Prologue
Laws and ethics are different, but in the end, the distinction is only relevant for the powerless. Ensuring laws are written in accordance to ethics can only be done through the use of force. Kento Kurahashi only truly realized this just now, as he watched someone before him preparing to break the law.
The fact that he acknowledged this was a testament to the strength of his will. The average man would’ve simply stood frozen in shock at the sight he faced.
No blood was shed. There were no external wounds. But her life was clearly gone from her body. Her beauty was still there, but her eyes were open wide, and the pupils reflected no light. Her muscles must’ve lost their strength, because her jaw was open and slack. Her arms and legs were limp. She hung from the ceiling like a victim of the gallows.
But there was no rope around her neck. She was floating in the air, suspended by some invisible power. In front of the corpse was a young girl. She wore a white dress, and was looking up at the body with a dazzling smile. It had, until very recently, been her own stepsister.
“See? I just got rid of her. She was in the way, you know. She tried to have fun without me! I couldn’t let her do that, could I?”
—Fun?
Kento repeated to himself the word the girl had just spoken. The woman who had died, no, had been killed, was Madoko Katayama. His girlfriend. That must have been what the little girl meant by “have fun.” Was this a distaste for sexual pleasure that often developed during puberty? No, whether it was or not, it was clearly an act of jealousy.
—Jealousy? Did I just say jealousy?
But Kento knew that was impossible. The girl was actually a boy, and Kento was one of the very few who knew this.
Kei Sakura. That was his name. After he’d lost his parents, Madoko had taken him in, and raised him like a younger brother. Of course, she hadn’t done it out of the goodness of her heart. Kei was possessed of incredible talent. Magical talent.
Mana responds to the shape of the mind. But this only means that the nanomachines that make up mana respond mechanically to your brainwaves. It’s up to the individual’s imagination to determine what sort of effect those brainwaves have.
Special combinations of words, or certain mental images, could serve as triggers. But it wasn’t known how, exactly, it worked. For this reason, the powers of a mage are a product of his or her individual psyche.
Madoko and Kento were some of the world’s best magical researchers, but they’d run up against that barrier, and found themselves unable to advance. They’d exhausted their ideas for exploring their own potential, and now they were forced to find a new subject.
Kei had lost his parents at a young age, and been sent to an orphanage. After they’d seen him using magic before he’d even learned to speak, the orphanage sent word to the church, who sent word to Kento. After their investigations revealed that Kei hadn’t learned magic from anyone, they used their tools to observe him using his mana smashing a toy into a friends’ head.
Whether the devil had whispered into Madoko’s ear, or Kento’s, there was no way to know. They’d pulled some strings, and Kei became Madoko’s legal son, to be raised like a little brother. It didn’t even take a week.
Kei’s unnatural talent quickly became obvious. He came up with several of his own original spells, similar to existing magic but with his own personal touch. He was forced to, since the couple kept him isolated from anyone who could teach him.
They wanted his ideas to be entirely his own. But he was equally abnormal in all other ways. He was a free spirit, and Madoko and Kento were forced to indulge him. It was precisely that individuality they were counting on.
Still, he took it too far. He took it to a level that bordered on insanity. For example, after developing a powerful healing spell, he would continually hurt, and then heal Madoko, as some kind of “game.”
It was a necessary sacrifice in order to develop a unique style of magic, but it was still a heavy price to pay. After that, they tried to teach him to “Not do to others things that you wouldn’t like them to do to you,” but it was already too late.
Kei just ended up chopping off his own arm and sticking it back on, not even flinching at the process. His magic even allowed him to modify his physical body. He had, in a sense, performed plastic surgery on himself.
As he grew, he became more beautiful, and by the time he reached puberty his body was remarkably androgynous. He possessed a beauty that transcended gender.
Even Kento, who was used to his presence, would often find himself stopping to stare when he let his guard down, and Madoko was no different.
That was the point when Kento should’ve noticed. Kei had become beautiful, so that he could use that to his advantage.
Kei was gradually claiming his freedom.
Of course, the plan had been from the start to gradually educate him in the manner that Kento desired, before returning him to a normal life. But he was advancing much faster than Kento had anticipated. If anything, Kei seemed to be setting the pace himself.
But still, in front of Kento, Kei was obedient. That was why it took several years to discover what was going on. Kento didn’t even realize what had been happening until Madoko was dead, and he heard it from Kei’s own lips.
“You and sister never noticed this, but the fact that I was doing it meant that I wanted you to notice. Why didn’t you notice that I wanted you to notice?”
Kei leveled a seemingly contradictory accusation.
“Notice... what?” Kento asked, and Kei laughed.
“Of course, the fact that I was taking all of your research staff.”
“You were... You were what?”
“In a sexual way, that is. I’m a little better at magic than anybody thought. That means I can read minds, and control them, too.”
Kento was stunned. He’d known that the staff had been charmed by Kei’s looks, but he hadn’t known things had progressed that far. Part of the fault lay in the fact that Kento wasn’t especially experienced in sexual matters, but more than anything, most of the research staff were men.
