What a Windfall (2)
The Demon King's eyebrow twitched as he looked at the demon tribe members targeting him.
He had no parents.
Well, that part was fine.
After all, someone from his paternal family had come to pick him up.
Then later, when his uncle came to fetch him, the Emperor had said:
"I didn't expect a direct descendant of Eshua to show up."
With just that one sentence, he quickly realized he wasn't exactly a welcomed presence in the family—but that was fine, too.
It was a family he intended to make his own soon anyway. What did it matter whether they welcomed him or not?
Once he took the position of head of the household, things like that would become meaningless.
With that in mind, it was necessary—for now—to innocently cozy up to the young uncle who had come to pick him up and milk him for all he was worth.
"Useless bastards!"
Who did these barely-grown demons think they were targeting?
And not even once, but twice now!
Even if they were related by blood, once rumors spread that a child kept getting targeted by demons, they would abandon him. That was just how it worked.
Especially since it all happened within their own territory!
There was no way the Holy Faction would just leave alone a child who could become a seed of calamity.
As they always had, they would cut off such a child for their own safety. And a child without parents? All the more reason to do so without hesitation.
And these demons knew full well how the Holy Faction worked.
"If you try to take that child with you, you're just going to get more tired and more stressed."
"The demons will keep coming until that brat is eliminated."
"Yeah. But if you just leave the child behind, we won't lay a single finger on the rest of you."
The Skull King's eyebrow twitched again at the words—so predictable it was almost funny.
Who taught them to run their mouths so well?
If he caught them, he'd slice their heads off…
"All of this is under the great Skull King's command and will. You're people from the Saintess's house, so I'm sure you'll understand. Let's not make this harder on each other."
Yeah, fuck off. Thanks so much for being so cooperative, it's bringing tears to my eyes.
No choice, then.
They weren't familiar faces, but before the family could disown him, he needed to take care of them…
It was at that moment.
Squelch!
The head of a demon disguised as a guard was pierced straight through.
A sword burst out through his mouth and brain like a harpoon.
The movement was so fast, you couldn't even see the sword being drawn.
The uncle who pierced the demon's skull glared with icy blue eyes.
"So you really did underestimate us. How dare you speak like that to someone from Eshua?"
"Guh…!"
"Looks like demons have ears, so listen carefully. We of Eshua—those who believe in the Faith of Blue—are the ones who eradicate evil to protect every little thing in the world."
The uncle infused divine energy into his sword.
"No matter what kind of silver-tongued nonsense you spit, we will chase you to the ends of hell to protect that child and wipe your existence from this world!"
As the sword was finally drawn, a burst of blue light erupted and—
BOOM!
The carriage exploded.
The Skull King, held in the arms of a knight commander, barely escaped the blast.
Looking at the carriage, now not just in pieces but reduced to powder, the Skull King scowled in disgust.
That crazy bastard!
No wonder they're from that insane Saintess family.
They look like pacifists—
Then they go and blow up a whole damn carriage, just like that! Lunatics!
The kid could've gotten caught in that and died!
But whether he lived or not didn't seem to matter to them. The uncle, who had just blown up a demon, casually brushed demon flesh off his shoulder and said:
"See? Didn't I say it? The Skull King's the culprit."
I'm not, you son of a—
Get your damn eyes checked, would you? Knights, say something, will you…
"What a shame he died without pain. If they were truly the Skull King's underlings, they should've had their limbs ripped off and been tortured for eternity."
Ah, these maniacs.
They've completely lost it.
They came to the wrong damn place.
They don't even care if their own territory gets destroyed.
The Skull King looked up at the sky, as if giving up.
It seemed like just hearing the name Skull King was enough to hit Eshua's berserk button.
He worried that if they found out who he really was, the same thing would happen to him. But he glanced over at the demons now frozen in fear.
The Skull King's eyes had already gone cold, like ice.
In truth, he was the one who least understood what was going on.
Demons targeting him?
No, that wasn't the issue.
"I'm sure I placed a restriction forbidding entry into human territory."
This was deep inside human land.
And the Skull King had enforced an absolute non-aggression principle regarding human territory.
They could fight in border zones to defend demon lands, but they were never to invade human territory and provoke conflict.
That was a rule he had insisted on from the very beginning.
"Preemptive invasion creates a whole new mess."
A first strike is always a perfect excuse for war. So instead of attacking first, he had chosen defensive warfare on the borders.
Sure, when someone crossed the line, he personally uprooted them without hesitation.
Demons hunting humans or starting fights for sport?
