To Your Future — The Two Characters *Demon Lord*

By the time Merea was around fifteen, half the Heroic Spirits had disappeared.

Their lingering regret had been cleansed away, in inverse proportion to Merea's growth.

"You all called me here to make me a hero — but you keep going before I can become one. Almost as if I'm — killing you."

Merea, on his end, found it bittersweet.

"That's wrong, Merea. You are, on the contrary, doing a wonderful thing for them. You are breaking the chain of their lingering regret and revenge. That, having survived past life by their regret, they end up satisfied by something other than that regret — that, in itself, is a truly remarkable thing."

Flander Crow still remained on Lindholm Sacred Mountain.

Fifteen years since Merea, with Flander, had crossed worlds.

Days that read both long and short.

"What is Flander's regret?"

Merea had, deliberately, avoided asking the Heroic Spirits about their regret, one by one.

He had sensed they would tell him if he asked, but did not want to make them recall painful past memory.

But — with the spirits around him gone by half, and no telling when Flander himself would go, Merea had finally lost the patience for it.

"Me? My regret. Hm…"

Flander looked up at the sky, taking the thinking posture.

"— What was it. There is some past scene that comes to mind, but —"

When Merea heard that, his heart leapt.

Flander himself does not, clearly, remember his regret. Was forgetting.

This was the recurring pattern when a Heroic Spirit was about to disappear.

So — Flander, too, would be going soon.

That fact, Merea registered.

"It's all right. I will be watching Merea through to the end."

"— Yes."

For Merea, that was a comfort, but also a source of sorrow.

---

Merea's body was, by the martial-faction Heroic Spirits, steadily forged.

But Merea did not descend Lindholm Sacred Mountain.

At first he had thought of going down to look at the lower world — but he had, at some point, become afraid that going down and coming back, he would find every Heroic Spirit gone, and so could not bring himself to descend.

By that, Merea was missing the chance to weigh his own physical strength on the lower world's scales.

Of those who climbed up to Lindholm Sacred Mountain's summit, none were normal humans.

Climbers themselves were rare; those who did climb were, in the main, monsters who had become strange on having a spirit-body attached to them mid-mountain, or beasts of species apart from human-shape.

And Heroic Spirits, fundamentally, do not have physical form.

By the special action of the sacred-mountain place, some could interfere through formula or briefly take physical form — but as Merea grew and their regret thinned, even that slipped out of reach.

---

On one such day, the giant Heroic Spirit at the head of the martial faction — 〈Tyrant〉 — calling it the final lesson, faced off with Merea.

Tyrant's window for physical form was a mere two minutes.

In that short window of attack and defence, Merea threw Tyrant.

That was the first time — that day — Merea threw Tyrant when Tyrant was at his serious.

"…Strong, you've grown, Merea. To the point where I find it almost bitter to look at — that strong. By that, my own body has thinned. — Damn. What was my wish. Reading it now — perhaps I just wanted somebody to inherit my technique."

Merea had surpassed Tyrant.

That same Merea who had not won once at sparring since beginning, having finally won against Tyrant — Tyrant, on a satisfied face, ruffled his head.

"〈The Hardened Body of the War God (Tyrant Lehal)〉 is my factor. Your body is strong. A sword or two driven into it — you should not register, by any margin. And you have made my body your own. You, moving my body better than I myself, are — without question — strong. If I may ask — be proud of the War God name. That, for me, is gift enough."

"Tyrant…"

"Don't make that face. My factor exists, in your body, properly. I am, always, with you."

"— Yes."

"The soul is one from another world, but you were treated as my son enough that my regret was broken. So — I'll go. Putting strange chains on your shoulders — I'm dropping the idea, after all."

Right after he said it, Tyrant's body, abruptly, thinned. — The spirit-body was disappearing.

In that closing instant, Tyrant thrust his right fist out toward Merea.

Merea immediately closed in and bumped his own fist against Tyrant's.

"— Live well."

"— Goodbye, Old man."

"Hah. Not a bad name."

And so, again, one Heroic Spirit ascended to the heavens.

---

By the heroes' factors, Merea's body had been settled with abnormal vital force.

〈The Hardened Body of the War God (Tyrant Lehal)〉.

〈The Resurrecting Body of the Life King (Myuzel Blue)〉.

〈The Heart of the Death King (Acht Cyrus)〉.

〈The Antibodies of the Plague God (Cyril Sumu)〉.

Beyond those, various Heroic-Spirit traits sat in him.

Those Heroic-Spirit traits were integrated by 〈the Otherworldly (Merea Mea)'s Soul〉.

