The Long-Awaited Item And The Handsome Demon King

Liricia and I were searching through the ruins of the pitch-black evil temple.

Liricia held the dragon girl Rāna in one arm while examining the rubble with the monocle.

“How is it? Does it look like there are any evil-god associates or the Bust of the Evil God?”

“Hmm… it doesn’t seem like there are any living humans… and there are so many evil presences that it’s hard to find anything—ah!”

“Hm?”

Liricia cried out and pointed toward the edge of the temple grounds.

“Master! There are a lot of evil god statues over here!”

“Oh. Seriously?”

Removing rubble as I went in the direction she pointed, I headed over.

Then a collapsed shelf came into view.

Sinister evil god statues were lined up on it.

“Are these things of the evil god? Or of the sculptor Skura?”

“I-I don’t know… ah! But there is Skura’s signature on the back of the statues.”

“So it was, after all… then let’s smash them.”

“Eh!?”

“I don’t know who was using this place, but if we destroy the statues, they won’t be able to make contact anymore.”

“T-that is true! As expected of you, Master! —Th-then!”

Liricia and I went around crushing the sinister statues that had been on the shelf.

They seemed to be made of clay, and broke easily.

It was when we had destroyed them all and there was only one left.

The sword I swung down was deflected with a sharp kiiin sound.

“What?”

Even though I had swung down with quite a bit of force, it didn’t have a scratch on it.

Liricia picked up the black sculpture and looked at it through the monocle.

Then her violet eyes widened in shock as she cried out.

“Ah! Th-this is—!”

“What is it?”

“It’s the Bust of the Evil God! The real one!”

“What!? So they really were copying the genuine article to make counterfeits!”

“That must be it! —Ahh! To think we would obtain the Bust of the Evil God we had been searching for in a place like this!”

“That means… we’ve got them all now. The items for rejuvenation.”

“Yes! This is unbelievable!”

My eyes were drawn to the Bust of the Evil God in Liricia’s hands.

—They’re all here. All three of the items for rejuvenation.

A tremor ran from the bottom of my heart.

Honestly, I had stopped caring much about all the evil-god-related business.

More than that, I wanted to become young again.

Looking at Liricia, I said,

“Hm… I had wanted to talk to Skura, but… was she buried under the rubble?”

“It doesn’t seem so… there is no sign of any humans. Only evil presences. Though all of them are gradually being purified.”

I looked around the area.

The land lit by the weak sunlight stretched in reddish-brown gravel all the way to the horizon.

“I see… it looks like a world with nothing in it, so let’s head back.”

“Yes!”

Liricia nodded, her silver hair swaying. As if she were expecting something.

I carried Rāna on my back and took Liricia’s hand.

When Liricia cast healing and awakening magic, Rāna woke up.

“Rāna, thank you. We’re done here, so let’s go home.”

“Kyui!”

Rāna cried out as she clung to me with both hands and feet.

A strong force arose immediately, and our bodies rose upward.

With an explosive boom, leaving behind a band of light, Liricia and I returned to the blue sky.

Buried in rubble and unable to move, Sklasis, as her consciousness began to fade, suddenly recalled things from long ago.

The scenes from that time vividly rose before her eyes.

Perhaps this was the flashback she would see at the very end of her life.

Sklasis had been called an evil god.

But what was an evil god?

An evil god, neither a demon god nor a Demon King.

An evil god was a crooked god. But crooked to whom?

A god of a faith whose teachings opposed doctrine deemed righteous. That was an evil god.

She slowly remembered the time when she had first been born as a god.

Sklasis presided over the night.

The dark and dangerous night.

Sklasis, then still a beautiful girl with traces of youth remaining, had been disappointed that she had ended up ruling over something so boring.

Even so, while wandering the world in search of those to whom she could grant blessings.

In the night, filled with monsters running wild and death everywhere, she found weak people making merry.

Several dozen of them had built a large bonfire in the middle of the village, and around it they spent their time singing and dancing with instruments in hand.

