(Of course. Just have him handle the mess of dealing with the Holy Maidens.)
A biker from a bygone era came to mind. What’s more, he knew that the Holy Maiden in apocalypse gear had some feelings for Zero. Fight fire with fire. Having successfully resolved this seed of a headache, the Demon Lord cheerfully pulled up the Admin screen.
(I gain back control after a while, anyway. All’s right with the world.)
As he made up his mind, a bright burst of white light emanated from the roof of the clock tower, illuminating its surroundings. It looked like a page from a myth — the light to defeat darkness. Allit squinted at the light, and even the residents, who were quaking in fear near the action, stared in disbelief. They had to imagine that the Angel itself had been summoned.
Who appeared from that light was a man wearing a bright-white biker’s jacket with a giant silver dragon on its back. No angel at all, just a Bosozoku. His hair, dyed silver, waved in the wind. Everyone watching was fixated on the dragon that had just emerged from the light.
“Zeroooooooooooo!”
Seeing him, Queen cried out in complete disregard of her situation. Despite her serious injuries, she seemed to have forgotten all of her pain. Seeing her, Zero gave a subtle grin. Whenever he saw her, she was curled up on the ground, being attacked by black liquid.
“What’s up...? Getting bullied again?”
Zero had no clue what situation he had been summoned into. The cityscape, as far as the eye could see, was completely unfamiliar, and, laughably, there was even a medieval-style castle ahead. Everyone in his field of vision looked foreign. Since many of the Game’s players were foreign, he came to a conclusion.
“Just another arena, courtesy of the fucking Empire, huh...? Guess that weird monster’s the gravy on top.”
At this point, he thought, he would not be surprised by anything the Empire did. That wacked-up country gathered wacked-up people and devastated the world with its wacked-up military. In later iterations of the Game, they had begun experimenting on various animals, in addition to humans, and had started sending chimera-like creatures into the arena to attack players. No one from that world would have been surprised by any sort of monster the Empire might have created.
“What... are you? Where did you come from?”
Allit couldn’t help but ask. Even a high-rank devil couldn’t quite gauge Zero. An eerie uncertainty. Without answering, Zero hopped off the roof and approached Allit. Much to Allit’s surprise, Tartarus avoided Zero’s steps. Parting the black sea, the dragon approached. Everyone gathered in front of the Holy Castle watched on, forgetting to breathe. As he approached Allit, his glare grew sharper. Finally, they were nose-to-nose... when the dragon grinned.
“You stink... like a murderer.”
Allit swung its claws without a word. Zero ducked to dodge it, and kicked the devil’s gut without much care. The prideful high-rank devil flew a few meters up in the air, a muddied footprint imprinted on the middle of its extravagant outfit.
“Y-You...!”
Already, blue flames flared from Zero. He had activated his special ability, Mad Flurry. However, his true strength lay with something else. As if to boast that fact, Zero turned his back to Allit, showing off the dragon he carried. In mid-combat, nonetheless.
“Carrying the title of undefeated, I’ve made it to the road of never-ending battle! — Righteous Hero!”
(+5 Damage for every kill the target has made. Max. +50)
Shouting something cringey, Zero was enveloped in crimson flames as his Combat Skill, Righteous Hero, activated.
“How crude... Was that supposed to be some sort of incanta—aaaghghhh!”
Now it was Allit’s turn to let out a crude scream. Before the devil knew it, Zero’s left fist had punctured his gut. In an instant, his right fist whirled at Allit’s face...! The devil was blown away, carving away chunks of the ground and crashing into a now-evacuated chapel. After such an impact, numerous cracks ran up the walls until the entire building came crumbling down.
“Grr...Aggh...!”
Allit looked devastated as he crawled out of the rubble. His hair mangled, and his extravagant outfit covered in dirt. What’s more, tears were pouring from his eyes. A high-rank devil, with a moniker like Duke of Darkness, was crying in front of humans. The crowd fell speechless.
“You’re scum for making a chick cry... I’ll show you just how pathetic you are.”
