Chapter 1 – Prologue＊

In the face of justice, evil will perish.

This is true, regardless of the era.
The embodiment of evil will be turned to cinders by the hand of those who embody righteous thinking.
The world will be bathed in light, the darkness will scatter, the world filled with radiance, and then the land will be granted eternal blessing.

It was the same in his case.
Evil had to perish; the story wouldn’t end otherwise, and for that reason he had to fall.
He bore that fate, that destiny.

And truly, in front of this eyes stood the embodiments of justice.

One stood boldly, wielding the holy sword that was now illuminating the dim hall of the Demon King’s Castle, and with a holy woman, an archmagus, and a sword master in tow.

Bearing the hopes of humanity on those small shoulders, the one who tirelessly worked to make those hopes a reality.

They were the one called the “hero”.

Were it possible, the demon king would have preferred them not come.
It would be better if nobody came for eternity, so he thought.
However, that wish of his was easily betrayed.

“You have come, O Hero!”

Though he felt resignation, so as to not let it show, he mustered up the loudest voice he could, and received them; the four who shouldered the hopes of humanity; the four who possessed greater coruage than anyone.

He slowly glared at each one of their faces.
No matter which it was, he could feel anxiety, and fear from them.
However, that was probably inevitable.
After all, they were standing there exposed before the one who ruled over all the demons in the land.

After all, one who possessed such great power that he could easily topple a city, or a country, was standing there before them.

On the contrary, it was praiseworthy that even now their faces held no resignation despite this.

Humans had foolishly come here to challenge him.

Hundreds of humans had perished before the might of the demon king.

The courage that brought them here despite this was praiseworthy, he thought.

The hero spoke.

“Are you, the demon king?”

“That’s right. It is indeed I, who am the master of this castle; the mighty one who reigns over the demons[/magic]; the demon king.”

Though a snigger about his arrogant lines escaped him, this too was what you could call ceremony.
He clearly named himself before the hero whose eyes housed great courage.

“I see. Then… let us settle this. Having come this far, there’s nothing left to say…”

Though it was obvious, the hero’s goal was the destruction of the demon king.
The demon king’s goal was also the destruction of the hero.

This was the logic of the world.
Even if there existed those who held doubts about this, and even if it was the demon king himself who felt this way, the demon king knew very well that there was no meaning in this.

Everything had already passed the turning point.
The time when things could still be talked out had gone by a long time ago.

Because of that, without saying a word, the next moment was already decided.

The hero who brandished the holy sword that was pointed his way.
The archmagus who began chanting his spells.
The holy woman who had chanted the scriptures for purifying evil.
The sword master who had begun strengthening his body, with power filled to the brim.

Without any hesitation, the four of them came together at the demon king to kill him.
They wished from the bottom of their hearts for the enemy of humanity to disappear.
After all, humanity’s hatred towards the demon king had already passed the point where dialogue was possible.
That’s why their attitudes were extremely matter of course.

However.

It was the same for the demon king.
It was the same for demon race.

He understood that the ending wasn’t something easy to discover.
That at some point they needed to give up, accept, forgive, and join hands was something he also understood.

However, his heart couldn’t accept it.
He had devoted himself to hatred; a desire to rampage until he was exhausted incessantly tempted his heart.

This was something he thought each time he turned his eyes towards those who had clouded his eyes with hatred.
‘We’re exacting revenge on those who not only endlessly killed our brethren, but even denied our right to exist; what’s wrong with that?’ he would think.
‘We’re answering hatred with hatred; what’s wrong with that?’ he would think.

He understood that logically, this would bear not a single result; it was something close to self-satisfaction.
However, even if it wouldn’t bear any result, they could feel self-satisfied.
Their hearts would feel better.
And this wasn’t the case for only the demon king; the same could be said of all the brethren who attacked humanity.
Because of that, though it wouldn’t bear any fruit, he would tell himself that it was necessary as a foundation for the future of the demon race, and continued to fight.

In the end, at this moment, he thought from his heart that he had surely been mistaken, but even so, there was nothing he could do about it.

To begin with, the one who bore the responsbility in the beginning was humanity.
Though it sounded like an excuse, the demon king thought about the cause of this situation.

Long ago, humanity had decided that those who lived by magic; demons, were a harm to this world.

After all, unlike magic beasts which were no more than animals, humans had labelled the demon race who clearly possessed intelligence, reason, and culture as a harm to the world that they wouldn’t accept.

And then they declared that killing demons as one pleased, stealing their lands, and plundering their property was fine.

