"Rivale — confirm there are no stragglers," Fíliya said.
It was a formality, really. She already knew the answer. But she asked anyway.
"Naturally." Rivale's reply came without hesitation.
Then let's begin.
Fíliya had always been a person of singular purpose. And her current role, as she defined it, was dictator of the Demon Race.
As a dictator, she had no obligation to explain herself to the lower-ranking demons below — and no interest whatsoever in sparing a thought for their feelings.
Besides... she had already gone to considerable lengths to reduce the suffering this magic would cause, whittling it down to something they could theoretically survive.
If some of them couldn't endure it anyway — well. Dead was dead.
Fíliya cut off the thought and, without further ceremony, unleashed the terminal virus upon the crowd below.
She had, after all, successfully replicated Tot's terminal virus magic. But her improved version was a far cry from Tot's original — its lethality had been drastically reduced. It was no longer the wide-scale mass-destruction spell Tot wielded. Instead, it had been repurposed into something else entirely: a magic designed specifically to reshape the physiology and psychology of the Demon Race.
The mechanism was simple enough in principle. The terminal virus's innate corrosive and destructive properties were the engine. To that engine, Fíliya had added one small component: the capacity for reconstruction.
Break it down, then build it back up. Destruction first. Creation second.
The effect was immediate. Even with the toxicity diluted many times over, the moment the terminal virus reached them, every demon below erupted in a chorus of agonized screaming that shook the air.
Hss... that's grating.
Fíliya winced at the shrill, piercing wails. Several hundred demons were simultaneously spitting mists of blood, their dissolved limbs dragging uselessly behind them as involuntary nerve spasms wracked their bodies. For a moment, even she felt vaguely nauseated — though that, too, was a testament to the peculiar genius of Tot's magic.
Under normal circumstances, a demon that was killed simply disintegrated into ash. No corpse. No blood. Clean.
But under the terminal virus's corrosion, they left bodies behind. Horrifically intact ones.
Within just a few minutes, the plaza Fíliya had cleared before the Demon King's Castle — large enough to hold several hundred — was carpeted in a thick, glistening layer of blood.
"...Hell probably looks something like this," Solitär murmured at her side, unable to suppress a slight furrow of her brow.
Aura had already closed her eyes entirely.
"Hell? Please. This is the diluted version," Fíliya said, sounding almost offended on Tot's behalf. "If I hadn't pulled Tot out when I did, this is what the human world would have looked like. Except on a continental scale."
"Now that would have been a truly spectacular hell — the entire continent drowning in blood."
Fíliya said it with open satisfaction, then quietly silenced the screaming below with a muffle-field.
"It really would have been," Solitär agreed, her tone pensive rather than impressed. "If Tot's terminal virus had never been contained — if it had truly spread across the whole continent — it would have been enough to wipe out every living thing. I hadn't imagined the so-called 'Demon Race's final trump card' would be that terrifying."
"Oh? Weren't you and Tot old acquaintances? You didn't know?"
"No, I genuinely didn't. The previous Demon King who gave the order — to have Tot go into hiding and quietly spread the virus — probably couldn't have imagined either just how far Tot could take it."
Solitär said it with a quiet note of something like awe.
And the subject of their conversation — the terrifying existence who held in her hands the power to end the world — was, at this precise moment, shuffling toward them in a sheer white nightgown, bare feet on the stone, clutching a stuffed doll that Solitär had sewn for her.
"What's going on," Tot said, her voice carrying its characteristic languid drawl. "It got very loud all of a sudden. Woke me up."
Fíliya pointed wordlessly downward. Tot stepped forward and looked.
"...? My Lord Demon King diluted the toxicity this much, and there are still solid remains? Quite a few of them weren't fully dissolved into fluid."
What had made even Solitär avert her gaze registered on Tot's face as nothing more than mild curiosity.
Fíliya shook her head slowly, then shot Solitär a look that said do you see what I'm dealing with.
"You see that? Sometimes the most naturally airheaded ones turn out to be the darkest."
"Ha... come to think of it," Solitär said, turning her attention back to Fíliya with a look of genuine interest, "our Demon King has, without the humans knowing a single thing about it, already saved their world once, hasn't she?"
"Obviously. I did, in the most literal possible sense, save the world." Fíliya accepted the compliment without a shred of modesty. "I'm quite impressive."
"And yet everything you did — humans know nothing of it. No one will ever thank you for it. Even that God of Magic never noticed Tot's existence."
"Well, that's only natural. Tot's combat power isn't anything remarkable — her mana signature is about the same level as yours, so of course she'd never attract Serie's attention. Who could have guessed that the magic wielded by someone like that was the ultimate weapon capable of ending the world? Only I, as the Demon King — capable of locating and observing every member of the Demon Race — would have been able to notice her."
