"Demon King, Tell Them My Dying Wish" V7 Chapter 6 - His Angel And Demon
Fwoom—
As soon as the letters made contact with the nearby seats they were instantly destroyed, as if they'd been vaporized. Orphen just kept running, ignoring the black dust mixing with the air. He heard Majic's head bang against the back of one of the chairs, pretty loudly, too, but he didn't have time to stop and readjust his hold on him.
There were about a dozen dolls, but they seemed to still be waiting in the passage. Even if he found an opportunity to escape, there was no way he'd be any safer out there. On top of that—
He looked behind him. The dogs were slowly walking towards him from the stage. They'd be faster if they ran, but they didn't, perhaps because the space between the seats was so narrow. There were probably be a dozen or so of them as well.
"I release — The Sword of Light!"
As he ran, he held his hand behind him, releasing the photothermal wave. The band of light crashed against the glowing symbols chasing after him. There was an explosion, but the letters continued to fly through the air, none of them disappearing. They'd slowed down, at least.
(I'll have to destroy them one by one, but at this rate I'll be dead long before I can—)
He looked at the dolls as he ran nimbly across the backs of the seats. There were more than twenty wyrd graphs spinning about just from the ones that were chasing him.
(They're not so fast, but if I can't get rid of them, I'm done for. Damn. And they're intercepting my spells...)
He kept running across the audience section of the auditorium — until he neared the other side. Then the walls were starting to close in on them.
In other words, they were about to be cornered.
"Let's try something..."
As soon as he mumbled the words, Orphen threw Majic's body forward with all his might — the boy, who hadn't yet awakened from the mind control, hit the wall and fell to the floor, not even having time for his body to fold from being flung. He still didn't seem to wake up, but there wasn't time to wait for it, either. Rubbing his now-much-lighter shoulders, Orphen stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face the other way. A number of wyrd graphs were continuing their restless advance towards him. Beyond them, the masters of those graphs — the dolls — stood side by side.
"I release—"
Taking a wide stance on the lined up seats, Orphen raised his right arm. With his left hand braced on it he lowered his right hand and pointed his fingertips towards the dolls. Specifically, the rightmost doll.
"The Sword of Light!"
The white light, born from the void was released from his fingertips and missed the target by a wide margin, veering off to the right — then bounced off in another direction, like it'd ricocheted off a mirror.
—!
The photothermal wave pierced the side of the target's head and it exploded into flames. The heat waves that erupted enveloped the rest of the doll's body.
—When the flames disappeared, the doll's head was gone, shattered. The whole thing crumbled, falling still.
There was a stir... Some form of agitated murmuring among the dolls. Several of the letters that were racing towards him suddenly disappeared, as if their light had been extinguished. They'd probably been fired by the destroyed doll.
Orphen leapt to the side to avoid the remaining letters flying towards him, and mumbled.
"This could work if I can catch them off guard. Maybe..."
There was only one problem—
He wiped the sweat from his forehead as he looked at the dolls still trickling in from the exit.
(I wonder how long my stamina will last.)
"I break, the primordial silence!"
The sorcery activated exactly as Orphen had composed it. The space he was pointing at instantly distorted, as if it were responding to his call. Then, the light spread out from that point and set off a huge explosion.
Orphen tightly shrunk away from the loud noise and vibrations. Refusing to resist the shockwave he jumped, allowing himself to be carried several levels up the auditorium by the resulting wave.
The remains of two destroyed dolls were left behind.
Once again, the dolls began to stir. Some of them even blatantly erased the wyrd graphs they'd been about to release.
"Heh—"
Orphen smiled wryly.
"This level of sorcery would never work on a Killing Doll. You guys aren't made for combat, though, so your attacks and defenses are pretty lax."
(Now, that's three dolls destroyed...)
While weaving a new magical composition, he glanced at the stage. The dogs that'd come down from it were slowly approaching him, albeit at a slower pace. It seemed that it wouldn't be long now before he could no longer ignore them.
And of course, the dolls continued to enter through the exit.
(... Four more have come in.)
He counted, then clicked his tongue.