From the eyes of the demon race, it was the conduct of a thief, and nothing more than the logic of a robber.

Despite this, as though it were natural and just, humanity used the light of god as a matter of course to claim authority, declared the demon race as enemies of god, and plotted their destruction.

Those kind of people, and the demon race.
Just which were closer to evil?

In front of the hero party, he thought again about the history of the humans and demons.
And suddenly thought,

‘In the end, both of them were probably wrong.’

‘Both the demon race, and the human race, had probably fatally erred in their choices’, he thought.

It was for this reason that despite both being humanoids who shared intelligence all the same, without comprimising or discussing, they turned their swords on each other, and ended up murdering each other.

Neither had thought back on their mistakes before it came to this, and continued to follow their warped convictions.

That the result was that they turned their trump cards, the hero and the demon king, against each other, might have been in a sense, truly a matter of course.

The victor of this fight would probably hold the world as a conqueror.

Would the demon race rule over the world, or would the humans reign supreme?

This was something that depended on the outcome of this battle.

It was something stupid.
It was something pointless.

Even if one of them won, they would probably begin new fights among themselves.
And once again, they would kill a lot of people, and then one day perish.

It was truly stupid.
Couldn’t they stop it at some point?
Was there nothing they could do about it?
At the very, very end, the demon king lamented over being unable to find an answer. However, even so, it was impossible that he and the hero could join hands now.

Right.
Both humans and demons had reached a point of no return.

Having come this far, there was nothing left to do, but fight.
There was nothing they could do, but fight.
Without them forcing a conclusion to this, the war wouldn’t end.
That’s why…

Having thought this far, the demon king naturally cycled mana through his body, turned to the heroes, and took a stance.

The one who held stronger mana than any demon, that held a stronger body than any being, was the personification of absurd strength; the demon king.

Just by casually collecting the greater mana in his body, the walls and floor of the castle cracked, and the heroes were faced with a Pressure strong enough that they wanted to despair.

It’s probable that a normal human would have died simply by being there.

However, even with a cold sweat, the heroes still stood.

The reason they still lived was because of the power they had trained over a long journey, and the fact that they held enough mana that they could be called monsters by normal standards.
The had overcome countless training, and even being granted the divine protection of spirits and god, they had already ascended to a level closer to what you would call a demon, rather than a human.

It was doubtful whether they had a place to belong to in their homelands, after defeating the demon king.
Humanity was terribly afraid of those who held great power.
It was for this reason that they feared the the demon race, and ended up persecuting them.
That’s why when they triumphantly returned to their homelands after defeating the demon king…

No, it was probably a needless worry.
Before thinking about that, he had to think about defeating the people in front of him, thought the demon king, focusing himself.
The mana released from his body became increasingly enormous, and just the emission of his mana was enough to overwhelm the hero and his companions.

The holy magic that the holy woman used was wrapped around the heroes, and was successful in weakening the power of the demon king.

However, perhaps because even this wasn’t enough, the four of them were sweating from their brows, and while bracing their legs, they turned sharp gazes towards the demon king.

However, it was not as though they couldn’t fight, and neither was it a major hindrance.

Perhaps because they thought that their chances of winning would decrease with time, the party of four exchanged looks with each other, and without testing the waters, as if to take the demon king down in one hit, immediately released the mana that dwelt in their bodies and began exercising their skills.

Following that, the heroes having smoothly finished their battle preparations, charged at the demon king with speeds unimaginable from the humans that had challenged him previously, and with attacks quite capable of taking a life, charged at the demon king with all their strength.

◆◇◆◇◆

The battle between the heroes and the demon king was made extremely grand.
However, everything will eventually meet its end.
Thus.

“…Ka, hah-…”

The holy sword was stuck in the demon king’s chest.
The holy light that repelled darkness and magic, being released by the holy sword, was purifying the power of darkness that clad the demon king.

The demon king couldn’t see the faces of the hero very well.
The hero clad in full body silver armour was even now donning a face-mask that revealed nothing but their eyes, after all.
Very few of the people who challenged the demon king had been so completely protected, but the magic that the demon king could use covered a great number of spells.
On the contrary, if you wanted to truly defeat the demon king, this much was natural.

Having said that, no matter how strong normal iron armour might be, it wasn’t enough to defend from even one attack from the demon king’s sword or magic.
However, even fragmented and scratched, with a number of indentations, the armour worn by the hero retained its original form, and was a treasure of an armour, made not of iron but of special materials like sacred silver{mithril}, stalwart iron{orichalcum} and god iron{hihi’irokane}.

