Leon gazed at Demon Lord Rimuru seated before him as memories of the past flooded his mind.
A Demon Lord with the appearance of a young girl, possessing no discernible gender.
Once a Slime—the weakest of all species—yet one who had evolved into a Demon Lord wielding immense magic power.
A singular existence bearing the visage of the girl Leon had once saved.
Izawa Shizue.
And one who knew of Chloe Obert—the very girl Leon himself was searching for.
When he thought about it, he could only marvel at the strange threads of fate binding them all together.
Despite both being visitors from Earth, they had arrived in this world as the rarest of the rare—"Reincarnators" who retained memories of their past lives. And on top of that, as monsters.
They had encountered the Dragon
A Demon Lord named Rimuru.
Could it be said that someone—or something—had guided all of this, that every thread was woven together by design?
A thought suddenly crossed his mind.
Perhaps this was all predestined.
But Leon shook off that notion and began to speak of the girl, Chloe.
Leon had arrived in this world roughly three hundred years ago.
He hadn't been summoned. Rather, he'd been swept up by a distortion in dimensional space that had formed by chance.
It seemed this occurred right after Veldora had been sealed and the Great Forest of Jura was designated as a forbidden zone.
The world was still in a state of chaos, though it had begun to show signs of settling, and that was when Leon came tumbling through.
He had been less than ten years old at the time.
But he had someone he needed to protect. A girl who had fallen through with him. That girl was Chloe Obert.
His childhood friend, his confidante. A beloved existence like a little sister—everything to him.
That was precisely why Leon refused to succumb to the Magicule rampage that was tearing his body apart, and with nothing but his own wits, he brought it under control.
Through sheer willpower and resolve, the boy—not even ten years old—managed to control the Magicules that had taken root within him. And the power he obtained was the Unique Skill "Guardian."
Born from his desperate desire to protect a girl younger than himself, Leon awakened to the power of guardianship.
But that wasn't all. By obtaining the "Hero's Egg," he was able to master the remaining rampage energy as well.
Even at his young age, Leon possessed the qualities of a hero.
"It'll be okay. I'll protect you, Chloe."
Leon smiled and comforted the crying girl, whose face was streaked with tears of anxiety.
But the girl in his arms suddenly vanished. Despite the fact that Leon was protecting her with the very power of guardianship he had just awakened…
That was when Leon's journey to find Chloe began.
Year after year, decade after decade, Leon never gave up. He continued searching for Chloe.
Perhaps she had crossed over to another world and returned to their original one. That thought occurred to him one day.
Back in their original world, Chloe had been all alone—no family to speak of.
If he didn't protect her, there was no one else who would.
So all he had to do was summon her back to this world.
He just needed to learn a spell that could summon a specific person by designating both time and coordinates.
Leon's extraordinary intellect allowed him to acquire magical knowledge at a staggering pace—all for the sake of summoning one girl and keeping her safe.
But every attempt ended in failure.
Extending magical influence across the boundaries of another world was impossible, even for a genius like Leon.
Still, he never gave up. He threw himself deeper into research.
He traveled across the world to increase the success rate of the Grand Magic—a spell that could only be attempted once every sixty-six years.
He even met with the fairy responsible for certifying heroes, hoping for some insight, but the conversation proved utterly useless—which irritated him to no end.
In a fit of frustration, he ended up stealing a High-Level Spirit, but no one seemed to make a fuss about it, so he simply continued his journey.
After mastering the arcane knowledge of every nation where humans dwelled, he pushed onward—through the Great Forest of Jura and into the territories of the Demon Lords themselves.
Leon's thirst for knowledge was bottomless, and he would hesitate at nothing if it meant summoning Chloe.
His life became a routine of annihilating high-ranking monsters and seizing their knowledge. Some among them wished to join his service, and as long as they didn't get in his way, he let them do as they pleased.
Before long, Leon's subordinates had swelled in number, and he came to command a small territory of his own.
He had never claimed any title for himself, but around this time, the epithet "the Golden-Haired Demon" began to spread.
Eventually, that title was reinterpreted to mean he held the rank of Demon Lord, but Leon couldn't have cared less. Such things were entirely meaningless to him.
What truly mattered was stripping knowledge from the high-ranking monsters who came to challenge him.
And then, for the first time, a genuine threat descended upon Leon.
The "Curse King" Kazalim, incensed by Leon's Demon Lord title, came to purge him.
Even for a genius like Leon—one who bore the "Hero's Egg"—the "Curse King" Kazalim was a formidable opponent.
As the King of the Undead, Kazalim was impervious to half-hearted attacks. Leon's abilities, specialized as they were in defense, could not inflict a fatal wound upon him.
Conversely, Kazalim found Leon equally difficult to deal with. Breaking through that ironclad defense was nearly impossible, and Kazalim's curses were neutralized on contact.
With neither side able to land a decisive blow, the battle raged on for days.
