Evade the Hero and Flee! 178 #20. This World Doesn’t Want to Leave Me Alone (7)>
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“Uheeheeheeheeheeheet!”
“Kkyahk! S-stop! Kuk! W-wait! Why- kek… What do you… want from… kuk!”
Just one strike and that was it.
The thing I requested from the dwarves during the designing process of the metal bat was demonstrating its effectiveness right now.
-Master, should I hit her some more?
-She’s still talking, isn’t she? Keep hitting her until she can only say yes, no, or uh.
-Roger that!
“Uheeheeheet! Someone still wants to see you get hit some more~!”
“W-what an evil existence!”
The metal bat’s provocative words caused the demon king’s daughter to cry out in shock, and my two disciples on either side of me began nodding rather energetically.
“That’s right. The evilest person in this whole world wants me to beat you up, so let’s get to it, older sis!”
“N-no, I don’t wanna!”
The terrified demon king’s daughter tried to move her body but, by then, her mind was no longer capable of controlling her own body.
All she could do was crawl on the ground, which made the metal bat go “Uheeheehee!” loudly.
“It doesn’t matter whether you want it or not, ya know!”
“Kkuuuueeeeehk!”
The metal bat’s assault resumed once more.
When the demon race’s princess began screaming loudly, my disciples on either side of me began trembling as if they were the ones being assaulted right now.
And so, after about five minutes later…
After that beautiful face became a slobbering mess of drool dripping down her chin, I slowly made my way towards her, squatted down, and stared deep into her eyes.
-Master, what will you do if this girl turns out to not be the demon race princess~?
-She probably won’t accept my apology even if I make one, and judging from her appearance, she must have her own circumstances.
-Wha, you wanna help her?
-Nope. I’ll eliminate her while leaving behind not one single piece of evidence.
-As expected of the villain class!
Uh-huh! This would be an obvious thing to do here.
Since time immemorial, humans and demons have been enemies!
The heroes in the novels that good-naturedly accept the demon king/queen or the demon princess just because of their circumstances? Now those fellas are the weird ones here!
-But, what about Alice, master?
-My daughter is an angel, so she doesn’t count.
-Discrimination!
It was impossible to live without discriminating against something. Being nice to someone you despise was an act of lunacy.
If there was something tasty, I should be giving it to my pretty little daughter, no? It’d be stupid and crazy to give something like that to the metal bat that ate food despite being just a pile of metal.
-Hey, master? Why does it feel like you swore at me just now?
She could be so annoying with how observant she was in this sort of thing.
“…I’m going to ask you a question. All you have to do is answer me yes or no.”
“What… do you…”
It’d get doubly annoying if the metal bat got peeved here, so I promptly decided to change the topic.
If this was any other place, I wouldn’t have cared, but this was the demon continent, and that made things dicey.
“You’re the demon king’s daughter, correct?”
“B-but, how…”
bbuh-ggeum, bbuh-ggeum… [1]
Seeing her shocked expression and how her lips opened and closed like that, I was right about this punk being the demon king’s daughter.
“Seriously?!”
“I-it has to be a lie…”
Uh-huh?! Looks like these punks calling themselves my disciples didn’t believe me!
To think that they lack faith in their instructor to this degree!
“C-could it be… You’re Aggreahrt’s…!”
The princess’s dazed eyes began regaining their focus.
No, hang on. Those eyes were getting ready to burn even more fiercely compared to when she first showed up.
-Beat her up.
“Kkwuek!”
And then, those fierce flames were rapidly suppressed.
“Kuwaaaahk! You, you evil… Kah-hak!”
“Sis, you sure know how to make pretty funny screams, don’t cha! It’s gonna be fun beating you up!”
Yup, it was wise to kill the fire as soon as possible. A dying cigarette carelessly thrown away during Autumn could burn down several mountains, after all.
‘Whether you’re awake or asleep, you better watch out for fires! So, let’s re-examine the dying person’s last surge, shall we!’
Since ancient times, main characters and villains would always get defeated after letting their guards down.
“Kku-uuuuhk…”
“Okay, so. After making a rough guess, there was a rebellion in the demon race, and you think I’m one of the rebels. But here’s the deal. You’re wrong.”
“You… lie…”
She was looking up at me from the ground with a pair of empty eyes, but even so, she still looked like a piece of art.
Her eyes, sparkling like jewels despite being pitch-black; her hair, as soft as silk yet as black as abyss trying to explain nothingness itself; and the horn in her head, a clear proof that she wasn’t a human. Even then, her horns only added to her overall unexplainable charm.
That’s right, this daughter of the demon king was a stunner even in my book, and I was already an old and cranky bastard! But my life experience had taught me this.
…That not a single beautiful woman I met in this world was sane in their head!
“Beat her up.”
“Yesss!”
“W-wai… Kkuweck!”
Since ancient times, it was incredibly difficult to trust someone you didn’t believe in the first place. Just think about all the religious people or con men from my past life, for instance!
