TERNLF Vol. 2 Chapter 4 Part 3

“Are you suggesting I’m lying? I believe I already showed you the proof a moment ago.”

Was he referring to that moment when he attacked Cheki?

I recalled the scene where Luchimada had erased my 【Blessing Freeze】 in an instant with flames that overwhelmed it.

But something on that level shouldn’t have been impossible for a demon with decent power.

…No, wait.

Back then, the spell I fired didn’t look like it had melted. It looked like it was erased.

“Don’t tell me what you did back then was—”

“Looks like you finally noticed.”

I’d assumed Luchimada had simply melted the ice with fire magic.

But thinking it through, that didn’t add up.

If flames hot enough to melt ice instantly slammed into it, even if the water vaporized in a flash, there should’ve been something like a steam explosion.

And yet, the ice that had been engulfed in Luchimada’s flames had vanished as if it had never existed.

“…Don’t tell me you nullified the spell.”

“It was stronger than I expected. I used my power on reflex.”

Magic was a phenomenon created by using mana.

In other words, anything produced by magic was mana that had transformed into a visible phenomenon.

The ice I created had been mana at its source.

So what Luchimada had done was forcibly revert that ice back into mana and wipe it away.

“Be proud. You made me use my power, even if only for an instant.”

“You expect me to believe you from just that one time?”

At my words, Luchimada turned his palm toward me and sneered.

“Then shall I show you again? Next time, I might erase you along with your very existence.”

“Tch.”

Even I didn’t have the spare focus to mind my surroundings if I was taking on one of the Progenitor Lineage.

If a fight broke out here, I’d end up dragging my companions into it.

“What’s wrong? You’re not coming at me? Then I’ll start by slaughtering the foolish dwarf rabble first.”

When I didn’t move, Luchimada shifted his palm from me toward the spectator seats and spoke as if he were taunting us.

…No. That wasn’t taunting.

He meant it.

“Eek!”

“Run!”

“I don’t want to die here!”

The instant Luchimada released his killing intent, the dwarves surged for the courtroom exit, scrambling over each other.

“Hey, it won’t open!”

“Someone locked it!”

“Smash it!”

“No good, it won’t budge!”

But the door showed no sign of opening.

Worse, even when they tried to break it down with dwarf strength, it didn’t so much as tremble.

And it became clear this wasn’t just “dwarf-made things are sturdy” when Luchimada let the next words slip.

“This entire court has been sealed off by my capable subordinates. Stop wasting your breath.”

“You’ve trapped us in here. What do you intend to do? No, more importantly, what is your objective?”

Unlike the dwarves still desperately trying the door, it was King Grenga who addressed him with an oddly composed expression.

“Do you think I have any need to answer?”

“You revealed your true form on purpose… You plan to kill everyone here anyway, don’t you? Then at least tell us what you’re trying to do before the end.”

Faced with the king’s detached calm, Luchimada lowered the arm he’d been holding up.

Then he looked up at the king and smiled fearlessly.

“Fair enough. Before you die, you’d all like to know why you have to die in the first place.”

The very next moment, Luchimada’s expression changed completely.

Was that the flame of rage burning in his red eyes?

He swept his gaze across the entire courtroom with killing intent so thick that even I felt a shiver run through me, and he roared.

“Then listen before you die, you despicable moles who scurried into your holes!”

With both arms spread wide and his voice ringing out, everyone froze and fell silent.

“One of my objectives is the same as yours, dwarves—namely, the extermination of the elven race.”

The extermination of elves.

For an instant, I wondered if Luchimada had tried to become king of the dwarves so he could force them to cooperate with a demon invasion of the elven forest.

That guess flashed through my mind, but it was only half right.

“We demons once lived quietly in the cold, barren lands of the far north. Our only food was monsters born of mana. That was the kind of place it was.”

Come to think of it, I’d heard about the demons’ origins from my mentors as well.

Before they founded the Volga Empire, they’d lived in small settlements, separated by race.

The north was frigid even in summer, and grain was difficult to grow there, so the population had always been small.

On top of that, the closer you got to the world’s poles, the denser the mana became, and the number of monsters increased accordingly, growing stronger as well.

In that harsh land, they’d survived by making powerful monsters their sustenance, and as a result, demons came to possess far greater mana than other races.

Even as I remembered that, Luchimada’s speech continued.

