「 ✦ Hajime Nagumo ✦ 」
The palace was quiet at this hour. Most people were either asleep or trying to pretend they could sleep. It was the quiet that only came after everyone had finally stopped talking about the things they couldn't fix.
I wasn't sleeping.
Neither was Yue.
We were given a room in the guest wing—something that used to be fancy before half the palace got torn apart. Now it was just four walls and a bed that didn't creak too much.
Yue's skin was warm against mine. Her breathing had that softness it got when she was completely relaxed. Her blonde hair spread across the pillow like silk. Her hand moved lower, and suddenly I wasn't thinking about home anymore. Wasn't thinking about much of anything.
The moonlight coming through the window cast everything in silver. Made Yue look even more beautiful than usual, if that was possible. Her red eyes caught the light when she looked up at me.
I ran my hands up her sides, feeling the curve of her waist, the softness of her skin. She made a small sound in the back of her throat, and it was driving me crazy.
"Hajime..."
I could taste the wine we'd shared earlier on her lips, could feel the way her heart was beating faster. My hands tangled in her hair as she pressed closer. She moved slowly at first, teasing. Her eyes never left mine, watching every reaction. Reading me like she always did.
Then faster. The bed creaked. The sound mixed with our breathing, with the soft sounds Yue made when she was lost in the moment. I sat up, pulling her closer, needing to feel more of her. She wrapped her arms around my neck, her forehead resting against mine.
"Don't stop," she breathed.
I had no intention of stopping. The world outside could burn for all I cared. This—Yue in my arms, her skin warm and soft, the way she said my name over and over—this was everything.
That's when the breeze hit.
Cold air swept through the room like someone had opened a door to winter. But there was something wrong with it. Something that made the hair on my arms stand up.
The window that had been firmly shut was now wide open.
And someone was sitting on the windowsill.
"Awful good time, Hajime Nagumo?"
Yue and I both froze.
Rimuru sat perched on the window frame like he'd been there all along. He was still wearing that cracked white mask from the coliseum, the one that looked like it might fall apart any second.
My hands went for Donner and Schlag before I even finished processing what I was seeing. Yue's magic flared, ready to shoot whatever threat had just invaded our room.
But Rimuru held up one hand.
"Relax," he said, his voice muffled by the mask. "I'm not here to fight."
"Then what the hell are you here for?" I demanded, not lowering my weapon. Yue had grabbed a sheet to cover herself, but her eyes were still glowing.
"I need everyone assembled," Rimuru said calmly. "There's something important we need to discuss."
"Now?" Yue asked with a wary voice. "You couldn't wait until morning?"
"No," Rimuru said simply. "I couldn't."
I studied him for a moment. Even sitting casually on the windowsill, there was something unbelievably dangerous about him.
"Five minutes," I said finally.
He nodded once and disappeared. Just vanished like he'd never been there at all.
"What do you think that was about?" Yue asked, already getting dressed.
"Nothing good," I muttered, pulling on my pants.
···—–—⚜—–—···
Twenty minutes later, we were back in the same room where we'd held the war council. Except now it was the middle of the night, and everyone looked like they'd rather be anywhere else.
Prince Lundel kept yawning. Princess Liliana looked confused and slightly annoyed. Aiko-sensei had thrown on a robe over her nightgown. Yaegashi was fully dressed—probably hadn't been sleeping anyway. Kaori sat quietly in the corner, still looking fragile.
And Rimuru sat at the far end of the table like it was a throne.
That dragon woman—Tio if I recalled—stood behind him, perfectly still and obedient. That was new. The dragon woman struck me as the type to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. Seeing her defer to someone else was this much seemed unsettling.
"What the hell is this about?" Kouki demanded, still angry from earlier. "Do you know what time it is?"
Rimuru didn't answer him. Didn't even look at him.
The cracked mask lay on the table in front of Rimuru. Without it, his face was visible—and that was almost worse. His expression was completely blank. Empty. Looking at him directly felt like looking at a statue.
Yaegashi kept glancing at him with obvious worry. Her hands were clenched in her lap.
The presence he gave off was overwhelming. Not threatening exactly, but sure was heavy.
"Alright," I said, breaking the silence. "You got us all here. What do you have to say?"
Rimuru's golden eyes fixed on me for a moment before scanning the room.
