Chapter 34 Epilogue Part 3: The Path to Take
Epilogue Part 3: The Path to Take
When Veiss opened his eyes, Lotte filled his entire field of vision.
“…Lotte, let’s stop this before you startle me.”
He gently stroked her soft, wavy hair.
Lotte does things like this sometimes.
Basically, she loves Veiss very much.
Well, it was a little much when she crawled into bed with him, but it was cute.
There was no ill intent behind it.
Veiss sat up and looked around. He was in his room at the clan house.
“…How long was I asleep?”
He had no memory of the battle with the Demon Lords.
“Two days.”
Lotte, sitting on a chair and swinging her legs, answered.
(Two days, huh… Demon Lords are really hard to digest, aren’t they…)
Veiss thought to himself, clutching his stomach.
It seemed like he didn’t need to eat anything for a while.
He chuckled slightly at his inhuman thoughts.
He would need to be careful not to overeat from now on.
Well, a mouse and an angel probably didn’t make the best combination anyway.
“Do you know where Arisu went?”
Veiss looked around but couldn’t see Arisu, so he asked Lotte.
“She said she’s going to see all sorts of things since it’s been a while since she was out in the world.”
Lotte answered in a tone that sounded uninterested.
This girl didn’t like it when other people’s names came up while she was talking to Veiss.
(The world, huh.)
Veiss, who hadn’t been separated from Arisu for a long time, felt uneasy.
If Arisu were here, she’d probably be smiling and saying, “The results of the training are superb!”
Well, he knew she was safe because their souls were connected.
Lotte was staring intently at Veiss’s face.
Then, as if she had made up her mind, she asked,
“Sensei, did you become a Demon Lord?”
Veiss thought for a moment.
He could lie, and Lotte would probably reluctantly accept it, pretending to believe him.
But he didn’t want to do that.
Lotte was a smart child; she wouldn’t try to uncover the things he wanted to hide.
However…
It was painful to keep lying to his student.
So he decided to be honest.
Trusting his bond with Lotte.
“Yeah, that’s right. This body has already deviated from being human.”
Upon hearing this, Lotte furrowed her brow, as if deep in thought.
Then, with a trembling voice, she asked again,
“Then… will you… kill humans… will you kill me?”
“I’m not going to kill anyone!”
Veiss immediately responded, then embraced her trembling body.
From a human perspective, a Demon Lord is a nightmare that sows death.
Lotte had been raised to be a sacrifice, to be offered up to the Demon Lord.
When Veiss had stopped by a farming village on a mission, he’d saved her from being offered as a sacrifice to a Demon Lord cult and had taken her in.
She had been deprived of proper food, and her growth had been stunted.
So, even though she was 10 years old, her speech was still halting, a result of a lack of communication.
She was the Demon Lord’s priestess and a sacrifice.
That was the past of a girl named Lotte.
That’s why Lotte used to cower at the mention of a Demon Lord.
Recently, she had seemed to get used to it, but it was probably not something so simple to overcome.
(It must be a shock for her to find out that the person she trusted became a Demon Lord… Damn, I was thoughtless…)
“…You won’t kill me?”
Lotte looked up at Veiss.
“Don’t worry! I won’t kill anyone! I’m… a good Demon Lord!”
Veiss blurted out the words desperately.
(What the hell is a good Demon Lord?)
“…Hahaha! A good Demon Lord…!?”
Lotte burst into laughter, tears welling up in her eyes.
(Ah, good.)
Veiss was relieved.
After laughing for a while, Lotte turned around and smiled.
“I understand, I won’t tell anyone.”
“Thank you for that.”
Veiss replied, relieved.
“It’ll be our little secret, just between you and me, Sensei?”
Lotte said, her eyes narrowing and her voice thick.
A voice filled with clingy obsession.
Veiss pretended not to notice.
That’s the kind of thing she does.
“So, Sensei, what are you going to do next?”
Lotte climbed onto Veiss’s lap and asked, glancing up at him.
“Hmm… For now, I think I’ll sort out the mess with the Clan, and then take everyone to find jobs.”
He answered after thinking for a moment.
(I’m also curious about Sieg… and I wonder where Monica went. From what I’ve heard, she might have been manipulated by something… or perhaps she had no choice but to do what she did? I need to meet her and talk to her, I must.)
“I see. So, where are you going first?”
“Well, I’m thinking of taking Anna to the Great Church of Seirion.”