Waiting around for hours in the middle of some streets in Winter and stopping any passersby for no good reason, or climbing up five stories of an apartment building with no elevators just to buzz the bell and ask for a glass of water! But I wasn’t even talking about that.
No, take your time and think about that from a different perspective!
There was no freaking way they would ask only you for a glass of water! They must’ve stopped by on every floor, starting from the ground floor! Imagine how many countless houses they must’ve gone around, climbing the stairs up and down and whatever!
But that’s not all! Now imagine around ten per cent of those houses would really offer glasses of water. That would be a serious problem, wouldn’t you say?
If they went to one hundred houses, then with that odds, didn’t it mean that they had to drink at least ten glasses of water?
Even they couldn’t tell you how many hundreds of houses they would visit in a day. Just from that, you could probably suspect that the quantity of water they drink in a day must be enormous.
So, if they plead with you to use your bathroom, then it might not be a mere trick to gain access to your home but a case of a real emergency.
That’s why any kind-hearted people should pretend to not have any and not give them glasses of water. That’s was the best outcome for those people, you see!
Well, uh… In any case, that’s how difficult it was to trust someone.
As such, I should order the metal bat to beat the demon race princess some more so that she could start trusting me.
“Master, this older sis is starting to drool nonstop from her mouth!”
“It’s fine. To people, drooling like that is a natural thing.”
“…Master, you’re looking away.”
“Well, eyes are spherical in shape, you see. And spheres are easy to roll around.”
“And now, you’re saying incomprehensible things, too?”
“I said, it’s fine. A person can sometimes say weird or nonsensical stuff, you know.”
“Uh? She died.”
“No, she’s fine. Since it’s you, she won’t die.”
From either side of me, familiar voices were muttering things like ‘He’s the devil’ and ‘I don’t wanna… I don’t wanna…’ constantly, but I cleanly ignored them all.
They weren’t bad sounds to my ears, after all.
I was preparing for the possibilities of these two either trying to escape or attack me since the metal bat was some distance away. But now, the hero and No.17 both lost any will to fight here, so it was all great news for me!
“Well, then. Let’s see…”
I unsheathed my sword, the blade making a shwiiiing noise. As expected of a high-quality weapon upholding the reputation of Ruibella the City Alliance, the frontline against the demon threat!
It cost a fair whack for a sword purchased from a regular blacksmith, but considering its quality, I knew I had got myself a bargain. It was not for nothing that mercenaries often travelled all the way to Ruibella specifically to get weapons.
“Alright, time to wake up.”
Poke, poke, poke…
The ultra-sharp edge of the blade began inflicting flesh wounds on the demon race princess. Crimson blood trickled down her snow-white skin!
-You’re so cruel, master!
-Doesn’t matter, since you’re going to heal her, anyway.
Indeed, the princess looked even better than back when she first appeared here full of injuries. Since we healed to full health in such a short time, surely she’d not get mad at me for cutting her up ever so slightly.
“Alright, now beat her up.”
“Ng!”
Slap!
“Kkyaaaahk!”
The flesh wounds might have been minor, but they were still stab and cut wounds inflicted by a blade. Even so, the princess remained unconscious throughout the process.
A single slap from the metal bat later, however, and she was right back up to her feet while screaming her head off.
“Sit down.”
“Kuh-huk…! It hurts… it hurts so much…”
The moment she got up, the metal bat’s low kick landed splendidly on her, causing the princess to plop down on her butt again.
“Alright, then. Are you ready to listen to me now?”
“Y-yes, sir!”
The demon race princess instantly went on her knees to sit straight. I stared at her in satisfaction.
Yup, a stick was the best tool for education, indeed. It was not for nothing that the concept of ‘tough love’ existed, wouldn’t you say!
-Master, if you showed any more of your love, this whole world might get destroyed.
-A teacher’s grace is as high as the heavens and as deep as the oceans, you know.
-She’s not even your disciple, tho?
-In the ancient past, a wise man once said that everyone he meets on a stroll can become his teacher.
-…If we go by that logic, master, isn’t this the same as you beating up the teacher the moment you ran into one?
-Just say ‘I see’ and nod along, will ya! You’ve gotten awfully talkative lately, haven’t you?!
Thanks to the metal bat that had gotten sassy with time, it felt like I couldn’t even say everything I wanted to these days.
“I’m not involved with this individual you called Aggre-whatever, princess.”
“Are you… telling the truth?”
The demon race princess’s expression initially said she didn’t believe me, but she quickly revised that to an ‘I believe you!’ face thanks to the metal bat standing next to her.
“Yes, I am.”
“But, how did you know I was the demon race’s princess in that case?”
“Just my intuition.”
“Oh… I see…”
Now her expression said I shouldn’t lie to her face, but her lips were saying something else.
This was good. She was talented in quickly assessing the situation.