"Where are the retreating demon forces?" he asked. "How many are there?"
Prince Lundel blinked in confusion. "The... the demons? They're falling back to the southern territories. Our scouts estimate a few hundred thousand soldiers, plus over a million controlled monsters under their command."
"That's a conservative estimate," one of the officers added. "Could be more."
Rimuru nodded slowly. "Perfect."
Everyone exchanged glances. That wasn't the response anyone had expected. I was getting a bad feeling about this. A bad feeling that usually meant someone was about to do something catastrophically stupid.
"Perfect?" Princess Liliana repeated. "What do you mean, perfect?"
"I have a proposal," Rimuru continued, his voice perfectly calm. "I kill the retreating forces. All of them. Down to the last demon."
Stunned silence.
"A bit much don't you think?" I said bluntly. "Even for you."
"No, no. It's really not. In exchange," he went on, waving his hand. "I need you to keep me safe afterward. I'll have something very important to do, and I'll be a bit busy during that time."
I opened my mouth to ask what the hell he was talking about, but he cut me off.
"Hajime," he said, looking directly at me. "You keep focusing on the labyrinths. Get your ancient magic. I'll make sure no gods or their lackeys interfere with your progress." He glanced at Tio. "Take her with you. She'll be more useful to your group."
The frustration hit me like a slap. Here he was, giving orders like he owned the place. Telling me what to do, where to go, who to take with me. But... damn it, the offer was good. Really good.
If Rimuru could actually keep the gods off our backs while we raided the labyrinths, if he could guarantee we wouldn't have to deal with apostles or any interference... we could focus entirely on finding a way home.
And I knew he was capable of it. If anyone could hold off armies of apostles, it was him.
Still, something didn't add up.
"What are you planning to do afterward?" I asked.
Rimuru's expression didn't change.
"I'm going to cleanse this world of its rulers."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.
Because we all understood exactly what he meant.
And we all knew he was serious.
"Rimuru." Yaegashi's voice was pleading. "Revenge won't bring them back. It won't make the pain go away. You know that."
For the first time that night, something changed in his expression. Even if for a moment, his face turned slightly gentle.
"I know what you're trying to say, Shizuku. I've already thought about it. A lot, actually."
He paused, looking down at his hands.
"I've already prepared myself to bear more sins. Nothing can shake me now." His eyes grew distant for a moment. "Besides..."
He trailed off, then shook his head. "It's nothing. Just understand that this is something I need to do."
The gentleness in his voice when he spoke to Yaegashi was the first real emotion I'd seen from him all night. It made the whole situation somehow more emotional—it proved he wasn't completely lost. He was choosing this.
"The offer stands," he said as he stood up. "Do we have a deal?"
I stared at him for a long moment. Weighed the options. Considered the alternatives.
There weren't any good ones.
"Yeah, I'm in. I don't know about them but I am," I said finally. "We have a deal."
The Princess stammered on her words, alternating gazes between Rimuru and I. Then, she breathed deeply and settled resolutely on Rimuru. "We're in, too."
Rimuru nodded once with a confident smile. "Great. Everything will be finished soon."
He put his mask back on, the cracks catching the lamplight.
"Thank you all for coming. Get some rest. You'll need it."
Then he was gone, leaving only a small shadow and the lingering sense that we'd just agreed to something we didn't fully understand.
The room stayed quiet for a long time after he left.
Finally, Kaori spoke.
"I think we just made a deal with the devil."
···—–—⚜—–—···
「 ✦ Freid Bagwa ✦ 」
The wound from that bitch Yue still stung. Despite having it all plastered up across my chest, the shame burned through it like acid—pestering, rotting, festering beneath layers of bandage and anesthesia.
I clenched my fist as I leaned back in my chair, the leather creaking under my weight. Two other people shared the tent with me—confidants whose names I had long since forgotten, though they were reliable enough. They got my orders done, somehow or another. I'd given up remembering the names of every confident serving under me. They all ended up dying within weeks of the appointment anyway.
The fucking futility of it all.
I was drafting plans for our next assault—never mind that it might not come for months, perhaps years. But I needed something concrete to report to the demon lord, some semblance of progress to justify our continued existence even after total defeat. The parchment before me bore crude sketches of fortifications and troop movements, but my mind kept wandering to that accursed wound, to the humiliation that came with it.
