I Can’t Run Away From the Girl Who Saved Me

188 – The Demon King (1)

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The door was open.

As Sylvia, with both hands on the door, took a step forward, the large door slid back without resistance, belying its size, revealing the room it had been hiding.

Before she knew it, Sylvia’s feet were touching the marble floor that separated the room from the hallway.

The front door opened so quietly that not even a squeak could be heard, but the sound of my footsteps hitting the hard, cold floor was so loud it gave me goosebumps.

“…”

Sylvia wordlessly pushed the door open and quickly drew the sword at her waist.

In the back of Sylvia, who was looking straight ahead, the weak emotions such as fear or tension that had been visible just a moment ago could no longer be found.

A refined coolness that seems to prove with his whole body that he is the last bastion chosen by humanity to kill the Demon King and an expert in killing monsters.

And all that was visible was a rough texture of anger that was not at all comparable to that of Sister Alice.

“there is.”

Sylvia muttered briefly.

Even without a subject, I could clearly understand what she was saying.

I tried my best to ignore the goosebumps that were running all over my body, but there was nothing I could do about the sudden cold sweat and the dryness in my throat that made it sting.

Sylvia slowly walked forward.

I followed Sylvia into the large room, staying a little further away as she requested.

I thought about asking Pia to go forward first, hide, and wait, but decided against it.

If the Demon King is a spirit sorcerer, he would also be able to see Pia, so it was judged that it would be unreasonable to use the spirit’s characteristic of being invisible to others like in Balder’s time.

I walked forward slowly, keeping Pia close to me.

And then, he immediately frowned and shook his head slightly.

“Ugh,”

different.

I could tell right away that something was different, from the texture of the air.

It feels like a vast wilderness where not a single breeze blows…

No, not to that extent.

It wasn’t just that there was no wind; it was as if the air in the room wasn’t moving at all.

Even though I opened that large door and walked forward with thick, sturdy iron boots and leather shoes treading on the hard floor, the moonlight streaming in from outside the window did not show a single speck of dust.

Slowly, something appeared over Sylvia’s shoulder as she walked forward.

In the middle of a marble room filled with luxurious decorations, a large, swaying apricot-colored sphere was floating in the air.

I muttered softly.

“… What is that?”

The sphere had a diameter that seemed to be larger than the height of a human, and its surface was covered with thin, blue lines that were drawn in a dense yet faint pattern.

It looked like a tangled blue spiderweb, or like veins fluttering inside a sphere.

Around the sphere, there was a thick and turbid magic energy that was visible even to my dull eyesight, and the magic energy was floating in the still air as if it was printed on air.

My eyes hurt.

I felt a sharp pain from the tip of my nose to deep inside my lungs.

Obviously, this feeling was due to that thick magic, but on the other hand, it was also due to the fundamental fear of a weak human being facing death.

When I tore Balder alive, when I burned my sister.

No, before that, when I burned the resurrected Layla to death with my own hands, or when I killed all the innocent humans by the curse.

I have experienced enough terrible things in my life, and have seen many horrible scenes, but I could instinctively feel that the fleshy sphere that I was seeing right now, at this moment, was the most horrible and hideous thing I had ever witnessed in my life.

Every time the sphere moved irregularly to a certain beat, I felt a chill down my spine.

Then Sylvia opened her mouth quietly.

“I see.”

“… egg?”

Those hideous meat balls are eggs,

So what’s inside?

Ha, that was a question that shouldn’t have been asked.

That’s it.

It’s the Demon King.

The Demon King must be sleeping inside that monster.

Sylvia said, gripping the hilt of her sword tightly.

“That’s a good thing.”

“… what?”

“We’ve come all the way to my room, and the fact that he’s still sleeping inside his egg means… that means the Demon King hasn’t fully recovered his strength yet.”

“… Is that… it?”

“…”

Sylvia kept her gaze straight ahead and extended one arm behind me.

It was a signal to stop.

“I have to check.”

As soon as she said that, Sylvia bent her knees and lowered her upper body for a moment, then in an instant, she ran forward as if shooting.

It was as if she had been launched from solid ground.

Sylvia ran out in the blink of an eye like a shot arrow and cut down the sphere floating in the middle of the room with one stroke of her sword.

From the sphere that had split in half, a strangely textured, yellowish mass flowed out and fell to the floor, splashing.