The demon king was pierced by a sword that held a power that was the natural enemy of mana and darkness, and in his receding consciousness, as he looked behind the hero, the companions there were still on guard, pointing their staves and swords at him, and like the hero, they were clad in mana and holy spirit, befitting of their status.

It meant that their preparations were perfect.

Thinking this, a smile escaped the demon king.
That his loss here might have been a matter of course, he thought.
As for why, it seems that justice would always triumph, after all.

The hero, was justice.
And the demon king, was evil.

It was a ‘truth’ that had been passed down from a long time ago.
From the perspectives of humans, it was the Truth.

Because of that, it was correct that he had lost, thought the demon king, in the depths of his receding consciousness.

Perhaps because they had found question with the demon king’s expression, the hero spoke to him with a puzzled expression.
Even though conversation should have been impossible, having come to this.
Things like dialogue between the dying demon king, and the hero who was the cause, were needless after all.
However, the gears of fate had turned in an unexpected direction.
Thinking back upon it later, it might have been the moment that a great number of things had changed.
It was a moment of such importance.

“…Why, do you laugh. Are you scheming something?”

“No… nothing at all. Just…”

“Just?”

“The daughter of a friend has her birthday tomorrow, you see. I was just thinking that it’s a shame that I fall here…”

Thinking that it would be wrong somehow to speak the truth, the demon king spoke of something else.
Of course, it was not a lie.
That one of his subordinates and friends had a daughter whose birthday was tomorrow, was the truth.
And that had the heroes not come today, the demon king would have attended that celebration, was also the truth.

But now, that day would never come.
To steal away the demon king’s life for eternity, the hero’s sacred sword continued to release holy spirit.

From the day the demon king perished, the demon race would surely be face persecution.

The humans would do as they liked to them, and they might disappear as a species.

His friend’s daughter would probably lose her young life.

Considering all this, the demon king shed tears.

Seeing this, as though surprised, the eyes that peeked through the hero’s face plate widened, and as though having noticed something, the hero grimaced.
And then for what seemed like an eternity to the demon king, the hero quietly began to think about something, and nodding as though they had come to some conclusion, they wrang out words from their throat.

“It wasn’t… a lie, huh.”

For some reason the demon king felt from that voice a human kindness that he hadn’t up until now.
Even though the hero’s gaze had been filled with that much hatred and killing intent up until just a moment ago, the demon king could feel warmth from their voice.
Because of that, the demon king suddenly followed a whim.
At the very, very end, he decided to throw away his despair, and the hatred he couldn’t abandon, and decided to try honestly speaking what he already knew.

“Of course… Hero. …Right, this is the end… I shall tell you the truth… That up until now, what you and I have done, and what will continue into the future, is nothing more than slaughter. Can you understand that whether the demon race, or the human race, when it comes to what matters, there isn’t a difference at all?”

“What are you saying…?”

To the hero who had been taught that killing the demon king was justice, perhaps this was something that they couldn’t understand.
However, right now, having come to this very moment, the eyes of the hero were not stained with hatred.
They were in the true sense of the term, the eyes of a righteous person.
They were the eyes of a person who would truly look at the truth.
The demon king felt this, and believing in himself, he decided to speak some of the truth.

“…Hero. You may have been taught by the church that we demons are the envoys of evil, but you probably understand from looking at me. That how demons behave, and how humans behave, are completely the same… If you do not believe it, then it’s fine for you to check this with your own eyes from here on. You’ll probably see it. You’ll probably feel doubts about the slaughter of all demons by the orders of the chuch… At that time, if you feel even a little something… then for the future of the demon race, no, of humanity and demonkind…”

His consciousness became distant.
He could feel all of the substance that composed his body turning into magic {ether}.

The hero looked like they were brooding over it.
They went over the demon king’s words, and felt as though they could understand it.

Seeing this, having at least planted some sort of seed, the demon king was able to feel something close to satisfaction.

His consciousness became dark.

And then, a voice suddenly reached his ears.

“Understood… I’ll, believe your words. I’ve decided to look properly at the demon race, without holding suspicions.”

At that moment, the demon king noticed for the first time.
That certainly, he had thought that their voice was a little high for a man’s, but in fact it was a different matter.
Because after all, what came from the hero’s mouth, was the gentle voice of a woman.

The hero, was a woman.

Whilst feeling shock at what he realised at the very end, he felt amused at the nice memory he’d be taking the underworld.

In his steadily darkening field of vision, what he saw at the very end were the faces of the hero’s companions.

