The Demon Lord Inside the Armour

He was still at the far end of the corridor, watching Merea — the armet hiding his whole head, shoulders pulled in.

Tall and slender unlike Aiz — but his bearing, taken alone, read almost as a small animal's.

Foot still on the windowsill, Merea hesitated for several seconds, unsure what to do.

Then, of all people, it was Aiz who moved first.

"Ah — Shira-chan."

She had followed Merea's gaze and turned, spotting him peeking out from the far end of the corridor. The moment she saw him, she spoke.

There was an easy familiarity in the way she called over — the kind of tone you'd use running into a friend on the street.

The bond between the two of them, evidently, ran deeper than his own — Merea sensed that much in the moment.

"An acquaintance of yours? — Look, even I know calling her that at this point doesn't quite fit."

"Yes. He's saved me, more than once."

On the battlefield, no doubt.

Looking back, he could remember seeing that conspicuous full plate beside Aiz several times. While the rest of them tended toward attack, this one might have been a Demon Lord who deliberately took the shield role.

"Wait — …chan?"

"Yes? Shira-chan is a girl, you know?"

"…"

Merea cradled his head and quietly chewed himself out.

All this time, he'd been calling her he.

He could plead her never having shown her face or her skin as the excuse — but no, the one in the wrong was him.

— Wait. I've actually called her he out loud, more than once.

And while he was at it — taking Shira for a man, he'd thrown a few Salman-style jabs her way.

— Yeah. Definitely.

As the memory hit, Merea turned toward her, squared his toes, and slowly began to bend his knees.

Aiz and Shira cocked their heads watching him — then, a beat late, realised this was heading straight into a full prostration.

"—!"

Before Aiz could stop it, Shira was already running down the corridor, armour clattering as she came. The pressure of it was tremendous, even for a sprint toward an apology.

"All this time — taking you for a man — how shallow of me — how shallow — when I finally reach the Empyrean the female Heroic Spirits are going to beat me to a pulp—"

Reaching him at last, she caught Merea's shoulders mid-grovel and shook her head hard. The armet scraped against the join with the gorget at the motion, ringing again.

"F-, forgive me…"

By the look of him, Merea was fiercely sorry for every minute of it.

Then —

"It's, fine."

A muffled voice came back from behind the armet.

A woman's voice — no mistaking it. Even muffled, the timbre carried clean and cool; you could tell at once it would be beautiful unimpeded.

"It's my fault, for never taking it off."

Something in the way she clipped her syllables short reminded him of Aiz.

So Merea — shoulders held by a stranger in full plate, eye-to-armet in a rather strange situation — noticed she had a next motion coming and waited quietly for it to play out.

She was lifting the armet off.

"Keeping it on forever isn't fair to everyone else, either."

The phrasing could read as curt; to Merea it came across less as cold than as someone bad with words.

While he thought it, she finally pulled the helmet free.

From under the thick silver armet, what emerged was —

"—"

Unmistakably a woman. No mistaking it. She was that beautiful.

"D-don't look at me so directly…"

Embarrassed under his stare, she dropped her gaze to a corner of the floor.

"—"

Merea still couldn't speak.

The healthy bronze of her skin held his eye in spite of himself. Glossy cherry-pink hair stood in sharp contrast against it — his gaze refused to leave.

And above all — high on the crown of her head — were cat-like ears, twitching in apparent embarrassment.

That did it; he froze completely.

"…C-cat ears…?"

The line slipped out before he could stop it; her cheeks reddened again.

For someone with a tall, graceful build, she was unexpectedly shy down to the bone.

---

"Th-this is—"

Her eyes flicked left and right, hopelessly flustered.

Then, as if to rescue her, Aiz spoke up from beside.

"Shira-chan is — that sort of family."

It clicked for Merea on the spot.

Family was almost certainly Aiz softening it. Without the softening —

"That sort of… Demon Lord."

That came not from Aiz but from Shira herself.

Her gaze was still on the floor, but the words came out clean.

"I — see."

He understood.

And — recalling that a similar type had been among the Heroic Spirits who raised him — the understanding settled deeper.

— Same lineage as 〈Dragon God Karel Nusa〉.

Those who had tried to become something more than human.

In truth, he himself carried that influence. The reason he could speak Dragon Tongue at all was the 〈Evolving Genes of the Dragon God〉 he had inherited from Karel — that factor had reshaped a piece of his biology to make it possible.

The 〈Dragon God Karel〉 had been a magnificent idiot who tried to become an actual dragon on adoration alone. His peerless talent, along the way, ended up extracting the dragon's essential property: the bio-evolution factor itself.

— An idiot, and a relentlessly earnest hero.

Merea didn't doubt the 〈Dragon God〉 had been a hero. There were real reasons behind his longing to become a dragon.

But neither did he doubt the man had been a fool in many senses.

Genius and fool, a hair apart — Karel had walked that line on both feet.

The other Heroic Spirits, hearing his stories, used to double over laughing: give an idiot overwhelming talent and a bottomless sense of justice, and this is what you get.

In any case — given all that, it didn't feel strange that others might have tried to put non-human capabilities into their own bodies.

— And she —

"Same as me."

There was common ground.

What had her ancestor tried to become? Almost nothing about her was clear yet.

And yet — even now, there was a little Merea could guess.

He looked her over again. The thick armet she wore to hide from outside eyes. The metal armour that wrapped the rest of her body without a gap. The way she dropped her gaze, as if afraid of being looked at.

Behind each of these — odd enough to call eccentric — sat something heavier. Surely she had suffered because of it. Because she had been born under a Demon Lord blood she couldn't do anything about.

"Still — much more than mine —"

The words slipped out on impulse. Spoken with no calculation — just straight feeling, a thought that had risen in his chest at the sight of her.