With a vicious smile, Zero swung his right arm in a big circle. Seeing his gallantry, the crowd of thousands of residents stirred... before finally bursting into thunderous cheer.
Do or Die
“Rgh... Gah...”
Allit was dizzy with confusion. His resilient body was screaming in agony. How did this happen? The devil failed to grasp how the fist of a mere human could produce such pain. It had punctured through numerous protective spells, hitting the devil with devastating damage. Allit felt like his very soul was writhing in pain. It wasn’t like the punch carried any Holy element, either. Nor any magic, for that matter.
“Wakey wakey...!”
Zero followed with a ruthless kick to Allit’s side while the devil was on all-fours. The high-rank devil, the Duke of Darkness, the center of flattery and adoration, was kicked away like a soccer ball... and he slammed into the barrier around the Holy Castle. In that instant, Allit erupted into flames.
“Graaghhh!”
With an explosion, sparks flew in all directions, filling the area with the smell of burnt meat. This was no surprise... a high-rank devil couldn’t have expected to walk away scot-free after touching the barrier set up by the Wise Angel. This fight had inadvertently turned into an electric cage match. The crowd went wild at the dragon who was too strong for even a high-rank devil to handle. In contrast, Zero’s mood plummeted, until he finally let out a “tsk.”
“This bastard’s got the crowd going hotter than me... You want to take on the Silver Dragon, huh!?”
The thought process of a Bosozoku. As Zero was of a species that felt ecstasy from a roaring crowd and a spotlight, he was enraged that the attention had shifted away from him. Allit would have cried in protest at the lack of logic here, but he could not.
“You... filthy scum! Abyss Beam!”
With all the strength he had left, Allit fired the Dark magic spell, and the black beam hit Zero dead-on. However, after the beam had faded — the beam that should have pierced any and all things it came in contact with — an unscathed Bosozoku remained standing. As long as Mad Flurry was activated, the Duke of Darkness didn’t have enough Magic to make even a scratch on Zero.
“You think you can mess around while you’re going mano-y-mano against me?”
With his frown tightening, Zero’s unreasonable wrath piled on. Now thinking that he was being toyed with, Zero quaked with anger. From his perspective, it must have felt like he was shot at with a toy ray-gun, or something. From Allit’s perspective, this was an utter nightmare.
“H-How could this be...!? I am too noble to lose to this wretch...!”
Spreading the wings on his back, Allit flew up into the air. Then, he approached Tron, the Firebrand who had been watching the battle from above, and pierced her with a single stab of his hand.
“Heh... ah...”
Allit raised Tron’s body and drank her blood as it spilled out. Allit was using Bloodlust, one of its skills. Against a human, this would have almost no benefits, but Allit could expect to heal somewhat by consuming the blood of a Firebrand.
“Filthy blood... The stench...”
Tron was tossed aside like a piece of trash, crashing to the ground. With enough damage to obliterate her stomach, her life was quickly fading away. Amidst her faltering consciousness, she wondered... why she had been treated this way. For as long as she could remember, Tron had no parents. Desperately, she had survived the relentless discrimination and constant violence in Hellion territory by drinking mud and eating rotten pig carcasses. Sometimes, she even reached for poisonous herbs. Even afte
r fleeing to human territory, she was greeted with persecution. With nowhere else to go, she was picked up by Utopia, only to be treated and looked down on like a sack of garbage, just like she had been for her entire life. Why was she even alive? These were the fruitless thoughts that ran through the girl’s mind. She couldn’t help but whimper in pain.
“How could that bastard do this to you...? Hey, kiddo. You alive?”
The girl saw the Silver Dragon. The last thing she would ever see... At least, that’s what she thought.
“Hey, open your mouth. Can’t you hear me, kid?”
Forcing the girl’s mouth open, the dragon threw something in it. Sooner than the girl could feel a strange texture and subtle sweetness on her tongue, her punctured abdomen began healing up at a remarkable speed. If he told her she just drank dragon’s blood, she would have believed it.
