I slaughtered every demon in sight as I raced toward the council hall in the heart of the New City of Ket Nya.
Death, death, death, death... The entire area was brimming with death.
—The cheerful young lizardman from the fish market.
—The skilled young sheep cat woman from the clothing store.
—The spirited woman from the oni race.
Every single one of them had been reduced to a breathless corpse.
Tears had been streaming relentlessly for a while now, blurring my vision so much that I could barely see. To me, this trampled landscape was the physical embodiment of the bonds I shared with everyone, a tapestry of precious memories. And it was being casually torn apart before my eyes. I was consumed by a helpless, burning fury and regret.
That was why—
(Please, let them be safe!)
Praying with every fiber of my being, I sprinted headlong toward the council hall.
Those desperate hopes of mine—
"——?!"
Were cruelly and utterly shattered by what lay upon the ground before the entrance.
Piled high like a gruesome mountain were the severed heads of Kiji, Cyclone, Crocodus, and all the other leaders of this city.
Nearby, Tama was being pinned to the earth by demons, while a heavily muscled, red-bearded man held a black crystal in his right hand, leveling it at her forehead.
A black coat trimmed with pristine white feathers and a wild, savage appearance. That had to be Demon King Aldebaran.
"You're an incompatible failure too, aren't you? As expected, things just don't go as smoothly as they do with us demons."
Aldebaran let out a disappointed sigh and raised his right hand. In response, one of the demons behind Tama lifted his sword.
"Stop!"
Noticing my presence, Tama's face contorted in terror as she—
"Gil, run—"
Tried to scream at the top of her lungs.
In that fleeting instant, the demon's blade flashed downward, and Tama's head dropped to the ground.
"Are you that fake local deity, then?"
Aldebaran twisted his entire body, locking his languid gaze onto me as he asked.
"You rotten piece of scum!"
I snapped. An uncontrollable, violent storm of rage surged through my chest like a howling gale. Charging straight at him to close the distance, I drew Flame and brought it crashing down upon the crown of his skull.
Flame bit deep, splitting his head and slicing straight through half of Aldebaran's face.
"This is the end of you!"
Releasing the hilt of Flame, I spun midair and hammered a full-powered left roundhouse kick into his skull.
With a sickening crunch, Aldebaran's neck snapped backward at an unnatural angle. His head burst into roaring flames, and he collapsed onto his back against the cobblestone.
I kicked off the ground into a backstep to put distance between us, lowering my stance and bracing for anything.
Though I stayed on guard, in that moment I felt certain of victory. I had cleaved his skull in two and shattered his neck. There was no surviving that. If he could still live after taking that kind of damage, he wasn't just far beyond a demon—he wasn't even a living creature.
Those faint hopes—
"Not bad, not bad at all."
Were instantly betrayed by Aldebaran's casual voice rising from the ground.
"—?!"
Snapping upright like a coiled spring, he rose with unnatural fluidity, pulled Flame's embedded blade from his skull, and clapped the roaring blaze out between his bare hands. Then, with a wet, grinding snap, he forced his twisted neck back into alignment and pressed the cleaved halves of his head back together.
Wisps of dark vapor trailed from his skull as the gruesome wound knitted itself closed in seconds.
"You monster...!"
He was no longer a demon; he had become something entirely different. Conventional attacks would never finish him off. To kill him, I would have to pulverize his body until not a single shard of bone remained. If that was what it took—
Just as I was scrambling to find a way to destroy him—
"Buuut, against someone like you, this'll be an easy-peasy win."
The musculature in his right arm swelled to several times its original size, and his figure vanished.
—An instant later, his boulder-like right fist materialized directly in front of my face, delivering a catastrophic blow to my skull.
My body tore straight through multiple buildings, reducing them to rubble, before finally slamming hard into the outer ramparts.
As my vision drowned in crimson,
"Guh..."
I vomited a mouthful of blood onto the ground, desperately struggling to get back on my feet.
If I stayed down, I was dead. I had to pull back, just once, and recover—
"——!?!"
Aldebaran's face suddenly thrust forward, hovering barely an inch from the tip of my nose. A vile chill washed over me, like a snake slithering across bare skin. I threw my right fist toward his face with everything I had left.
In the microsecond before the blow could land, Aldebaran's face twisted into the grotesque maw of a crocodile, and—
—CHOMP!
He tore my right fist clean off.
"Gah!"
A searing agony, like a white-hot poker thrust through flesh, ripped through my entire body.
"How pathetic."
Aldebaran spat the contemptuous words as he seized the front of my shirt and hoisted me up into the air.
And then—
"Though, it seems you happen to be compatible."
With those parting words, a crushing shockwave caved in my abdomen, and my consciousness was mercilessly torn away.