"Cute, those ears."

A small smile crossed Merea's face, and he reached up and touched the beast-ears at the top of her head.

Same colour as her glossy cherry-pink hair, but a different texture entirely. Soft, downy, pleasant under his fingers.

"Eh?"

She looked startled at what he'd just done.

"Ah, w-wait — that t-tickles, maybe…"

"Wha—! Sorry! Reflex! No — no second meaning! Don't blush like that, it's going to look like I did something awful—!"

Beside him, Aiz had turned away and was laughing. Merea noticed.

— Surprisingly steely, that one.

His flailing must have been that funny.

He cut a side-eye at her and turned back. Pulled himself together. Spoke again.

"You wear the armour because you don't want the ears seen?"

"Y-yes…"

She answered head a little down, a self-mocking edge surfacing in her smile.

"Right… Rough."

Merea was careful never to say over something like that.

Pain like that — only the person carrying it knows what it is. So he didn't push the words.

— Even so.

"If anything ever comes up, come to me."

"Eh?"

"I'm interested in everyone's story. If there's ever anything you want to talk about, come find me."

That said — he had no intention of giving up on the trying-to-understand side of it.

"—!"

"H-, hey?! Did I just say something?!"

At his words, she finally looked Merea in the eye.

His red eyes — kind, gentle-lit — reflected back at her.

She froze as she looked into them, then abruptly her eyes welled.

Merea, flustered at the sight, looked to Aiz for rescue. Aiz only laughed.

"Th-thank, you."

"Y-yeah — well, I am everyone's master, after all."

"Only times like this you use it as an escape, hm?" — Aiz's light teasing, sailing in from the side.

"Who—! Who excavated Aiz's talent for banter?! …Mostly us, I guess."

"And Marisa-san, and Shaw-kun?"

"I mean — most of the Demon Lords talk crooked anyway, by birth or by background…"

That said — Aiz's banter didn't push for Shaw's all-in conviction. Hers had the charming, deliberate staginess of a child mimicking an actor's lines.

"Um —"

"Mm?"

Mid-exchange with Aiz, the woman in front of him finally found her words. Cherry-pink hair lifting in the candle-light, she met Merea's eyes again and said —

"Shiradis. My name — is 〈Shiradis〉."

"Ah — come to think of it, I never asked your name. Pretty wild in retrospect…"

An odd lot we are, he added briefly to himself, then came back to it.

A playful colour kindled in the red eyes, and he went on.

"I'm Merea. Merea Mea."

"Yes. I know. Merea."

"Right then — actually, calling you Shira-chan would have Marisa side-glancing about I, too loud enough I'd hear it across the hall, so — let's go with Shiradis."

"Yes. That's fine."

Shiradis said it, and stood.

Taller than him. Truly — anyone would have taken her for a man on the height alone, without being told.

But at the neck — where lifting the armet had let a sliver of her body show — there was none of a man's blunt build. The full plate made her look outsized; underneath, her body was slim and graceful — lithe in the womanly way.

That she could run in heavy plate like this with that build —

— That's her factor.

Plainly — the factor that earns her the Demon Lord tag.

"— 〈Beast God〉."

"Mm?"

"My ancestor's title."

— A God-tier title.

The way she said it — caught somewhere between shyness and a faint flinch of aversion — let the understanding settle clean into his gut.

"Right."

That peerless strength in a slender build was almost certainly tied to her line's title.

"That part too — when you feel like it, tell me. No rush."

Of course, part of him wanted to know sooner. It would be easier to plan operations as the 〈Sword (Mea-Ne Emelie)〉 with that information in hand. But it wasn't a thing to ask at the cost of bending her will. If that were the cost, he'd cover the gap himself.

— Which is what makes me an idealist, yes.

Even teasing himself about it, he had no intention of breaking the policy.

"Right — anyway, it's late, and Marisa's about to finish her last cleaning round and come back up, so I'd better hurry to my room—"

Marisa was maid to Merea and Aiz, and effective head housekeeper of Star-Tree Castle. After every banquet she cleaned and checked the common spaces the Demon Lords had used.

When she was finished, she'd finally head back to her own room. Her room was on the fourth floor, directly below Merea's. Which meant she'd take the stairs. Which, in turn, meant she might run into him right here.

Merea read the situation, threw a parting word at Aiz and Shiradis, and made for the windowsill at speed. Head turned over his shoulder to the two of them, feet aimed at the window.

And —

"Right, then —"

"'Right, then' — and where, may I ask, do you intend to be going? This is not a stairway."

"…"

Catching the cold voice from the very direction of the window he was about to step out of, Merea turned that way slowly — with all the grace of a rusted iron door swinging on its hinge.

"H-, hi."

"Hi will not do. Trying to climb the Great Star-Tree branches up to the fifth floor again, were we?"

Marisa was standing there. Somehow already ahead of him, on the branch outside the window.

"Wasn't, wasn't. The window — the view, you see — I was just going to look — yes?"

"Then what is the foot in the air for?"

"This is — er —"

Merea's internal alarm was howling at him to run. By the look of it, the excuse route was not available.

"Could it be — that foot aimed in my direction — that I am, in fact, allowed to lick?"

"S-stop—!"

"— A jest."

"There was a pause before that line…"

Out on the Star-Tree branch, Marisa held a pure-white-gloved hand to her mouth and waved the other in an oh, you gesture so flatly performed it didn't even read as acting.

That much for the motion. The eyes weren't particularly laughing.

On her unblemished pale face, the bewitching purple eyes carried a strangely heated regard, fixed on Merea's foot.

"We'll take the stairs!"

"That should have been the plan from the start."

Marisa nodded as Merea turned on his heel — and the faint flicker of something almost regretful that crossed her face was caught by Aiz and Shiradis, and no one else.