The Demon King’s Bastard - 2

Four years had gone by since the destruction of Meeti.

On a mountain road in the Athiel noble family's domain, there was something resembling a shredded minian corpse. In other words, it was not actually a corpse.

It crawled with its fingers as it painted a line of blood behind it. There were only two fingers on their right hand.

"Hah, hah…ha-ha-ha-ha. Kweh, hwak…"

All they could do was continue forward like this. The flesh of their left thigh was torn open, with the bone inside exposed.

There was nothing left from their right ankle down.

The laughter-like sounds escaping their lips were out of terror.

Their diaphragm was spasming in fear, and this was the only voice that came out.

"Hah…hah, haah, aah."

Even the simple act of breathing tore the inside of their lungs.

Both their physical body and their mental state were unable to maintain the form of a normal minia.

There was no prospect of recovery. They would simply continue toward doom.

It was the final moments for the survivor of the First Party, Izick the Chromatic.

He had laid eyes on the True Demon King.

On true terror that no one in possession of a heart and soul could oppose. "…I'm not giving up…"

No one knew what not giving up would even accomplish. "Like hell I'm giving up…"

The bushes around him trembled. Revenants that he had employed for himself.

The centipede-like revenants crawled out in an agitated stir and forced their way into the man's mouth, his eye sockets, biting and tearing away tissue as they went. He screamed in the agonizing pain of certain death but was unable to with the bugs filling his esophagus.

"Gnrgh…gahk…glrgh…urngh…"

He suffered just like people he had killed in the past, unable to even let out a scream.

His legs and arms feebly wriggled and struggled until the movements became slight spasms, and bit by agonizing bit, over time, they began to stop.

"......"

Izick could no longer move.

From his mouth and nose flowed red, but eventually it changed over to a dark brown.

Even after the sun fell, and it turned to night, not even the lowliest beast approached the unsightly carcass.

Then the sun rose.

The next day, and the day after that, the man once referred to as the wickedest demon king of all rotted away without anyone paying him any mind.

All his blood and moisture had completely dried up, and falling leaves accumulated on top of his body.

One day, it rained.

Izick the Chromatic was half submerged in a puddle of water.

At last, for what must have been the several dozenth time, the sun rose into the sky.

A beast-like silhouette approached his corpse.

It was abnormally colossal compared to the beasts in nature, with an uncanny glow of intelligence about him.

An elegant, multipedal, wolflike beast.

"YOU FINALLY MET YOUR END, TOO. DIDN'T YOU, IZICK THE CHROMATIC?"

The chimera created by Izick the Chromatic bore the name Ozonezma. He murmured at his creator, now dead, just one single sentence.

"A FITTING END."

Feeling no more words were necessary, the beast went to leave the scene behind.

Ozonezma's hind leg was grabbed by that man who was supposed to have breathed his last.

"...! I-IZICK…!"

"Ga-ha, hak, kahak, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

The corpse cackled. "That's right! It's Izick!"

With strength that seemed impossible from a formerly dead man, he dug his fingers into Ozonezma's leg.

"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! That's awfully cold, Ozonezma! Your ole master just came back to life, y'know! C'mon…you could stand to look a little bit happier, right?! Right, Ozonezma!"

"HOW…HOW ARE YOU ALIVE IN THIS STATE…?!"

"…Kahak, hak! You can't tell just by looking? I made revenants slip into my injured areas…and merged the swarm to create an artificial organ system. Connected the insects' nerves, digested with the insects' stomachs, revived my cells with the insects' blood— Well, if I'm being honest, I'm mostly bug at this point. As a minia, I'm essentially dead still. Disappointed? Yeah, right! Ha-ha- ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

"IMPOSSIBLE… A PROCEDURE LIKE THAT, WITHOUT ANY FACILITIES AT ALL… BUT THEN…THAT WOULD MEAN YOU'VE BASICALLY BECOME A REVENANT YOURSELF."

He hadn't learned his excellent techniques from anyone.

However, the Life Arts of self-proclaimed demon king Izick had been clearly abnormal from birth.

He could bring together the cells of different organisms without causing any rejection response.

Sending signals to his nerves with the swarm that had slipped into his corpse, he could even move himself as if he were still alive.

"I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU WOULD ALTER AND REMODEL YOUR OWN BODY."

Making a mockery of all living things and trampling over even the barest ethics and morals, despite it all, he continued to have a flesh-and-blood body for himself—up until now.

There was no question that Izick the Chromatic, called the wickedest demon king of all…had challenged the True Demon King in order to remain who he was.

"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! What do I care anymore? Ozonezma… When I sent off Fralik and the others, I told you that I didn't have any more use for you, right? Yeah, that was all a big lie. I take it back. I mean, Fralik's dead either way. You're going to work for me again."

"PISS OFF. LIKE I HAVE ANY DUTY TO YOU!"

"…It's useless to refuse. Ha-ha-ha-ha! After all, you can't disobey me, right?"

"..."

"Nope, nope, no sirree! You'll be that way forever. At my beck and call! Since I never gave you any innate courage after all! I bet you thought, with me dead, you were free, right…? Aww, too bad. I'm aliiiiive and kicking! Ha-ha- ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

Ozonezma could split open Izick's head with his strong forelegs. However, for Ozonezma, Izick's orders were absolute. That was how he had been made.

