Hitsugi no Maou

Ash hardened by forgetting to even cough up.

Dust turns his back as he swallows the bread to her as he holds his throat and turns a round, open eye.

"It's relatively easy to cross the border now. Snobba's generals should focus on consolidating their surroundings... and border guard soldiers are also completely detached from the Divine Summoner. Once we cross the border, we shouldn't be able to persevere."

"Wait. I don't know. What are you talking about?

Placing the cup on the floor and stretching his back, Ash throws a voice on the back of the dust.

"You can't cross the border. We're just getting close, and the snobber soldiers are gonna catch us."

"A few days ago, I hear someone tried to cross the border with Doo. It's a traditional Coffin riding animal... outside, there's my Doo shadow. You can take him."

"Wait."

"If you dare to cross the border with the shadows of dogs and deer, you'll be blind. No snobber soldier has a bow. It would be to avoid bickering, but anyway, Doo's mobility would allow him to swing it."

"Wait!

Ash grabbed Dust's shoulder and shouted. To his opponent with his back turned, Ash takes a deep breath and then asks.

"What did you do yesterday when you met a Snobba general? How did you get back safely?

……

"... What do you mean, Coffin will perish in a real way? Hey, Dust."

"What do you think I'm called by the other Coffins?"

Dust twisted his neck and saw Ash from between his white hair.

"It's the Demon King. It is called the second demon king in history, following Rayakels, the demon king of the coffin"

He opened his mouth thinly and shook Ash's hand off, and the dust poured out of the skylight, exposing his hand to the thick columns of light.

Overlaying a fist that swung up to the sun burning the sky, he raised his voice as he stared at it.

"King of demons, king of magicians! Dyed my hands on the most powerful and evil contraindications, the worst blasphemer, that's the Demon King! People feared, disliked, and sincerely wished for the death of me, who studied the secret art of Rayakels, the ancient demon king, and wore it! I am the scourge of Coffin's life. You met and lived with a man like that!

"Hey... hey..."

"Whoever destroys Coffin cannot avoid this confrontation with me either. If we are to rule the country, we must also subjugate the scourge that lurks in the country. That's why I came yesterday to declare war on Snobba's general.

He tore his pride apart, he did harm to the God-caller, and he came running wild like their hatred was coming at me. "

I am the Demon King. If that confession wasn't from a man named Dust, Ash must have thought it was a joke too.

But Ash has seen it the first day he met him.

From among the stone altars, a group of bone hands that emerged in response to the call of dust.

The relic of Rayakels, the Demon King, who unilaterally killed three adventurers.

If they had seen such a dust manipulating a giant mutation that could not be seen as something of the world, it would not have been impossible for the Coffins to recognize him as the Demon King and a fearful natural enemy.

Dust looked back and saw Ash.

"Snobba killed Morg and took the rain from the land. And they are pressing Lucina, Princess Coffin, to submit to conditioning the export of water. If snobbers grasp the right to supply the water that people need to live, this is the end of Coffin. Even if we succeed in water self-sufficiency in the future, by then we will be deprived of all that is essential as a country by snobbers.

Coffin will be Snobba's, eternal homeland. I won't tolerate that as long as I have my life. "

"As long as there is life..."

"I tap snobbers using all the intelligence I have grabbed as the Wisdom of the Royal Coffin and all the witchcraft I have acquired as the Demon King. This has been decided for a long time before you showed up before me... if this house became discovered and pursued by the enemy, I was going to fight the Snobba generals for the last time.

Preparations for this have also been advanced. So... from here on out, it's none of your business. "

You just have to move on to a different future.

In front of the dust that went on, Ash sat down on the floor peppered.

Dust takes a deep breath and says to her as she drops her eyes on the floor and pushes her silence.

"It was bad to keep quiet that we had the means to cross the border. However, I only had one ridden animal bone that was capable of carrying humans enough to cross the border walls even more... and this was what I really needed to see the General. I couldn't have done it to you right away."

……

"I will put all the animal bones I have in your mouth. Stay away from Coffin and flee to some distant country.

Fortunately, there is a bag of Coffin gold in the house... I never got a chance to use it, but even if it rots, it's gold. Exchange it for the currency of another country and it will add to your life. "

So Dust approached the stone kiln where the fire was extinguished, and removed one inner stone, a decoy.

Remove the small box of metal that has turned black from the gaps in the stone and give it to Ash. Ash, turning away, let me open the lid of the small box, and a bag of gold coins did show up from inside.

"... you said you didn't have any gold eyes..."

"I'm sorry. It was a lie."

"... can you win?

To snobbers.

As Ash held a small box in his hand as he asked, Dust erased his expression and opened it for a little while before answering.

"As long as one person's behavior is ridiculous, such as deciding the end of the country. But... at least a few of the idiots at the top of the snob will clean it up."

"Let's run away together."

Ash shaking his voice. But the dust immediately shook his head to the side.

"No. Go alone. I'll stay and fight."

"I can't... I don't see you winning anything at all. Absolutely, you'll die."

"I'm almost dead already"

The dust unraveled the cloth that was wrapped around his palm.

