Chapter CLXXIX - Ending a War (part 1)

"W-W-What was that?!! That immense pressure...!? What was that!??!"

The king is sweating profusely as he tries very best to stand up. Everyone else also fell to their knees from the fear. Looks like the pressure made it to them too, even when they are hundreds of meters away above the source.

"I... I'm not sure, sir. Even I got... Taken by surprise."

The knight lady was able to withstand it just a little bit, but she is still startled by the sudden scare from the pressure. She was able to loosen up a bit.

Suddenly, a sound can be heard from the elevator. It's the sound of the elevator going up.

"Someone is coming. Be ready."

The knight lady commanded, and the knights around her became guarded. The people in the room also stood back up and tried to prepare for what was about to come.

The king is now capable of standing up again, and everyone can see the scared expression from his face. But no one said anything, because everyone else is also worried.

The bell on the door rang, and the door opened, revealing what's inside.

As the door opens, everyone can see a single knight is standing in the middle of the elevator, standing still. Seeing this, the knight lady lowered her guard.

"You? What happen belo-"

"Surprise!!"

I pushed the unconscious body of the knight forward, and his body fell to the floor as his armour crashed loudly with the ground.

The knights in the room quickly fired their weapons and magic at me, but I dodged every single one of them and dashed to the right. They all unsheathed their weapons, and moved in for a close combat. 

Hey, I can do that too.

Without using magic, I moved like a real swordsman, slashing the knights away and defeating them one by one. I'm finally using my swords, and I faced them without holding back.

They all lost to me in terms of swordsmanship, and they expect to defeat me when I am using my all? How laughable.

The knight lady dashed forward and attacked, and looks like her skills are better than the rest of the knights. Even without magic, I can tell that she is also a Rank 1 ranker from how she fights. 

But, she is not any better than Fran, and she is losing this fight rather quickly.

I managed to push her back by quite far, but then she decided to cheat and used magic energy.

She noticed that she is not winning with just sword techniques alone, so she decided to use her all. She enchanted her whole body and dashed forward. 

She arrived behind me in less than a second, and swiftly moved her sword to slash me.

FTANGG!!!!!

Her sword suddenly struck a very hard material, and she realized a second later that it was in fact my finger.

"Okay, that's cheating!"

I stopped her sword using one finger covered in shadow magic, and she quickly panicked. She dashed backwards, but I already disappeared from my position.

I moved faster than she could react and arrived behind her, and she turned around only to find my hand flying to her.

"You sleep too."

I smacked the back of her neck rather hard, and she fell easily to the ground unconscious. I chuckled at how easy it was to take her down as well as the royal guards. Because clearly, not even Mazino's knights were this weak.

I took down all of their light infantries, rankers, and now the royal guards. Veldonia has nothing else to stand between me and my goals.

Now that everything is taken care of...

I walked to the middle of the room, the same position where Lescia and I stood previously, and I bowed to the king.

"Greetings, King Mejon of Veldonia. I am of no name, but you can call me… the Masked Devil, like everyone else.

Cool name, by the way! Props to Prym! He was a funny lad."

Hearing my casual introduction, the king felt really attacked. But, he can't do anything since all of his rankers have been defeated.

The king may be ugly, but he's not dumb. He knows that Veldonia has lost to a single person, and there is nothing that he can do but follow.

"What… do you want...?"

"Oh, straight to the point! I like it! Then, we shall go with an agreement."

"An... Agreement?"

I took out a piece of paper from my space ring, and I threw it towards the ground in front of the king. It's amazing how the paper managed to fly that far, really. Totally didn't use magic at all.

It landed right at the foot of the king, and he kneeled down to take it.

"If you can do all those things listed, then I might consider doing some good things for you."

The king took it from the ground and read the content. His eyes turned wide immediately from reading, and he quickly snapped at me.

"No way!! I-If it's truly an agreement… what can you do that is as good as these things in this damn list!?"

"Hmm, I don't know... What about that arm?"

He quickly glanced at his right hand, that is now only half due to yesterday's incident.

Looking at it now, it looks like it has been cut cleanly and treated properly. But I crushed that hand yesterday like crushing a plastic bottle, so I'm quite amazed that they were able to treat the wound that cleanly.

The king bit his lips while thinking, and he slowly nodded.

"F-Fine... Heal my arm... Then I will do these... things."

He said while showing a really annoyed expression, but one thing I learned is that a person's words can never be trusted just by their expression.

It's not much, certainly not like Lescia's ability. But, I learned a long time ago how to see the lies of a person.

He is lying.

A grin formed on my hidden face. Too bad he can't see it, because I'm grinning so happily right now.

"Oh dear… Oh dear--oh dear--oh dear! You actually thought that I am making a deal here? Haha! How hilarious!!"

I lifted my left hand up and pointed my fingers towards the king's children who were standing on the left side of the room. 

Specifically, towards a certain someone.

"Huaaa--!!"

Jeruma's right leg was pulled away by a random lump shadow that appeared from the ground. It was too fast, and he couldn't react. It was also powerful, so he cannot shake it off.

His body arrived next to my foot, and I used more shadow tails to tie him to the ground. He screamed as he tried letting himself go by writhing the shadow tails, but it was a Knight tier shadow magic.

It is ten times stronger than steel, it is not something you can just writhe open.

I stared at him for half a second and chuckled at how dumb he looked. Then, I lifted my left foot upwards.

This is for you, my princess.

BRAKKK!!!!!

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggghhhhh!!!!!!!"