While he despised this demon king, now weaker and frailer than a baby, Ozonezma would never be able to kill him. Izick always gave his creations a sense of self solely to make sure they were able to suffer.

Ozonezma drooped his head, bit down on his fangs…and then he asked a question.

"…HOW MUCH?"

"Huh?"

"HOW MUCH LONGER WILL YOU LIVE?"

"Ha-ha…"

Since he had thrown away his proper existence as a minia and depended on heretical Word Arts to remain in this world…Ozonezma wondered how much longer Izick would be able to stay alive.

He had lost to the True Demon King. While he may have survived, the scars must have been fatally gnawing at him.

Without any doubt, it was a life far more hopeless and horrific than death.

"…Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha."

Izick laughed morbidly while crawling along like an insect.

"Who the hell would give up? Never, never, never, never, I'll never give up…! Ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha! I'm Izick the Chromatic, dammit! Right, Ozonezma?! Aren't I right?! No way this is enough to get me to throw in the towel, you hear me?!"

"..."

"I'll make…the strongest construct ever; just watch. Strong enough to break that stupid little girl's neck with a single punch! I'm one who can do it! I'll do what Neft, Fralik, Lumelly, and that damn brat Alena couldn't do! I'm the only one left! I can do it…! I can…! Me!"

"…Izick."

He was pathetic and unsightly, without the slightest shadow of his past might.

Ozonezma was unable to flee from that blazing glare… Was that because he was a creation that was never given courage? Or perhaps…

"Material. We need real cells, mountains of them. Koff, koff. O-Ozonezma… bring me the bodies of champions. Doesn't matter who. Whatever you can get your hands on."

Several years passed.

Izick was still using the domain of the Athiel nobles as his base of operations. After coming back to life, his body was no longer able to endure long-

distance movement.

Given he was unable to move his physical body from where he was, his only choice when it came to the materials and base bodies for his creations was to employ constructs for long-distance work, amassing them all from his basepoints across different regions.

Even then, as long as he obtained the most important part of all, for the genius Izick, that was plenty.

"…The fundamental theory's the same."

He had spent his whole day experimenting, eating cultivated insects, and hiding himself in the corner of some ruins.

To the man once lauded throughout the world as the wickedest demon king of all, this countryside, already destroyed by the True Demon King and unbeknownst to anyone, was his final domain.

"Ozonezma…had been the strongest combat organism possible, pieced together with the most powerful parts I could find. But it can't be like that defective prototype… I have to start over from square one. I'll construct something that's been perfectly designed; just watch."

The mass of cells in the glass bottle, immersed in preservatives, was the true cornerstone of Izick's research.

A deviant species of unthinkable embryonic cells that weren't even differentiated by race.

Discovered mostly by accident by a self-proclaimed demon king long, long ago, it was a construct capable of transforming its own physical body and imitating any and all entities, referred to as a mimic.

How many more trials were left before he would incubate the organism he sought from these cells?

However, the completed organism that Izick was aiming for was not a normal mimic.

"Simply patching together the bodies of champions isn't enough. I don't have the Greatshield of the Dead with me, but…I did completely analyze its Word Arts theory-based mechanism that interferes with spatial phases, and I can even reproduce it, too…!"

The Greatshield of the Dead was the name of a magic item Izick had previously possessed, which bestowed absolute defense. By interrupting a

minuscule spatial phase, it rejected any and all interference from outside. However, at the same time, the warped space would corrode the structure of the user's cells like poison, a dangerous magic item that induced severe pain and degeneration.

Nevertheless, he believed that a mimic could even conquer this heavy toll. "…thirty-seven trillion cells, every single one, without exception, as strong…

No, it's theoretically possible for their structure to even surpass the Greatshield of the Dead, both structurally and conceptually. Same with the degeneration reaction from its defense; the mimic cells themselves could immediately respond and reset everything back to the way it was initially…! I'll design a homeostasis managed through the mimic's transforming abilities! All that's left, ha-ha…are its physical capabilities… I have mountains of material to work with…! Champion muscles, champion nerves, champion bone! I can even fully sequence the invincible cells… I can do it!"

Reproducing a magic item with a living organism, and this idealistic sequencing and preservation. A truly preposterous dream.

Izick himself had thought as much before challenging the True Demon King and shelved the plan.

Testing this was his only option. If it was in order to defeat the True Demon King, there was significance in completing it, even if he sacrificed everything to do so. Exhausting resources, exhausting lives, in the thousands, and the tens of thousands.

Terror and obsession had begun to drive the extraordinary genius toward acts of madness. Though, of course, to Izick the Chromatic, there may never have been a borderline between sanity and madness to begin with.

"Hah, ha-ha-ha…! Damn demon king…! You're nothing at all… Terror, fear, I just gotta excise all that stuff from the start…! I'm not connecting any of those nerves together… A living weapon made specifically to kill you!"

Thus, he set down a grueling path.

Life Arts. Chemical treatment. Introduction through bacteria. Coaction with magical items. He tried all the methods at his disposal.