"Are they showing up faster than I can take them down? Should I block the entrance? ... No."
It'd be pointless. The dolls could use spacial transitioning.
In fact, they might all teleport into the area at once.
(In the end, I don't have any choice but to take them out one at a time...!)
He prepared himself and thrust both hands forward.
"I release, the Sword of Light!"
The doll, taken by surprise, was hit with the light and exploded into pieces, having no time to defend itself.
The dolls seemed to use two characters each during the thick of battle — a character that would fly through the air and pursue the target, followed by a defensive one. The defensive character floated near the doll and intercepted any spells cast at it. On top of that, they had some form of mind control, but it wasn't as powerful as it could be. At the very least, it wasn't strong enough to overcome a sorcerer who'd been trained in mental defenses without them being able to resist. Perhaps aware of this, the dolls didn't even try to use it here.
Orphen remembered that the Killing Dolls were said to have incomparably greater mind control, along with hundreds of symbols carved into their body, but the dolls lined up here didn't seem to possess that level of combat power.
But there were too many of them—
"I build, the spires of the sun!"
A vortex of fire tried to engulf all the dolls at once — but disappeared mid-sentence. It seemed to have been intercepted by the defensive wyrd graphs.
"Damn it."
He spat and moved away. The pursuing symbols were getting quite close.
(This is never-ending. Should I try to take care of them all at the same time?)
He asked himself. Looking around, he saw that the dogs were also closing in.
"I call, upon the sisters of destruction!"
He used a shock wave to hold the dogs back, and ran towards where Majic had fallen. The spreading shock wave didn't kill the dogs, but it did shove them further away for a moment. He watched as they slowed and quivered, then he ran, dodging the wyrd graphs flying towards him.
The auditorium was fan-shaped, and Orphen was sandwiched between the puppets entering through the exit and the dogs coming down from the stage. He ran straight between them, avoiding getting close to either group. Straight to the edge of the auditorium, where Majic had fallen.
"—!"
Orphen cried out voicelessly, cowering from a sudden chill that hit him from behind. Following his instinctive warning, he threw his body forward — under the seat. After twisting to dive into the narrow space between the seats, he looked up over his shoulder toward the ceiling. What he saw wasn't the ceiling, but the floor of the second floor. Then he saw several wyrd graphs pass overhead.
After the wyrd graphs had passed him by, they made a U-turn a little further up ahead and came flying back. Now that he was between the seats, there was nowhere left to roll away—
"Damn it!"
Orphen cursed and pushed his elbow into the back of the seat in front of him with all his might. The wooden seat crumpled with a crunching sound — and when he drove his elbow into it a second time, the leg of the seat snapped in half. He shoved the seat up off the floor and rolled into the gap it'd created.
He saw the wyrd graphs descending to the very edge of the floor miss his body once and again and pass him by.
He stood up from under the seat and started running again. Soon he'd reached Majic.
"Just wake up already, will you..."
Grumbling, he hoisted the boy onto his shoulders. He quickly stood up and turned towards the stage. He fixed his eyes on the dogs still slowly approaching, then turned down the seats towards the stage.
Suddenly, the distance between him and the dogs closed—
According to legend, the Celestials made numerous attempts at creating their dolls, or rather, to create new forms of life. However, what they ended up with could never have possibly been living things. Even their Silence Magic was unable to create life. All they could do was creating some vague imitations of it...
And even so, these artificial life forms, no matter how sophisticated they were, were far too crude compared to creatures of the natural world. You could say that they were only ever able to create simple concepts, far from the choices of nature.
Perhaps because of this, the dogs' movements lacked any sense of intelligence. Moving forward, flying, attacking. There was an awkwardness about them, as if they were choosing between these options at random. It wasn't just on the surface — the power of the celestials was beyond them.
He raised his free left arm towards the dogs—
"I repel, the hail of glass!"
"—!"
The force field that suddenly bound their bodies caused the dogs to collapse on the spot, though they didn't fly away. Orphen ran between the fallen animals with all his might. The dogs didn't seem to be able to use wyrd graphs, but there was no telling what special abilities they might have. If they were poisonous, it could be fatal, and he didn't want to risk being pounced on, either.