For an instant, the face of the holy woman entered his blurry sight.
Though he’d have thought that she’d look refreshed, having defeated the demon king, she was unexpectedly grimacing.

Even though the hero and the other two weren’t grimacing… why?
Even though he thought that he was prepared to die, he felt regret at just that issue.

However.

‘If it’s that hero, then surely, they’ll consider the future of the demon race as well, won’t they?’

Dying with such an optimistic hope was surely a blessing, thought the demon king.

And thus, on that day, the demon king, known as the strongest demon in the world, had his life taken by the hero, and disappeared from the world completely.

‘And they all lived happily ever after. The end.’, in other words.
[‘medetashi, medetashi’]

◆◇◆◇◆

It was said that souls existed.
Far in the distant past, the almighty god who had created all of the world, had given birth to all living things as equal.
It was a legend passed down in the demon race.
It was quite different from what humanity believed in.

However, that didn’t mean that because of this, the demons held prejudice against them as a race.
Because humanity had attacked, the demons had certainly held hatred towards them, but that didn’t mean that they denied their right to existence as a race, or any such vein of thought.

Humans, demons, magic beasts, demi-humans; their characteristics varied,  but their souls were created the same, and once they died, they would reincarnate eternally; so the demon race believed.

Because of this, when the 100th Demon King Luruslia Nord opened his eyes, he was not all that shocked at what he saw before him.

“…My, my, you’ve woken up. Good morning, Luru.”

It was a beautiful, human female.
Silky black hair like the night, and red eyes like blood. Smooth, white skin like light snow, and so wonderful a figure that it seemed that someone had carefully sculpted her.
Standing there was woman so beautiful that even women of the demon race, and ancient race{elven race}, the so called beautiful pair, would run away in shame.

For a member of the demon race that held no thoughts of prejudice, whether they were humans or elves, deeming beautiful things as beautiful was a matter of course.
Because of that, the human woman standing there was not something that merited particular shock.

‘However, it’s just…’, thought the demon king.

‘No matter what, for a human, the person in front of me is much too big’, he thought.

For the demon king who was relatively large, even amongst demons, their sizes were really very different.
Of course, it wasn’t as though there weren’t people that were larger than him, but basically nobody was so large that their arm was bigger than he was.

There was no conclusion other than the fact that this woman was of a different race.
A woman of the giant race{titan race} perhaps?
If that was the case, then her size wasn’t impossible but…

However, having thought that far, the demon king mentally tilted his head in confusion.

After all, he already knew quite clearly what race the person in front of him was.
From the very language they spoke, and the accent of the language, it was clear from the start that they weren’t a member of the titan race that boasted a gigantic body, but what could be called a human.

Despite that, why were they so big?
Wondered the demon king, when suddenly,

‘No, it might be the opposite,’ it occurred to him.

It wasn’t that she was big, but that he was small.
Such a thought struck him like divine revelation.

And thinking about it like that, he naturally grasped the situation.

Not long ago, the woman before his eyes had called him Luru.
The demon king was far smaller than the woman before him.
And, right now, he could feel that he was face up on some kind of soft cloth.

This was… that kind of phenomenon. The one handed down within the demon race.
So thought the demon king, in that instant.

In other words.

“Now that you’ve awoken, it’s lunch time.”

The woman bore her body just a little from the loose clothes that she was wearing.
For a moment he wondered how exactly this was supposed to be lunch, but if the situation was as he had predicted, then what she was doing was understandable.

He happened to catch sight of his own hand.
His small, plump hands bore not even the slightest resemblance to his old ones.

It was as if… right, it was as if they were a baby’s.

The moment the thought this, he could feel his consciousness becoming distant.

It was unlike sleepiness; the way he lost his consciousness was extremely abrupt, and moreover it seemed that it was absolutely unopposable.

Why, he wondered, whilst he could feel his body beginning to move on its own.

The body that held its hand up, as though searching for something,
Seeing that, with a smile, the woman held his body in her arms.

That sweet, milky scent, and that gentle atmosphere brought to mind an existence from a long, long time ago.

That was…

“Mn, mn. You’re hungry, aren’t you, Luru…? Mum is going to feed you now.”

Mother.
Right.
The woman before him, was his mother, huh.

The instant he was convinced of that, the little remains of his consciousness were swallowed by darkness.

He only realised that his reason was being submerged in darkness by instinct later on, after this kind of thing had repeated over, and over again.

◆◇◆◇◆

After a few days had passed, the demon king discovered a few facts.

First of all, that he had been reborn as a human.