“We knew that if we went south, there would be fertile lands. But those lands were ruled by you dwarves and the elves. Both were isolationist races that would not permit even outsiders’ entry.”

Among the demons, some had been unable to endure hunger and thirst and had sought trade with the dwarves and elves.

But at the time, those two races had been far more exclusionary than they were now, and they rejected every proposal the demons made.

And so, driven past their limits, some demons began to slip into dwarf and elven territory in scattered incidents and steal food.

“We demons lived so our territories wouldn’t overlap, precisely because food was scarce. Because of that, we never learned how to cooperate with other tribes.”

The dwarves and elves, of course, hadn’t simply stood by and watched those sporadic thefts.

Even if demons could wield powerful magic, dwarves and elves were races with strength of their own. Demons who only knew how to fight in small tribes were gradually picked off one by one by opponents who overwhelmed them with numbers.

“That was when it happened. When that great Demon King descended.”

Luchimada spoke with an expression of rapture.

“Our Demon King traveled from one scattered demon settlement to the next, and with wisdom and might, brought them all under his command. He accomplished the unprecedented feat of uniting the demons into one.”

Thanks to the Demon King, the demons learned how to fight together, and began defeating formidable monsters they would never have been able to bring down before. Their food situation improved somewhat as a result, but…

“Even so, life on the northern lands remained harsh. And so the Demon King finally resolved to invade the south.”

At first, the Demon King chose to seek the return of the lands they had lost to elven and dwarven offensives through peaceful talks. Along with a pledge of atonement for what the demons had done in the past, he asked them to forgive them and promised that such deeds would never be repeated.

But they refused to accept the Demon King’s apology, and negotiations broke down.

“When I learned why they refused to return that land to us… it made my blood boil.”

The Eldwa Autonomous District.

On the land the demons had lost, the elves and dwarves had already founded a new nation that aimed for coexistence.

Naturally, every demon cried out to reclaim it, and some charged ahead and attacked the Eldwa Autonomous District. But the defenses of the two races were solid, as though they had anticipated it, and the only result was mounting demon casualties.

That was when a certain plan was devised, and Luchimada was chosen to carry it out.

“If you can’t break them from the outside, you slip in from within. That was the Demon King’s plan. I entered the Eldwa Autonomous District with trusted subordinates, using a magic tool that concealed our true forms. They were completely complacent after easily repelling the Demon King’s army, so infiltrating was even simpler than expected.”

Once inside, Luchimada and his group succeeded, just as they had in this dwarven kingdom, in pulling strings both openly and from the shadows until they wormed their way into the district’s core.

“Even if they looked friendly at a glance, elves and dwarves were never truly compatible. There were openings for us everywhere. But one single miscalculation occurred.”

As he said that, Luchimada met Cheki’s glare head-on.

“That was you. The Devil’s Child.”

The one who stood in their way after all their painstaking infiltration was Cheki.

Her power, long feared and shunned by others, would shatter Luchimada’s conspiracy.

“You exposed the true identities of our infiltrators and drove them out of key positions. Even so, we continued acting with extreme caution to avoid ever crossing paths with you, and we had reached the point where the district would be ours with just one more step. If only you hadn’t meddled…”

Luchimada had intended to seize control of the district by murdering Cheki’s father, who had been the district’s leader at the time, and taking his place.

But Cheki happened to visit her father’s room, saw through him, and exposed what he was.

And of course, once Cheki realized who Luchimada truly was, she told her mother, who had been working in the next room.

When Luchimada got that far, Cheki, as if reliving it, glared at him with eyes full of hatred.

“And after your cover was blown, you killed Father and Mother…”

“I didn’t expect your parents to prioritize protecting you over escaping.”

“Mom used the oath ring to tell Dad, then she made me run into the hidden passage. But right after I went in, there was this huge sound outside…”

“Let me be clear. Your father struck first. I merely retaliated.”

Luchimada shrugged.

“Either way, I intended to kill all three of you.”

And with that, he sneered.

“The original plan failed, but in the end, I got to see something far more entertaining.”

The king and queen who ruled the district.

With their assassination, the buried animosity between the two races erupted all at once.

They had fallen neatly into Luchimada’s trap.

“We let the Devil’s Child slip away, but when I watched those fools who’d been playing at comrades until yesterday turn on each other so easily and start fighting, I couldn’t stop laughing at your stupidity.”