But the conclusion came anticlimactically.
The egg had hatched.
Absorbing the power of Leon's inner soul—his purest, most earnest desire—the "Hero's Egg" had hatched.
Leon awakened as a true hero.
A true hero reigning as a Demon Lord. That was
The ability he awakened to was the Ultimate Skill "Purity King."
An ability that could sort through the mingled laws of power, vibration, and magic, selecting and isolating pure energy from the whole.
For Kazalim—a composite entity of curses—it was the worst possible match.
Curse blood broke down into curses and blood. Decayed flesh became microorganisms and filth. Bones separated into Magicules and water.
The Cursed Body that composed Kazalim was dismantled by the divine light waves of the Ultimate Skill "Purity King."
Unable to endure even a moment, the "Curse King" Kazalim perished before Leon.
By defeating one of the reigning Demon Lords at the time, Leon was officially recognized as a new Demon Lord in both name and truth—an irony not lost on him. But even that was irrelevant to Leon.
He established a research facility in the castle that Kazalim had once called home.
He used it for his research while also beginning to consider the need for a proper residence of his own.
When he succeeded in summoning Chloe, he thought it would be pathetic if he had no place for her to live. With that in mind, Leon resolved to claim a territory of his own.
And what he discovered was the new continent to the southwest.
He expended his Grand Magic without hesitation, transforming the very ecosystem itself.
And so, the Golden City was completed. Though Leon himself continued to carry out his research in Kazalim's former castle on the Demon Continent…
It was around this time that he accidentally summoned Izawa Shizue through a failed interdimensional summoning spell.
He could tell at a single glance.
Unlike Leon, this girl with black hair had suffered severe burns. She would not live long.
Because his summoning had failed, the girl had likely experienced a body collapse from Magicule overload regardless.
But then again, depending on her age, she might have survived without issue. It was a gray area. Or perhaps, had he never summoned her, she would have perished in flames as originally destined.
Leon brooded over it for a moment. Offering to help felt presumptuous. After all, he had summoned her purely for his own convenience.
If the girl survived as a result, that was her own fortune—not his doing.
So he decided.
That was why he said, "I thought it was garbage, but this one seems compatible with fire," and summoned the "Flame Giant," implanting it within the girl as a parasite. The High-Level Spirit he had once stolen from
With this, the girl stabilized and managed to pull through.
The rest was up to her.
It should be her own actions—not the results of his intervention—that determined the path she would walk.
And besides, Leon had no room to involve himself further with the girl.
Leon would walk his path, and the girl would walk hers. It may have sounded cold, but in the end, this world was one of survival of the fittest.
That was the fullest measure of compassion Leon was capable of. He had no reason to shoulder the girl's fate as well on top of his own.
Leon never realized that this whim of his was one of the threads that would become entangled with destiny.
And so, destiny's loom began to weave its threads together, spinning ever more intricate patterns.
A young boy appeared before Leon.
The boy introduced himself as Kagurazaka Yuuki.
Though young, he claimed to be the Commander of the Free Guild, and said that his organizational abilities could be of use to Leon.
It seemed he had investigated through back channels and learned that Leon was searching for a girl from another world.
With supreme confidence, he declared that he could find the very girl Leon sought.
On a whim, Leon gave his permission.
Either way, even if the attempt failed, Leon wouldn't lose anything. He had every intention of eventually succeeding in summoning Chloe through his own power, no matter how many years it took.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained—so Leon relayed Chloe's characteristics and accepted the boy's offer.
When he reflected on it, this had been his greatest failure.
Kagurazaka Yuuki succeeded in summoning Chloe Obert.
He succeeded.
Not from another world, but by summoning the Chloe who had arrived in this world at the same time as Leon.
In other words, had Yuuki never been given the commission, destiny might have taken a different course.
The Chloe summoned by Yuuki would eventually meet a monster named Rimuru, and together with Hinata, she would set off on a journey into the past.
Bound by the complete laws of the world, she would awaken the Ultimate Skill within herself, repelling all external interference.
Had Yuuki never been involved, there was a possibility that Leon's summoning could have succeeded.
But that was something that could no longer be verified.
Leon, fixated on summoning from another world, might never have succeeded anyway, and there was no point in dwelling on it now.
The real question was what to do going forward.
---
Leon's story was finished.
The tea had already gone cold. More time had passed than he'd realized.
Or rather—Leon had been trying to summon Chloe? That was completely unexpected.
When the hero had attacked his research facility, Leon said he'd felt an inexplicable urge to avoid the battle, even though he wasn't sure why at the time.
He had entrusted Shizue—who he couldn't exactly say he was protecting—to the hero of that era and decided to retreat.
When he thought about it, that made perfect sense.
Leon had no way of knowing, but it was all part of the predestined order orchestrated by Chloe's ability.
I filled in the gaps of Leon's memory by sharing everything I knew.
