Interlude:
The Armor
I HAD NOT LONG BEEN GIVEN LIFE in this world when my father spoke thus to me: There is one person in this world you must not make an enemy of.
I asked the reason, but my father would not tell me, offering only a vague response. Such memories of my infant years are fond and rare.
Time passed, and at the conclusion of the Second Great Human-Demon War, a certain saying began to spread: There are three people in this world you must not make enemies of.
Well, wasn’t that interesting? One had become three. Yet, when I first heard the specifics, I was overcome by laughter. Those three were the Dragon God, the Demon God, and the Fighting God. I couldn’t stop myself from asking back, quite genuinely, “Wouldn’t that be four people?” By rights, the Technique God ought to have been on that list.
Alas, few had seen the Technique God, and his very existence was doubtful at best. As a wise and all-knowing demon king, I knew that—be they three or be they four—the truth remained the same. There had in truth only been one person not to make an enemy of, and that was the Demonic Dragon God Laplace. He had always been the greatest of all until he was split in two in the Second Great Human-Demon War. Even afterward, he continued to tyrannize the world through fear. He was truly the greatest in the world. For my own part, whenever I encountered a youth drunk on their own strength, I told them, “There are three people in this world you must not make enemies of.” The North God Kalman especially took such a liking to it that he allegedly repeated it every chance he got. He was always so susceptible to the influence of others.
Ah, but if you asked today’s young people to name which three people they must not make enemies of, you may well end up with a different three. I expect some would even name North God Kalman. The threat of Laplace had faded. More than four centuries had passed, after all.
So much the better. Laplace was terrifically powerful. I’ve lived a long time, but I have never encountered a greater threat than he.
Yet the Man-God told me such a greater threat does exist, in the form of the current Dragon God—Dragon God Orsted. That would be the man to whom the great Dragon God Urupen passed his skills. They say he’s what, the hundredth Dragon God? I scarcely believed the line had continued for so long, but the great Urupen always did play fast and loose with numbers. The actual number of generations was likely irrelevant.
In any case, this Dragon God Orsted was supposed to be terrifically powerful, so much so that he surpassed the Demon God and the Technique God—so much so that he could even defeat Demonic Dragon God Laplace. I’d be hard-pressed to say I believed such a story. I myself fought Laplace once, and his gruesomeness was beyond my power to express it. A power greater than that? Inconceivable! Fwahahaha!
Yet, that cowardly god of men who looked down on all of us on this earth as scum, that model of arrogance whom even Laplace dared not challenge—he feared only this Dragon God. He took such pains to stop, nay, to kill that man with the fearful countenance, and yet he had never once succeeded. Would you believe it? He even came and bowed his head to me! Just that should be enough to make one believe it.
Now, was there anyone out there who could defeat such a mighty being? The answer to that was no. There wasn’t even anyone who could defeat Demonic Dragon God Laplace. I professed no great knowledge of the subject, but my father said that none have rivaled the Dragon God’s power for more than ten thousand years. Was it any wonder? Physically he was the strongest—wearing his invincible armor and wielding his unmatched martial skills, how could anyone ever best him?
Four hundred years ago, in the Laplace War, it was only narrowly and with the power of the Seven Legendary Heroes that Demon God Laplace was sealed away, and he only had half of his power then.
No, don’t tell me! You’ve a question about that, don’t you? You want to know why Demonic Dragon God Laplace isn’t around today. Why was he split into Technique God Laplace and Demon God Laplace, with Orsted inheriting the Dragon God name?
I have one answer for you. It was because another appeared, bearing the name of Fighting God. Another Fighting God, you say? Well, that just came down to a simple case of stolen identity. A man stole Laplace’s ultimate armor—the Fighting God Armor he’d crafted himself. This Fighting God Armor is terrifically powerful, you know. Such is the power it confers upon its wearer; you might think it was created specifically to vanquish a god. Admittedly, any ordinary person would die the moment they put it on… Not only that, but that armor would kill anyone who wore it for too long, no matter if they were abnormally skilled. Even Demonic Dragon God Laplace fought without it in the final days of the Second Great Human-Demon War. It was not an item to mess with.
But I digress. The thief obtained the power of the armor, fought the Demonic Dragon God, and they ended up taking each other down. Ironic, isn’t it? Defeated by the very armor he himself created.
“…Jeez, you talk a lot. What’s your point here?”
“That if we only had the Fighting God Armor, we might even be able to defeat Dragon God Orsted! That is my point!”
“And what if we don’t have it?”
“Then we shall surely lose. The young North God and the toothless Sword God may claim otherwise, but I, who have fought the Dragon God and survived, know better than anyone his strength.”
Geese was silent.
“Though I am an immortal demon, I expect I should die if I fought him, for he knows ways to kill even those of my kind.”
“Then what’s the plan?”
“We go and get it, of course.”
“Yeah, easy enough to say, but it’s not like this crazy armor is just sitting around in a basement somewhere, right?”
“They say it is kept tightly sealed and the journey there is treacherous!”
“Well, ain’t that a headache. Can’t pop in and grab it then, huh?”
“Fwahahaha. To me, it might as well be my basement!”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think it’ll feel like that for me…”
Geese sighed as though he were fed up. It was too late; before our eyes yawned the mouth of a great hole. We were in the middle of the ocean. Here and there, parts of a reef peeked out. Here, in a patch of ordinary, unremarkable ocean, lay a hole around fifty meters across. Water came welling up from it. That’s right, not flowing in—welling up. Who knew whence it sprang and to where it flowed? Those with the eyes to see it would also notice that the hole emitted a terrific quantity of magic. Of course, that included myself.
“This place’s full to bursting with some crazy energy.”
“You feel it, then!”
“I’ve raided an S-rank Teleportation Labyrinth and even that had nothing on this…”
“Fwahahaha! But of course! This labyrinth, you see, is different from other labyrinths. It is a mana collection point that spawned in the Second Great Human-Demon War. It is where a vast continent vanished, inhabited by the wandering souls of many millions of demons.
“This is one of the world’s three great labyrinths: the Devil’s Cave!”
From where he sat on my shoulder, Geese went, “Eep.”