The flame of suspicion that ignited between the two races spread unchecked, in an instant.

Before long, it escalated into all-out war, and it did not take much time for the Eldwa Autonomous District to become ruins.

After suffering enormous losses and losing the district they had built toward an ideal, the dwarves and elves chose to abandon that land and retreat to their own territories.

“So you demons got that land without shedding a single drop of blood.”

“It was a shame the land was ruined, though.”

Luchimada shrugged again at my words.

“Then you’ve already gotten plenty of land, haven’t you?”

“Yes. That land is already ours.”

“Then why do you need to wipe out the elves now? Isn’t it enough?”

The demons had taken the land and built a prosperous, peaceful nation.

Neither elves nor dwarves clung to that territory anymore, and there was no fear of them invading. Lately, they even traded with those two races.

In that situation, what was the point of exterminating the elves now?

But Luchimada answered my question with a single, casual line.

“Because they became an obstacle to us.”

Starting with the Kingdom of Preasole, most nations on this continent and most races viewed demons as friendly and mild-mannered. A land without discrimination, blessed with rich granaries, maintaining amicable ties with other countries and races, the most peaceful nation in the world.

“You’re going to exterminate the elves just because they’re in your way?”

“Exactly.”

“Is that the Demon King’s order?”

“Mind your tongue, you miserable human!”

Luchimada flew into a rage at my words.

The one who ruled the Empire was Demon King Isaid, wasn’t it?

With my memories of a past life, the very phrase “Demon King” made me want to label him an enemy on instinct, but in this world, a Demon King was simply the king who governed the demons’ nation.

So in general, he was more often called Emperor Isaid than “Demon King.”

Even in my past life, there were plenty of stories where the Demon King valued peace. And the image I’d heard of the emperor was that of a gentle ruler who treated everyone with kindness and fairness.

If problems arose within the country, he dealt with them swiftly and properly. There was little gap between rich and poor, and he had maintained a nation where everyone lived peacefully for many years.

That was Emperor Isaid, the perfect sovereign.

But…

“…So the ‘perfect ruler’ was a lie after all.”

I muttered under my breath.

No one is perfect. If such a person exists, it’s only in stories, or in someone’s idealized fantasy.

I already knew that.

I’d learned it the hard way when I’d lived a destitute life in my past world.

Behind a saint’s gentle whispers waited only despair.

If anything, a hand extended with a little self-interest in mind, by someone with a bit of darkness in them, was the one you could actually trust.

“You said they became an obstacle. What about the elves is such an obstacle?”

I asked, hiding my disappointment in the Demon King.

If the Demon King who’d pursued peace and cooperation for so long had decided to wipe out the elves, I needed to know why.

“Because they started forcing unreasonable demands on us.”

“Unreasonable demands?”

“You know the nonsense they’ve been spouting, claiming they are the mouthpieces of the gods, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I know that far too well.”

The frontier fortress where I’d been sent in all but exile.

The enemies the people there fought weren’t only monsters spilling out from the Demon Forest.

“I’ve fought those elves who scream that nonsense more times than I can count.”

Yes, there had been countless battles with the elves.

The elves said they acted for the sake of a divine oracle brought by the Creator God.

The elves said the Creator God had commanded them to free the World Trees.

The elves said they were the chosen people of the gods.

The elves said it was the mission of the divine army to seal the World Trees and destroy the fortress that tormented the gods.

They said that long ago, there had been many gigantic trees called “World Trees” across the world.

The goddess of creation who birthed the World Trees exhausted her strength, and what came after was entrusted to her children, the Ten Gods, who were born at the same time.

That was the creation myth Nikka had once told me.

With the passage of countless years, the World Trees throughout the world fulfilled their roles and withered away, and one of them had been the one in that beast forest.

“They used to go on about freeing the World Tree in the Demon Forest.”

The frontier fortress had been built, and the kingdom’s greatest fighting strength had been stationed there permanently, mainly to prevent the ferocious monsters spilling out of the neighboring “Demon Forest” from invading the kingdom.

There was a legend that the Demon Forest had been formed by a fireball that suddenly fell from the sky.

People in this world didn’t have concepts like “meteor” or “crater,” so the exact truth was unclear, but given the circular depression of the land, I believed the legend was real.