Sylvia landed on the ground, brushing off the residue from her sword and immediately raised her head to look at the sphere.

The sphere was still floating in the air, split in half.

“…”

Amazingly, nothing happened.

There were no screams, no corpses torn in half pouring down.

There was only a sticky, yellowish liquid seeping out, emitting a foul odor.

Sylvia glared at Gochi, wary of what was going on, and I too stared at the sphere, holding my nose with my sleeve.

Soon, the sphere that had been split in half began to snap back together again and began to wiggle with a bigger and stronger rebound than before.

Sylvia swore, her guard rising.

“What the hell is going on here, you fucking lizard.”

“… for a moment.”

At that moment, I had a strange feeling that the sight seemed somehow familiar.

I couldn’t figure out why, but as I looked at the wriggling Demon King’s Egg, the scenery of the Goldfield Estate seemed to flash through my mind.

Goldfield.

A prosperous estate famous for its extensive agricultural land.

Most of the territory was agricultural land, and most of the inhabitants were farmers.

Although the finances were stable, there were no developed commercial centers like the capital where the Academy was located or the city where the Vatican was located.

That’s why I grew up like a little kid from the countryside.

They would run out to the mountains or fields to play, and when they returned to their small wooden house, they would take long naps in the shade of the large tree outside the window.

Why?

Why do memories from that time suddenly come to mind?

“… ah,”

I saw it as a child.

I’m sure I’ve seen something similar to that hideous orb.

I muttered.

“I don’t know…”

“what?”

If you think about it, that’s what it was.

Even if he was the Demon King, there was no way he would survive with his head completely cut off.

If the Demon King could have survived, it would have been normal for him to have recovered in an instant like Sister Alice.

However, since such abnormal regeneration and recovery are the power of the goddess, the demons cannot use them.

Even if you can somehow avoid death, you can’t regenerate your body instantly like Sister Alice.

In other words, the Demon King was clearly defeated by Sylvia.

How can a demon lord like that recover his body?

Perhaps because of the derogatory term ‘lizard’ that Sylvia always used, I had a stupid image in my head of a new body growing from the Demon King’s severed neck.

But, it wasn’t.

“cocoon…”

The method chosen by the Demon King was more similar to that of an insect than a lizard.

And, the fact that the gochi is wriggling so violently…

“Sylvia, you have to keep cutting!”

“…?”

“That’s not an egg, that’s a gochi. Sylvia! That foul-smelling liquid that just flowed out is the Demon King’s body!”

The severed head was not forcibly attached to the body, nor did the head grow out of the body or the body out of the neck.

The severed head and body are placed inside that sphere, melted, and then the body is reconstructed.

That was the method of resurrection chosen by the Demon King.

That must be why the Demon King held his breath for so long.

The gochi is writhing violently.

It meant that hatching time was near.

Sylvia immediately jumped up with her sword in hand.

Her flying afterimage flashed like a white flash of light, thanks to her platinum blonde hair and silver armor.

A flash of light flying towards Kochi in an instant.

However, the flash stopped abruptly in front of Kochi.

Sylvia looked startled, as if her body had suddenly stopped.

It didn’t take long for Sylvia to realize that a thin, long arm had emerged from beneath the sphere, grabbing her leg, out of sight of the square where she was swinging her sword.

His arms dragged Sylvia’s legs down in a languid movement.

Sylvia fell straight to the ground.

“Sylvia!”

I ran towards her.

Sylvia, who had hit her head on the marble floor and was bleeding all over her face, staggered to her feet and shouted.

“Don’t come!”

I stood still as she said.

At that moment, Pia spoke to me.

“Ash, up.”

Pia was pointing at Kochi with her finger.

As I followed Pia’s fingers, there was a thin, pale arm sticking out, slowly opening the cocoon.

“Ugh,”

My heart was pounding.

It felt like the inside of my body was being rubbed with sandpaper.

It was a familiar pain, one I had already felt.

It is the pain of the body being destroyed by magic.

The divine power that Sister Alice had left me still remained, but it seemed that the thick magical energy was destroying my body faster.

Perhaps, a normal person without divine powers would die on the spot just from magic alone.

I clutched my chest and exhaled cautiously.

Sylvia wiped away the blood that kept blocking her vision with her palm and grabbed her sword again.

And the red eyes looking at her were quietly shining through the cracks in the torn mortar.

.