Merea's soul-capacity was, to the surprise of the Heroic Spirits, unusually wide — and deep.

---

As the Heroic Spirits decreased in number, Merea found himself with more idle time.

Settled into days saturated with training, on the contrary, idle time left him not knowing what to do.

— What to do.

No — what does he, going forward, want to do.

Picking up bits of world-affairs from the 〈Sky Dragons (Teishia)〉 who occasionally visited the summit, he tried imagining how he, going forward, would live this world out — but every attempt stalled mid-thought.

— The feeling of being in this world hasn't sat in.

He had not yet seen the world with his own eyes. He had not skin-touched the lower world where living humans lived. The long stretch lived in a cut-off space was, somehow, the source of this un-anchored feel — that much, he understood.

Days continued of muh-muh-ing his way through it.

One day, in a corner of the sacred mountain, Merea found a strange stone.

A rare stone he had heard of in the Sky Dragon's talk.

— 〈Future Stone (Funas)〉.

Hold the stone for thirty minutes, and the possibility of one's future surfaces on it as text or picture — apparently.

"Patently transparent fantasy, this."

So thinking, he could not not try it.

Merea decided to test the future-sight of a Future Stone.

Merea held still and gripped 〈Future Stone (Funas)〉 for thirty minutes.

Then, looked at the text surfaced on the stone's face.

---

Demon Lord

---

Merea, without missing a beat, hand-chopped the stone in two.

— Phew.

Merea, on a job-done feel, swept his eyes around.

The Heroic Spirits seeing that would be no joke.

— Everyone's raising me to be a hero, and this Future Stone is, frankly, defective.

He took a deep breath, calmed his heart-beat.

Pulling the cold air of the sacred mountain in, he registered another Future Stone nearby and decided to try once more.

— That last one was some kind of mistake.

Holding what was halfway between hope and conviction, he gripped a Future Stone for another thirty minutes.

Demon —

He broke it.

— Strange. That is not how it should be.

The ones who raised him are a hundred Heroic Spirits in total.

He should be a thoroughbred of heroes; this is strange.

For an ordinary person, fine — but coming up the opposite direction is a problem.

— Last. Just one more. Third time's the charm? — Mind, what happens twice happens thrice is also a thing.

Merea's last attempt began.

Demon God

Done in an instant.

— That actually got worse…

Worse than Demon Lord.

He'd at least wanted Lord still in there.

— Absolutely cannot let Flander and the rest see this.

Merea collected the nearby Future Stones, every one, and decided to hide them where the Heroic Spirits would not see.

Future Stones are not, themselves, perfect.

They show only one fragment of a possibility, the talk runs.

Time passing, on a re-try, surely it would turn into 〈Saviour〉, 〈Great Hero〉, that sort of thing. Brave-One would do.

— Even if it's a lie, at the character-level, let it be that. Please.

Merea, internally prostrating, prayed.

---

About a month passed, and —

— By now, the Future Stone's prediction must have shifted. Yes — surely.

Aware that he was a touch impatient, but unable to hold it in, fidgeting.

Praying that the Demon Lord and Demon God characters had shifted, he dug up the hidden Future Stone, confirmed the Heroic Spirits weren't around, and gripped it again.

Thirty minutes.

Hand off.

— Oh — picture, this time.

There was a man, chin propped on his hand, on a large chair set with thorny ornament, a grin on him.

A chair almost like a throne. — Of the vice-tasteful register, by the look.

And, alongside the man, several men and women heads-low.

— Strange. Strange. This — this is, definitely — doing something bad…

Who is he, this man playing the part of the standardised evil Demon Lord.

Snow-white hair, red eyes, a forced — practised-looking — villain-face.

— He looks like me, this one.

Imagination, surely.

For now, Merea hand-chopped the stone. The motion had become quite practised by now.

— Pictures are, slightly, hard to read. Next, by character — please.

Praying, gripping a Future Stone.

Demon-Lord-Lord

— Close! Good, good! That's Demon Lord and Saviour mixed up, surely! — Mind, combined like that lands as Lord of Demon Lords, which is fairly dangerous — Saviour-Lord would have been preferable!

A further attempt looked likely to throw Demon Lord again, so Merea stopped reading futures there.

— W-well — Demon-Lord-Lord still admits a faint hope. Right — onward.

So Merea got himself, by force, to settle.

---

After Merea left the Future-Stone place, there was the sound of someone visiting.

He picked up a Future Stone left where Merea had been crouching, and murmured the characters carved on it.

"— 〈Lord of the Hundred Demons (Hyaku-ma no Aruji)〉, eh."

That was a phrase carved on a Future Stone that Merea, unwittingly, had been standing on.