Chapter 12 - Demon King's Rebirth
While Shalk the Sound Slicer held Tu the Magic in check at the canal and Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge enacted a plan to erase Kia the World Word, in the sixth borough of the Northern Outer Ward, an Aureatian squad was encircling Uhak the Silent.
Uhak the Silent stood in the entrance of a ruined inn at the base of a mountain, protecting it.
His massive gray form was wrapped in pristine white robes. His only weapon was a boorish wooden club.
“He looks like a stone statue.”
The commander expressed his honest impression.
Uhak was completely defenseless. However, he still appeared to understand the situation he was in.
The commander couldn’t help feeling that Uhak had absolute confidence he could win, even with his comrades torn away from him and surrounded by this much fighting power.
He’s strong. Can we actually manage to capture an ogre like this without losing any of our men…?
This operation to capture him was being carried out with eight crack squads coordinating together, equipped with the old and new muskets being industrially manufactured on the New Continent.
Bafflingly, they weren’t supplied with the weapons of the Beyond that had been seized in large quantities during the recent upheaval.
Inside, they had been given the chemical weapon phosgene, provided by the Gray-Haired Child. While it would damage the surrounding area as well, it could suppress any foe, even an ogre, in a pinch.
“Commander, I’m ready to take the shot.”
“Hold. Uhak still isn’t hostile to us yet.”
They could simply shoot through both his legs and take him into custody after completely immobilizing him.
However, the commander had a gut feeling that Uhak could defend himself from the sniper shot. With a body like his, he must possess the reaction speed to make it happen.
More than anything else, while Uhak couldn’t understand Word Arts, he was still a hero candidate. They didn’t want to take any action in bad faith.
“I’ll try negotiating with him. In the worst-case scenario, the vice-captain will take over command.”
“Commander!”
“I’ll be fine.”
For some reason, he was firmly convinced.
Uhak the Silent wouldn’t kill him.
<What’s the situation?>
The person he spoke to on the other end of the radzio was the Twentieth Minister, Hidow the Clamp.
Steeled to meet death, even with their exhaustively prepared equipment and personnel, the operation instead ended without a single casualty, over so abruptly to make it all feel almost disappointing.
“Yessir. Uhak put up no resistance whatsoever. After making contact with Uhak, I determined sniper fire or poison was unnecessary, and have captured him unharmed with the previously prepared restraints.”
The commander hadn’t done anything special at all.
He simply explained the necessity of the restraints to Uhak, and the ogre held out both arms exactly as told.
<Got it. One of the few bits of good news today. Escort him away as fast as you can—there’s a situation we need to use Uhak the Silent for right away.>
“Are you going to become his sponsor, Lord Hidow? I understand that his capture was to make him return as a hero candidate, however there are still procedures to go through before the match…”
<It ain’t the time for that, idiot. The twelfth match is a victory for Shalk since it failed to kick off. Listen up, make it quick… I need you to get him ready to move ASAP. A simple order, right?>
“…!”
The commander gulped. There was some kind of urgent state of affairs.
Neither he nor his unit had been briefed at all regarding Uhak the Silent’s abilities.
They hadn’t been given any explanation on why a new toxic weapon was readied for this operation, or about why they were using muskets from the New Continent instead of some of the large quantities of Beyond firearms that Aureatia had seized.
The restraints on Uhak were shackles manufactured for this very mission from whittled-down deep celestial charsteel.
From the commander’s perspective, Uhak was a tranquil ogre without any hostility at all.
“Understood. As an order from a Twenty-Nine Official, I will skip several of the review procedures and escort him right to the Monstrous Race Protective Camp. It would be greatly appreciated if you were present when he is handed over, Lord Hidow, to facilitate the clerical procedures.”
<Right. I’ll get moving on my end, too. Jeez… Swear everyone’s getting screwy on me now.>
“To further ensure the necessary procedures go smoothly, I would like to ask you, sir—though if this would touch on confidential information, I understand if you cannot answer—what exactly is going on?”
<…You ever think to yourself “Tomorrow, the world’s gonna end”?>
“I don’t follow…”
<Hell, up until now to a greater or lesser extent, we in the Twenty-Nine Officials took action while cautioned against just that. True Demon King was first on the list, sure, but the Particle Storm, Alus the Star Runner, Lucnoca the Winter… There are those in this world here could really destroy absolutely everything on a whim.>
“I understand that the Sixways Exhibition for selecting the Hero is to ensure we are not daunted by such threats.”
<Okay then… What if someone who wasn’t a hero continued to face off against these threats, what then? Failure comes to everyone at some point. No matter what kind of master they may be…there ain’t anyone out there who could keep walking eternally along a tightrope where one wrong step means the end of the world.>
Hidow’s words were roundabout, veiled in a smoke screen, but while he was unable to tell the commander fully, he did a good job of conveying that something truly terrifying was happening.