“That’s impossible...”
“Impossible? You know that common sense is of no interest to me. That’s what makes me who I am.”
“Then...”
“Beauty is beauty whether you’re a man or a woman, right? And anyway, in a natural state, a beautiful boy would be loved by both men and women. You’ve been making me study history lately, and one of the things I’ve learned is that the idea of sex only being between a man and a woman is a relatively recent development.”
He laughed seductively.
“And even if I am good at magic, they still could’ve countered it, right? The only thing I used my mana for was to make myself more beautiful. Mind reading and mind control are old magics... In other words, I didn’t use mana to seduce them, but words and gestures. The magic of love, if you’ll pardon the anachronism.”
As Kento stood there silently, Kei walked forward and wrapped an arm around his neck.
“You’re the only one it didn’t work on. And when it didn’t work, it just made me want to try harder, you know?”
Kento was shaking. For the first time in his life he was truly afraid.
—I’ve created a monster!
But that wasn’t what scared him. What scared him was the fact that he found the monster fascinating.
—Maybe I... no, maybe ONLY I, can control this monster.
“I can’t believe I couldn’t recognize how you felt...”
Kento took his hand. If there was such a thing as a deal with the devil, this was it.
1 - The Prelude to Destruction is Always Silent
It was clear f
rom the expression on Morlock’s face that his confidence had instantly abandoned him.
He was shaking. There was a cold sweat on his skin. These reactions were natural, but not to the degree he displayed here.
The sweat wouldn’t stop dripping down his face, and his shaking was sending it scattering everywhere.
Morlock was a veteran spy and saboteur, and he was only this scared because it was Akuto that he was facing. Akuto’s expression was that of a demon. It was a handsome one, and thus when it became twisted, it became more terrible than anyone else’s.
The look in his eyes was purely murderous. He was ready to kill.
“I was trying my best to come up with a reason to kill you... and I just found one.”
When he said this, all the mana in the surrounding air disappeared. There hadn’t been much to begin with, but the very atmosphere within the empire’s borders was suffused with mana. If it all disappeared, it could only mean that Akuto had instantly collected it within his body.
“Impossible!” Morlock shouted.
No one had ever been able to do such a thing, no matter how powerful they were. Even if you had the energy to do it, you still needed a mind capable of manipulating the mana down to the individual particle.
Akuto waved a finger. That alone was enough to freeze his body in the air, arms stretched out like he was nailed to a cross, and bring him in front of Akuto like he was being pulled by a magnet.
“Please don’t kill him!”
“Don’t kill me!”
Two voices overlapped. One was Morlock’s. One was Keena’s.
“Don’t kill him, huh? That’s smart. It’s better for me if I don’t kill him.”
Keena’s expression turned to relief. But Morlock had been through enough dire situations and deadly battles to know there were fates worse than death. The sadism hadn’t vanished from Akuto’s face.
“P-Please! Please, no!” he begged, but Akuto silenced him with a wave of a hand.
“If you’re going to beg for forgiveness, you shouldn’t go around attacking people in the first place.”
As he screamed, Morlock’s body began to shrink. He’d always had the power to grow or shrink at will, but this time it clearly wasn’t intentional.
“P-Please, no!”
Morlock’s shrinking ability didn’t actually give him the power to change his size. Instead, he sent most of his body into virtual phase space, and then built a new body with mana. Akuto had used this fact to his advantage.
“Ugyaaah!”
Morlock screamed and screamed, and his screams gradually began to get quieter. Akuto had sealed him inside the VPS, and reduced his body’s size to that of a few mana particles. Morlock was now the size of a few grains of sand, too small to even scream.
“Aaaah!”
Inside VPS, he was screaming and crying. But his voice went underheard in the real world. All he could see was a colorless, microscopic world. Even the particles of dust in the wind seemed the size of asteroids, and the salty breeze blowing over the ocean struck his body like a hurricane. He would be trapped in that tiny, lonely world for eternity, until the day that the mana ran out. As he watched, helpless and afraid, a wind blew up off the ocean, and carried it away with him inside its current, and he disappeared from sight.
“Ackie... What... what did you do?” Keena asked, fearfully.
“I trapped him inside virtual phase space. And I shrunk his body down to microscopic size.”
His tone was cold, but she could feel the fire behind it. The flames of his anger remained stoked.
“Ackie...”
Keena’s voice held a mix of fear and sadness.
“Y-You can’t do that... Because...”
“I didn’t kill him. I did just what you told me to,” Akuto said coldly.
“No... You know that wasn’t what I meant! The Ackie I know wouldn’t be so mean to me!”
Keena began to cry. There was a flash of emotion in Akuto’s eyes.
“But he’s working with the people who killed Junko...!” he said, angrily.
Keena fell silent. The silence continued for a moment, until suddenly it was broken by Korone.