The experiments were as if he were etching an extremely detailed sculpture out of a tiny grain of sand and then applying the same process to all the grains of the sandy seaside beach.

Eventually, Izick even replaced the arm on the side of him that was still intact with a wire-like prosthetic arm meant for precision work.

A large portion of the motor functions in his brain, rendered unnecessary by the loss of his physical body, were replaced with a nervous system composed of fungal hyphae. This nerve circuit made him able to automatically handle the complex initial work of treating the cells.

The constant alterations to his own body gnawed at the memories from when he was still minian, but even then, he stubbornly protected his sense of self in order to complete his final creation.

The two moons cycled many, many times, and his work remained undiscovered by anyone.

A long time. Longer still.

The light of success would appear only to vanish, without even providing him with the darkness of resignation long enough to give up.

At the end of a repeating cycle of thousands of miracles and thousands of inevitable failures…

"…A name. I gotta think up a name at some point."

Izick had always been a talkative man, but he was talking to himself more and more.

The only person for him to talk to was the mass of cells being cultivated inside the glass tube.

"…Minia-shaped. It's always the minia…who can create the strongest society of all… I'll borrow some help from them and make this one even stronger. In that case, guess I should make them a man—"

Absolutely all of it was part of a long-shot future…

"Nah, nah, a woman! If I make 'em a man…I'll be forced to stare at a naked guy the whole time, right? Ha-ha-ha-ha! That sounds awful…"

…Time passed.

How many years had gone by?

The cells that had started to grow could no longer fit inside the glass tube and required a square aquarium.

With Izick's Craft Arts, creating it was a painless endeavor, but with the increase in volume, he now struggled with the adjustments to the preservatives suppressing their mutation.

Returning with a supply of champion bodies, Ozonezma, too, set eyes on his successor for the first time.

"…THAT IS YOUR OPUS?"

"Yup. Actually, in a sense, y'know. It's the ruined remains of all those guys you've been slaughtering. Ha-ha-ha!"

It didn't seem like the disordered mass of cells he was looking at would shape into a minia, but if Izick declared they would, then Ozonezma figured it was likely so.

While he was generally a truly loathsome man from any and all perspectives, he had never been wrong when it came to construct creation.

"You better not get in the way here, Ozonezma. Finally… With this, my life'll finally begin…"

"RISKING YOUR LIFE ALL FOR YOUR MASTERPIECE, YOU SOUND ALMOST LIKE KIYAZUNA THE AXLE. YOU'VE NEVER ONCE SHOWED ANY EMOTION FOR YOUR CREATIONS BEFORE… YOU'VE CHANGED QUITE A BIT."

"Huh? Sounded like you were getting smart with me there. Almost like who?"

"THIS MIMIC, SHE'S VERY IMPORTANT TO YOU, THEN."

"…This is all for me. My toy. I'm not like that old hag…! I'm living entirely for myself. I'll kill anyone that tries to look down on me; they'll regret ever being born. That's who I am!"

"IZICK, YOU CAN NO LONGER WIELD THE POWER YOU ONCE HAD. YOU HAVE NO CHANCE OF RECOVERY. YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THAT MUCH…!"

"Yeah, yeah, forget it. Y'know, I don't need you to do anything 'cept bring me more material. Don't you dare get close to this one… That's an order from your master. Got it?"

"…UNDERSTOOD."

Before two small months had passed, the mimic shriveled and died.

This tiny sliver of hope disappeared, and from there, another ten years went

by.

Izick lived another ten years, all just to glimpse that light once more.

"Do you understand me?"

"…Uh-huh."

"Perrrfect. We're good as long as you've got a soul that comprehends Word Arts, no matter how dumb you may be at the start. Oh…right. Should we start with my name?"

"…Uh-huh."

"Izick the Chromatic. Better remember it, okay? Ha-ha-ha! It's the name of your master."

"Uh-huh."

At long last, his creation was complete.

This mimic, having its perfected form engraved into it from the beginning of its existence, didn't undergo any of the maturation process of a normal life-form, possessing the body of a young girl right from the start.

Although she was born as a mimic, capable of transforming her body at will, her figure wouldn't change for the rest of her life. She was a life-form shouldering such a fate.

"Your name is Tu." "Tu."

"Mhm, Tu. Tu the…Tu the Magic. Ha-ha-ha-ha!"

Izick laughed. The freshly born life-form had no idea this laugh was one of scorn, looking down on his ignorant servant.

"First, I'm gonna go ahead and teach you the most important things of all." "Uh-huh…"

"Justice and courage."

She was innately unable to fight because of a defensive response to fear. He had made her that way.

A sadistic heart was unable to stand against an enormous menace like the True Demon King.

For example, it was possible to rephrase things such as justice and courage. "Tu. It was an incredible stroke of luck that you were born, okay? There are

infinite possibilities in this world. All sorts of colors. A world where you can take hold of any future…just as long as you have a just and brave heart. So now, as for what that really means, well…"

Which was precisely why the wickedest of all demon kings taught her about the heart, first and foremost.

Things that he himself, in the past and still now, never once believed in at all.