The Demon Lord Given the Title of God

A storm was raging at Merea's back.

A wind tinged faintly white.

"Strike the sky—"

The raging white wind began to converge, gathering onto his back as if it had been told where to go. As if the wind itself were alive.

"〈Six Wings of the Wind God (Van Ester)〉."

The words went unheard by anyone in particular. They were caught up by the wind and lifted into the sky.

---

White… wings of wind.

The 〈Fist Emperor〉 found himself staring.

The enormous wings of wind that had unfolded from Merea's back were sweeping up the snow piled along the slope and pulling it in around him. Inside the six wings, light glittered like diamond dust.

The instant the wings finished forming —

Merea's body accelerated again.

White lightning. White wind-wings.

A thunderclap and a gale.

The white-haired man, wrapped in both, was the very picture of nature's fury.

"Hey, hey — he's still going faster…?"

The 〈Fist Emperor〉 wore the half-smile of a man overmatched by what he was looking at. The voice carried disbelief on the surface, but underneath it, something feverish.

The six wings weren't really for flight. They were thrust. Less flapping than detonation — bursts of wind off his back hurling him forward.

He was already half a blur. And that blur was catching up to the golden ship.

Whatever slow-motion fog the 〈Fist Emperor〉 had been stuck in was gone now.

"Grab on!!"

He thrust out a hand.

Something met it.

"There!"

And finally, the 〈Fist Emperor〉 hauled Merea aboard.

The aftershock of the six wings burst through the inside of the hull.

"Whoa! The wind — my eyes! My eyes!!"

"Eep! Hey! My hair's gone all over the place!"

"Now, now — let's just be glad everyone's in one piece."

The Demon Lords were tumbling about inside the ship, kicking up a noisy chorus. The golden ship had reached a speed past description.

The Mūzeg infantry that had been closing in from the rear was thoroughly left behind.

And the twins were still laughing — kya-kya — as they kept the ice path unspooling beneath them.

Faster still.

The slope was scraping the bottom of the hull with a coarse grinding, but the ship was holding up. Built solid enough.

"The power of gold is mighty!" came Shaw's voice. The 〈Fist Emperor〉 ignored it.

"Oi. You all right?"

He glanced over at Merea.

Merea had rolled all the way to the far end of the hull, and was now banging his head against the side wall with each new shock the ship took. Twice. Three times.

"Ow…!"

He was clutching the spot, looking pained — apparently his pain receptors were perfectly normal. After a combat performance like that, you started to wonder whether he was the same species as you. Apparently he was.

Eventually Merea righted himself, rubbing his head, and lifted a hand toward the 〈Fist Emperor〉 in an I'm fine sort of gesture.

The smile on his face could have been self-mockery, or just rueful. Hard to tell.

"You saved me. I almost ate it at the worst possible moment."

"Scared the hell out of me. Took years off my life. — And, hey, if you've got that thing in your back pocket, why didn't you just lead with it?"

"Wouldn't fit, in a space that tight. And after seeing that many Mūzeg troops, I wanted to keep some magic back in reserve. We have no idea what's waiting once we're off the mountain."

"Ahh. …Yeah, fair. You're so off-the-charts about everything else, I forgot the basics. Mana, huh. Body-stored type — running dry's a real problem, then."

He'd normally have caught that on his own. The fact that Merea had to point it out to him said something. He realised, as he chewed on it, that the combat high hadn't worn off yet.

He was riding out the next jolt and trying to fish out a sentence that wouldn't come, when Merea spoke first.

"Ah — I never asked your name, did I."

"Hm? — Right. I'm the Demon Lord who carries the 〈Fist Emperor〉 title. The name's Salman."

He answered with the air of huh, you're right, I never said.

"Salman, huh. Cool name. I'm—"

"Merea, right? I remember."

Cut off mid-introduction by Salman's grin, Merea scratched the back of his head, faintly embarrassed.

"…Yeah. Thanks for the lift up, Salman."

"Sure thing."

Salman opened his hand and held it up beside his face, palm out. Waiting for something.

Merea didn't catch the cue at first. After a beat, he did — and a delighted grin broke across his face as he met Salman's palm with his own.

A sharp clap rang out, echoing off the inside of the hull. Even over the grinding of the ship on the slope, it carried clean.

The Demon Lords inside the ship turned toward Salman and Merea. Their faces had relaxed.

All twenty-two of them — safe, here, accounted for.

Then someone crawled forward through the shaking, unsteady, and spoke up.

"Convenient thing about men, isn't it. Bond off the vibe of the moment, just like that."