In the end, he broke through without incident.
After passing the dogs, Orphen continued running towards the stage, then turned around. The group of dogs slowly scrambled up and awkwardly regained their balance. Then, at the exit, at the very back of the auditorium stood a line of puppets — before he knew it, there were dozens.
If he looked up further, he could see the second floor.
"Hoho..."
Orphen heard the Demon King murmuring behind him, but he ignored him and shouted.
"I run, along the heavenly mountain peaks!"
In an instant, his body's weight dropped to near zero.
Orphen kicked off from the floor and jumped up to the second, about ten meters above him. There, the effects of the spell ended and his weight returned. Holding the spell, he tightly closed his eyes and began to weave a complex structure for a larger-scale incantation.
"Stop... that individual..."
He could hear the Demon King giving orders, presumably to his dolls.
Orphen slowly opened his eyes. In his faintly blurred vision, he could see the groups of seats spreading out in a fan shape, similar to the first floor seats. He could also see two dolls appear in the last row of seats, teleporting through space without so much as a sound.
"Too slow!"
Orphen raised his left arm and screamed.
"In my left hand, an image of the netherworld!"
At that moment, a small black mass, a vortex, appeared in his left hand.
It was a few centimeters in diameter. It made no sound, and it didn't flicker like a flame, it just began to exist. It wasn't a gravitational body, much less matter. It was merely information, a factor. It was a kind of trigger, rather than having any action of its own.
(Master Childman's First Secret — "Disintegration of Matter")
He swung his left hand down.
The "factor" was released from his fingertips and flew towards one of the dolls. It was likely that, having just used spacial transition, it wouldn't be able to defend itself. The doll was prepared to take a hit, so it ignored the factor and tried to fire off more graphs to attack.
— and that decision backfired.
The "factor" disappeared when it touched the doll. Its roll as a trigger ended when it vanished on contact.
The moment the factor disappeared, something strange happened to the doll's body. Without any warning, nearly half of it was disintegrated as if it'd just been gouged out. In an instant the air around it became electrified and sparks scattered everywhere. It all happened in the blink of an eye. Finally—
An explosion occurred. A flash of light filled his field of vision. The rumbling and impact overwhelmed his senses, and Orphen curled into a defensive position, still holding onto Majic. After that, he let things take their course and stopped thinking about it.
There should've been flames. A sharp pain ran through his whole body. He couldn't breath. Yet, even that pain was gone in an instant.
When Orphen no longer felt the heat, he opened his eyes. The explosion had caused severe damage to the doll, of course, but also to the second floor itself. With this much power, even a wall protected by wyrd graphs wouldn't stand a chance. All the seats were knocked down in an arc starting from the center of the explosion. Large cracks appeared in the floor, and deep fissures ran in all directions from the center to the wall. The floor of the second floor shook tremendously, but slowly, seemingly starting to sink.
(Just as... planned?)
Orphen muttered as he braced himself. The second floor seats—
They were falling.
Not too fast, but even so, the dolls shouldn't have had time to draw the symbol for 'transition.' He'd braced himself, anticipating the impact...
It was only moments later that the second floor seats crushed most of the first floor, like a closing door.
After falling with the floor and landing hard on his back side, Orphen got back on his feet. He put Majic aside, and was now on his own. He looked around at their messily destroyed surroundings. Judging from their position, all the dolls lined up at the exit should've been crushed. Probably the pack of dogs, too.
"Did I win...?"
Orphen muttered in dismay in the midst of the underground theater, which was nearly reduced to rubble — but.
"It won't be... that... simple..."
From the undamaged stage, still sitting atop his throne, the Demon King quietly spoke to him.
As he turned towards him, he felt a presence appear from behind. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw several dolls that'd apparently successfully transitioned into the room.
With his attention still on them, Orphen lied to the Demon King on the stage.
"But six of them. That's not an insurmountable number."
"That's an... impressive, technique."
The Demon King said in a tone that didn't seem particularly impressed.
