WALPURGIS
Too bad, though.
“Didn’t I just tell you? You’re cornered. That
attack won’t do a thing. Projectiles don’t work on me.”
Belzebuth gobbled up that massive energy
blast, leaving our surroundings completely unaffected. Clayman’s scheme bit the
dust hard.
“…Whaaaa?!”
It surprised Clayman enough to leave himself
open—just long enough for me to snap my fingers. At that instant, a Barrier
erected itself over the two of us, a kind of imitation of the one Guy built.
“So he’s stealing my skills?” a bemused but
unangered Guy asked. “Talk about shameless.”
Now, I calmly thought, I can
consume Clayman with confidence. Man, my thought processes are getting more and
more evil by the day, aren’t they? Because I’m a monster, maybe? I wasn’t shirking the idea
of eating him up at all. Or was it because I’m a demon lord now? Ah, it doesn’t
matter.
“Wh-what? What happened…?”
Clayman
could no longer hide his confusion. The biggest, proudest attack he had was
wiped away in an instant, and his brain hadn’t caught up to that yet. Like, how many times do I have to say it? You’re already cornered. The
moment someone with your level of talent took me on, your future was cast in
stone. It’s so important, isn’t it, to fully gauge your abilities against those
of your opponent?
“Look, if you’re gonna be serious about this,
make it fast. I’ll wait for you. Or were you thinking about ducking out of this
chamber while that attack exploded all over us?”
It was a fully rhetorical question I was
cornering him with. Talk about disrespecting your fellow man. Well, I’m a slime
now, so it’s all right.
I mean, Clayman was
still screwing with me. He was on high alert, watching for what I’d do next,
but he was still a wimp about it.
Just as Raphael expected, getting awakened
didn’t do all that much to change him. He had a ton more magical energy, but
that was it. Apparently, he hadn’t obtained any ability to control it or new
skills to take advantage of it with. His “awakening” was a far different thing
from mine. Me, I could use Mind Accelerate to speed up my brain a million times
until it felt like time stopped. I could even cast spells in that state, making
it look like I could just think of a magic spell to
set it off.
Kneading together a big ball of magic was a
terribly inefficient use of my time, so I didn’t opt for that here. Unlike a
full spell, which could be conceived and cast through one’s will (or knowledge,
in other words), controlling one’s aura always led to a time lag. Of course, I could
handle that because I had Cast Cancel and All of Creation. No matter how long
and intricate a spell was, living life a million times slower than normal made
it simple. One second, after all, now felt like two hundred and seventy-seven
hours. Even the fanciest of spells could be pulled off in less than a day, so
that meant I could trigger them in less than a tenth of a second. With regular
magic, it was simple for me to set off multiples at the same time, even.
Thus, if I were in Clayman’s shoes, I’d use
multiple layers of magic to throw the chamber into confusion, then attempt to
run as fast as I could. He didn’t choose that, which meant he didn’t have the
strength for it. He hadn’t even noticed that I built a barrier around us—one
that cut off any escape route. If he wanted to get out, he’d have to do it over
my dead body.
Whether he was aware of this or not, the
atmosphere around Clayman began to change.
“Heh…heh-heh-heh… A mere slime with a big
mouth, I see. You are strong, I will admit that much. But I am capable of far
more than this!!”
He had changed tactics to the first scenario—a
desperate bull rush to kill me. Giving up the escape, revealing his full force
to the demon lords… A risky bet, to be sure, but it gave him a winning chance.
Surrounded by a bunch of lords who believed that strength was everything, it’d
even be a chance to write off all his previous crimes.
Assuming, of course, he could beat me.
“You seem confident in your aura-control
abilities, but do you think you could deal with this? Here we go—my most
powerful hidden skill! Demon Blaster!!”
After that long speech to throw off my game,
he put his feelers to the ground, stretching them out around me, and then
released.
The attack harnessed the ley lines under the
ground, stacking them together and mixing in his own magicules to amplify them,
then released it as a destabilizing ray of light. That was the long and short
of it, and anyone caught in it would have their arrangement of magicules thrown
into chaos, destroying them from the inside. Physical resistance would be
useless, and even a magical Barrier would be instantly smashed.
This was the natural enemy of any monster, and
I had to hand it to him—this was real demon lord stuff. But it didn’t work on
me.
“Swallow it all down, Belzebuth…”
The Demon Blaster light beam looked like a
herd of dragons rising up from the ground—but now they were caught up in a rift
before they could reach me, screaming their last as they were sucked inside.
There was no escape, almost like a black hole that consumed all light around
it.
“Forget it, Clayman. You’re weaker than me.”
I had to crush him. Crush him and hopefully
make him reveal something about his patron. The best way to do that was via
terror.
“No… That, that’s not possible!! That—that was
my secret weapon!”
Secret or not, projectiles just didn’t work on
me. Maybe if he used his head and did something to land a direct hit on me,
things would be different.
“Do you see that you can’t win now? So let me
ask you. Tell me what you know and who you’re cooperating with. Be honest with
me, and I’ll give you a painless death.”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-haaa! I am a walking dead! Kill
me all you want; I’ll just resurrect myself and come back later to kill— Ounngh?!”