His mother, or at least the person that seemed to be, certainly showered the demon king―――― currently named Luru it seemed ――――with deep love.
She gave him meals, faced him with smiles, took care of his business, and always looked happy around him; and he definitely didn’t feel that this person’s feelings were a lie.
Whether a human’s feelings, or a demon’s feelings, there wasn’t very much difference.
To the demon king, this was an obvious fact.

Furthermore, souls reincarnated.
Humans, demons, and all the other species had the same soul.
All humans beings after losing their bodies would be reincarnated as other species.
If they had behaved badly, they would be reborn as a small animal or bug.

So it was said, back when he was a demon king. Because of that, he didn’t feel the situation was particularly unnatural.

He was certain that he had been killed by the hero, and surely after that, his soul had been reborn as a human.

Luru was flexible enough to believe that.

Moreover, that humans had an extremely large number of social positions was a fact that he had known since he was the demon king.
The human race was different to the demon race in that regardless of the fact that they were the same race, they established a wide number of countries, and used a number of different ruling systems.
Monarchies, republics, federations etc. ――――a number of different types of countries had existed, and the position that their household, or their families held, was an issue of great importance to humans, and had great power over their lives.
The demon race had collected as one, but the other humanoid races were not so.

Because of that, besides just knowing that he was a human, Luru felt he needed to know what position his family held, and decided to listen in on the conversations of his mother and the other inhabitants of the house in order to gather knowledge.

And then, the result he arrived at was that his house was located in a monarchy known as the Kingdom of Renard. His family was a lower class noble family, his father served the country as a knight, and was not at home right now, having gone to the royal palace.

To Luru, these findings were not particularly bad.
That he wasn’t extermely poor was something that he managed to realise even lying down, because of the number of people that walked about the house normally. On top of that, he had guessed from things like his mother’s complexion, and the people who seemed like servants that occasionally came to the room, but once he was sure this was the case, he found it was good enough to be relieved.

However, what he did find strange was that he had no recollection of the country’s name, and the magic that his mother and the servants used were clearly different to the magic he knew.

The Kingdom of Renard was a country with a longer history than its neighbours, or so it seemed from the light conversations that his mother and the servants had, but if so, shouldn’t he have known about Renard? So wondered Luru.
At any rate, they had fought bloody battles with the human kingdoms.
He clearly remembered where each country was, and what kind of country it was.

But no matter how much he searched his memories, he had no recollection of a country called the Kingdom of Renard.
This was something bizarre.
It was essential to investigate further once he grew a little bit older, and was a little more free to act, he thought.

As for the magic, it had definitely existed in his previous life, so that much wasn’t anything to talk about.
However, the way they used it was strange.
First of all, for some reason his mother and the servants used rings or wands[/staves] as a medium, and on top of that, they used really long incantations.
What they used was nothing but low class magic such as spells to produce light, but that kind of magic could be used without a medium, just by thinking about it.
But despite that, it seemed they couldn’t do so; this was extremely mysterious.
Besides that, the chants were strange as well.
For example, the chant they used to produce a ball of light in the magic language was,

『Light… Call… Start… Burn』

and such and such – a chant made from a considerable mess of grammar and vocabulary.
Just why was this happening?
This too was something that he needed to investigate, thought Luru.

Finally, there was the case of Luru himself.

Luru held memories of being a demon king in his past life.
Assuming that he had been reborn, this might not have been such a strange situation.
However, in the first place, when it came to rebirth, Luru didn’t think of inheriting memories as something normal.
This was because when Luru was the demon king, almost nobody said that they had memories of their past lives. On top of that, even if they did, they were nothing more than the lies or pranks of madmen.

Despite this, Luru could clearly recall his memories of his past life.
When he was lying about as a baby, he clearly established that his memories weren’t fragmented.
There might have been the normal degree of forgetfulness, but there was no case of any unnatural loss of memory.
It was to the degree that he could clearly remember being stabbed by the hero.
Certainly his memories of dying were hazy, but it was to the same level as being unable to remember the moment when you fell asleep.

At any rate, the fact that he could clearly remember his past life was a strange situation.
However, he felt that there was probably no chance that these were mistaken memories.
To begin with, Luru was a baby.
It could be said to be impossible for him to have made up such knowledge and stories without anybody teaching him.
Nevertheless, if you asked why he knew such things, remember such things, and could consider such things, the conclusion should probably be that he had inherited them from his previous life.
Being the case, then was there some deep meaning to this?
Or was there no meaning at all?

No matter how much he pondered this, he didn’t know.
Just, if there was some meaning…
He wanted to one day find out what it was.