Giving thanks that they had passed the day safely, and that they had taken game.

Seeing that, Sklasis opened her eyes wide.

—It’s amazing that they’re spending the night, which should be frightening and painful, having this much fun!

She came to like, just a little, the authority of night that she had not been able to love.

And so she decided to grant them divine blessings.

The village prospered and became a town, and the number of people increased.

Naturally, Sklasis’s believers increased as well.

The town became a city, and prospered even further.

The entertainment district, especially, where people reveled through the night, became widely known throughout the world.

Before long, she came to be worshipped not only as the goddess of night, but also as the goddess of music and art.

By that time, Sklasis had grown into a beautiful, alluring woman with a fine figure, dressed in clothes with very little fabric.

Using her as a model, many religious paintings and statues were made.

Every last one of them was an artwork radiating sensuality.

But that turned out badly.

One day, she was destroyed by believers of the God of Light, who decided that Sklasis was a lewd evil god.

Sklasis was branded an evil god, and lost all of her followers.

Faced with treatment so utterly cruel, she was driven by fierce anger and resentment.

And then curses began to burst forth from that beautiful body of hers.

She bitterly resented those who had turned her into an evil god.

Even so, at first, she tried to remain a good god by sealing those curses inside small statues modeled after herself.

But her followers did not increase, and only her name as an evil god spread farther and farther.

Far from disappearing, her jealousy and resentment only increased more and more, and the curses that came from her body grew more varied as well.

As a result, the statue that sealed her curses came to be called the ultimate cursed item, the Bust of the Evil God, and was used by those with wicked hearts.

And Sklasis gave up.

She could never return to being a god. She realized she had no choice but to live as an evil god.

As her consciousness faded beneath the rubble, Sklasis let out a sorrowful sigh.

—What was I supposed to have done…?

No, there had been nothing she could have done.

My role is over now….

Once she arrived at that conclusion, she suddenly felt at ease. She might even have been smiling.

—If I die like this, I can finally be at peace.

That was what she thought.

—But.

Suddenly, there came the rattling sound of rubble being moved away.

When she opened her eyes a slit, against the backdrop of a sky full of stars, there were two figures wearing airtight suits that completely covered their bodies.

Visible through the glass masks were a fierce-looking man with jagged teeth, and a short goblin.

“D-Demon King… why…?”

The two of them placed Sklasis into the sealed coffin they had brought.

Then, while closing the lid, the Demon King let out a loud laugh.

“Hmph! Our entertainment showdown has not yet been decided! Do not think you can escape from me through the cowardly act of death! I shall make you taste a living hell, fuhahahaha!”

“Just for that…? Even though it was dangerous, you came to save me… just for that…?”

“Once I have acknowledged someone, I shall no longer let them die! Even if I know that in talent and beauty alike, Sklasis is a rival who stands equal to me! —Even if you hate the idea, you shall remain by my side forevermore! Fuhahahaha!”

The Demon King threw back his head with a powerful grin and laughed loudly.

But in Sklasis’s eyes, his ridiculous figure looked incomparably dependable.

“…Idiot.”

Sklasis murmured that with her smiling face dyed a little red, but the lid was shut at once.

Just like that, she was carried away inside the coffin, swaying gently.

The Holy Wave protective suit invented by Mikoto and improved by the Demon King.

He had ordered Gobe to make them for their own use.

The coffin too had been designed to block Holy Wave.

Inside the dark box, Sklasis closed her eyes and softly murmured.

“—Gift Release.”

After releasing all the blessings she had granted to the evil god cultists, she let the tension leave her shoulders.

As she gave herself over to the swaying coffin, Sklasis thought.

—With this, the evil god Sklasis has died.

But I am still alive.

…In that case, as the artist Skura, I will try living a little longer by his side.

Wearing an innocent smile upon the beauty that had once been so alluring, she thought that.

‘Until Sklasis sees her life flash before her eyes and dies: 0 days remaining.’