Fíliya said it lightly. Solitär, however, found herself quietly dissatisfied.
Wasn't the important part of what she'd said the first half? Why had this woman latched onto the second half and launched into an explanation?
"What I mean is," Solitär tried again, "you saved the world once, and you got absolutely nothing for it. Humans won't thank you. No one even knows what you did."
Fíliya gave a small, unbothered shrug. "What does it matter? Everything I do, I do because I feel like it. Whether humans hate me or are grateful to me — it makes no difference. Now stop wasting my time on this."
Her tone was bored. Her gesture was final. Solitär let it go.
Around this time, Rivale vaulted up onto the terrace — the blood pooling below had spread to the point where there was simply nowhere left to stand.
"Oh, Rivale — good timing. What do you make of all this?"
Fíliya turned to her number-one workhorse with something resembling sociable interest.
"It is... deeply striking," Rivale said. "In terms of sheer body count it's nothing remarkable — but the scene itself. It's as though you took a crowd of living people, crammed them into an enormous wooden barrel, smashed them apart with iron hammers, and then splashed the resulting pulp and blood all across the ground at once."
"Hoh. You have a way with words."
Fíliya gave him a genuine sideways look of appreciation.
While the greater demons chatted above, something had begun to change in the sea of blood below — quietly, almost imperceptibly.
The scattered remains. The pooled blood. All of it was reversing — reconstructing — at startling speed, as though time itself were running backward.
This continued for over ten minutes.
By the time the demons had fully reconstituted themselves into something resembling their original forms, most of the blood on the ground had been reabsorbed.
But not all of it. And what remained told a clear story.
Some had not made it through Fíliya's gift of "sublimation."
"Mm... just under seven hundred," Fíliya murmured, counting. "So roughly two hundred didn't survive."
Her mood remained perfectly undisturbed.
After all, strictly speaking, there wasn't a single demon among them who was innocent.
The ones who'd survived could be considered her new subjects, reborn into something new.
The ones who hadn't — well. Consider it justice, delivered by humanity.
Mm. Fíliya nodded to herself, satisfied with the framing.
She had once been human herself, hadn't she? So technically speaking, the demons she had just killed had indeed been put down by a human. Lawfully. On the spot.
She convinced herself of this rather quickly.
"Where's Amy? I'll need her contribution again."
Fíliya turned to Solitär.
"I'll bring her."
"Mm." Fíliya nodded, then gestured for Rivale to get down there and keep order among the demons.
The newly baptized Demon Race, confronted with the corpses and blood of those who hadn't made it, were visibly shaken.
"To all surviving members of the Demon Race — I swear to you in the name of the Demon King: the suffering you just endured will happen exactly once, and never again. Take a moment now to feel the changes within you. Whatever you discover — I congratulate you. You have been reborn."
Shortly after, the human girl Fíliya had resurrected — Amy — was ushered out onto the terrace.
"Lady Fíliya... what is... what's happening..."
Amy clearly had no idea what role she was about to play. But surrounded on all sides by demons above and below, she was visibly frightened.
She was, after all, a human girl who had spent the past month living in the Demon King's Castle as a kitchen helper. And right now, the demons appeared to be holding some kind of assembly — with a very large pile of corpses and blood on the ground below.
And now they'd brought her out here.
Could this mean—
Miss Amy's legs promptly turned to jelly. In her imagination, the demons had just finished a grand feast.
And she — she was probably the last little dessert.
Any second now, this green-haired creature who called herself the Demon King was going to throw her down into that crowd below, wasn't she?!
The more she thought about it, the more terrified she became. Fíliya, however, was entirely indifferent to whatever was running through Amy's head. She simply seized her by the shoulders and brought her down.
"EEEK!!!!!"
Miss Amy screamed.
And when she realized that every demon present had turned to stare directly at her, her eyes rolled back in her head and she nearly fainted on the spot.
"Tch. I figured someone who died young on a battlefield would have stronger nerves than this. You're a bit of a coward, aren't you."
Fíliya, still gripping Amy by the shoulder, was watching her with something between amusement and mild judgment, clearly suppressing a laugh.
"Please... even if you're going to kill me, please don't let them eat me...!!" Amy managed in a trembling voice.
"What exactly is going through your head? If I wanted to eat you, why would I have let you work in my kitchen for a month? Stop your whining — I'm going to break your hand first and let them try a piece. Don't worry, I'll block your pain receptors. It won't hurt. Be good."
Fíliya said it pleasantly, and then, exactly as promised, snapped Miss Amy's arm.
"!!!!!"
Amy didn't feel any pain — but wasn't what Fíliya had just said extremely obvious in its implications?!
Break my hand first and let them try a piece??
THAT WAS STILL EATING HER!!!!!
Fíliya paid no mind to whatever Miss Amy was internally screaming, and simply held the severed arm out to the nearest lower-ranking demon.