“I’m being truthful to you. As I said earlier, we have nothing to do with Aggre-whatever because…”
“…Heuph!”
I slowly raised my hand and carefully caressed my hair, causing the horns stuck up there to fall off.
“…We’re humans.”
The horn headband came loose and dropped to the ground.
This item was personally crafted by the dwarves that made the wearer look like demons and designed specifically not to come off that easily, as per my request!
When those horns landed on the ground, the demon race princess sucked in a deep breath, her disbelieving eyes glued to me now. “R-really… you’re humans?”
“Correct.”
“H-how can humans be in this place? C-could it be that I’ve entered the human terri… No, if that’s the case, you wouldn’t have been wearing the horns in the first place!”
Her utterly confused eyes hurriedly scanned me and the others surrounding her.
“J-just what is going on… Hah-wuk?!”
Pow!
A small fist landed next to her face.
“…You talk too much, sis.”
“Yes. I was wrong. Sorry.”
The moment that fist shook about, the demon race princess stared at the metal bat with nervous eyes while hurried nodding away, emphatically agreeing with what the ego weapon was saying.
I knew it, this girl was quick on the uptake.
“Hmm. I think I can more or less figure out the situation here, but there might be some other aspects that I’m not aware of. So, tell me the demon world’s current affairs that you know of,” said I while picking up the horns from the ground to put them back on my head.
I told the dwarves to make the headband stick religiously to the wearer’s head no matter what, so they designed the dang thing to get entangled pretty tightly with the wearer’s hair. That caused a bit of pain on my scalp, but I needed to wear the headband to keep my head attached to my shoulders.
Still, this product demonstrated the ability to fool even the eyes of the demon king’s daughter, so it passed with flying colours. As expected of the trusty dwarven products!
“W-well, that is…”
The demon king’s daughter, still deeply mindful of the metal bat’s moods, eventually began telling us the current situation as she knew it.
The demon king’s sudden passing. The establishment of three factions soon afterwards. But, in reality, it was a battle between the moderates and the radicals.
She also said that most of the moderates’ executives were defeated during the radicals’ sudden raid.
“Hold on. Are you telling me that you didn’t expect the group called the radicals to attack you out of the blue?”
“Even though Aggreahrt and I differed in our ideals, we both still did our best for the sake of the demon race. That’s why I never imagined someone like that starting a civil war.”
What kind of dog sh*t was this girl saying here?
You’d be a fool to trust someone close to you in the imperial court where all sorts of insidious plots were afoot!
I mean, folks in the imperial court would smile and shake hands amicably, only to start plotting your demise as soon as turning around to leave. That’s what that place was like!
You’d be signing your own death warrant by being that naïve in the imperial court full of dastardly schemes and machinations, you know.
But to think that the demon race could be this benevolent!
“And what happened afterwards was that…”
She continued on with her story, revealing that the civil war started due to Aggreahrt’s misunderstanding over her subordinates searching for the descendent of the Succubus race, which led to…
…Mm?
‘Why does it feel like I’ve heard this story before somewhere?’
No, before all that. We did have the final remaining descendent of the Succubus race with us, didn’t we?
“If only that descendent was found… The demon race wouldn’t have to experience the civil war, and everything would have been settled peacefully. But we still haven’t found the descendent in the human continent yet, and…”
I wordlessly looked down at the demon race princess still yapping on and on about her circumstances.
Obviously, you wouldn’t find the Succubus’s descendent on the other side of the continent. That’s because my daughter was the descendent you’ve been searching for, and she had accompanied me to the demon side of the continent, you see!
No, hang on a minute here…
There was an old saying about a crisis becoming an opportunity. And the demon side of the world was currently embroiled in a crisis called the civil war.
And what do you know, the most important existence in this situation happened to be my daughter.
In other words, my daughter had the power to choose who would become the next demon king between the demon race princess and this dude named Aggreahrt.
Not only that but…
“…You say that, as long as you can endure the demon god’s blessing, you can become the demon king acknowledged even by the demon god itself?”
“Y-yes. However…”
…You would definitely die after receiving that blessing.
In the history of the demon race, only five demons ever managed to survive the demon god’s blessing. And all of those five individuals came from legends of the past, too.
After the previous demon king passed away, several demons stepped forward to take up the challenge, but they all died during the process. Understandably, no one else felt brave enough to receive the blessing afterwards.
However…
“Who cares about your circumstances, anyway?”
The thing was, my daughter, with the power to cast the swing vote, was with me right now. And the unique existence that even the gods had to publicly acknowledge was standing right here, too.
After combining these two factors, creating the next demon king should be a cakewalk, no?
That’s why…
“How about forming a contract with me and becoming the next demon king, princess?”
It’s time to make some investments for the sake of peaceful demon world life.
[1]: Apologies, but uh, I couldn’t think of an appropriate onomatopoeia for a person’s mouth silently opening and closing, and decided to go with the romanised version of the Korean SFX, “뻐끔뻐끔”
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