DKFTI 5

Sibel could not deny reality. He bit at his nails as he thought about how to deal with this situation.

“They can be hidden, right? Shanti, you were once a hideous hybrid dragon with three heads and scales stuck all over, but now you’re in the form of a cute lamb!”

“…Your words are too harsh.”

“There’s a way! There must be a way!”

Sibel grabbed Shanti by the shoulders and shook him violently as he demanded. Shanti then nodded.

“Don’t worry. Once you come of age, you’ll be able to freely change your appearance.”

“Of age? I’m not of age?”

A Demon King was not born, but came into being, as if they suddenly dropped from the sky one day.

Sibel, who had been born in the form of an adult with the mind of someone in their twenties, had never once imagined he was not of age.

“Of course, physically there’s no issue, but aren’t you only one year old, Demon King?”

“You mean I’m a child?”

“Then why do you think you’re timid and always bursting into tears? Demon King, you’re a baby.”

“……”

“You’re vulnerable to outside stimuli. You’re easily sad, angry, and happy too. It seems especially fear hits you the hardest, Demon King!”

Shanti asked as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Why are you only telling me this now?”

“Huh? All past Demon Kings knew naturally on their own.”

“Why don’t I know…?”

I don’t know anything.

“Well, yes. You’re a little lacking… urk!”

The moment Shanti showed signs of saying something rude, Ruru smacked him on the head.

“You!”

“How dare you speak like that to the Demon King!”

Ruru patted Sibel’s shoulder and opened his mouth.

“Don’t worry. I, Ruru, will take care of every shortcoming you may have.”

“Ruru, freeze to death Ruru. Why do you keep twisting the brave name given to you by the previous Demon King, Rukubaltlarkrum, into something like that?”

Smack!

At Shanti’s retort, Ruru smacked the back of his head again.

“Trust Ruru! Demon King, if you just train for one hundred years, you’ll be able to change into whatever form you want! The age of a Demon King is proportional to his magic power, so once your power grows, you’ll mature quickly!”

“…One hundred? One hundred days?”

“One hundred years!”

“Lies.”

Sibel began to deny reality. It felt as if the flow of time itself had completely twisted. How could anyone speak so lightly of a hundred years, which was equal to a human lifetime?

In fact, to the demon race, a hundred years was nothing more than time that passed by lightly.

“But even with horns, you look beautiful.”

Ruru made a thumbs up with both hands in front of Sibel. His thumbs were raised straight, but Sibel pressed down on them with his palm and folded them in.

“What if the horns grow really big?”

“Then they’ll be even cooler!”

“What if, like Shanti’s, they twist and curve like ram’s horns?”

“Kya, if they curl around, it’ll be even more artistic, won’t it?”

Sibel realized that his sense of aesthetics and that of these demons lay on completely different tracks.

Sibel gave up speaking further and wiped away the dried tear streaks stuck at the corners of his eyes.

“Now that you’ve calmed your emotions, shall we practice magic? You need to grow quickly!”

With springy steps, Shanti planted a scarecrow into the ground.

Sibel also got to his feet, dusted himself off, and opened the book he had brought along.

“The Demon King inherits the magic used by the previous Demon Kings. You can learn all the spells written there, spanning seven hundred forty eight pages!”

“Seven hundred forty eight…? That many?”

“Yes! But none of them ever mastered them all. There are too many, and it’s also a matter of personal taste.”

Shanti quietly muttered, “None lived long enough to learn them all anyway.” But Sibel did not hear. He was too busy creating his own criteria for selection.

That was, coolness.

They said, “Live by coolness, die by coolness.” If it wasn’t cool, it wasn’t magic.

“Would fire magic be better? Or thunder and lightning? Hm, hypnosis might be useful too.”

Just the thought of using magic lifted Sibel’s spirits. Rustle, rustle, the sound of pages turning was light and brisk.

“Instead of that, why don’t we start with the Demon King’s personal specialty?”

“Specialty?”

“Yes! Each Demon King has their own unique specialty magic. The previous Demon King’s was hypnosis. You must have a specialty too! Here, look at page eleven!”

It felt uncomfortable to skip over the table of contents and warnings, but Sibel checked the page Shanti had flipped open. There was a heading that read, “Specialty magic that even a beginner Demon King can easily start with.”

“Destruction comes from creation. Magic is the same. Awaken your own magic.”

