Demon Lord

〈Violent Emperor〉 Marisa's ancestors were minor border-region nobles of the kind one finds anywhere.

A weak house, near enough to the fallen-aristocrat category that the term would have fit; even so, no major misfortune had befallen them. Together with the small remnant of their tenants, they had managed, somehow.

That changed when a war broke out near the Catastrov estate.

They were swept into it.

The Catastrov house of the time had no means of resisting a war; the tenants were in the same position.

In the end, the lands were trampled almost to total death. The tenants, the lord — all ascended to the 〈Empyrean〉. What was left were the young first-born of the Catastrov family and a bare handful of surviving tenants.

But that first-born child changed the Catastrov family's history.

Raised carefully by the surviving tenants, he then, alone, brought down the country that had killed his clan and his tenants.

The country was not particularly large, granted. Even so, that he, single-handedly, put down both of the states involved in that war was, in plain terms, the deed of a monster.

Once or twice in an age, a person born with talent so far beyond ordinary that they read as chosen by a god changes history alone. He was one of those.

And by that act, he came to be called 〈Violent God〉.

After his revenge was done, however, he never raised his fists again.

It was as if he were satisfied with everything; he stepped back from combat, the records say.

The Violent God, on the strength of that more-fictional-than-fiction event, stayed as material for stories and showed up in many records.

That his combat had been that single instance — a single moment in a long age — meant the stories around him collected an enormous amount of decoration. Even so, the more dedicated researchers managed, in his lifetime, to find their way to him and beg for the secret of his power.

He never disclosed it.

The line he repeated when scolding the more obstinate visitors survives in identical form across several records.

"My power is a power for the weak. To people like you, who already have sufficient strength from the start — it is unnecessary."

He passed the secret only to his own son before he died.

The instruction passed alongside it: if your clan and tenants are oppressed again, use it.

Marisa was the descendant of that Violent God's line.

There were no longer any tenants.

But Marisa was a girl who was being tortured by that Violent God's power.

Marisa, alone, knew the meaning of his line.

"A power for the weak" — only she knew what her ancestor had meant.

---

"You must not use it, Merea-sama. With strength like yours, who, exactly, is going to stop it. — You've only just opened the Demon Gate, I think. You absolutely cannot go past that."

Marisa was looking him in the eye, dead serious.

Eyes wide, conviction on her face, both her hands gripping his to hold him back.

"That is a power for the weak. If a person who doesn't actually understand themselves to be weak uses it, they will, without exception, lose their reason. That's the kind of power it is."

The world had read the Violent God's power for the weak line as humility.

It was not humility.

The Violent God was, almost certainly, a man considerably weaker than the average human.

The bespoke spiritual art he had developed for himself was, to a normal human, poison.

Marisa knew the suffering of that poison.

"Even I lose reason once I open the Emperor Gate. That's why I sought you. Someone stronger than me. — I thought you would stop me."

Merea looked at her, quietly, while she pleaded.

"That is why — please, Merea-sama. That power should not be used by the strong."

"I'm weak. I had a real felt sense, especially at first, of being weaker than the inhabitants of this world."

Merea answered, finally.

"That's why this spiritual art was the first thing I was taught. Back when I still didn't know strength."

The phrase the inhabitants of this world gave Marisa a flicker of confusion, but she set that aside; it didn't matter just now.

"And —"

— Merea continued.

"I don't know how to open the Demon Gate alone. Or the King Gate alone. Or the Emperor Gate alone."

A bad premonition.

Marisa had had it from the moment she'd learned of his no interim tendency in his formula-handling. The ten minutes, and the I have a way to limitedly overturn my weakness — those had pulled it tight.

It hadn't looked, until then, as if Merea had been holding back.

If on top of that, he was going to overturn his weakness — there was only one way.

Exceed the limit.

And Marisa knew, intimately, that there was a method for that.

The very method passed down in her own clan: the Spiritual Art of Violence.

A limit-breaking technique that strips every restriction from the body. Self-destruction an inevitable feature.

It draws every faculty the creature has out, full, and on top of that lays down a reinforcement that can, at the limit, tear the soul apart.

Four gates.

Like the Demon Lord title-hierarchy: starting at Demon and ending at God.

Each gate, opened in sequence, raises the strength of the art.

Across generations, the Catastrov family received its Violent title based on how far the gates went.

〈Violent King.〉 Marisa's mother had reached the King Gate.

〈Violent Demon.〉 Her grandmother had reached only the Demon Gate.

And Marisa had talent.

〈Violent Emperor.〉 Marisa reached the Emperor Gate.

More precisely —

— at a certain interval, the Emperor Gate opens of its own accord.

The phrase she had once given Salman: 〈Violent Emperor Period.〉

That was the symbol of Marisa's suffering.

To be exact: of all the descendants since the founder, no one but the original 〈Violent God〉 had ever reached the God Gate. Even the Emperor Gate, on opening, was already terrifying enough.

"Surely not —"

Marisa's eyes widened further at Merea's reply. The blood drained from her face again.