"Eat this hand."
The lower-ranking demon didn't dare disobey. But as it looked at the human girl's arm held before it, something unexpected welled up inside it — a deep, involuntary sense of revulsion.
"Ugh..."
Just holding the severed limb was enough. The demon's face contorted with distress, and it let out a dry, retching sound.
"Hm? What's the matter? Don't you like it? Have you never eaten a human before?"
Fíliya asked the question in the tone of a researcher noting a curious result.
"I... I don't remember, my Lord Demon King... but this thing... it's really disgusting... do I really have to eat this..."
The expression of revulsion on the lower-ranking demon's face was growing more pronounced by the second. Fíliya raised an eyebrow.
Oh? Not only had it developed a psychological aversion to human flesh — it didn't even retain the memory of having eaten humans before?
The response was satisfying. But she needed to confirm the effect further.
"Keep eating. You don't stop until I tell you to stop."
Faced with that command, the lower-ranking demon bit off one of Miss Amy's fingers — because its survival instincts left it no choice — and placed it in its mouth to chew.
"BWUGH—"
Two chews. That was all it managed.
The demon's knees buckled, and it collapsed directly at Fíliya's feet.
The finger was spat out, accompanied by several other unidentifiable and extremely viscous substances.
Is it really that disgusting... Fíliya wondered. Did it just empty its entire stomach onto the ground?
She observed the demon's reaction with genuine curiosity, while simultaneously finding a moment to needle the girl in her arms.
"See that? Your flesh is apparently so revolting it made a demon sick."
...Miss Amy bit down hard on her own tongue.
At this point, anger had overtaken fear as the dominant feeling in her chest. What kind of demon race was this — first they fed her arm to someone, then they had the nerve to insult how she tasted—
"My Lord Demon King, please... please don't make me eat any more..." the demon on the ground whimpered.
That tone — the genuine pleading in it — struck Fíliya as interesting.
Because an ordinary lower-ranking demon, by rights, should not have been capable of something like that.
It was almost as if... it had acquired emotions.
"Good. Get up."
Fíliya gave a satisfied nod and let the demon rise, then moved on.
She selected several dozen more demons, one after another, having each of them sample a portion of Miss Amy.
The results were uniformly satisfying.
It appeared that this new generation of demons had indeed lost the instinct to consume humans — not only would they refuse to eat them, they found the very idea deeply repulsive, to the point of gagging at the mere thought.
"Good. Rivale — I'll leave the rest to you. Have them resume their normal duties."
With that, satisfied, Fíliya carried Miss Amy back inside the Demon King's Castle and issued Rivale his new standing orders.
Miss Amy — who was, by now, quite literally missing chunks of herself — was subsequently healed by Fíliya as a casual afterthought.
"That's all I needed from you. Go back to the kitchens."
Amy stared at her with pure, undisguised hatred.
"Hm? What, you want revenge?"
Fíliya watched her with interest.
"I'm afraid that won't work. You're simply too weak." She paused. "Oh, right — I did give you a choice at some point, didn't I? Whether or not to become a member of the Demon Race? If you did, you'd have all the time in the world to train. You could grow strong at your own pace and come challenge me properly. Doesn't that sound more rewarding?"
Fíliya said it in a coaxing, almost reasonable tone.
"I — I would never become a demon!!" Miss Amy declared, stubbornly.
"Oh? Why not."
She'd refused clearly enough, but when it came to answering that question, Amy found herself at a loss.
Having grown up in the Southern Nations, she had never once had real contact with the Demon Race in her life. So it wasn't as though she harbored any deep-seated hatred of demons as a concept.
Honestly, she just... didn't like this particular one. The one who called herself the Demon King.
Especially the part where this woman had carried her around and held her out in front of demon after demon — and the ones who'd taken a bite of her had responded with that disgusted, nauseated expression, staring at her like she was something rancid. That had been uniquely, specifically humiliating.
Compared to all that, Lady Solitär seemed like a much more tolerable person to be around.
Lady Solitär was cold and indifferent, yes — but at least she had never subjected Amy to anything like this.
If she became a demon — and had to call this insufferable woman her king — that would be absolutely unbearable!!
"Ah... so that's what you're thinking," Fíliya said suddenly, which made Amy start.
"Hm? I'm the Demon King. Did you think I couldn't hear what was going through your head?"
Fíliya smiled at her — the smile of someone who had exactly what she wanted right where she wanted it.
"I've made up my mind. I'm going to turn you into a demon. Refusing won't do you any good — you're something I brought back from the dead, so your life belongs to me anyway."
Fíliya said it with cheerful, absolute ruthlessness. She had stopped caring about Miss Amy's "human rights" some time ago.
____
👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Oshi No Ko: Co-starring with Kana Arima
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