He was about to carefully read each word, but Shanti flipped the page with a quick motion.

“What’s the point of reading all that long text. Here, just memorize the spell!”

“Spell?”

“Yes. The body of the Demon King holds the magic power gathered by the past Demon Kings, so it won’t be difficult!”

“Good!”

So, if he only memorized the spell, it would become magic? Anything that came without effort was always welcome. Sibel carefully scanned the spell.

“Now, focus and think of drawing your magic up from your lower abdomen. That’s it, good! There’s a reaction! The spell is written in an ancient language, so the pronunciation will be hard, but give it a try!”

Sibel read aloud the incantation, which stretched to no less than one hundred characters written in the magic book.

“Don’t get a single letter wrong!”

He focused all the way through, without missing even a single particle. But a question came to mind. If the spell was this long, wouldn’t he be cut down by the heroes before he even finished chanting?

“…Rangel Pepiar Lobianu Besia Krutie Cractum!”

The moment he recited the long incantation without knowing what it even meant, a bright light appeared in front of Sibel.

Pop! White smoke puffed out, and in that place, a pudding appeared.

“You succeeded!”

“Waaah!”

Shanti and Ruru clapped their hands to congratulate him. But Sibel looked in disbelief at the object that had appeared before him.

“This is my specialty?”

This pitiful, soft, tiny pudding?

As he wondered how on earth he was supposed to interpret this, the pudding suddenly snapped its eyes open.

“Puu–!”

The pudding had eyes and a mouth.

“It seems the Demon King’s talent is the ability to summon monsters!”

Shanti clapped as he shouted.

“……”

The ability to summon monsters. At first glance, it sounded like a decent specialty, something that could be useful for self-defense. But. The area around the Demon King’s castle was already crawling, packed full of monsters. Was it really necessary to summon this?

“But why does it look like this.”

“That’s probably related to the Demon King’s mental age, don’t you think?”

Is that an insult?

“It’s not cool at all! This is just… just pathetic!”

Pathetic. Incredibly pathetic.

Of course, the newly born pudding monster was cute. It bounced lightly across the ground as it came up to Sibel and rubbed its cheek against him, it was undeniably cute. “Good boy, good boy,” Sibel stroked the pudding’s head.

“It doesn’t seem like a simple summoning. It looks like you gave birth to the monster. The creature is a newborn. Just like the Demon King.”

Shanti lifted the pudding monster stuck to Sibel with two fingers, looked it over, and spoke.

“It will get better with time.”

Ruru encouraged Sibel, whose energy seemed to have drained away.

“Then if I get stronger, I’ll be able to summon huge and terrifying monsters like Shanti?”

“That’s possible. Although I don’t like being compared to a monster when I’m a strong demon myself.”

Shanti pouted as if he was displeased and handed the pudding back to Sibel.

“Your name is Pudding.”

Sibel gave the pudding a name. At that, Ruru and Shanti started whispering.

“Isn’t that too insincere?”

“That’s like naming a dog Dog.”

“I didn’t think the Demon King’s sense would be like this.”

Watching his subordinates openly mocking him in front of him, Sibel deliberately pretended not to hear. If they had seen his true form, they wouldn’t dare to act so carelessly.

But it was a meaningful moment, he was able to discover what his specialty was. Sibel held Pudding in both palms and lifted it up to his eyes.

Blinking its small black eyes, Pudding looked as cute as a cartoon character. Perhaps because it was a living being he had made with his own hands, he felt a certain attachment to it.

He had been staring at Pudding for a long while.

“Pft.”

From somewhere came a mocking laugh, thick with ridicule. Sibel immediately turned his gaze to the source of the sound.

“……?”

Blinking, Sibel stared into the black pupils that resembled Pudding’s eyes.

Why didn’t that hero left?

He had given him everything, told him the treasure vault’s password, even cleared out the castle for him, laid out the board for him, and yet he still remained inside the Demon King’s castle.

“He hasn’t left? I thought he did.”

“Exactly. He was so quiet like a dead mouse, I thought he’d already gone. Tch, I thought we wouldn’t need to prepare food for a human anymore.”

“He looks pretty comfortable walking around. Does he think this is his home or what?”

Shanti and Ruru too were surprised at the sight of the human hero. From outside the low wall, the hero easily climbed over and walked toward Sibel.