NOVEL NEXT Chapter 20 – Public Enemy (1)
“The flow of magic is quite peculiar. Are you an experiment subject? Just stay right there for now.”
After a quick glance, I had a rough idea of what the creature was. I left the one pinned to the wall and set off to hunt the rest.
The bugs were crowded at the emergency exit, choked like arteries with atherosclerosis. I swung my hand, and my shadow twitched in response.
When the black veil brushed by, bodies exploded, and red blood splattered like rain inside this room.
In front of this spectacle, Ren, who had been chatty, suddenly fell silent. My results were rising in real-time.
And no one could stop me. They were just too weak.
“What the hell…! Stop! I’m the prosecutor of this land… no, I’m the chief prosecutor! The chief prosecutor!”
“That doesn’t help at all in this situation. What are you planning to do with that jiggly belly of yours?”
Here it comes again. A bug mistaking their social status for power. Sure, it might work in a stable society, but in the face of overwhelming chaos and violence, only strength can protect you.
That was the rule of the demon realm that changed my values for a hundred years.
“Ugh, ughhh!”
I sliced open the belly of the one shouting about being a prosecutor. After all, I’m a being of another world. I wanted to go back to Earth, but I had no intention of changing my allegiance.
I was not human; I was the Demon King, and right now, I was a magical girl.
“So, what crime do you commit?”
I quickly tore my gaze away from the dying one, who was trying to gather his own entrails, and shifted it to the woman he had been with until a moment ago.
“T-Takilas…”
Jeon So-hyun’s eyes, sliding from the chair, were trembling violently.
I chuckled inwardly. The revealing and blatant bunny-girl outfit somehow suits her.
“You, unlike the other girls, have less malice.”
I muttered while pointing a finger at her, who was shaking. Did she catch my drift? Her eyes widened, and she hurriedly dropped to the floor, begging.
“Please, please spare me. I didn’t want to do this at all… It was my father’s gambling debt. I thought I’d do it just once and quit, but then I got caught and they started blackmailing me…”
“I wasn’t planning to kill you anyway. Your nature isn’t bad, so live well from now on.”
“…Huh?”
“Just hide well.”
I smiled as I turned my back. The fact that I was going to kill everyone was an exaggeration in the first place. I only killed those who deserved it. That was all up to my heart, anyway.
Since Jeon So-hyun had shown me kindness once, I could let her go this much.
“Are you newcomers? Lucky you.”
I spared all the women who had similar statistics to Jeon So-hyun.
After tidying up everything, the one I had pinned to the wall had already fled, leaving behind only bloodstains.
“Shouldn’t we chase after him!? Illegal experiments and body modification are incomparable to this trivial prostitution…”
“That may be, but it’s a hassle.”
I kicked at the nagging Ren. Originally, this wasn’t supposed to be a performance report. Honestly, I had come this far because of Jeon So-hyun.
“Hands up!”
“There’s no way you’ll escape today!”
And when I stepped back outside, dozens of blinding spotlights shone down on me simultaneously.
“Long time no see, senpai.”
“You, you can’t escape today.”
Magical Girl Aria glared at me, armed with the full power of her second awakening.
But it wasn’t just Aria. Other magical girls also drew their weapons and aimed at me.
On top of that, there were police pointing lasers at me too.
Really, I was being treated like a wicked villain. Ever since becoming the Demon King, instead of invading the human realm, I changed my approach to management, so I didn’t think I would be treated this way in the human realm.
“I’m innocent here. I was just diligently performing my duties as a magical girl.”
“…Follow the lines. This is a world where everyone lives together.”
“If you think that way, then I can’t help it.”
I smiled. There was no reason for me to comply with this slander.
“What, what is that…?”
“The ground is shaking!”
The area began to tremble. My power was currently in an SSS-grade ‘restricted’ state.
However, since falling into this world, I had never unleashed my full SSS-grade power.
“If you’re going to stand up for your beliefs, bring the strength that matches.”
Something began to rise from my shadow, lifting my body off the ground. I could see the terror in the eyes of the people.
And the magical girls were just as shocked.