And perhaps because of that meteor’s influence, the Demon Forest was saturated with an incredible density of mana.

As a result, countless dungeons formed within it, and stampedes—monster rampages—occurred periodically. The frontier fortress had been built to hold them back.

Since its completion, the fortress had drawn warriors of many races, with humans at the center.

Those who had suffered direct damage before the fortress existed, like beastfolk and dwarves, came, but so did elves and even demons.

Their reasons varied. Some volunteered to protect their countries or families, while others were drawn by the highest pay in the kingdom.

And powerful monsters yielded valuable materials. Even high-rank adventurer parties, not permanently stationed there, often came and went in search of them.

But that was before I’d ever been sent to the frontier fortress.

An elven envoy, from a race that had barely interacted with the kingdom at all until then, visited the fortress and demanded its removal on the grounds of “divine oracle.”

Naturally, the kingdom rejected their appeal.

But the elves weren’t about to accept that and back down.

To them, the gods’ oracle was something that had to take priority above all else.

They screamed, demanding to know whether the kingdom meant to defy the gods, and their eyes were said to have been painted with madness.

And so the war between humans and elves… no, between the frontier fortress and the elves began.

But while elves were unmatched in the forest, they were at a disadvantage on the plains around the frontier fortress. And the fortress itself had been built to withstand monsters that used magic even more powerful than the elves could muster, so the elves had no way to bring it down.

In the end, the elves abandoned a direct approach and began using every underhanded method they could.

At times, they sent assassins. At times, they used spies, trying to sow chaos not in the fortress itself, but in the kingdom and other nations.

Yet every scheme failed, thanks to the fortress’s capable warriors.

That was the history of the conflict with the elves, stretching back to before I was ever sent there.

“It was a few years ago that those elves sent an envoy to the Demon King, demanding he help free the World Trees.”

Perhaps they’d realized the limits of their own strength and sought aid from the demons.

“The Demon King, of course, refused. There’s nothing to gain from going to war with humans right now. But those fanatic lunatics spewed abuse, shouting, ‘Will you defy the gods!?’ They denounced the Demon King as an enemy of the gods. And in the end, they even declared they would hunt demons again, just like in the past!”

As Luchimada reached that point, madness seemed to flicker in his eyes, and then—

“That’s why I decided. Just like before—just like when I erased the Eldwa Autonomous District—I would act in the Demon King’s stead and wipe out all those who would make enemies of the demons!!”

Luchimada’s voice rose even higher, his face twisted in ecstatic delight as he let out a booming laugh.

“Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!”

While everyone stood frozen, unable to move before the madness in Luchimada’s posture, one person alone hurled herself at him with a sound that was half scream, half sob.

“Stop, Cheki!”

“【Blessing Wind Cutter】AAAAAA!!”

My shout of restraint and Cheki’s 【Blessing Wind Cutter】 activated at the same time.

By now, people had already backed away from Luchimada, leaving only him and his subordinate, who still hadn’t regained consciousness.

But Cheki’s magic, as expected of someone with elven blood, carried enough force to sweep up even dwarves standing some distance away.

The moment I saw it, I tried to raise a wall with magic to keep the dwarves from getting caught in it.

But Luchimada moved first.

“Did you really think you could kill me with a pathetic little spell? 【Dispel】.”

It was the moment Cheki’s 【Blessing Wind Cutter】 was about to whip through the courtroom.

In an instant, her magic was wiped away.

“N-No way…”

He must have used this same 【Dispel】 spell to negate my 【Blessing Freeze】 earlier too.

Back then, he’d activated fire magic at the same time to fool our eyes.

Which meant Luchimada could cast two different spells simultaneously.

What a pain.

“Would you stop interrupting me? You feeble brat who can do nothing but skulk around reading people’s hearts.”

“…!”

Having her spell—packed with every ounce of her mana—snuffed out in a blink, Cheki bit her lip in frustration.

“To begin with, your presence here is nothing more than a mere accident.”

With a thin smile, Luchimada took a step toward Cheki in the defendant’s stand.

Or so it seemed—only for him to cross from one end of the courtroom to the other in an instant, like teleportation.

“The one I ordered to kidnap was you, Grassa the Duplicator.”

“Hii!”

With Luchimada suddenly appearing right in front of her, Grassa let out a small scream.

His hand brushed against her cheek.

No—more importantly…