Shing...
[Confirm. Commencing operation.]
[Great Sage]'s auto-battle mode.
Rimuru's eyes turned red as he invoked an ability like a high-performance game AI, then drew his sword.
Fwoosh!
As black flames bloomed around it—similar to Shizue's white flames, yet completely different. [Black Flame].
"......Grrr..."
Facing Rimuru head-on, Geludo—the [Orc Disaster (Dondu Demon Lord)]—let out a low growl as he watched the black flames enchanted onto her blade with wary eyes.
He understood it too.
Shizue's flames were dangerous on an entirely different level, but Rimuru's flames were also not something he could afford to ignore.
"You bastards... you two, at least, I will devour for sure!!"
Even so, despite sensing that gap in power, Geludo did not retreat.
Because he believed that, having named himself a [Demon Lord], he could not flee from a battlefield this small.
Because he firmly believed that if he swallowed even one of them, he could overturn this situation.
So he hauled his massive body upright once more.
Sssshhk...
Then a dark crimson aura emerged from Geludo's shadow.
Those twisted energies flew at Rimuru and Shizue with grotesquely warped mouths gaping wide. It was a higher [Skill] of the [Orc (Dondu)] race, one that would rot away the body completely.
"Devour everything... [Chaos Eater]!"
Geludo's trump card was based on the belief that the two women, specialists in flames and swordsmanship, would be strong against magic offense but weak in physical defense and ranged attacks.
For him, it was almost the last card he had left.
"......"
But the problem was—
[Evade. Returning to liquid state.]
"Burn up and vanish. [Inferno Flame]!"
—both women were geniuses so complete that even Adelio would click his tongue in amazement.
Sliiide.
One simply liquefied her body and hid within the ground.
Fwoooosh!!
The other simply burned every attack away.
"......"
It may have been Geludo's trump card, but to these two women, blessed with talent counted among the finest in the world, it was nothing of the sort.
"......Th-this... this can't... be..."
Without caring in the slightest whether Geludo was horrified or not, Rimuru and Shizue kept closing in.
Clang!
Rimuru alternated between her Homunculus body and liquefaction as she attacked, while Shizue, standing opposite her, scattered white flames in rhythm with the black ones.
Naturally, Geludo struck back—but at his speed, it wasn't enough.
"......How dare... mere majin like you dare—!!"
Whoooom...!!
Geludo desperately searched for an opening to counterattack. He barely endured their assault by using [Self-Regeneration] and [Recovery Magic], but that was his limit.
Those black-and-white flames raging together were the most threatening weapon of all against a beast.
Clang!
The women, now hunters, simply hunted their prey with greater reason and precision.
And the Dondu king, drunk on power after losing the wisdom befitting a king and forgetting that he himself was prey...
"I—this body, this me! I am not a [King] who can fall in a place like this!!"
...even as he howled that to the very end from within the flames, he slowly burned away.
[Operation complete.]
"......This ends it—[Predator]."
And with a vivid blue storm that snuffed out the flames in an instant—
...
...
......
.........
"......"
Drought.
A drought filled the far side of the storm that had surged like waves.
As the storm filled the vision of the Dondu [King], a blazing sun appeared overhead, as if recreating a dream.
"...This place... is..."
And beneath that sun crawled a king reduced to a beast.
Having lost his reason and been devoured by the flames of the two women, he knew this place.
This had once been the sacred land of the Dondu, but at some point it had been swallowed by nature—a barren land, and the place that had changed his life forever.
"......I see..."
After glancing around for a moment, he lifted his eyes to the sun hanging high in the sky, his gaze filled with countless emotions.
"...So this... is where I die..."
Like the final flare before a dying light went out, he regained a faint sliver of reason and calmly spoke of his end.
Because he could not stand by and watch his people suffer, he had received a name from a majin here and resisted to the very end—but he had always suspected that one day, after losing himself completely, he would die a miserable death.
"......I only wanted my people to live... but it was all meaningless."
Then again, he had attacked other races for the sake of his own kind alone. There was no way they could have escaped unharmed...
Letting out self-reproach and bitter mockery, he lowered his head as he recalled the storm he had seen just before arriving here.
"We tried to devour every race in the great forest... and in the end, we were the ones devoured..."
Thinking that perhaps this outcome had been decided from the start made everything feel futile.
There had been moments when he truly believed his race could be saved, and yet that had all been nothing but a dream.
The thought that it had all been pointless struggling would not leave his mind.
...However,
that was only the [King]'s mistake.
"......"
"Are you really going to give up on your people's lives too?"
"......?!"
"The kings I know would never make a choice like that."
Like a mirage in the desert, a man appeared in the space where only the [King] had stood alone.
A man with ash-gray hair, far smaller than a Dondu, yet somehow seeming much larger.
"......Who are you...?"
The [King], now openly shaken, asked the man as if led by instinct, and the man answered briefly.
"A demon."
The man was a demon.
He possessed a humanity untouched by evil, walked a path that defied the order of the world, and bore the contradiction of being called a Hero—but in this moment, as he dealt with souls... he was, as always, a demon.
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