Now there was no pain and no bleeding. This was so much more than closing an open wound — this was an incredible effect to behold, as if the course of time had been reversed. What the dragon had shoved into the girl’s mouth was a 100 Lives Bar, a healing item from the game. Despite its ridiculous name, it amazingly healed 100 HP. In this world, common medicinal herbs healed about 1 to 3. Even the most expensive potions used by adventurers healed no more than 10, so healing 100 HP instantly was unthinkable. Naturally, anyone in the crowd would have believed that he had given the girl dragon’s blood, fabled to heal any illness or injury and even to grant immortality. Allit watched the impossible phenomenon with horror.
“Are you... of a new species of dragon...? How could this be...!?”
Screaming, Allit came to a certain conclusion. That the dragon must die, right here and now. It was difficult to even imagine the chaos this dragon would bring to Hellion territory if given the chance. Inserting both hands into his torso, he tore himself apart as if to open a saloon door.
Meanwhile, Zero made sure that the girl’s wound had healed, and wore a relieved expression. However, the girl remained emotionless and gloomy.
“Why the long face, kid? You survived, give smiling a try.”
“Smile...? I forgot how to, a long time ago...”
The girl squeezed this out as if she were coughing up blood. Zero frowned, unsure of what to do. Then, sensing some movement behind him, he grabbed the girl by her collar and tossed her into an alley. While he wasn’t gentle about it, he tried to keep the little kitten out of the fight.
Zero turned around to find that Allit had torn his own body apart... and was now turning it inside out. What emerged from Allit was bats. Hundreds, thousands, countless bats were clustered together, forming a shape. The ominous sound of flapping wings could be heard, and two eyes could be seen glowing in crimson. This was Allit’s true form. The devil’s physical capabilities drastically increased in this form, but in turn, it was now extremely vulnerable to the Holy element, which was why Allit rarely went this far.
“Pesky dragon! You will be judged for your arrogance of feigning neutrality!”
Even as Allit blasted Zero with obvious intent to kill, the dragon’s attention was with the girl behind him. Even Zero could tell that she had lived a terrible life. He, too, had not lived an easy life.
“Smile, kid. No matter how tough it gets, the strongest guy’s the one laughing like a dumbass.”
Since she was behind him, Zero couldn’t tell the expression she gave in response. He could only sense her hold her breath for a moment.
“You think you have a chance while dividing your attention, Dragon...? Now die with your arrogance!”
Allit exploded into a charge. He flew so fast that the air around the devil screamed as if being torn apart. As Zero prepared to counter, his iconic silver flames roared about him. The dragon shouted as loud as he could...
“...Heavens, watch me roar! Do or Die!”
The dark void and silver sun clashed, head on... for only a moment. While the city stood silent as if the world had stopped spinning, countless cracks ran through the giant black void, until the entirety of it shrieked and dissolved into black mist. The skill Zero had used was a game-breaking skill that added 10 damage to his attack for each person his enemy had killed before. His ultimate attack, with the ceiling set extremely high at 500 damage. A devil with countless kills on his record stood no chance against this move. Zero stood for a few moments, holding his pose at the follow-through of his punch. Then, he thrusted his fist up into the sky, holding up his index finger... An animalistic display of ‘who’s number one!?’ and a pose to hold for the crowd that had gathered. Seeing this, the crowd went from silence to screaming and throwing their fists into the air. Hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of residents followed suit, roaring with cheers. The rolling wave of cheer spread to other districts, and soon, the entirety of the Holy City was wrapped up in the whirlwind of excitement.
“How’s that, kiddo...? Remember how to smile, now?”
Zero smiled, which he didn’t do often, the smile of a teenage rebel. The girl in the alley stared back at him wide-eyed for a while, before finally nodding as tears began to streak down her cheeks. Then, she couldn’t seem to contain herself as she ran to Zero, and jumped onto him.
“Ha ha! You got the pep back in your step, kiddo.”
“...Not Kiddo. Tron.”
“Tron? That’s a funky name...”