Perhaps, being more sensitive to magic than ordinary people, they could gauge just how much power I was emitting.
“Can you handle it?”
I looked down at them and laughed mockingly.
*
“A, a demon…”
Even a magical girl old enough to know better flinched and took a step back.
The recently hot topic, Magical Girl Takilas, had gained the nickname ‘Demon Girl,’ but her immense power made her uncontrollable.
However, no one thought it was truly uncontrollable.
Though they called her a demon girl or a bloodthirsty murderer, at her core, she was just a teenage girl. Surely, there had to be some weakness.
“Ugh… Takilas!”
But Aria grit her teeth, her face pale. What Takilas had summoned from her shadow was a massive… creature resembling a dragon or perhaps a snake.
Yet the black exoskeleton that covered its body made it seem like a centipede, and its wings, sprouting from rotten branches, hung limply.
‘Can you handle it?’
A cold sweat trickled down Aria’s forehead. Honestly speaking, even someone who always believed in her strength seemed unable to handle this.
The demon realm’s dragon summoned by Takilas was emitting a power that instilled primitive fear in those she deemed weaker than herself.
“Move… move, damn it…”
Aria struggled to move her trembling legs. Compared to the other magical girls and ordinary people who had fallen and were writhing in fear, her mental fortitude was like steel.
“Senpai. What can you do if you can’t move?”
However, when Takilas snapped her fingers in mockery of her, a mouth filled with shark-like teeth suddenly opened wide, unleashing a horrifying roar.
‘Ah…’
It wasn’t just a simple cry.
It was the power of the ruler of fear, drawing out what others dreaded the most. In an instant, Aria’s eyes lost their sharpness, and she staggered to the floor.
“This, this is…”
“You seem fine. Perhaps you have a different operating system in your head?”
Ren, perched above Takilas’s head, was flailing at the sudden turn of events. Though she remarked that Aria was fine, it was only from her perspective.
The current mascot, Ren, was also in a state of terror.
“Ugh, agh! Don’t come near me! Don’t come near me!”
“Ren… I… hurt…”
Ren, horrified by the apparition before her, flailed her legs in the air.
She saw the figure of a magical girl holding her horrifically severed neck.
“Please… Delight…”
“Pathetic.”
Takilas gave Ren’s head a good thump. The apparition vanished, and Ren breathed heavily. She grabbed Ren by the nape of her neck.
“Let’s go. Time for bed.”
And with that, she took off into the air. The summoned dragon of the demon realm had already returned to a handful of shadows, and they crossed the sky before anyone else could recover.
No one could get in their way.
“…Incredible.”
That was all that remained on the cell phones of oblivious bystanders filming from a distance, where the dragon’s roar couldn’t reach. In the end, news and videos about Takilas began trending online once again.
“That thing fought and survived?”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Sounds good.”
And among them were those who felt an increasing interest in her as they watched the footage.
“Phew. I’m feeling a bit tired.”
In a dim corridor. She crossed it and opened the door, removing her concealment. Her roommate, of course, was sound asleep, unaware of anything.
“Come on, tell me.”
“W-what should I say?”
“What story is behind all this?”
As she deactivated her disguise and lay on the bed, she smirked at Ren. The silent Ren struggled to find words and could only stutter.
“…It was an accident. Just a simple… accident. Something any magical girl could experience.”
Sighing, Ren muttered blankly.
“An accident, huh? In a fight?”
“Yeah. Died fighting the villains. They were monsters. Delight fought hard, but they showed no mercy.”
Ren tried to maintain a calm tone, but she didn’t believe that calmness was genuine after confirming Ren’s trauma was tied to that incident.
“You don’t want to experience that again, do you? Is that why you retired from active duty?”
“Hmph, you sound like you know everything.”
“Then why did you want to take charge of me?”
“Th-that’s…”
Ren flinched and avoided eye contact, but Takilas already had an inkling of the reason.
“You don’t need to be afraid, Ren. I won’t die.”
Her quiet, casual tone held an immense aura of the Demon King.
Even though it was the voice of a girl lying in bed, Ren recognized the weight of it and froze in place.