“Beauty, where are you going all alone?”
A group of five rough-looking men blocked the way of a woman, her face hidden under a hood.
All of the men were grinning lewdly, sizing up the woman’s body.
They were dirty, filthy men.
This was a path slightly off the main road, a route frequented by people with shady intentions.
The woman was being harassed by bandits who made their home there.
Usually, they targeted merchants who were smuggling goods, and they moved with practiced ease.
“…North.”
The woman muttered softly.
Although she was alone, she showed no sign of panic.
The bandits didn’t seem to care what she had to say, instead tightening their encirclement.
“Wherever you want to go, it doesn’t matter… we’ll take you to heaven!”
One of the bandits, perhaps thinking she was scared, reached out with one hand, holding a sword.
Silently, the woman put some distance between them.
As she did so, the wind blew off her hood.
Underneath the hood appeared the face of a woman with honey-colored, soft-looLord hair and blue eyes.
“Hoo! What a gem! We’ll treat you real good, kekeke!”
The bandits laughed vulgarly, whistling.
“…If all of you were trash like this, I wouldn’t feel bad about it…”
Monica, the woman under the hood, spat out the words.
“What the hell? If you resist, we’ll have to make you suffer a little, you know, kekeke!”
The bandits laughed loudly.
Slowly, they surrounded Monica and closed in.
Seeing this, Monica muttered,
“Goodbye.”
Hero Skill: [Temptation].
The change was immediate.
In the blink of an eye, all of the men’s expressions vanished.
In the blink of an eye, they were all incapacitated.
All five of them had glassy eyes as if they were staring at nothing.
There was no will in their eyes.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”
At the same time, Monica fell to her knees.
A pain like her body was being torn apart assaulted her entire body.
From the tips of her toes to the top of her head, every part of her body was engulfed in pain.
“Aaaaaaaaaah! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! …This is the first time… I don’t know the limits… Ugh… Was it too strong?”
The price of Monica’s Hero skill was “pain”.
The greater the power she exerted, the greater the pain she would endure.
It was a pain that could make a normal person writhe in agony and even die.
And the pain would never allow her to lose consciousness.
The price was not an easy one to bear.
“Haa… Haa… Haa…”
After a full hour, she was finally able to move again.
“Haha… This isn’t something I can use on the battlefield…”
She laughed weakly.
Sweat dripped down her chin.
She took a water bottle from her storage bag and drank it dry.
While Monica was suffering, the bandits were still staring blankly into space.
It was an unnatural and eerie sight.
Monica turned toward them and gave her command.
“I’m heading to the Great Church of Seirion. You’ll escort me there.”
“…Understood.”
The bandits replied expressionlessly.
In the depths of despair, wishing she could die, Monica recalled something Veiss and Lotte had talked about.
She recalled what Veiss and Lotte had discussed before.
“Lotte, in the Great Church of Seirion, there seems to be a divine relic from mythology.”
“What kind of relic?”
“There are various kinds, but the most famous one is the seal that was used to seal an evil god. The relic that sealed the power used by the war god to defeat the evil god is said to still exist there.”
“Wow, there’s something like that.”
“I’d like to see it someday.”
If it was possible to seal the power of a god…
If it could seal the power of a god, then surely it would be easy to seal the power of someone like me.
Then…
If so!
If she didn’t want to use it, she could just seal it.
It was a simple idea.
No matter how difficult it might be.
Even if it was difficult, if it was possible, she would definitely make it happen.
It was a glimmer of hope that Monica found in the depths of despair.
She would use any power, no matter how much it cost her.
She knew it was contradictory.
She knew it was illogical.
She knew it didn’t make sense.
Nevertheless,
Even so, she decided to do it so that she could face Veiss with her chest held high.
So that she could say with pride that she wasn’t controlled by power!
So that she could say, “I didn’t lose!”
She wiped away the tears that had unknowingly fallen down her cheeks.
She couldn’t afford to keep crying.
With a firm resolve, Monica took the first step forward.
And in that moment, the woman who had been dragged along by others for so long vanished.
She had decided to move forward with her own will.
Even if it was a thorny path, she had decided to walk it.
From this day forward, the woman who had always been led by others began to walk on her own feet.
As the day turned into night, the sky was filled with countless stars.
She headed toward the land where the relic slept.
No matter how dark it was, the stars would shine.
Volume 1 End.