As Zero muttered this, his back was met with something soft. Queen had embraced him, blushing. Out of context, she looked very shy. Even though Zero was carefree with a girl of Tron’s age, he couldn’t help but lose his cool at this. He was an old-fashioned Bosozoku, an extinct species of men with traditional values.
“H-Hey... I can’t let a woman... not in public...!”
“I never want to let you go...”
Queen held him tight with a dreamy expression. In turn Zero blushed as he felt her soft breasts pressed up against him. Queen being a perfectly tame and beautiful girl in Zero’s presence made her all the more dangerous.
“G-Get off me! A guy can’t be seen in public with a chick like...”
“Sir Zero... The dragon on your back is so rugged... Just like your chest...”
Queen’s fingers crawled up Zero’s toned pecs, making him jump. The cool fighter was nowhere to be seen, now. The tens of thousands of spectators reacted with laughter, completely destroying the darkness that had been looming over the Holy City moments earlier.
And so, the two contrasting rumors of the appearance of a Demon Lord and the appearance of a silver Dragonborn, a defeater of evils, spread throughout Holylight. In fact, the rumors eventually spread out of the country and into neighboring nations. The grand confusion and misunderstanding brought about by this one man would reach the far corners of the continent, triggering a world-wide commotion... But that’s a little ways down the road.
Side Story: The Golden Heartbeat
The Holy City, ten years ago...
“Come on, run faster!”
“H-Hold on, Luna!”
Two kids were running and weaving through the Business District. Luna, still a young child, and her friend Eagle. They were both only six at the time, wearing dusty rags. Luna was living at the orphanage, still far away from the glitz and glamor she would encounter later in her life. Dust covered not only their clothes, but their faces and hair, too. Eagle had her hair cut as short as a boy’s. The workers at the Orphanage must have kept it as short as possible to get away with a little less work.
“If we don’t hurry, all the bread will be gone!”
“I-I know, but...!”
They were holding a single bronze coin together, which was a rare occurrence. Normally, kids at an orphanage would have never come in contact with any money, but they had been given this ‘allowance’ from a Holy Maiden. The children planned to buy a loaf of bread with it and revel in that luxury.
“With this, we can buy a black loaf!”
“Yeah!”
A black loaf was barely a loaf of bread. Hard as a rock, it couldn’t even be
chewed without dipping it in some sort of soup. Even that, however, was seldom seen on the dining table at the orphanage. The kids were only given the bare minimum of random grains and discarded greens. Their meals were closer to cow or pig feed than human food.
“...I can’t stand it.”
“What?”
Luna had stopped suddenly in front of a certain restaurant. It was Artemis, one of the most exclusive restaurants, even by the Holy City’s standards. Wealthy merchants and nobles flocked here each night and day, enjoying a meal that peasants could only dream about.
“One day... I’m going to be able to eat here whenever I want...”
“Hee hee. That’s too much even for you.”
“Your problem is that you always give up before you even try! That’s why you’re such a loser!”
“What do you want me to do...?”
An orphan dining at Artemis. That was an impossible feat, even if hell were to freeze over. That being said, Luna was entirely sincere. She had been devoting her life and soul to magic training in order to find a way out of her current circumstances.
“Woah. What are these filthy peasants doing here?”
“At least walk along the edge of the street so we don’t have to see trash like you.”
“This is the problem with our Holy Maidens right now. They have too much mercy for the lowlifes.”
A group of nobles came out of the restaurant at a bad timing for the two girls. The nobles made a gesture as if to shoo away a couple of stray dogs. Eagle immediately lowered her head and tried to leave, but Luna stared right back at them.
“Ugh, see that look of disobedience?”
“Smells like swine... Now our meal is ruined.”
If a noble were to kill a lower-class citizen on the streets, much less an orphan, no one would have batted an eye. Eagle tried to pull Luna by the hand to get away, but she showed no sign of backing down. In fact, she declared brazenly:
“...I’ll make you regret it.”
“Did you say something?”
“One day, I will be accepted into the Holy Church. And one day, I will become a Holy Maiden. When I do, I will make you regret everything you’ve just said.”
Demon Lord, Retry! Volume 1 Page 21
