Demon King and Hero

Volume 9 Chapter 2

Silence descended upon the room.

The demon king and the hero, the Pope and the Creator Gods. How long did they pass in mutual silence? Looking up at the sky, the demon king shouted in his heart,
'Oi, author! Why are you doing this to me?'

Why're you asking me? And enough of those cross-dimensional declarations.
Scowling furiously, the demon king looked to the hero.

"What?"
Looking at the hero that had an expression of the most comfortably curious expression, the demon king closed his eyes.
How would you put it... He felt uneasy. A feeling like he was watching Sermir's character development all over again settled down on the demon king.

"Um... Why don't you want to?"

The demon king's words were shaking slightly, but as if it meant nothing, the hero shrugged her shoulders and said,

"No, I lost just now. As soon as you brought out Endless, you creamed me? And what, 'if you lose the hero's well and truly mine?'"

The hero looked at the demon king with an unamused expression, shook her head.

"Am I an idiot? Staking everything on a fight that I'm guaranteed to lose."

"N, no... You're a hero. In that case..."

"Hm... But if I don't marry you, then my crimes are set? Then, I have to quit being a hero. When have you seen a criminal hero?"

"......"

The demon king shut his mouth. What could he do, the hero was completely steamrolling through right now. Having already beaten the crap out of gods, you'd have thought she'd have shown the utmost limits of just how far anyone could run rampant, but no.

The demon king looked at the hero uneasily and said,

"I, if I don't use Endless will you fight me?"

"Hm? No, I'm scared something else will pop up."

"Th, then what do I have to do to make you fight me?"

Looking at the demon king that seemed about to cry, the hero smiled brightly.

"If you cut off all your arms and legs, destroy your mana source, and get rid of that Endless or whatever then I'll give you a crack."

"That's just telling me to diiiiieeeeee!"

The demon king finally lost it. His sanity, his tears, and his mentality all went kapow!

The demon king's knees hit the ground in his despair. Watching the demon king hold the classic OTL position, the demon god shouted,

"S, stop it! Don't hurt my follower anymore!"

"I never touched him? I just said I didn't want to fight."

"Th, then just fight him!"

"It's not my hobby to get into losing fights."

At the hero's casual words, the demon god pointed at the demon king.

"Fight him already! Look at him! Don't you feel the tiniest bit sorry for him? If even the demon god's taking pity on him, what are you going to do about it!"

Looking on the ashen-white figure in the corner murmuring "Burned... Burned to nothing but ashes..." even if Sermir wasn't the goddess of love and benevolence, she'd still have felt sorry for him.

Looking down from above, the Chief God told the goddess,

"Oi, do something."

"Hey, this is your neighbourhood. Why're you doing this to me?"

"It's turned to this cause you threw some half-assed comments everywhere!"

"No, what's your problem! Everything's gone to the everyone's preferred scenario! And if this was an ordinary story, when the demon king challenges the hero with his magnificent visage, isn't it normal for the hero's heart to go doki doki and accept him?"

"Ha? I told you over God Talk! Normal is a thing of the past! Everything went to custard the moment my daughters came over to the human world! Did you not think of that? This world has long since gone to shit!"

As one Creator to another, the goddess on at the shitstorm that the world's Creator acknowledged as one, and nodded.

"Yep, it is. And therefore I have no responsibility for this!"

"Why!"

"It was already crap to begin with! In my case, all I did was add a tiny bit more sauce to an already ruined dish... Yeah, it's like adding soy sauce to fried kimchi rice that was too spicy because too much kimchi(1) was added to begin with!"

"That's an unfixable error! No, before that, don't make comparisons with things that the others can't eat! Our place doesn't even have kimchi!"

"Holy, no kimchi. Rural backwater."

"Says the backwater that doesn't have magic!"

"Ha, a backwater without Lol?"

"... Fair enough. My neighbourhood's a rural backwater."

And thus in the world acknowledged as a fucked up rural backwater by the Chief God, the hero sighed and turned back to the demon king.

"Look at that, even the gods are like that. The Creator to boot. So why on earth do I have to protect the world?"

The hero had already reached enlightenment of the world. Having once protected the country carrying justice in her heart and protecting the weak, those were now all in the past.

As the hero snorted and everyone else were staring blankly at her, the white ash in the corner that was the demon king realized something.

'World = fucked. Hero = protects the world. If the world is fucked, there's no reason for the hero to protect it, and the hero is no longer a hero. Then, she has no reason to fight me anymore, and any thoughts of marriage are completely off!

In that case.

With an intense light in his eyes, the demon king stood up. A degree of vigour that even the hero flinched at! And channeling his energy, the demon king aimed a sinister smile at the hero and shouted,

"From this moment onwards, I, Greed, on my name as a demon king!"

The hero had no reason to fight him.

Then, then!

"On behalf of the demons, I declare war on the human world!"

'You just need to make a reason to fight!'

And so the human world's greatest crisis approached.

***

Author's Notes:

Human world: What did we do.

Demon world: What did we do.

Demon soldier: Wait, what. I've only got a month left on my service. Invasion of the human world! Emergency summons!

Author: Damn hero, I'll acknowledge it. Just marry already. Let's end this

Readers: What is he smoking now.

Translator's Notes:

(1) The staple side dish of (practically) all Koreans, a spicy fermented cabbage(i)dish. Looks something like this: