The mercenary’s face flushed red.
“When I descended this time, I wanted to cultivate something called patience.”
There had already been one failure. He had chased the Standard, but he had also acted on impulse more “like a Demon King” than anyone.
Thinking back, even making it to the 20th floor of the tower had been luck. Unlike the other Demon Kings, he probably acted so brashly and quickly that the enemy had been caught off guard and reacted too slowly.
“So I actually held back once.”
When kidnapping Roger, he had turned his back and run from some mere princess.
It had been an unavoidable choice. He could not afford to reveal he was a Demon King, and being too far from the tower had worsened the restrictions on his power.
But that did not change the fact that his pride as a Demon King had been trampled.
“And now these worthless things are making a fuss in my own front yard.”
Should he hold back here as well?
No. Compared to the Ergest Mountains, Hortonwork’s restrictions were heavy, but compared to the Dwarven Kingdom’s, they were nearly nonexistent.
And he had tolerated the princess’s insolence only because she had not known he was a Demon King—but the man before him was different.
“Y-you, what the hell are you...!”
Crack—
The sword snapped. A line of blood trickled from the mercenary’s mouth.
“I am not an ordinary demon.”
Just as you are not an ordinary mercenary.
“Now it doesn’t matter. The dead don’t speak anyway.”
Whoosh—
The flame grew stronger.
It advanced while consuming some of the aura. The mercenary screamed.
“Run!”
With his final command, he collapsed. The mercenaries turned their backs.
“Who said you could go.”
He had never given permission.
Berje slowly took a single step. Space folded, cutting off their escape route.
He swept his hand through the panicking mercenaries. His elongated claws tore through leather armor and drenched flesh in blood.
At that moment, someone abruptly intervened. It was Kaede.
“Hero.”
Sensing the presence of his natural enemy, Berje’s lips curled upward. Kaede drew her cherished blade under that chilling killing intent.
Clang—
Her stance wavered. The desperate slash she barely mustered was swallowed by the flames. Even so, she stepped forward.
She thrust her sword quickly, but a small explosion blasted her back. With a scream, she rolled across the ground.
“Wait! You can’t kill her!”
Berje’s shadow loomed over Kaede. His gaze shifted toward Granada.
“She—she’s a princess! We need to capture her!”
“Is that true?”
“....”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Kaede bit her lip.
“...What do you intend to do with them?”
“What is your relation?”
“They’re knights who came to capture me.”
“...I don’t understand.”
“I slipped out of the imperial palace without permission.”
“...Imperial palace?”
Not the royal palace?
“If you promise to spare them, I will tell you my identity.”
Kaede’s legs trembled. But she did not back down.
“You don’t seem to understand your situation.”
“....”
“If you don’t want to talk, then don’t. I can simply kill them all.”
“Zespine!”
She shouted urgently.
“I am Kaede Zespine, the 9th Princess of the Zespine Empire!”
* * *
The Zespine Empire.
Berje did not have pleasant memories of the greatest and strongest empire of Arein.
If anything, it was filled only with bad ones.
Come to think of it, the moment his death was foretold had been when he kidnapped the Zespine Empire’s crown prince.
Back then, he had been doing quite well, and his pride as a Demon King reached the heavens. With success after success, it wouldn’t have been strange if his arrogance pierced the cosmos.
He believed he could even confront Zespine head-on, and so he kidnapped the crown prince. From that moment on, the entire Hero Guild sharpened their blades to kill him.
‘Come to think of it....’
The Demon Kings’ conversations at the Harmony of the Towers surfaced in his mind.
‘The 9th Princess of the Zespine Empire has gone missing. I’ve been meaning to ask… it wasn’t the work of someone here, was it?’
‘I have no intention of provoking the Empire.’
‘If it’s the 9th Princess, wasn’t there talk of a marriage alliance with the King of Ormus?’
“Did you run away because you didn’t want to marry him?”
“H-how did you... mmph.”
The princess hurriedly clamped her own hand over her mouth, but the water had already been spilled.
‘The Kingdom of Ormus isn’t much of a threat.’
Its territory was fairly large, but half of its land was jungle and rainforest, making its national power practically garbage.
There were no notable strong figures, no remarkable heroes, so there was nothing to fear from their retaliation.
‘The problem is the Zespine Empire....’
Unlike Hilderan, Zespine had no firmly established successor.
The 1st Prince, 2nd Prince, 1st Princess, and 3rd Princess were locked in a fierce power struggle, while the princes and princesses below them each clung to their own factions and fought covertly.
Much later, the 1st Prince would crush all his siblings and become the crown prince, but that was a matter for the future.
‘There is no such thing as familial sentiment among the imperial bloodline.’
They viewed one another as rivals soaked in blood.
‘They might even be pleased that a competitor disappeared.’
Of course, the best choice was to avoid provoking the Empire entirely, but when a hunk of meat rolled right into his front yard, he couldn’t simply let it go.
All the more so because he had already exposed himself as a Demon King—there had to be something to gain.
There was another reason as well.
His obligation to earn more demonic energy to pay off his debt, and the confidence he had gained through experiencing Hillan Cargill’s hero’s march.
Because of that, he was certain.
This one was something he could take.
“You’re coming with me.”
“T-the knights....”
“I’ve gone to the trouble of kidnapping a princess; naturally, I need witnesses. Your choice saved them.”
Though they didn’t know that.
Berje grabbed Kaede.
“You remain here and carry out your orders.”
“Yes.”
Berje and Granada vanished.
The injured knights remained unconscious until the security forces, drawn by the presence of demonic energy, arrived and found them.