The Demon's Pelt Someone Made

"Merea — you used 〈Future Stone (Funas)〉, didn't you."

"E-eh?!"

A year since the Future Stone's Demon-Lord-Lord declaration.

Before he registered, the Heroic Spirits remaining could be counted on the fingers.

In all of which, Merea had quietly kept collecting Future Stones and hiding them.

Results were as before — but the primary aim of not letting the Heroic Spirits see the cursed future-picture was, by the hiding, being met. — Should have been.

"Of course. — For reference — what came up?"

"Erm… h-hero?"

But, here, Flander had, evidently, found out.

"Merea — bad at lying, aren't you."

"Yes…"

More precisely — bad at lying to the Heroic Spirits, who were his parents.

To the Sky Dragons that came round on visits, and their small-Sky-Dragon children, he could spin fairy-tales with lies woven in. With Flander, the tongue went heavy.

"Prediction — Demon Lord, came up — yes?"

"Eh!"

The pinpoint precision of the read pulled Merea's voice up.

Watching the reaction, Flander nodded — as I thought — and Merea, finally, gave in.

"H-how did you know…"

"Hah — slight prediction. The prediction had, lately, grown stronger in me. Possibly because of the very recent lower-world story I heard from 〈Sky Dragon〉 Cortista."

"What story?"

Merea, in turn, asked.

"— Lately, in the lower world, the rumour is that 〈Demon Lord Hunting〉 is in fashion."

For an instant, the forlorn expression on Flander's face — Merea did not miss.

"Demon Lord Hunting…?"

"Yes. The smell of it is off. The lower world's nations may be hungrier for power than I had read."

Flander, abruptly, straightened his bearing and said it.

Merea, copying, straightened his posture.

Flander, after a slow breath, on a settled-resolve serious face, began.

---

"That the form 〈Demon Lord〉 shifted from a word indicating a being mighty and the incarnation of evil into a word indicating one who is merely mighty — I touched on, before. Yes?"

"Yes."

Flander, evidently, was about to walk Merea through 〈Demon Lord〉 in detail.

"As that line said — long ago, the word didn't, by any means, point to such a broad class. One who is merely mighty — slightly indiscriminate, no?"

Flander laughed in a troubled way.

"In my early called-a-hero years, Demon Lord still meant a being mighty and the incarnation of evil. But by the time I died, the incarnation-of-evil part had been pared off, and the word had become a tag for one who is merely mighty. The era I lived in was, almost certainly, that transition period."

The transition period.

Why the meaning had shifted that way — Merea, of course, did not know.

As if reading Merea's interior, Flander, in turn, asked.

"For reference — do you have a guess as to why?"

"Mn…"

Merea had several guesses. None of them landed cleanly.

While he hesitated, Flander, time-up, spoke first.

"Because the incarnation-of-evil sort of Demon Lord fell in number. Without anyone noticing, they had stopped being a threat. Tyrants who held both power and a life soaked in vice were, finally, almost all hunted out."

"Good thing, surely."

"Yes — that part."

Flander's smile turned wry.

"But — by that, humans — or, nations — lost their common enemy. And then — with no top-priority common enemy keeping them from turning their weapons on each other, their weapons, gradually, started to shake."

"— Spare me."

Merea, predicting the next bend of the road, said it.

"Complaining to history goes nowhere. — At any rate, by that — inter-state war came into bloom."

A grim story, that.

Merea thought it, plain.

"Around when inter-state war started blooming, the meaning of Demon Lord shifted. Conveniently shifted, for the nations."

"Meaning?"

"They wanted strong power they could use in war."

If one is going to wage a war, and wants to win, one will, naturally, seek power.

Equally — if losing means losing things, losing lives, one will, by the same reason, seek power not to lose.

"For strong power, the answer was Demon Lord. But Demon Lords were almost gone. They had been hunted out."

"Yes."

"At that point, a certain nation turned its eye on a different target."

"Different target?"

"Yes. — Before the incarnation-of-evil Demon Lords had been fully hunted out, the specific cure against them, so to speak, had existed — 〈heroes〉. That was what the nation eyed."

