The Devil King And The Dispatched Devil

Some time had passed since I withdrew from Isha’s world and returned to my own personal Demon Realm.

No, time was difficult to perceive inside a personal Demon Realm, so perhaps a great deal of time had passed, or perhaps it had only been an instant.

Either way, lately I have found myself in a somewhat troublesome state.

The reason was that devils formed a connection with those who summoned them, and as a result, they were influenced by those summoners.

It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; in a sense, it could even be called growth.

A devil who had been summoned by countless humans wouldn’t be shaken much by adding one more to that number, but conversely, a devil with little experience being summoned would be affected far more strongly.

I was somewhat better off because my original foundation had been human, but if, for example, a newborn devil were summoned by an evil person, its very nature would become heavily inclined toward evil.

Someone might ask what a devil was doing talking like this, but even devils varied widely in temperament and individuality.

What I was trying to say was that the influence Isha had left on me was proving rather difficult to deal with.

My first summoner, Garmon-san, had been an elderly man whose passions had largely withered with age, someone like a massive tree that had grown peacefully beneath the sunlight, so the influence I received from him had been gentle.

But I’d been with Isha from around the beginning of adolescence until she fully blossomed into adulthood, and the feelings she directed toward me had been incredibly intense, so the effect she had on me was equally severe.

More than anything, I’d been forced to realize that girls really did have those kinds of desires too.

In other words, one of the things I had inherited through Isha’s influence was sexual desire.

Naturally, that made thoughts like, What a waste that I didn’t do anything after she came on to me that strongly, flash through my mind, only for me to hate myself for tainting my memories of her with thoughts like that.

I found myself missing the more dried-up version of myself from before.

There was especially little to do inside my personal Demon Realm, so I inevitably ended up examining my own inner feelings far too often, leaving me at a loss over what to do with them.

But what saved me from that state was something I had thought impossible—a visitor to my personal Demon Realm.

One day, while I was experimenting with ways to make the lightning Magic I’d dropped on the cathedrals in Isha’s world more efficient, a lone man suddenly appeared before me… or was he a man?

The inside of my personal Demon Realm was, metaphorically speaking, like the inside of my own body, so I was stunned that a stranger had appeared there at all, but more than that, I was left speechless for a time by the sheer beauty of the person who had appeared.

…Though I wasn’t sure whether “beautiful” was even the correct word.

The vocabulary I possessed simply wasn’t enough to describe that existence.

Magnificent, sacred, wicked, warm, cold, violent, tranquil, empty as the void and yet like boiling magma—he seemed to embody every possible sensation at once.

Perhaps, back when I had still been human, simply looking upon him would have been enough to erase me from existence.

And that person smiled at my stunned expression and asked,

“My apologies. I had thought this Demon Realm belonged to an old friend of mine. Where might my friend be? And who, may I ask, are you?”

After asking, he simply waited while I struggled to make sense of both his question and his very existence.

All the while, he continued smiling gently.

I had no idea how long I kept him waiting, but once I finally regained my composure, I realized who the friend he mentioned must have been.

The one who had given me life as a devil—well, not exactly a person, since he had been a devil—but yes, the old fellow.

“My apologies. I think the story about your friend will take a while, so if you’d like, I can make some tea. Why don’t we talk over a drink?”

So, summoning up just a little courage, I invited my visitor to have tea with me.

“…Hmm. Splendid. And fascinating. I could create something identical to this out of nothing, yet even if I drank something I had created myself, I doubt it would bring me this same sense of wonder.”

He gracefully raised the tea I had brewed to his lips, took a small sip, swallowed, and said that.

His manners weren’t particularly elaborate, and yet every movement he made somehow looked extraordinarily elegant.

What he said, on the other hand, sounded exactly like something a transcendent being would say.

“That’s because someone else made it for you. One of my previous summoners told me that drinking water he’d created through sorcery did nothing beyond quenching his thirst, and that he grew by taking natural water into his body instead.”

I took a sip of my own tea as well.

The water I’d used to brew it had come from that lake in Isha’s world, purified with Magic.

Since I had the opportunity, I’d collected a large quantity of it and stored it while preventing deterioration.

“I see. How fascinating, my new friend. Still… so my old friend is truly gone.”

His murmur sounded deeply lonely.

I told him how the old fellow had come to give me this body, and in return, he told me what kind of being the old fellow had actually been.

To my surprise, the old fellow hadn’t merely been a devil—apparently, he’d been a renowned Devil King.

Or rather, ordinary devils couldn’t possess personal Demon Realms at all; only Devil Kings could have realms of their own.

Normal devils apparently lived within the Demon Realm belonging to the Devil King who had created them.

Thus, Devil King Grimor had been the old fellow’s true name, while the man before me, who called Grimor his friend, introduced himself as another Devil King named Grazen.

It was a bit of a surprise, but I’d already suspected that the old fellow had been an extraordinary devil, and it was obvious at a glance that Grazen was extraordinary too, so in a way, it felt only natural.

My tea party with the neighboring Devil King continued, and Grazen smiled contentedly after picking up a honey pastry and popping it into his mouth.

“My new friend, you are a fascinating existence. You are neither an ordinary devil nor quite a Devil King. I have taken a liking to you.”

Being liked by a Devil King just because I’d served him tea and sweets made him seem surprisingly easy to please.

Still, I was enjoying my conversation with Grazen too, and it had become a welcome change of pace.

Then, on top of that, he made me a certain proposal.

“However, my friend, you are still somewhat too weak. As you are now, if another Devil King were to take notice of you, you could easily be destroyed. So I have a proposal…”

Grazen carefully chose his words before explaining his proposal, which, put simply in terms I could understand, amounted to subcontracting some of his work to me.

Even if a Mid-Ranking Devil like me simply waited on my own, summons would come only extremely rarely.

That was because my name wasn’t known, meaning all I could do was wait for a compatible summoner to call forth a devil without specifying a particular target.

Conversely, precisely because my name was unknown, almost all the summons I’d received had come from highly compatible people like Garmon-san and Isha.

But if I did nothing except wait for that, naturally it would take an enormous amount of time for my power to increase.

So Grazen offered to pass some of the miscellaneous summons that came his way on to me—short-term contracts with predetermined compensation.

Naturally, I would only need to accept jobs within my capabilities, and if I was already being summoned by a compatible human, I wouldn’t have to take them at all.

The greatest advantage of accepting his proposal was that taking summons referred to me by Grazen would clearly demonstrate to those around me that I was a devil under his protection.

Having Grazen as my backer would likely help discourage others from trying anything against me.

It really was an offer that covered every possible concern.

There was no particular reason for me to refuse.

After all, more than anything else, I didn’t want to be destroyed by another devil.

Grazen and I talked about many other things as well, especially my experiences when I’d been summoned, and he listened to them with obvious enjoyment.

Grazen also gave me lessons on how to operate as a devil and as a Devil King, including how to create subordinates of my own.

He explained that they were created using the compensation received from summoners, so I hesitated to try it at the moment, but perhaps I would experiment with it someday.

Apparently, beings with whom I shared a particularly deep bond, such as Bella, could even live in this Demon Realm if they had their bodies transformed into those of devils.

That was something I would have to ask Bella herself the next time we met.

Everything I learned was incredibly valuable to me, while I had nothing whatsoever to offer Grazen in return, but—

“Don’t concern yourself with that, my friend. Treat me to tea again sometime and tell me more of your stories. That will be enough.”

That was what he told me.

Grateful for those words, I decided that, for now, I would make sure to carry out my dispatched assignments admirably so that I wouldn’t bring shame to his name.