What more was going to happen on top of all this? Iriolde had incited a revolt, Rosclay the Absolute was dead, and there was something that posed an even greater threat to Aureatia?
<What I’m trying to say is don’t hold it against us, okay? We frantically did everything we could in our own way, too. But when the time comes and we’re unable to redeem this one misstep—>
His tone wasn’t that of someone telling a joke.
The world truly might be heading to its doom.
<—then let’s all bite the big one together.>
Anyone was accustomed to spells of boredom.
For Nihilo the Vortical Stampede in particular, ever since generating her sense of self, she had spent more time than not with her freedom taken from her.
The sunken tower. Inside the large, blacked-out room, she stared vacantly at the wall while she entertained herself flicking small stones at each other.
It was the game she had played while confined in Aureatia. The game included a great deal of high-level strategy and choices, but no one would ever know about them all, save for Nihilo.
Almost all battles are made from lack of freedom. So really, this is a much better situation overall.
Generally speaking, weapons were created with combat in mind, but even after the battle finally started, no one left weapons to be free on their own. They hid in darkness and waited for the lone moment of freedom and slaughter.
Obeying Viga and Enu like she had, and cooperating with the experiment, was a necessary deprival of freedom to prepare for the freedom to come one day. Fortunately, Nihilo had been given the toys to satisfy her innate cruelty.
…Though, it’s not very fun that I can’t destroy her body at all. I’d really prefer even greater destruction. Where is Helneten right now, I wonder?
She was convinced that it was still somewhere out there.
Nihilo the Vortical Stampede and Helneten the Burial were linked together by a shared curse.
As long as its core Nihilo still survived, Helneten would never truly fall.
She didn’t completely lack the means to get it back, either. She had the information from Yukiharu the Twilight Diver’s investigation.
The numerous acts of foul play by Aureatia. The Gray-Haired Child’s weakness. The True Hero. The True Demon King. For several of these topics, Nihilo had listened and learned from inside her box, including where the evidence might be hidden away.
When brandished by a construct like Nihilo with no societal backing whatsoever, this was probably a totally useless weapon, but if wielded by the proper person, it was a trump card that could easily and readily destroy the existing order at its core. Perhaps the information could be used as negotiating material to regain Helneten as well.
Nihilo’s camp here may have been an inconsequentially small group within the greater disturbance, but as long as Viga got all the preparations in order, they could fight against Aureatia at any moment.
When that happens, I’ll have them let me into school.
She giggled in the large empty room.
What would happen once she was able to attend school?
It would have been a wonderful thing if even a monster like her was able to live life like a minian.
Nihilo loved the minian races.
This feeling surely differed greatly from the minian races’ own love of their kind, a solitary sense of values completed and contained within Nihilo’s own heart and mind. Like this game with the pebbles.
“…”
Suddenly, Nihilo raised her head.
She sensed a threat. It wasn’t Kuuro the Cautious.
The heavy door to the experiment lab was open. Only tiny fingertips peaked out from the crack.
“…That experiment lab…”
Nihilo stood up and deployed the nerve fibers from her back.
She could directly read the air flow through the nerves and grasp her target’s movements.
“…wasn’t still being used by Viga or anything, right?”
“Pfft, hee-hee.”
The unknown on the other side of the door laughed, as if unable to hold back her amusement.
Nihilo had known from the very beginning that it couldn’t have possibly been Viga the Clamor.
It was a clear, young, laughter.
“Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee.”
There were no intruders in the tower.
Even if Nihilo assumed he had been unable to sense someone entering, Kuuro the Cautious would have detected them a long time ago.
In which case, this person had to be something newly born from within the tower.
“…Are you the krsnik?”
“Uh-huh.”
Nihilo could tell it was shaking its body back and forth with its fingers still gripping the door.
It was purposefully hiding its body as a form of entertainment.
Nihilo still felt a threat.
The behavior didn’t look like anything more than the mannerisms of a child, but even then…
“That room…all of Viga’s lab animals were supposed to be in there, right? What happened?”
There had been beastfolk resembling swelled-up cephalopods and carefully patched together dwarfs.
An even more terrible, fiendish ogre.
They were all revenants created by Viga for both experiments and her defense, locked away in heavy cages.
“They died.”
“…”
Through the slight crack in the door, Nihilo saw cages destroyed and warped by brute strength, and a sea of blood, splattered like a popped water balloon.
Viga… You really made something like this…?
“Pfft, hee-hee-hee… Hey, your name.”
The unknown something on the other door asked with delight.
“What’s youuur name?”
“…Nihilo the Vortical Stampede.”
“Nihilo. Pfft, hee-hee-hee-hee.”
The door opened.
It was a young girl.
A thin gown used on experimental subjects was the only thing on her body, drenched with blood and artificial amniotic fluid.
Her long black hair, possessing a colorfully tinged luster, clung to her.
The one eye unhidden by her bangs was a deep, almost black, crimson.
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