It was 〈Flame Emperor〉 Lilium.

She'd been watching the high-five with her hair sticking out in every direction, and there was a touch of envy in the line.

"You look like some kind of red shaggy monster."

"You really do."

"…What?"

"Eep—"

Realising at last that his own wind-wings were the reason Lilium's red hair was a wreck, Merea let out a small, involuntary squeak under the force of her glare.

"—Fine, whatever. You did just save me, and we're not exactly safe yet, so I'll bring this up later."

"You are still going to bring it up, then."

"A woman's hair is her life."

"Whatever, the power of gold isn't enough!! More!! I need more gold-shine — aaaaaahhhhh!!"

Shaw's manic wail rose above everything else and rang through the inside of the golden ship.

---

…So this is my first time outside.

Everyone returned to bracing against the swaying of the ship. Sliding down a mountainside in a boat was strange enough that none of them were dropping their guard yet.

In the middle of it, Merea was thinking.

I didn't think my journey out would start like this.

A combat opening was hardly ideal. But it had at least made up his mind for him.

He stuck his head out of the window one last time and looked up at the peak of the Sacred Mountain of Lindholm — by now barely visible.

A snowstorm had laid layered curtains across the summit, hiding it in a white haze.

But somewhere through that haze, Merea thought he could see a hundred figures.

Surely an illusion.

But the illusion was waving.

…Yeah.

He chose to believe it, in the end.

This was the Sacred Mountain of Lindholm. A strange place where the dead could still do things. A wave goodbye from up there was nothing.

Goodbye, everyone. I'm going.

He'd kept the look on his face quiet, but most of the other Demon Lords had noticed.

They knew, by now, that the summit was Merea's home. They hadn't believed it at first, but having seen what Merea was, they did now. And they could guess that the graves up there held something dear to him — they'd seen his reaction when Mūzeg's spell-soldiers' 〈White Light Cannon〉 had clipped them.

But Merea wasn't saying any of it aloud. So they read his silence and chose theirs.

For a little while, they made themselves as quiet as they could, hoping his sentiment might soften, and let the swaying gold hull carry them down.

---

The hundred heroic spirits, kept in this world by the weight of their regrets.

The man raised by those hundred — Merea Mea.

The man born to be a hero, who on that day set out on a journey alongside those known as Demon Lords.

After the events at the Sacred Mountain of Lindholm, Merea Mea was formally recognised as a 〈Demon Lord〉 by the Kingdom of Mūzeg.

When a Demon Lord is recognised, they are assigned a title — something to set them apart from the others, and to capture, in a phrase, their style of combat or their nature.

The title given to Merea Mea was 〈Demon God〉.

This was, in the present age, exceedingly rare.

A Demon Lord's title carries, loosely, a hierarchy of strength.

〈Demon〉. 〈King〉. 〈Emperor〉. 〈God〉.

〈God〉 is the highest. 〈Demon〉 the lowest.

If you set aside titles inherited from older eras, very few of those styled Demon Lord today carry a God-title. The reason is simple: Demon Lords today are, more often than not, the hunted. The hierarchy is a measure of strength — and, from the hunters' side, a rating of how dangerous a target is. There aren't many Demon Lords left whose threat warrants the God-tier.

And yet, in this age, Merea was given precisely that.

The recognition leaned heavily on the testimony of Mūzeg's spell-corps — the men who had actually faced him — and they had filed for the God-title without hesitation.

What had shaken them most was this: their joint formula, requiring multiple practitioners working in concert, had been traced in an instant by a single man — and then, more impossibly still, reversed and turned back against them.

Spell-cancellation by reverse formula was the signature art of the man once said to stand at the apex of all spellcasters: the former hero 〈Technique God〉 Flander Crow.

What Merea had done was, by reputation, no less than what the 〈Technique God〉 himself had been capable of. And, more chillingly still, where the 〈Technique God〉 had been a pure spellcaster, Merea was equally formidable in close combat.

Looking at him through the lens of a Demon Lord's specialty, neither 〈Technique God〉 nor 〈War God〉 quite fit.

At first, no one was sure what to call him.

In the end — they settled on 〈Demon God〉. A title for a strength that fit no single category.

Later, taking after his snow-white hair, some came to call him 〈White God〉 as well. But it's said no title ever described Merea quite like 〈Demon God〉.

---

And so Merea, first of all, came to be officially called a 〈Demon Lord〉 by the Kingdom of Mūzeg.

---

The man who would, in time, transcend the title system entirely and be called by the unique epithet 〈Lord of the Hundred Demons〉 — his life as a Demon Lord began here.

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