“So ye’ve brok’n through our w’rlds.”

“Even af’er we went ‘n had Alpine go through the trouble a’ makin’ ‘em…”

“Don’t Heroes call themselves the good guys?”

“You lot are truly deplorable.”

“Navillus thinks, bad!”

The vampire, devil, dragon, witch and slime spoke in turn, none of them hiding their disdain for the Heroes on the ground in front of them. They had just had their ‘desires’ broken through, and were none the happier for it.

“Alpine…?”

Reynald’s memory was vague, but he did feel like he remembered the names of all five of these monstrosities on legs, and none of them were that name. At the same time, the demon king did possess a variety of subordinates other than these five… for example, the children. Perhaps ‘Alpine’ was simply someone he hadn’t met.

That guess turned out to be correct. At the witch’s beckoning, a Kobold walked over, its fur white as snow, its eyes black as the deepest of pits, a spiked collar around its neck.

“Apologise. Without delay.”

The Heroes were still significantly weakened from the hells they had just been sent through, so Reynald had no way to resist when the witch planted her boot on his back and forced him to the ground. Indeed, she splendidly managed to make him kowtow to a Kobold.

“Ghhk…”

“I said apologise. Say sorry for breaking her creations. We provided the underlying desire, yes, but she is the one who put them together, you know?”

A malevolent, green glint shone in her eyes as she ground the heel of her boot into his back. Normally speaking, as a Hero, he could experience no pain, of course—

But Daeva Asto-vidatu had poked the blessing that granted that pain immunity full of holes, which, combined with the witch’s frankly ridiculous physical strength, meant he truly was experiencing the pain one would expect.

Ebstrea tried to reach out to him, but she found her hand stepped on by a scaled foot…

“Noooope~”

The dragon, covered head to toe in red scales, except for her arms and face. Almost cheerfully, she spun around and planted her ass right on the poor mage’s back, using her as an impromptu floor cushion.

“You don’t get to say anything. You can say sorry after he’s done!”

Forget the ‘almost’, she was being excessively cheerful about all this… Though her narrowed eyes glinted red.

As might be expected, the Saint was being treated with more care…

But only in the sense that there were more people tending to her. Slimy tendrils locked her limbs in place, the devil was using her foot to keep her from moving, just like the witch, and just to add insult to injury, blood-based weaponry was pinning her to the ground.

Not through her clothes, or anything, but through her flesh.

She leaked pained breaths, but it seemed she could not focus well enough to actually do anything about her situation.

“I said apologise,” said the witch, grinding her boot ever-deeper into Reynald’s back. “Or what? Are your ears just decorations? Shall I cut them off for you?”

From one of the pockets on her outfit, she produced some manner of bladed instrument… A scalpel, or such? No matter what it was, she threw it down, where, after whizzing past Reynald’s ear by no more than a few millimetres, it clinked off the floor.

“The next one won’t miss,” she said, producing a host more of the things.

“Urkh…”

Reynald looked at the blade from the corner of his eye, then turned his gaze to the ground.

“I… I’m sorry for breaking what you made. It was the only way to-”

“Silence!”

The weight on his back was momentarily lightened, but only for the sake of a kick to his head. Soon after, his ribs once more creaked under the pressure of the witch’s boot.

“I do not want to hear any excuses!”

He could feel the taste of iron welling up in his throat, but he was too weakened to push her off him…

“Well, you should leave it at that, Tempest.”

To his surprise, it was the demon king who saved him.

“One more ‘sorry’ and I’ll make sure they forgive you,” he said, sitting atop his throne.

In the first place, this entire situation was ridiculous. They’d been invited, and done exactly what they were told to do, and now they were getting yelled at for it.

But he swallowed his pride…

“... I’m sorry.”

And said it once more, an expression like he’d swallowed a bitter bug.

The witch clicked her tongue, clearly still irritated beyond belief, but she kicked Reynald aside, and with just a casual kick like that, he was sent flying across the room and smacked into a wall.

“Trash. Be grateful Master stood up for you.”

She didn’t spare him another glance—instead, she turned to the other ‘normal’ Hero.

The girl, who was still being used as a floor cushion. The dragon on top of her had her legs extended out in front of her and was wagging the tip of her tail and twitching her wings to show she was quite content with her seat.

“Well, I suppose that will do for now… Though, Davna.”

“Yes, Tempest?”

“Shift your weight.”

“-Ah, right!”

She crossed her legs and folded them underneath each other… indeed, so she was sitting cross-legged on the poor mage’s back, and thus her entire weight was resting on the mage.

“Now, I’m pretty sure I promised you something,” the demon king said, turning his gaze to Reynald. “As promised, I’ll engage you in a duel… Though, I’d like to be spared from some clichéd sequence of some ‘ideal world’ that I have to break through, so I’m afraid the Saint won’t be allowed to participate.”

Something about the demon king seemed… off, like he was an entirely different person from the previous times they met… but Reynald’s attention was stolen away by the latter part of what he said.

“What are you…?”

“Hmm? Well, I suppose it’s hardly inconceivable for you not to figure it out if you don’t know what I know, but… Well, in simple terms, that woman isn’t the Saint of Purification at all.”

“Huh…?”

“Originally, there were seven Aspects… And when Luciel broke off, she took six wholesale and split the last in half, leaving Entropy with half of that last one, too. And the one Entropy has is Concealment. That doesn’t match up with any of the Saints, does it? That Aspect’s identity is a fraud.”