"But... you're not, very... smart."
"Excuse me!?"
Orphen clenched his fist and approached. However, when he saw the Demon Lord suddenly raise his right hand, shaking it — he stopped.
"You want to fight me on your own?"
But the Demon King didn't answer. He simply snapped the fingers on his raised right hand.
And then...
A doll silently appeared next to the throne — a large doll that they'd called "passage keepers."
"A seventh one?"
Orphen groaned, deciding not to approach them any longer.
However, the doll that appeared suddenly turned its back to him. He furrowed his eyebrows in suspicion — but in the next moment, they shot up in shock.
The doll's back was as transparent as crystal glass. Inside, Mädchen was imprisoned, suspended in the pose of the cross.
"A hostage...!"
Orphen bitterly spat.
But the Demon King immediately denied it.
"No... not a... hostage..."
He lowered his right hand.
"After I... dispose of you... I will also kill... this human as well..."
"What's the point! What are you even doing here!?"
Orphen shouted in desperation, throwing his arms outwards as he glared at the Demon King.
"I don't get it at all! There's something you need to tell sorcerers, but you say humans aren't good enough to hear it, and because I brought humans with me, I'm no good either!? Explain this to me in a way that I can understand!"
He put it out all on the table, then he froze. He calmed his haggard breathing and patiently waited for an answer. In the collapsed theater, the Demon King remained at ease...
"The true purpose... of the Demon King play..."
His voice carried, unwavering.
"Is to simply... follow... our Master's command..."
"Ugh—"
In that instant, there was nothing else to think about.
"GRRAAAHHHHHH!"
Losing control, Orphen screamed, he didn't even try to hold back. His roar became a spell, and he released a very simple magical structure.
The distance between him and the throne, including the height of the stage, was about five meters. A straight line connected the two, creating a furious heat wave. Orphen let out a gasp of agony as the light swelled and the discharge hit his own body. The roar and agony mixed together, turning into a scream that sent intense pain ripping through his throat.
"AAAAAHHHhhhhhhh—!"
At the same time, his voice trailed off.
His strength was exhausted. The spell dissipated. However, with the light gone, and the dust stirred up by the shockwave dispersed, the unharmed throne was soon revealed.
The Demon King hadn't moved an inch.
"I have not... been given... the wyrd graphs... to attack."
He said slowly.
"No one... can... stop me... That is... my role..."
"D... Damn it—"
Orphen crumpled to the ground in a fit of weakness. He could feel sweat pouring all over his body.
He looked at Majic, who was lying on his back nearby, and gripped the floor with his weakened arms.
"So it's that simple—"
"— You got beat because you've been neglecting me!"
"......!?"
Shocked — not relieved — Orphen raised his head. There was no way he could have misheard it; it was a girl's voice, one he was used to hearing pop up in the weirdest places.
From the side of the stage, he saw Cleao jump out with her blonde hair fluttering in the wind. Leki was clinging to her head as tightly as if he were stuck to it. As the girl ran, she held a strangely shaped dagger at her waist.
Caught by surprise, the dolls were unable to react. Cleao glided towards the one that'd absorbed Mädchen into its body. With a light leap, she jumped high into the air and plunged the dagger into the doll's back.
The dagger, with the added force of the charge, pierced the doll's back with a dull shunk. Cleao herself kicked off the doll's body and nimbly jumped back. She was about two or three meters away when she shouted in a high-pitched voice. At the same time she took Leki off her head.
"Make him fall!"
In an instant, the baby dragon's eyes widened.
The doll fell on its back without any resistance, and the handle of the dagger was slammed into the floor like a stake. The impact cracked the doll's body.
Orphen didn't quite understand what happened next. However, the dagger suddenly glowed and a wall of light of some kind started spreading out from it. A barrier was deployed inside the body, which had started to crack, and the doll's body split even more, taking only a few seconds for it to completely shatter.
Mädchen tumbled out from its shattered remains. She was unconscious, but appeared to be unharmed.
