“Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! That’s right, run! Don’t you want to try conjuring up another golem? Who knows—you might win this time!” Somewhere behind me was the Demon King, his gleeful voice bouncing off the dungeon walls.
So he could create golems, too? No fair!
I had three more manatite crystals in my item pouch, along with a single stick of Tinymite. My only other weapons were an enchanted blade and my beloved but weirdly named katana.
“You know perfectly well that if I made another golem, you’d just pulverize it again! You’re a bad, bad person! No wonder those generals liked you so much!” I shouted back as I ran through the gloom of the dungeon.
“What?! N-now, hold on! They were a pain in my neck, too, I’ll have you know. Beldia was always forgetting his head in the bath, Vanir wouldn’t stop playing nasty tricks on my soldiers to get those bad vibes he loves so much, Wiz would simply walk off with the castle’s war chest or some priceless heirloom and then sell it off, claiming she was practicing for when she opened her own shop…” He was talking faster and faster, as if he wanted to be sure he got it all out. “As for Hans, if you want to eat something from the stockpile, say so already! Don’t go in there and pollute it with your poison body! Sylvia needs to stop trying to ‘merge’ with me at every available opportunity! Even Serena never stopped trying to solicit donations around the castle. I guess Wolbach was the only sensible follower I had…! I beg you, don’t imagine I’m the wellspring from which they flow!”
Boy, he really had had it rough. I was almost starting to sympathize with him—but still I pulled out the stick of Tinymite I’d stashed while I was running.
As a member of demonkind, the Demon King was only significantly affected by magical attacks. But the same didn’t go for Earth Golems…!
I turned back and pitched my Tinymite at the golem. In the same motion, I raised my hand…! “Kindleeee!!”
“?!”
I blasted the explosive I’d thrown at the golem with a fire magic spell. There was a loud boom, and then its torso vanished in a cloud of dust, leaving just the legs still plodding along. A bit of debris even fell from the dungeon ceiling, and I briefly worried that it might cave in. Had the blast been that big?
“Wh-why, you…” A piece of the demolished golem smacked the Demon King right in the face.
I grinned as triumphantly as I could manage and said, “That wasn’t Explosion I just used. That was Kindle.”
“I know that! Because that’s what you shouted when you used it! No Adventurer could possibly use magic as advanced as Explosion anyway!” Now he was really mad. He resumed chasing me.
Geez, he was supposed to be the Demon King. Didn’t he know that was the oldest trick in the Demon King handbook?!
Three more pieces of manatite. What should I do with them? Should I face him right here and now?!
While I hesitated, the Demon King reached out his hand.
I grabbed one of the manatite crystals. “Lightning!”
“Cursed Lightning!”
I sent a lightning bolt with the full force of an entire manatite crystal streaking toward the Demon King. But he sent dark lightning back and hit me in the right shoulder.
“Hrrrn!” the Demon King hissed. “Grrrrr, you do know how to handle yourself! I’ll give you that much, boy!”
“Ow, ow, owwwww! My shoulder! There’s a hole in my shoulder!” I pressed a hand to my shoulder and looked at the Demon King, my eyes brimming with tears. He was holding his right thigh and crouched on the ground. But his injury didn’t look that bad, whereas I had a freaking hole in my shoulder.
This was bad. No way was I going to survive a fair fight. Only one thing to do…!
“Another game of hide-and-seek? I tire of this, boy! Cursed Lightning!” Still leaning his right knee on the ground, the Demon King stretched out his hand and unleashed his deadly magic.
Ugh, this was no good. How could he use such powerful spells back-to-back without even chanting? I dropped the hand I’d been pressing to my shoulder, almost unconsciously pulling out my magic sword and holding it more or less in front of me.
✦ ✦ ✦
Where it took the full brunt of the Demon King’s magic and, with a dull sound, shattered into a zillion pieces.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Ahhh!”
“?! So… Escaped again, have you? You have the luck of a demon…”
Brought to the brink of despair by the destruction of the weapon I’d been counting on, I grabbed the now-empty scabbard and threw it at the Demon King, crying, “Luck, my ass! If I’m so lucky, why the hell would any of this be happening to me?! Arrrgh! Damn Dust for giving me a POS magic sword to lug around!”
“Y-you really should show a little more appreciation for someone’s gift… But look, you didn’t really think you could stop a spell like that with a run-of-the-mill magic sword, did you?” The Demon King seemed genuinely puzzled. I ignored him and drew the katana from across my back. The Demon King said, “Now, at least, I’ve sundered your last hope. How many manatite crystals do you have left? And how many of those lightning bolts can you conjure? I take it you can’t use advanced magic. If you could, you’d have hit me with a serious spell by now, not some intermediate magic like Lightning. What do you have there? What do you mean to do with that lifeless hunk of steel? It’s not even enchanted.”
“It’s Chunchunmaru.”
…………………………………………
The Demon King came to a halt in spite of himself. “It’s what?”
“I said: It’s Chunchunmaru. The name of this sword is Chunchunmaru. Not ‘hunk of steel.’ Chunchunmaru. And after I use it to beat you, I think maybe I’ll donate it to a museum or someth—”
“Cursed Lightning!”
“Yikes!” My Auto-evade caused me to dodge out of the way of the Demon King’s attack.
“You miscreant! You knave! Never in my life have I been so mocked!”
My plan now was to piss off the Demon King until he ran himself out of MP. This might have been the first time my weirdly named sword had ever actually helped me. I put the sword on the ground—it wasn’t going to do any damage to the Demon King anyway—and placed my hand against my shoulder instead, intoning, “Heal!”
“You can even use healing magic?” the king said in exasperation.
“Heal! Heal!” I cried, almost weeping from the pain in my shoulder. The wound was too deep, though, and I couldn’t do anything about it with my magic. Instead, I pressed my hand to my shoulder again and turned my back on the Demon King once more.
“You truly do nothing but flee, don’t you? It’s time for you to learn when to give up. You’ve done well for an Adventurer. I mean it. As a show of respect for you, I might even see fit to let you go. You’ve still got some manatite, don’t you? I’ll give you just long enough to perform the Teleport incantation.”
I ignored the Demon King’s very attractive offer, turning the corner of the hallway, where I crouched down, sliding to the floor with one hand still against my shoulder.
This is really, really bad. It won’t stop bleeding.
Maybe it was time to teleport my way home… What should I do now? Had I bought enough time for the others to defeat the Demon King’s bodyguards back at the castle? Anyway, heck, I’d lasted this long one-on-one. Together, the others would have no problem with him.
As for me, I had to stop this bleeding, and soon…
“Say, boy. I haven’t yet learned your name. In a final battle such as this, I feel obliged, as the Demon King, to know the name of my opponent. Won’t you tell me?”
Shhf. Shhf. I could tell he was coming my way by the sound of his leg dragging along the floor. I took out another chunk of manatite. “Heal!” With the wound on my shoulder finally closed, I shot a question back at the Demon King. “My name’s Kazuma Satou. What’s yours?”
I felt lethargic. Maybe I had lost too much blood. I knew I had to get up, but I couldn’t summon the strength.
I heard the Demon King whisper: “It’s Yasaka.” And then I…
………?
“Yasaka? Yasaka the Demon King? I kind of thought your name would be, y’know, scarier.”
At that, the dragging sound went quiet. I guess the king must have stopped moving. After a long moment, I heard him chuckle softly. He was around the corner, so I couldn’t see his face, but he sounded truly, deeply amused.