His words, plain and to the point, reverberated inside Rachiel’s head like a sledgehammer, smashing her understanding of the world and her faith to pieces.

“Now then… Come, Reynald. I shall take you on.”

Picking up the sword resting against the throne, the demon king stood up and beckoned to Reynald to come forth.

Spitting out a mouthful of blood, along with a tooth, Reynald drew his blade and rushed forward—

The golden blade of holy light met with the black blade of sacred darkness, spreading sparks across the room.

Despite the numbness in his arms and the creaking pain in his bones, still left from his impact against the wall, Reynald was determined to, at the very least, try to defeat the demon king. The several healing artifacts on his body certainly helped, though they didn’t do anything to numb the pain.

“Hmm? Is that all?”

Not even a hint of a smile on his face, the demon king repelled every last one of the Hero’s attacks with his own blade, sending shivers down Reynald’s arms.

Clash after clash, the blades sent loud vibrations through the room, but Reynald found his mind preoccupied by something else entirely.

This felt awfully fake… like a performance being put on by third-rate actors, who did not properly know the characters.

The Demon Generals were real, he could tell that much…

But something about the demon king himself felt off.

Where was the condescending monologue? He would have expected nonsensical philosophical questions in the middle of a fight like this.

Where were the spells, or the disgusting, crawling darkness?

If this was the kind of battle he wanted to show to his goddess, then where was she?

The god-piercing sword and the blade of the world clashed again and again, the shockwaves from the fight causing cracks to run all over the room, from floor to ceiling.

“Who… Who are you?!” Reynald managed to get out between the swings of his sword and his heavy, encumbered breaths.

“Who am I? Oh, you wound me so.”

The demon king, still not having found his signature smirk, shook his head, shrugging.

“I’m the demon king. He who rules all of demonkind, and shall bring this disaster of a world to its end. Doesn’t that answer your question? Do you really need to know any more?”

As he thought, that answer was wrong.

The demon king he knew would never answer like that. This was a cheap fake, put here by who-knows-who for some unknown reason…

Considering the Demon Generals’ complete lack of reaction, perhaps they already knew? Even the demon king’s other subordinates didn’t seem to respond…

His other subordinates…

Reynald took a quick look in their direction during a lull in the clashes, and found his attention completely stolen away.

He recognised that face… No, there were two faces in there he recognised.

Two of the Saints.

From the mana reaction, it was easy to tell they were monsters, but their faces were-

Distracted as he was, he found himself at the mercy of the demon king’s blade and was once more smashed into a wall.

“It’d be a good idea not to look away in the middle of a battle, Reynald,” he said, closing an eye.

He coughed up another mouthful of blood and fell to the floor.

His whole body ached. Despite the constant healing spells Ebstrea was casting on him even while serving as a floor cushion, he could tell that his bones were broken and shattered and several of his muscles were shredded.

Yet he managed to stand up.

“As if I’ll be defeated… by a fake…!”

He spat out another tooth and turned a resenting glare to his own sword.

“Claiomh Solais! Are you going to do something or not?!”

The sword gave no verbal response… but for the first time in a long while, Reynald felt like it gave him something, and he wouldn’t let this chance go.

Latching on to the path that formed by the sword’s brief acknowledgement of his words, he squeezed it dry for all it had, invigorating himself more than ever.

The renewed war of clashing swords was more energetic than ever, and it was only thanks to the witch’s quickly-cast magical barrier that a rain of shards of glass could be avoided. Squeezing out every last drop of power the sword had allowed Reynald to finally stand on a similar sort of stage to the demon king… to this demon king, anyway, and he’d be remiss to let it flow away and then be beaten down.

He’d resolved to die, sure, but not…!

His muscles screamed out in pain as he took them far beyond what they were supposed to ever be capable of, and he felt every bit of it, just as he felt them being forcibly repaired, stronger and faster than before.

This was probably the fastest way of growth possible, yet the true demon king still felt insurmountably far away.

But it would suffice to deal with this cheap fake. The longer the battle went on, the closer to the throne Reynald managed to push him back.

And eventually-

An arm came off, flew through the air and landed on the ground.

And then the other, taking with it the demon king’s sword.

And finally, Claiomh Solais pierced the demon king’s chest, nailing him to his own throne.

“Ghk…!”

He choked on his own, black blood, welling up from his throat, and could only get words out by squeezing them through.

“To think… I’d be defeated, this easily…”

Reynald let go of his sword, allowing it to remain lodged in the throne, and leaned on it for support. Though he’d won, the victory came at the cost of much of his stamina, and even now, several of his bones were without a doubt broken.

“Reynald… You mustn’t forget… to kill, Luciel…”

The demon king managed to squeeze the words out of his throat, and slumped over.

Reynald felt a momentary sense of relief… and then there was a loud, strangely familiar bang, followed by a scream of pain.

Certainly, for the sake of ‘this world’, it would be best for the demon king to die here, so that Reynald could inherit his powers and use them to slay Luciel.

But—

That voice was…!

“Lady Rachiel?!”

Anyone who believed the demon king cared about ‘the good of this world’ was either woefully naive or a complete idiot… or perhaps a bit of both.

By the time Reynald turned around to see what was going on, the bang resounded once again…

And there was a sharp pain in his shoulder as a hole was blown clean through, worse than anything he’d ever felt.