Gripping my short spear, I went into the house. I was protected from the flames and smoke by a barrier I had created around me, but that gave me less air, so I didn’t have much time. I had to get this done quick.
Everything was going fine—or at least it had been up to that point. That’s why I thought something so conceited as, I have to get this done quick, about killing the hero.
From a bedroom on the collapsing second floor came the hero wielding a sword. When he saw me he looked surprised, but in the next moment he blew me away, barrier and all—with a simple horizontal swipe of his sword.
My spear broke, my barrier scattered, and I went flying through the burning wall to land outside. I broke my left arm and a rib, but that was probably thanks to my barrier. The hero meant to slice me in half.
I realized the situation was hopeless. One hit was enough to open my eyes. Between him and me...there was something that made us very different. We were from different worlds, after all.
But I couldn’t run away. I had a sword stabbed through my thigh. As I struggled like a pinned bug, he had the nerve to say, “Well you’re a new kind of demon. Is that your attempt at transforming into a human?” He coughed. “Your skin color’s off.”
I felt insulted, so I forgot my fear and yelled at him. How he’d stolen my village. How he’d killed my friends. And how he spared me because I was a child.
And what do you think he said to that?
“I dunno who you are, but if I saved your life, then why aren’t you more grateful?” He seemed honestly confused.
I couldn’t get through to him. He saw us as puppies or something. He thought that even if he murdered our friends and invaded our territory, he could just feed us and we’d like him.
I realized that begging for my life or spewing hatred at this guy would be pointless. So I told him to hurry up and kill me. He took the sword out of my thigh. He seemed about to stab me through the heart, but then he saw the drinking pouch on my back. The smoke was ruining his throat. He opened the pouch and gulped down what was inside.
Then—he started to hurt. He clawed at his throat, writhing.
“You little—is this—poison!?”
It wasn’t poison. It was the water mixed with poppybat blood that the guards had drunk. I had removed its taste and smell with dark arts, but it was mixed potently enough to send them for a loop.
The hero’s suffering wasn’t normal, though. Sometimes it didn’t agree with people, but I’d never seen a reaction this bad. He seized and fell over.
Really? I wondered and felt for his pulse. And yes, really.
He was dead. The hero died of poppybat blood.
Maybe that was just another difference between us and the hero from another world. Maybe what for us was a dangerous game was a violent poison for him.
But now there was no way to check, and it didn’t matter, anyways. Just in case, and to show who killed him, I stuck my broken spear through his heart.
It’s not the most satisfying story, but that’s how I won.
Huh? What? This is the first time you heard about that?
Of course it is. Who would tell a story about how the hero was killed by a cursed child? After we fled the city, those idiots all realized how stupid they’d been and changed their story. That is: The kid who called himself a hero was a fraud. It was all made up.
Naturally, it was they themselves who did away with him. They declared, The criminal who deceived our citizens and stole our wealth, women, and children has been put to death. On top of that, they added, The criminal was tricking people using the dark arts of a remote ethnic group. They made the whole thing our fault.
We ran back into the forest. The village had been burned. There was no one there who could fight, and the wall men had all been killed. The wall man who saved me had been one of the first to fight and die defending the village.
Maybe I should have died there, too.
But I didn’t know why we had to die. I remembered everything from all the way back to being a little kid through to the present, but I couldn’t understand why we should have to suffer like this.
The muck always sinks to the bottom. I only just happened to be born down there.
Hidden in the forest, I kept on thinking. All I had was hate. I bided my time, sharpening my spear and cursing the entire world.
And then I met that demon again. The same one I had encountered as a kid. The horse with no bones.
I wasn’t scared. I had seen plenty of things more horrible than a demon. I put up a barrier and twisted it up in the grass to trap it with no problem. Then I killed it. I stabbed my spear into its brain and gouged. I kept gouging the contents of the thing’s head out until it stopped moving.
Up until then, the demons were terrible beings—and gods. But I killed the hero and a god. Who the heck did I think I was? The demon lord, that’s who. I thought I must have been the demon lord.
It was raining. I remember that even now. It just kept raining over me when I became the demon lord.
I killed the soldiers that came in pursuit. I killed the demons and beasts I encountered in the forest for food.
I made tattoos out of the blood. Day by day I felt myself growing closer to the demons. Eventually, no one came after me anymore. Still, I lived in the forest, teasing the adventurers I ran into and killing any soldiers.
I wore their clothes plus body parts from the demons I’d killed and made myself look more like the demon lord. I meant to be a creature that was neither human nor demon.
I must have done that for about ten years. I think I must have looked just like a demon. I abandoned speech and writing and lived my life thinking only of that day.
Apparently rumors about me had really gotten around. An awful lot of adventurers showed up to kill that monster everyone’s talking about and win a reputation. Of course, they got what was coming to them.
But among them was one guy who wanted me to be his friend. Naturally, I was going to take out any joker like that. But the thing is, this guy wouldn’t go down so easily. He had a nasty sort of persistence, caution, and cleverness that was different from that hero kid. He was a man with a human sort of strength.
It was that dumbass Widgecraft.