The hand offered to Ash left the wound he put on with a knife intact, the scab barely formed, a muscle of red and black loose body fluid, and he passed his fingers and fell to the floor.

"He cast too many spells yesterday to keep standing. I've weighed in on the use of magic for the last two years... maybe only one or two more times I can fight it. No more of my body."

"... what do you mean?

"I told you before. The use of sorcery, which produces too great an effect, is always required of the operator at some price.

I used too many Rayakels secrets... so my hair turned bright white and my skin color fell out. The human body's life energy is falling out. To the price of blasphemy of death, loss of vitality. It's a fair reward. "

To Dust's words, Ash just stared bluntly at the other person's face in front of him. I thought my hair was white because it came from the beginning. Candle-like coloured skin has a pathological impression, but I even thought it was beautiful and flattering.

I can't believe those were the price for sorcery.

"When I had you knit my hair, I would have answered that I was stretching it because if I cut it, it was going to fall out as it were. My body is shutting down many of the life activities that the human body is naturally carrying out. If the scratches are hard to block, the dirt (or scalp) hardly comes out, and the nails never stretch. My body hair stretches a little, but when it falls out, it doesn't grow.

That's why I didn't want to put a blade on my hair. "

"You're kidding..."

"It's been years since I started using Rayakels magic, but since then, what happens with visible changes in my body like 'metabolism' or 'growth' is almost gone. It's like rotting without old age, a living corpse.

Ash, I'm already in a strange state of living and moving. "

Ash rises off the floor in a slow motion. I stuck a small box of gold coins silently back into the dust staring at myself.

The dust also shuts up again and pushes the box back.

Ash ate up his teeth and continued to reject the box with both hands.

... "It doesn't matter," her mouth says.

"A living corpse is a contradiction as a word, isn't it? If he's alive, he's not a corpse, is he? Hey, dust. If you're that close to a corpse, let's move as far as we can. Maybe you can live with your bones alone. Isn't that the other way around?

"... what?"

Dust dwelt slightly closer to anger in the back of his eyes. But Ash pushes the box back with more intense, undisputed anger all over his face.

"I don't need this, so let's run away together. Otherwise, let me fight with Dust, too. Hey, that's good."

"Ash, don't know..."

"You told me to live!

Ash pulled his hands away from the box and thrust Dust's chest.

Small boxes and gold coins scatter at the foot of a slightly mellow dust.

In the quiet house, only Ash's disturbed breathing sounded bitter.

She puts her hands on her chest, slightly, and breathes deeply.

I vomited words, pompous, to the dust of staring at myself quietly.

"From now on... Dust, it's kind of like... you're making excuses... saying you're a demon king in a big way... that's why you fight snobbers... as if you're not telling me how you feel..."

"You're telling me it's a lie"

"I know you're not lying... but I can't believe I'm really dead because I've become a dead man because I use too much magic... and I think it's absolutely weird"

Ash sees the dust.

"It's kind of like I don't want them to know the real reason I'm fighting snobbers.... The truth is... you want to fight for Coffin in your own country, right? Don't you want to defend your country for your old friends or someone you know in Royal Castle? For that, because you're going to give up your life... aren't you trying to get me away...?

Dust returned his heel (bits) from halfway through Ash's dialogue, leaving the spot to escape a few steps, keeping his head on his back.

He squeaks his grumpy, precious hair, low and low, "stupid".

"I don't deserve that. For the good of the country, for the good of the royal family, for the good of our fellow citizens... I don't deserve to say such heroic things. I always... always, at my own convenience..."

"Oh, I remember"

Dust turns a round peeled eye at Ash, who inadvertently raises his bare voice.

She approaches the dust indefensibly, twirling the universe with her fingers, "Look, that one".

"You promised before. Look, dust past, dust wants stories"

……

"Look, when you went to pick up the Ramlai flowers, you certainly promised. If I could see Morg, he'd talk about Dust's past and Dust's dream. Don't you remember?

Oh, and he finally remembered Dust when he heard that much.

Ash placed his fingers on the shoulder of the dust and raised them to peek down into his face.

"I saw Morg properly. Just the neck, but certainly with these eyes. So now it's Dust's turn to live up to his promise."

"Promise..."

"Tell me everything. Why Dust became the Demon King, why he was put on guillotine, and why he was banished from the king's capital. So, now, why are you trying to fight snobbers? Let me be honest with you. And on top of that, I'm gonna decide whether or not to follow Dust's orders."

"Fool, I'm telling you I won't help you if you stay. The safest way to cross the border is tonight. Tomorrow, things will get tougher."

"If Dust were in my shoes, could you put me down that could die and run away on my own?

Ash turned to the dust that caught his face and told him to plead (cancer).

"Please. You can't just run away without knowing what's going on. If... if you find out it's better for Dust without me, I'll listen."

The dust, which had been silent for a while, eventually curled his hair again and walked out.

To Ash, who turns his anxious gaze, Dust waves the flat hand he returns, saying:

"Follow me. We first met, let's go to the stone altar. There's the answer."