Chapter 7

"Merea, you used the 'Future Stone,' didn't you?"

"Eh!?"

It had been a year since the Future Stone's declaration of the "Demon King Master."

When she realized, there were only a handful of heroes left.

Despite this, Merea had been diligently collecting Future Stones and hiding them.

While the results were still the same, the main goal of not showing the heroes the dreaded future had been achieved—or so she thought.

"Sure enough. What did it show you?"

"Um... um, a hero?"

However, it seemed that Flounder had found out.

"Merea, you're not good at lying, are you?"

"Yes..."

To be precise, she wasn't good at lying to the heroes who were her parents.

She could spin tales with a bit of fibbing to the celestial dragons who occasionally visited, and their young ones, but when it came to Flounder, her tongue tied itself.

"Guess. —Did it show 'Demon King'?"

"Eh!"

The accuracy of the guess made Merea's voice waver.

Seeing her reaction, Flounder nodded and said, "I see, I see."

"Why did you know...?"

"Ha, I had a hunch. That hunch has grown stronger recently. Maybe it's because of the recent stories from the lower world that I heard from the Celestial Dragon Curtista."

"What kind of stories?"

Merea asked in return.

"Rumors that 'Demon King Hunting' is becoming popular in the lower world these days."

Merea didn't miss the sad expression that flashed across Flounder's face for a moment.

"Demon King Hunting...?"

"Yeah. It's just so unpleasant. The lower world's nations might be hungrier for power than I thought."

Flounder suddenly sat up straight and said.

Merea followed suit and straightened her posture.

Flounder took a deep breath and, with a serious expression, began to speak.

◆◆◆

"The term 'Demon King' used to refer to a powerful and evil entity, but it has changed to simply mean a powerful being, as I mentioned before."

"Uh-huh."

It seemed that Flounder was finally going to give a detailed explanation about the 'Demon King.'

"Back then, it wasn't a term that referred to such a broad category. 'Just a powerful being' is a bit too indiscriminate, right?"

Flounder laughed in a troubled way.

"When I was first called a hero, a Demon King was a powerful and evil entity. But by the time I died, the 'evil entity' part had been dropped, and it had become a term for just a powerful being. The era I lived in was probably the turning point."

Turning point.

Merea didn't know why the meaning had changed in such a way.

As if sensing her thoughts, Flounder asked in return.

"By the way, do you know why it changed?"

"Hmm..."

Merea had a few guesses, but none of them quite clicked.

As she pondered, Flounder spoke up as if the time had run out.

"It's because the number of Demon Kings as evil entities had decreased. They had somehow ceased to be a threat. The tyrants who were powerful and steeped in evil were finally almost all defeated."

"That's a good thing, right?"

"Yeah, in that sense."

Flounder's smile turned into a wry one.

"But, as a result, humans—or nations—lost their 'common enemy.' What happened then? The weapons that were not aimed at each other because of the common enemy they had to prioritize began to waver gradually."

"Please, spare me."

Merea said this involuntarily, having anticipated the flow of events.

"You can't change history by complaining about it. Anyway, the result was that—wars between nations flourished."

It was a terrible story.

Merea thought so frankly.

"During the time when wars between nations began to flourish, the meaning of the word 'Demon King' changed. It was altered to suit the needs of the nations."

"What do you mean?"

"They desired strong power for their wars."

If you want to win a war, you naturally seek power.

Similarly, if losing means losing everything or even death, it makes sense to seek power to avoid losing.

"The strong power they sought was the Demon King. But the Demon Kings were almost all gone. They had been hunted to extinction."

"Right."

"At that time, one nation turned its attention to another target."

"Another target?"

"Yes. —Before the Demon Kings, who were evil entities, were hunted to extinction, the 'heroes' who were like a special remedy for them, caught their eye."

Merea felt dizzy.

From Flounder's words, she could predict the path history had taken.

"Heroes who had faced Demon Kings were strong. However, they were not evil entities. Rather, they were the opposite. Many of these heroes, having lost their role as heroes with the disappearance of Demon Kings, returned to their desired professions with a sense of relief. Some engaged in business, others pursued the study of magic, and some opened dojos to pass on the martial arts they had mastered. Many sought adventure to explore the unknown, dispersing their excess energy. Perhaps due to the backlash from their battles with Demon Kings, many chose to distance themselves from fighting."

Flounder gazed at the sky with a nostalgic look.

But his gaze soon fell to the ground.

"But a tragedy befell them."

Suddenly, a gloomy word appeared in the conversation. —Tragedy.

"In short, the nation that focused on the heroes fabricated a story and made one of them into a Demon King."

"Oh..."

—That's what I thought.

Merea couldn't stop a heavy sigh from escaping her lips.

"At first, they honestly asked the hero to cooperate in the war, but the hero refused. He couldn't find a reason to oppose the enemy nation. So he upheld his pride and declined to participate in the war. He said, 'Do as you please.' —But the hero's power was incredibly attractive to the nation. However, he was a hero. They couldn't force him, and of course, they couldn't forcibly take his power. When they were at a loss, someone said—"

'All we need is a pretext.'

"And so, they finally fabricated a 'pretext' to forcibly take the hero's power."

◆◆◆

"They made the hero into a Demon King, an evil entity."

◆◆◆

"Once they did it, they couldn't stop. The more successful the method, the more they used it. The label of Demon King was increasingly slapped on other heroes. Thus, heroes became the Demon Kings of the next era."

It was really a terrible story.

The term 'Demon King' seemed to be a demonic skin that covered something in each era.

Merea remembered Tyrant's words.

◆◆◆

'Another one will come. The name will just change.'

◆◆◆

It was even worse than Tyrant's words.

The name didn't change. This meant that those who were labeled as 'Demon King' in the next era had to bear the accumulated resentment of the term from the previous era.

Perhaps the root of all evil lay in the term 'Demon King' itself.

Merea even thought that.

"This repeated, and eventually, the sense of it became numb. They even stopped bothering to fabricate evil pretexts, and the term 'Demon King' finally became a synonym for 'just a powerful being.'"

"..."

It was hard to nod. But nodding or not wouldn't change history.

"Such a loose standard for labeling someone a Demon King has apparently become even looser. As the era of war progresses, the boundaries are becoming blurred. Hearing this from the Celestial Dragon Curtista, I imagined a grim future."

In other words,

"A future where Merea, upon descending to the lower world, would be labeled a Demon King."

Flounder smiled wryly.

His smile seemed to carry many emotions.

Self-mockery, sorrow, or perhaps anger.

Along with a troubled hue, various emotions were there.

"When you descend to the lower world, you might be labeled a Demon King because of the power of the hero within you and the skills you have honed yourself."

Merea understood.

She also understood why Flounder's wry smile carried self-mockery, sorrow, and anger. She realized this from the phrase 'power of the hero.'

—Flounder blamed himself for it.

He had wanted to make her a hero.

He had thought it would be for the best.

Even if she didn't become a hero, he wanted to give her the power to protect someone.

But this had inadvertently set her on the path to becoming a 'Demon King.'

When he realized this, a mix of self-mockery, sorrow, and anger towards the era had arisen in Flounder.

"That's so unfair."

Merea realized this and, not knowing how to react, responded lightly.

She wanted to reassure Flounder that she didn't mind, but even if she felt that way, Flounder might not.

... Probably, no matter what she said from the outside, Flounder wouldn't lose that wry smile.

Merea also realized this.