Cleao's actions were quick until the very end. She put Leki back up on her head, and, ignoring the stunned dolls, grabbed Mädchen's body. Dragging her along, she jumped off the stage with Mädchen. With how different the length of their limbs were, Mädchen was slammed hard into the floor, but she still hadn't woken up.
As Cleao ran towards him like that, Orphen couldn't help but feel like it looked a bit ridiculous, and burst out laughing.
"Man, you make the stuff even I can't do look so easy..."
"Orphen! Are you okay?"
After carelessly throwing Mädchen aside, Cleao bent down to look at his face. She seemed to have noticed Majic's presence as well.
"What's up with him? Is he still sleeping?"
She motioned to the black mass above her head (which had skillfully curled up.)
"Leki, heal him. And that nasty woman over there, too."
After saying that, she stood up—
Her gaze turned stern, and she glared at the throne. She folded her arms, puffing up her small body up as hard as she could.
"What the hell is wrong with you people!?"
"......!?"
The Demon King, perhaps unable to find the words to answer this rather straightforward question, looked puzzled.
But Cleao continued, not even minding.
"My belt broke, my back hurts, and you need to think about the trouble you're causing other people!"
And then—
She suddenly turned around. Quickly and powerfully, she cast her piercing gaze behind her. As if her gaze were the cause — three dolls who'd been about to cast secret wyrd graphs were blown to pieces.
Of course, it was Leki who'd really done it.
"I'm so angry with you!"
"Ahh... I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm sorrrrryyyyyy..."
Majic groaned in his sleep, like he thought he was the one being bullied.
But no one else seemed to hear it besides Orphen. He looked to the side, still on the floor, and saw Mädchen trying to stand up, groaning softly.
It seemed that both of them had escaped the influence of the Celestials' control.
"The tables... have turned."
Orphen spoke in a trembling voice that somehow reached the Demon King.
"So what will you do...? Demon King."
"This is nothing... I can just do this."
The Demon King said in a voice that didn't sound particularly frightened, then he raised both hands and began drawing complicated characters.
"Leki!"
Cleao shouted, turning to face him, but nothing happened. It wasn't that Leki hadn't done anything, but it was as if his actions were drowned out by the words the Demon King was writing.
Then the characters were completed. They were quite large, and suddenly, insanely bright—!
"—!"
The light enveloped them.
"— So, things have changed, haven't they?"
"Yes."
He heard voices... a man and a woman.
He didn't sense any youth about them, yet there wasn't any tone indicating advanced age, either.
Just voices unchanged by time, yet somehow still affected by some sort of change.
A change that they were now discussing.
Incidentally — these weren't sensations captured by his five senses.
Someone, or something, was explaining it to him. Probably the glowing graphs.
"I'm sorry."
The man mumbled from the north side of a round table. The table was enormous — so vast that the edges of it even appeared hazy. There was a woman at the round table as well, sitting just across from the man.
She was too far away to see her face. That said, he couldn't see the man's, either.
"We both know what's causing this."
"They are. But should we blame them?"
"It's not their fault."
The woman's voice was full of conviction. There was a certainty in her tone that transcended all emotion, an unfounded certainty that sometimes women — or rather, mothers — seemed to have.
"But I'm just like you. I want to put a stop to this flood."
"How?"
"The same way most people would think."
"Your chosen beast, the Basilocok?"
They were speaking in a language he didn't know — but of course, he could clearly understand what they were saying. If he couldn't, there would've been no point in bringing him here.
"Yes, I'll be using that, too. May I borrow your angel and your demon?"
"That's not happening."
The man snorted.
"But you know that, don't you? Of course you do, there couldn't possibly be anything we don't know about each other. We know, or have known, everything, and if there's one thing that's unknown even to us, it's the angel and demon. They're more powerful than I. It'd be no simple matter to lend them to you. More than that, they'd never agree to it."
"You're not blameless in the collapse of the system, you know."
"Of course. The fact that I'm talking to you is a big problem in and of itself. But my ideas on solving this problem are very different from yours..."
"I used the Basilicok. Vampires, too, and—"
"The dragons as well?"
"Yes."