As long as he stopped that, they could avoid unnecessary wars and focus on the revival of the demon race.
And more than anything—he was human.
Yes, human.
A person.
Even if he had become a skeleton, nerves dead and emotions gone, he didn't want to let go of the fact that he had been human.
That's why he made it a principle:
Do not invade.Do not eat humans.
In order to choose the path of coexistence, it wasn't even a command—it was a binding curse.
A thousand-year curse, at that.
During that time, no demon could defy it.
It was an absolute oath.
So why the hell were these bastards ignoring his will and showing up in the middle of human territory?
"Judging by their appearance, those bastards' handler must be from the Western Command Branch."
In other words, they were bastards from some disgustingly far-off place.
"Is it trendy these days for sea-folk to drift inland?"
It meant: Why the hell are you breaking the sacred code and stirring shit up here?
"Looks like they even received orders from someone other than me."
Which implied that among the demonfolk, some lunatic had grown bold enough to rebel.
Because of that, the Skeleton King pressed his lips together with a hiss.
Well, sure.
It had been 150 years since his sealing.
In that time, maybe another Skeleton King had taken the throne besides himself.
Maybe it was the Skeleton King next door who gave the order to kill the Saint.
Sure. That would make sense.
Gotta accept the new era.
Can't act like an old geezer now, can I?
"Vile Skeleton King. So desperate to escape prison that you send your own subordinates into human lands. You are utterly rotten."
"You dare insult Lord Isaac, you mere human!"
"All of this is for the King's resurrection!"
…Yeah, looks like a new Skeleton didn't take over after all.
The Skeleton King's eyebrow twitched.
Well, he had suspected it.
To break the sacred code, a new king would have to possess power overwhelming enough to shatter the restrictions — just like he did.
But if it had truly been broken, there's no way he wouldn't have sensed it. Which meant they'd simply violated it on their own.
Still, he didn't expect there'd be a maniac bold enough to use his name so openly.
"Kill them all! Bring the Saint's corpse, and eat the rest if you want!"
He definitely hadn't expected they'd so proudly violate the highest-ranked clause of the sacred code: .
The knight commander, seeing the Skeleton King's expression, misunderstood the reason behind it and gently patted his face.
"Young Master Isaac, it's alright. Please don't make that face. We — especially your uncle — are strong."
That's… not really the issue here.
"We will burn the Skeleton King's vile minions to nothing, not even leaving behind a magic core."
Hey, could you not destroy the magic cores?
I mean, I know you're strong, but do you have any idea how hard those are to get?
And technically speaking, they're not even my minions. I don't know their faces. Total strangers.
The Skeleton King's gaze grew colder.
Because the five demons that appeared here were not all of them.
"There are more."
Quite a few more, in fact.
Twenty… no, forty.
They were undoubtedly allies of these bastards.
"They seem to be suppressing their power and moving in a way the garrison can't detect."
Normally, they wouldn't be within sensing range — but even in a young body, he was still the Skeleton King.
Among the approaching enemies, there was one in particular who was especially powerful.
"Is that the one who sent these guys?"
This was a chance to capture them all and uncover who was behind it. But with a mere first-rank detection level, he couldn't pinpoint the numbers precisely.
He could change the story by activating a related spell, but… not while a sixth-rank high-level Holy Knight was right next to him the whole time…
And then—
"Young Master Isaac, forgive me, but please stay here for just a moment."
"!"
The knight commander pressed her hands together, forming a special sigil, and a holy magic circle spread across the ground.
It was a barrier spell.
She placed the Skeleton King inside it.
"I'll be right back."
Realizing the enemy wasn't weak, the knight commander quickly joined the uncle on the front lines.
Once she was gone, a series of magical seals appeared above the Skeleton King.
"This barrier is dense enough that even I'd struggle to break out in this body."
No wonder they call her a frontline blade — even the Skeleton King was impressed by its strength.
It was a perfect barrier, with no openings from the outside.
But…
The Skeleton King's lips curved into a smirk.
No openings from the outside meant nothing could leak from the inside either.
At that moment, the Skeleton King activated his survival blessing.
⸢Blessing: Magic Unleashed⸥
The Skeleton King's magic, granted through a survival blessing, worked differently from others.
Pop!
From deep within his soul — his primordial world — an enormous magical circuit unfolded.
It was like an entire cosmic system.
Mastered spells, known spells, even spells he wasn't yet aware of — all of them were interconnected like constellations.
The spells he couldn't use yet, or hadn't even discovered, didn't shine. They just existed as proof that higher stages lay ahead.