I punched him. Then again, and again and
again, without a word. I also applied Mind Accelerate, speeding it up a million
times for him. Raphael could influence not just my perspective but those of
people around me.
In the real world, it lasted several seconds.
But in Clayman’s mind, I was continually punching him, tormenting him with pain
and terror, for several dozen days. So I could carve that pain and terror into
his soul. And in those few seconds, the terror made Clayman’s hair fall out,
transforming his visage into the ghastly, bony gaze of the actual dead.
“Clayman,” I quietly called out.
His body convulsed, then froze out of terror.
“I’m going to ask you one more time. Who are
you getting your information from, and how is this person related to you? Tell
me, and I’ll make it easy on you.”
But Clayman had more backbone than I thought.
“Don’t… Don’t treat me like a child. I would
never betray my friends—and especially not my clients. That, and that alone, is
the ironclad rule of the Moderate Jesters!”
Huh. So even villains had certain unbreakable
rules.
“All right. Well, so be it.” I casually
changed my tone. “Oh, right, I should probably tell you—you realize you aren’t
gonna be resurrected, right?”
He had talked about doing that a few
seconds—or days?—ago, but it wasn’t gonna happen. Being consumed by Belzebuth
was an even more tragic fate than being caught in the inescapable Unlimited
Imprisonment Veldora was locked in.
“Wh-what? What are you talking about?”
Was he keeping up that macho act because he
was counting on a new life later on, then? The moment he heard me, Clayman
began to quiver.
“Look, um, what you told me earlier? About how
walking dead can come alive again after they die? And that’s why you wanted me
to focus on killing you, so you could pluck out your astral body and try to run
away. Right?”
He was an underhanded sneak, but I had to
applaud him for his single-minded devotion to his cause. But my observation
made his face pale.
“Wh-what did you…?”
He tried to cover it, but I could tell I was
right. Not even I needed Raphael to figure it out—but Raphael had even more
amazing stuff for me.
“Ummm, so you can connect your astral body to
the ley lines here to keep your consciousness and memories protected, yeah? So
even if you lose your physical body, you’ll never truly die. That’s why you
were pretending to die there?”
Ahhh. Now I see. And just parroting out what
Raphael told me made Clayman convulse before me. I was absolutely correct.
“W-wait, wait…”
I knew his game. And now it was time to end
it. I turned toward the demon lords surrounding us, ignoring the gibbering
Clayman.
“Well! I guess I won’t extract anything else
from Clayman, so I’m going to execute him shortly. Anyone have any objections?
’Cause if you do, I’ll be happy to take you on, too.”
It would suck if
someone did, but I doubted it.
“Do as you please,” Guy answered, speaking for
the Council like I thought he would. No one else voiced any complaint.
“Stop! Wait, stop it!!”
Now Clayman was loudly pleading for his life,
finally realizing there was no escape.
“After all the grief you gave me, I’m
absolutely sick of you. Don’t expect your death to be all sunshine and
rainbows, all right?”
With that, I placed my hand on his head. I
thought I’d make it quick ’n’ easy on him if he coughed up some info on his
master, but Clayman never sang. I really wanted him to, considering what I’d
have to deal with in the future, but hey, I’d probably manage without it. There
might be some more leads in his castle to explore, and given the testimony I
had that the Modest Jesters weren’t a monster ring, it was obvious that Clayman
had worked with humans. I didn’t know if that meant the Eastern Empire or the
Western Nations, but either way, if he knew about my own movements, he had to
have connections in the west. Track those down, and I should find a trail to follow
before long. In a way, relying on the not-too-credible Clayman’s testimony
might just lead to more confusion.
So. Clayman.
“…I hope you’ll spend the last few moments
before your soul vanishes regretting what you’ve done.”
“No! Wait, wait! Stop!! Stoooopppp!! Help,
help me, Footman! Teare, help me! I can’t die yet. I can’t die heeeerrrreee!!”
It was pathetic, watching him try to flee. But
I wasn’t about to allow it. No matter how much he carried on, none of it would
ever touch my heart. Leaving someone like this alive would just be planting the
seed of disaster.
Plus, thanks to you, the
naïveté in me just died. There was no way I could
let that get one of my companions killed again.
“P-please, Lord Kazalim, help me—”
He reached out to his broken mask, clutching
at it as if in prayer—
Crunch.
In an instant, the
wailing, howling, resisting Clayman disappeared from sight. Body, soul, and all
were greedily consumed by Belzebuth. And now it was converted into pure
magicules inside me, where he would get to experience the torments of hell.
And whether a dirtied soul like his—a tainted,
evil soul—or a sensible, good soul, death treated them all equally.
And for a moment, I
thought I heard his voice:
—Ah, Laplace. You were exactly right. I think I
went a little too far. I should have waited and bade my time, like you warned
me to… You always were right…
Was that regret? I
suppose even a villain like him feels regret. Let’s hope that the “death” I
gave him helps him get more familiar with that emotion.
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