My encounters and partings with Chloe, Yuuki's actions.
And what Hinata and
Leon had trusted me enough to share such a deep conversation, so I decided to pass along every piece of information at my disposal.
I drained the cold tea in one gulp and said:
"So, it seems Chloe is currently under Yuuki's control.
Because of a unique curse called 'Three Commands,' Chloe cannot defy Yuuki.
Moving forward, depending on Yuuki's actions, I expect we'll end up opposing him.
Our goal is also to free Chloe, so—how about we cooperate where we can?"
I cut to the heart of the matter.
I was hoping to bring Demon Lord Leon on board against Yuuki.
"Hmph. I don't mind cooperating.
My wish was to summon Chloe and then protect her happiness afterward.
But if there's an obstacle standing in the way, it needs to be removed, doesn't it?
Whether the awakened hero Chloe is truly the strongest remains to be seen.
But first—let's not get ahead of ourselves. Whether you're even useful is a separate question entirely?"
First, it seemed we needed to gauge each other's strength.
Fine by me. In that case, I'd give him the one punch Shizue had asked me to deliver.
"Okay! Works for me.
Let's drop the complicated talk. You'd better be ready.
Unlike
"Heh. Then let's put that to the test."
We grinned at each other and rose simultaneously.
Our destination was the training grounds—the same place
Leon led the way through the palace. Impressively tasteful carvings and paintings lined the corridors, and through the glass walls, one could survey the entire grounds below.
It was an exquisitely crafted palace. I was secretly impressed, but kept it to myself as I followed Leon.
We arrived at the training grounds.
The entire wall was inscribed with magic circles that absorbed and dispersed energy generated within. That meant we could go all out without causing any real damage.
Thinking that was good enough, I pushed open the door and stepped inside.
"Oh…"
Inside was
And there was a figure who could only be the former Silver Knight Commander Arlos, reduced to a twitching, tattered rag of a man.
A cold sweat trickled down my back—or so it felt.
"I-it's not what you think!
He told me to come at him with everything I had, so I did. And then he kept teleporting around, picking at me with little attacks, so I finally just…
By the time I came to, Lord Arlos looked like this!
I had no idea what happened—I was just as confused as you are!"
Was that an excuse?
I desperately wanted to lay into her, but now wasn't the time.
I hurriedly pulled a Complete Recovery
I took out another one and managed to get it into Arlos as his consciousness began to faintly return.
"S-strength… I never imagined Lady
I clearly still have much to learn…"
It looked like he'd be fine.
I breathed a sigh of relief—only to face the real problem child:
"Hey,
When I called her name,
"Do you actually understand why we're here?"
"Y-yes! To build a friendly relationship with Demon Lord… Leon… right?"
She understood to some degree, at least? Though something felt slightly off.
Well, "friendly" was the hope, but it would be a disaster if things turned hostile instead.
Coming here for diplomatic negotiations and then beating the other side's people to a pulp—what was she thinking? No, she clearly wasn't thinking at all.
Selecting
Leaving the capable
I chose to be grateful that the other guy was still alive.
"Leon, I'm sorry about this. It seems my subordinate got a little carried away with yours…"
I offered a vague apology.
"Don't worry about it. My subordinate was simply outmatched. No harm done.
But I will say… that took the wind out of my sails."
Yeah, no kidding.
I'd been planning to punch Leon in one clean shot, but that momentum was gone now.
"I'm not really in the mood for a fight anymore either. If we can call this whole thing even, I'd appreciate it."
"Heh. Very well. Between you and me, we're square. Agreed?"
"Agreed. Thanks."
We were square.
Leon's guy had actually been planning to let me punch him, hadn't he? That was definitely the vibe I got.
He was someone whose words and actions didn't always match up—which was probably why Shizue had…
But… thinking about it that way,
It looked like we'd be able to build a good relationship, so maybe things had worked out for the best after all.
In the end, we'd been able to exchange valuable information and had even reached an agreement on future cooperation.
Though "agreement" was generous—it was really more of a verbal promise to consider any formal requests.
Still, I felt that I had fulfilled my promise to Shizue.
I hadn't actually punched him, but I don't think Shizue ever really wanted me to hit Leon for the sake of it.
It had been a sudden invitation, but I was glad I'd accepted.
Through this candid conversation with Leon, I had come to know the man behind the title.
Having accomplished one of my goals, I returned to my nation with a sense of satisfaction.
For Rimuru, this meeting had marked the end of a chapter.
But for Leon, it was not an end.
Rather, the girl he had been searching for so many years had finally been found. He moved swiftly into action.
He ordered the Silver Knight Commander Arlos to mobilize the main force of his knights.
And with the goal of reclaiming Chloe, Demon Lord Leon marched out to war.
Waiting for him was Kagurazaka Yuuki.
The clash between these two was drawing near.
And that battle would mean that once again, the world would witness a clash between two wielders of Ultimate Skills.