There were several advantages, like being able to view the entire map, but in return, it was a system that could only be activated under specific conditions. Thanks to that, no matter how familiar one was with a spell, it couldn't be activated without first fulfilling the required conditions.
In other words, as long as the conditions were met, the spell could be used.
And for the lower-tier spells, the unlocking condition was generally the total amount of mana accumulated in the body.
At that moment, the Skeleton King's mana core flared up with intense heat.
Fwoosh!
Along with it, a previously unlit star began to blaze.
It was an original spell unique to the Skeleton King, infused with his origin.
Flash!
In that instant, a slithering black mist began to rise faintly from the Skeleton King's body.
That black mist was none other than mana.
And the mana, as if it were alive, started to move—and even spoke.
[My master!]
'Yeah, long time no see. Ah, don't come out though.'
As soon as the command was given, the black mana swiftly retreated.
But its ecstatic, almost sobbing voice continued ringing in the Skeleton King's ears.
[Ahhh, my great liege! You're alive. I truly thought I'd never see your noble self again. And congratulations, by the way, on shamelessly hijacking a child's body.]
Was this thing happy or mocking him?
The Skeleton King clicked his tongue.
This was a detection spell with intelligence bestowed upon the mana.
Simply put, the mana had been given a personality and life of its own.
It was something the Skeleton King created because using detection spells and analyzing things during battle was too much of a hassle.
In any case, it was now one of the Skeleton King's spells and a subordinate focused on analysis.
And just then, the loyal Whisper, who had been examining his master's condition, let out a shrill cry.
[…Those filthy goddamn bastards! How dare they! Even if my master is a bit shabby right now, how could they stuff him into this dirty brat's body? I should tear them to pieces and still not feel satisfied…!]
This little…
'Enough. Start detecting the enemies.'
[At the current mana level, detection range is 100 meters.]
[Total of 88 hostile entities detected nearby. They're magical beasts. Of course, nothing that could stand a chance against our mighty master.]
The Skeleton King frowned.
Well, that's a relief, but… 88 of them?
Are they out of their minds?
When demons gather in numbers, their rank increases.
An entire city could be wiped out.
Even if their individual ranks weren't that high, a group of demons could raise the threat level of the entire territory.
Worse yet, paladins might show up and start forming a needless guard force.
'That would be such a pain.'
If the alert level increased, he'd be suspected, and summoning his subordinates would become harder.
So what needed to be done to prevent such a pain-in-the-ass scenario?
'Wipe them all out secretly before they get any ideas.'
Only one target needed to be taken alive for information.
So the Skeleton King sighed deeply.
Ah, how annoying.
To deal with all of them, a simple first-rank spell wouldn't cut it—he'd need to amplify the power as much as possible.
Fortunately, judging by the types of creatures Whisper detected, it looked like he could take them out in one go with his current level.
'No direct attack. Something like a trap.'
But doing that would require using all the mana he had stored up.
This body barely even accumulates mana as it is. And now he had to dump all that precious, hard-earned mana just to deal with these lowlifes?
Damn it. What a waste!
If only he had some minions, he could make them do it.
But if he wanted to avoid suspicion, he had no choice, even if it felt wasteful.
'Use up all the stored mana and take care of it personally…'
[No, Master. There's no need for you to get involved personally.]
At Whisper's words, the Skeleton King's eyes widened.
'What are you talking about? This isn't just one or two—there are 88 of them! If we don't clean them up now, the priests will come sniffing around and things will get messy—'
[Ah, well. There were 88. But they're gone now.]
…What?
The Skeleton King's expression twisted.
Were? Now they're gone? What kind of nonsense was that?
It was at that exact moment—
A massive surge of powerful mana began approaching the Skeleton King's location. As the powerful mana rapidly closed in, the paladins who had dealt with the demonic beasts turned their attention toward the Skeleton King and his uncle.
"Young Master Rilai!"
"So you're the one behind them!"
As voices rose in alarm, demons disguised as guards began to smirk.
"Yes, you've come, brother. Let us kill the saint together—"
But the demons couldn't finish their sentence.
Suddenly, the demons that had been aiming to harm the Skeleton King were slaughtered—brutally and without mercy.
"Guh—! Who are you…!"
"Why would something that's not even human attack us—guurk!"
In the blink of an eye, the demons were cut down and collapsed.
Their precious mana cores rolled freely across the ground.
A familiar shadow loomed over them.
And as the Skeleton King realized who the attacker was, a smirk curled at the edge of his lips.
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