And I hadn't even faced that Rimuru Tempest.
That was when every hair on my arms stood on end.
I looked around, suddenly alert. A strong breeze was swaying the tent walls, making the fabric ripple like water. But there was something else—an uneasiness settling deep in my bones, a wrongness I couldn't quite place.
Finally deciding to trust the instinct that had kept me alive through countless battles, I signaled for my two confidants to investigate outside. They nodded and slipped through the tent flaps without question.
I waited.
And waited.
Minutes crawled by—maybe more, maybe less. Nothing came back. No footsteps, no voices, no sounds of camp life that should have been a background noise. The breeze had stopped swaying the tent walls, but the uneasiness inside me had grown ever stronger.
I found myself unconsciously tapping my foot against the ground.
Something was very, very wrong.
I stood up, approached the armor stand to the right of my desk, and unsheathed my sword. The weight of the blade brought small comfort one way or another. Then, I began chanting a defensive spell, weaving the words carefully to keep it on standby, ready to be unleashed at a moment's notice.
But when I stepped outside the tent, the chants died in my throat.
The plains where we had made camp—where hundreds of thousands of demon forces had settled alongside over a million fully obedient monsters—were scorched black. The earth itself looked like it had been kissed by hellfire. Dark smoke tendrils branched into the air in thick, choking curls, and the sickening stench of death and violence felt so heavy and so dense I could taste copper and ash on my tongue.
I coughed violently and felt something trickle from my nose. Blood. My own blood, running in a thin stream down my lips.
"What the fuck?"
I couldn't fathom what had happened. Everything had been normal just minutes ago. Now there was nothing. Nothing but death even in the absence of all bodies that, by all rights, should've been here.
I walked forward with my sword raised, every sense straining for danger. I picked up the pace of my chanting, layering spell after spell on standby. But the further I wandered from the false comfort of my tent, the stronger the uneasiness grew, until it felt like it was tearing me from the inside out.
At some point, whether by instinct or madness, I looked up. And thereafter cursed whatever the hell possessed me to do so.
The moon was round and perfect—indifferent as it always was. It showered radiant porcelain light across the desolate wasteland where my army had once breathed and lived and served.
And suspended at the center of that moon was a being.
No—not a being.
A god.
He couldn't have been older than my nephew, this slender figure floating in absolute stillness. So delicate, so beautiful, so enchanting that looking upon him felt like staring into the sun—painful and wondrous and utterly consuming.
His presence filled the air with power so absolute that it made my bones ache just to perceive it.
At some point, I lost myself completely in the ethereal sensation of witnessing something beyond mortal comprehension. Because I hadn't even noticed that my head was separating from my shoulders, falling toward the ground below with dreamlike slowness.
Time stretched. Was this his doing? Each second passed like a full minute, giving me endless moments to process what was happening, yet somehow everything still felt too fast.
I didn't bother gazing upon the many other identical figures floating across the battlefield like suspended heralds of the end. Were they clones? Illusions? I didn't care anymore. All I knew with absolute certainty was that the one above the moon—my executioner—was real.
And when a slight breeze stirred his hair, revealing two golden eyes that shone like twin stars in a starless void, I felt something like peace settle over me.
What beautiful eyes, I thought with wonder.
I see. The realization came. This is Rimuru Tempest. Certainly worthy of being called a godkiller. Certainly worthy of ending us all.
There was no panic in me now.
No bitterness clawing at my chest. No regret for choices made or unmade. No shame burning through old wounds, no humiliation at my army's total annihilation.
No pain.
No mourning, even as I glimpsed my dear friend Uranus's massive draconic form lying lifeless in the distance. My head simply continued its slow descent toward the cold, burnt earth below, and somehow, everything seemed peaceful.
The world had been set right.
As the final thud settled through me, just as my severed head came to rest against the scorched ground, I realized that maybe this boy had been the key to our world's peace all along. And I couldn't feel more honored to have received such a painless death. If nothing else, I had seen the epitome of beauty in my dying breath.
Rimuru Tempest was so beautiful... so small, and yet he looked like he carried the weight of the world on those delicate shoulders.
Ah. So I've been controlled all this time.
Even my last thoughts were not my own.
And somehow, that was perfectly fine.