"I open the gates all the way to the God Gate, in one step. So I can't pull off the dexterous trick of opening, say, just the Demon Gate, the way Marisa can."

Merea, having looked at Marisa earlier, had read intuitively that she was using the Violent God's spiritual art.

"Y- your reason —"

Marisa had known since childhood that her own reason snapped at the Emperor Gate.

She had been born with both rare talent for the Violent God's art and a strong native gift, and the combination tortured her.

Without an awareness of being weak, one cannot hold reason at the limit-break.

The Catastrov family had passed that maxim down for generations. The line itself was clear; the content under it was abstract enough that, with time, the underlying principle had been lost. The technique had been built by a single genius, and the recovery of its theory had not progressed.

On top of that, there were children — Marisa among them — who manifested the art without being taught.

It had, finally, slipped out of the family's hands.

"It's all right. It took time. But I was taught directly. By Curza."

Marisa envied him. If she had been able to, she too would have liked to meet the 〈Violent God (Curza Catastrov)〉.

"He asked me to do this."

"…Eh?"

Merea, gently, set a hand on Marisa's head.

The hair was black and the air around him different, but the expression was unmistakably Merea's.

"Curza regretted leaving the Spiritual Art of Violence behind. I think he realised, after the fact, that his descendants might end up where Marisa is now. He worried. So he said this to me: if my children are suffering because of this art, save them."

"The Violent God — himself?"

But — that, at the same time, meant that one had to be able to stop a wielder of the Spiritual Art of Violence with strength exceeding theirs. Half-strength wouldn't do.

"So I learned it too."

I feel like I'm doing the same thing in the end. But you'll be the last.

Merea remembered the apology-without-end Curza had repeated.

And Merea —

"It wasn't unwelcome, in fact. I was glad to know Curza's descendants were still alive — and to be able to help them was a way to repay Curza for raising me. I took it on, gladly."

"You're… an idiot. Do you know what kind of power this is…"

"I know. That, of all things, I've kept aware. — But it's all right."

Marisa's face dropped.

A heat had risen to her eyes that wouldn't let her keep it up.

She felt — for the first time — that her suffering had been understood by someone outside her family.

That her ancestor was still watching her — she felt a small impulse to curse him, but in the same beat felt a strange happiness too.

The mix overflowed; tears welled up.

The warmth of Merea's hand on her head was, in that moment, the greatest mercy she had ever received.

When she at last lifted her face, set —

— behind the man with the gentle expression, on his back —

— she felt she could see her ancestor.

She had never seen his face. Yet — he was inside Merea, watching her.

---

Merea, gently picking up the drops at the corner of Marisa's eye on a fingertip, was thinking back to a line of Flander's.

"There can no longer be a universal hero. — Or perhaps there never could be one. At minimum, the heroes of this present age are far more diversified, far more subdivided, than they were before. A hero to one country is a Demon Lord to a country at war with that one. The age has come to a point where that kind of thing happens often."

That had been right.

Meeting Hasim, meeting Serius, the line had landed in him with full weight.

He had thought he understood it in the head. Meeting the men trying, each in their own way, to live in this fierce torrent had given the line solid ground.

He had also seen the savagery of the current.

Flander, almost certainly, had pushed his way through that exact savage current with his own conviction in his hand.

"— You really were something else."

He himself, perhaps, would not be able to look at the world with as gentle an eye as Flander had.

Even after his own allies had poisoned him, Flander had still tried to talk them round. Frighteningly kind. Flander himself, as a heroic spirit, used to mock himself for it —

"I do carry the regret that I couldn't truly persuade them, and the regret that I didn't catch the poison — but for the way I lived, there's no regret."

— but he had said this too.

Was there any other human who, having become a spirit, could still say that.

"I may not be able to be that kind."

But —

"I, on my own end, will at least take responsibility for the way I choose to live."

He did not intend to copy Flander.

Flander hadn't wanted him to. He would have come to that on his own, told or untold.

So — he had decided.

Merea sent his red eyes toward the distant Serius.

"If that is what a hero is to you, then —"

---

"— I'll be your Demon Lord."

---

But the weight the world had piled onto that word was, itself, in the way.

Tyrant had pessimistically said they'll just put another name on you eventually. If the word itself could really be changed, though, it ought to be — at least the accumulated grudge underneath it might thin.

Even so, Demon Lord had been used for hundreds of years. It probably wasn't going to disappear.

So —

"I'll change it."

Mock me if you want.

Deny it if you want.

You — who called Flander's preposterous way of life a failure — would, no doubt.

I have decided, even so, to walk this road.

---

"I will change what the word Demon Lord means."

---

I'll keep wearing this name on purpose.

I'll act, while wearing it — and through that, change what it means.

I will set myself, head-on, against several hundred years of accumulated history.

"That is my dream on the battlefield — and at the same time, my dream outside the battlefield."

A wish above both of those frames.

A dream broad enough to cover everything.

That was, now, Merea Mea's guiding compass.

In this moment, in name and in fact — he became a Demon Lord.