Merea's head spun.

In Flander's line, he could now predict the road history had taken.

"Heroes who had stood against Demon Lords were strong. Not, however, incarnations of evil. On the contrary — the opposite register. Many such heroes, with the Demon Lords gone, lost their role-as-hero, and, on bright spirits, returned to whatever trade each one wished. Some set into commerce; some pushed into formula-research; some opened a dojo to pass on the martial arts they had mastered. Some, with strength to spare, set off into the unknown for adventure. Various heroes, of various kinds. Possibly because of the recoil from fighting Demon Lords, many moved away from fighting."

Eyes on the sky in a fond-recall register, Flander said it.

But that gaze, soon, dropped to the ground.

"Even so — to those heroes, a tragedy came."

Suddenly, into the conversation, an overcast word — tragedy.

"To say it cleanly — that nation that had eyed the heroes fabricated a single hero, and made him a Demon Lord."

"Hah…"

— That kind of thing, I had thought.

Merea could not stop a heavy sigh from leaving him.

"At first, they made the request honestly — cooperate in this war. The hero did not nod. He could find no cause-to-stand-against in the opposing state. So, holding his own pride, he refused to participate. That sort of thing — handle it yourselves on your end. He said it. — But the hero's strength was, for the nation, painfully attractive. He, however, was a hero. Compulsion was no option, and stripping the strength by force was, of course, no option either. With every wall closing, someone said —"

"All we need is a justification."

"And, finally — they fabricated a justification by which they could strip the hero of his strength."

---

"They built him into a Demon Lord, in the incarnation-of-evil sense."

---

"Once it has been done once, it cannot be stopped. That the method worked made it worse. The 〈Demon Lord〉 label, on more and more other heroes' faces, was applied. By that, heroes became the next era's Demon Lords."

A grim story, truly.

The word Demon Lord was, era by era, like a demon's beast-pelt draped over something.

Merea recalled Tyrant's line.

---

— "Something similar will come up. The name will just shift."

---

In fact, worse than what Tyrant had said.

The name does not shift. Which is to say: the curse-laden weight that Demon Lord had accumulated through the prior era now had to be carried by those wrapped in the word in the next era.

The whole root cause may, in fact, be the word Demon Lord itself.

Merea felt that far.

"It repeats, and finally — sense itself goes numb. Even the vice-justification fabrication grew tiresome and was dropped; in the end, Demon Lord shifted into a generic pronoun for one who is merely mighty."

"…"

Hard to nod to. But his nodding or not is not what changes history.

"That loose application of the Demon Lord label is, lately, dropping its bar even further. As the warring-age progresses, the limit breaks. From Sky Dragon Cortista I heard it, and I imagined — an unpleasant future-picture."

That is —

"The picture in which Merea catches that bar, and the moment he descends to the lower world, is named a Demon Lord."

So saying, Flander let a wry smile up.

On that wry smile, several feelings rode.

Self-mockery, or pain-tinged sorrow, or anger.

Beyond the troubled shade, a number of feelings sat there.

"When you descend to the lower world — by the strength of the Heroic Spirits' factors that sit in your body, and by the strength you yourself have built — the 〈Demon Lord〉 label may, possibly, be applied to you."

Right, Merea registered.

And — why Flander's wry smile carried self-mockery, sorrow, anger — he felt he understood. The Heroic Spirits' factors, the phrasing, gave it away.

*— Flander reads it as his fault.

He had thought to make him a hero.

He had done it on the read of good intent.

Even if not a hero, at minimum, he would put strength into him to defend someone. So thinking, he had raised him.

But — that had, in result, paved the road to 〈Demon Lord.〉

Recognising it, in Flander, a self-mock-edge helplessness, a sorrow, and an anger toward the era had risen.

"High-handed, isn't it."

Merea, registering all of it, and not knowing, even so, how to react, answered light.

He had meant I, on my end, don't mind — to put Flander at ease — but his thinking it didn't mean Flander would.

…Likely, no matter what he said from outside, Flander would not let the wry smile drop.

Merea — that, also, was registered.