"The angel and demon — are you sure that they're too much for you to handle?"
"The angel and demon would be the collapse of this world."
The woman then declared in a low tone reminiscent of the strength of steel.
"I'm going after them. The ones who destroyed the world and gave birth to us..."
"The Yggdrasil Units are all very cunning. Far more so than us, who've only recently possessed this lump of flesh called a brain."
"We're the only ones who haven't had them for long. You, however—"
"Yes. I used to have a body, but only for 32 years. Can you believe it? In that brief moment, I even pondered what the meaning of life was..."
"Sentimentality hastens decay. I must be careful about that, and so must you."
The woman said coldly and quietly got up from her seat.
"I'm going now."
"I won't stop you. I'm going to kill you sooner or later."
"Of course..."
The woman spoke in a pained voice.
"That's what you thought of?"
"I can't help it. It's the best I can do."
The man's voice didn't have any remorse, nor was there any sentimentality to the words as he'd stated them — it was just as he'd said, it couldn't be helped.
"Goodbye, Swedenboli."
"Goodbye, then, past... or the future, though I'm not sure which. She of fate."
The round table was wide.
He didn't know where he was, but wherever it was, the man and woman's faces were blurred, and he couldn't see either of them. He could only hear their voices.
He just watched. And then, when he realized that this was the real play of The Demon King, the lights went out.
"............!"
He awoke with a start.
He was outside. The smell of earth filled his nostrils — the undergrowth on the surface was wet with morning drew.
Right. It was morning. The sun had probably finished its early morning glow, but it hadn't risen up high just yet. Orphen got to his feet and — ignoring the aches in his body — he looked around. Majic, Cleao, and Mädchen, were all laying on the ground nearby. Sleeping peacefully. It was as if everything that'd happened up to that point had been a dream.
On top of that... countless corpses of the dog monsters were lying all around them.
"Wha..."
He exclaimed. It must've been those dogs that'd surrounded them last night (he supposed), the ones that had driven them into the theater. However, if even one of those dogs had attacked them while they were sleeping, they would've never woken up again. The slaughtered bodies he'd found in the hall suddenly came to mind.
The memory of it might've lowered his body temperature — by a degree or so. Orphen shuddered and counted the number of defeated dogs. Sixty-three. All of them were completely lifeless now. All blown away by sorcery.
"What did this...?"
Orphen looked at the boy, wondering if Majic or Leki had done this while he was out. But Majic was sleeping soundly, and Leki was sleeping in Cleao's arms. There was no sign that either of them had done anything like this.
"Well, okay..."
Feeling unsettled, but too tired to think, Orphen sat right down on the spot. He was that exhausted. Then he noticed something strange.
"The theater's not...?"
If there were dead dogs lying on the ground, the theater should've been close by. But no matter where he looked, there was no sign of any such building.
The shape of the woods surrounding the area — and the location of the luggage that Majic had left behind last night — made it clear that the area was near the theater in the first place. But even then, it was such a large building. There was no way he could've lost it even if he were standing a bit further away.
"This is all a bunch of bullshit, isn't it?"
Orphen muttered in despair, and then he realized something else. On top of their — and mostly Cleao's luggage — there was a small piece of paper.
It was on Cleao's sword. Orphen walked over to the luggage and picked it up. It was just a piece of paper, like one torn out of a notebook.
"............"
After a quick scan over it — as if to check it again — he read it out loud.
"'Next time, at least protect yourself'...?"
There was no signature, but it was easy to recognize who'd left it by the handwriting.
"Azalie..."
The corners of his mouth twisted bitterly.
"My own angel and demon, huh...?"
Orphen crumpled the note in his hand and slammed it down on the ground in a fit of rage.
Table of Contents
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| (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) |
Activated Once More Silence More Like Singing Then Everything Started To Swirl Leaping Into The Light Its Bound To Be Somewhere His Angel And Demon |
- Notes
- A French Curve is a type of ruler used in sewing.
- Magic Lanterns, these types of early image projectors are kind of like those old imagine projectors you might've used in school to display stuff on a screen at the front of the room.