“If you want revenge, that’s fine... But are you aware of what’s going on here?”
Korone was a Liradan, and so she was perfectly calm. Akuto seemed far from calm, however. There was a chance he didn’t even know what was going on.
“Of course I understand what’s going on. The guy behind all this is right over there!”
He pointed with a finger toward the airship that The One was aboard. Akuto was aware that a member of CIMO8, as well as the leader of the Republic, were aboard it. He knew that Marine, the Republic leader, had used the Faceless Power as well. But the conclusion he’d drawn from this beggared belief.
He would attack the airship and defeat them both. That was his only conclusion.
Only anger drove him now.
“Woooooah!” Akuto howled.
He leaped off the ground. As he jumped, a tornado formed around him.
Keena covered her face.
“No!” she screamed, but Akuto was already high in the sky. A shockwave formed around him as he flew straight toward the airship.
“Empress, please seal the Demon King’s power away.” Korone said sharply.
She gasped and nodded. Until now, she’d forgotten, but the Empress — that is, her — had the power to seal away Akuto’s power. She’d been using her power to “unleash” his full strength, when he needed it, but now she could use it to shut him down.
“As Empress, I seal...” she shouted. But her voice trailed off.
Confused, she looked down at her hand.
“...What’s wrong?” Korone asked.
“H-Huh...? I can’t do it.” Keena shook her head, trying to recover the sensation that was now lost to her.
“You can’t do it?” Korone asked, confused.
“N-No...! I need this power...! Come on! Come on!” Keena waved her hands again and again. But it didn’t help.
“She can’t use the Imperial power...?”
Korone considered the source of the Empress’s power.
—The Faceless Power.
It was the power of will, completely separate from mana. Probably, she thought, it was some kind of collective consciousness. If she couldn’t use it, it meant that Keena had lost her ability to access the Faceless Power. There was no way to tell if this was due to an external cause, or an internal one...
“Why...?! I want to stop Ackie! Just this once, I have to stop him!”
Keena’s cries went unheard, and Akuto was now practically on top of the airship.
Bullets and energy beams were pouring out from its gunports, but Akuto was ignoring them. A small plume of smoke rose up from the airship’s disc-shaped side. Akuto’s body had easily pierced its armor.
○
Marine was shocked at the results of his actions. He had made it possible to use the Faceless Power, yes. But he’d had no idea that this would be the result.
He’d intended to use it to stop the nuclear attack, but instead, he’d wiped a part of the Empire’s coast off the face of the Earth.
“The Faceless Power reacts strongly to collective will. The people of the Republic must have wanted that very badly,” The One said.
The One resembled a talking dog, but according to him, he was an alien being of pure mind merely possessing the body of a dog. And a servant of the devil too, at least by Marine’s estimation.
He’d baited Marine into using the Faceless Power, knowing full well what would happen.
“You tricked me!” Marine screamed.
But The One just smiled back.
“Hahaha! Give power to a life form, and it always ends up the same way. That’s all there is to it.”
“And if that’s not trickery, what is?” In this moment, Marine gave up on negotiating with The One. He accelerated his body to smash his fist into the dog’s face. But...
�
�Why?!
Marine’s body froze. He couldn’t move forward. He couldn’t even raise a fist. It was like his body was moving through a sea of heavy mud.
“Ha, hah!” The One laughed.
“I’m using something like hypnosis! I subjected you to it when I saved you. You can’t attack me. When I’m up against someone strong like you, it’s important to take precautions.”
“It can’t be... an implant?!”
There was no way to control another person’s mind with normal magic. With one exception. You could implant a device inside their body, where their mana was strongest.
“Very perceptive. That’s right. I can’t just take over completely, after all. I need you to use the Faceless Power...”
“Tch... You’re going to make me use it again? We’re already at the point where a world war is unavoidable...”
“Yes, we’ve succeeded in causing a world war. But I’m interested in what happens after that,” The One said.
“There’s... more?” Marine’s face twisted in even greater terror. He’d never even considered that they were planning something greater than a world war.
“That’s right. I’m going to destroy the world in a way you’d never expect. And for that to happen, I need the Faceless Power. And I’ll need more help from your subjects.”
Just then, an alarm sounded as a hole was blasted in the side of the airship. The One and Marine both looked up, confused at what had just happened. Akuto slowly walked out of the smoke, after blasting through the wall with overwhelming force. Neither Marine nor The One could say a single word.
There was no way they could’ve predicted that a man would fly toward their ship at a speed too fast to detect, blast straight through several walls, and then slowly walk toward them.
Akuto opened his mouth.
“I’m not interested in what you have to say.”
His voice was low, like a growl. It chilled Marine to his very bones. But at the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to look away. Along with the fear, he felt an incredible attraction. The same thing was true for The One.
“Have you come bearing death, cursed one?” The One asked. There was fear in his voice, but also a note of praise. But The One’s actions were those of a creature acting out of fear.
Demon King Daimaou: Volume 12 Page 1
