Chapter 200: Zetto is bad (2)
On the night that Aizel, whose lifeless eyes gave off an eerie vibe, set out to find Zetto, who was wandering the streets of the academy looking for an informant when he came face to face with a nameless demon.
He hadn’t been in a hurry, so he had planned to ignore the demon as if he hadn’t seen it, but the demon had been chasing him relentlessly, and Zetto had finally decided to deal with it.
“…”
In the dead silence of the alley, the demon was unable to do more than swallow his saliva.
There was an iron collar around his neck.
The red blade of the sword, beautiful to gaze upon and more dangerous than the thorns of any flower, was soaked with a single drop of black blood from the demon’s throat.
It was Sierra, the Spectral Sword of Zetto.
Meanwhile, from the shadows of the wall where the demon stood with its back to him, Zetto stretched out his arm and held the blade to the creature’s throat.
‘This guy…Is it even a demon?’
He had hoped that the demon would be able to fill up the magick to power the prosthetic, but the magick it possessed was terrible.
However, the energy he could sense from its body was unmistakably that of a demon.
At that thought, Zetto moved his arm to slit the demon’s throat.
“…Lord Zetto…?”
His body froze at the name the demon called out of nowhere.
“You’re Lord Zetto…?”
“…That’s right.”
The demon had already gotten the information.
It was strange that he didn’t know about Zetto’s existence since he was the one who had been secretly chasing after him in the first place.
“Could you please spare me…?”
“Why should I?”
“Well, if you listen to my story first…”
“There are no villains without stories, but there are two kinds of villains in this world: those who at least tell their stories and die, and those who die without telling their stories.”
“I, I’ve been looking for Lord Zetto all along…!”
“Isn’t that true of the other demons as well?”
Since he had killed the Legion Leader’s right-hand man and had even been revived by Heneryes’ miracle, the demons must be looking for him with a light in their eyes.
“No, it’s not like that… At this rate, Lord Zetto is in danger…!”
“…Danger?”
Zetto repeated.
Then he stepped out of the shadows completely, revealing himself while keeping his blade straight as he held it to the demon’s throat.
“Tell me more.”
In response, the demon steadied its trembling voice and slowly began to explain.
The demon’s explanation went like this.
There was a price on Zetto’s head, 50,000 gold, and all sorts of assassins and shady mercenaries were out to get him.
“Ho… Fifty thousand gold, that’s a lot of money, no wonder there’s so many people running after me.”
“Have you already met…the assassins?”
“I have, though I didn’t realize they were trying to scratch a 50,000 gold lottery ticket.”
“Then… is that why you were wearing that ridiculous helmet?”
The demon pointed to his face.
His fingertips were pressed together in a grotesque design that could hardly be called a helmet.
It was a doll’s head.
“I thought if I wore this, people wouldn’t recognize me.”
“Well… I think you stand out in a different way.”
“Is it very strange, master?”
Zetto asked Sierra, taking a break from talking to the demon.
[Don’t worry, it’s not strange at all in my eyes, how can a demon understand human standards.]
Sierra, the one who had chosen the doll, frowned.
She liked the way Zetto, who could be described as anything but cute, was tilting his head with the face of a cuddly teddy bear.
“…Master?”
The demon muttered as he watched Zetto ask the question into thin air.
‘He doesn’t know about Sierra’s existence.’
Zetto removed the puppet mask covering his face as he considered the demon’s response.
“What I do know is…”
He then reveals his signature snow-white bandages. It’s slightly hot inside, and his jet-black hair is slightly damp from the bluish moonlight.
“That my disguise didn’t fool you, that you recognized my identity at a glance. What is your identity, and who did you receive your instructions from, the Legionnaire or the Chief of Staff?”
Zetto pressed down hard on the hand that held his sword and the demon narrowed his eyes.
“If I had to guess…I report directly to the General Staff.”
“Under the Chief of Staff…That’s quite a high position considering your insignificant magick. Did the Chief of Staff order you to find out information about me?”
“…Well, there was such an order, but I wasn’t looking for Lord Zetto at the behest of the Chief of Staff, believe it or not… I’m here because I’m impressed with you, Lord Zetto, and I want to serve you as my lord.”
“That does sound very unbelievable.”
Zetto shook his head at the absurdity of a demon offering to serve a human.
“I don’t think I’m going to spare your life for spouting such words… Regardless of its authenticity, what made you say that?”
“Because you, Lord Zetto, are the Second Coming of the Nameless One.”
“The Nameless One…?”
Zetto, who knew a little about him, muttered.
The Nameless One, was a demon who was said to have challenged for the position of demon king in the past by eating his own kind and was exterminated.
Aside from that tinnitus, he knew nothing else.
“You don’t seem to remember him after all.”
“You… What do you know?”
Zetto asked, his voice turning serious.
“There was a time when I was gathering information on the followers of the Nameless One on the orders of the Chief of Staff…”
The demon began to explain what had happened to him.
The information he’d learned about the Nameless One while trying to locate his followers.
The world he sought and the goals he sought to achieve.
What kind of demon the Nameless One was, what kind of man he was.
The demon was slowly warming to the ideas of the Nameless One, which contrasted with the cruelty and selfishness of the demons he’d experienced while traveling with Murka, who had been ordered by the Legionnaire to eliminate his followers.
Not that he could do anything about it.
He could do little more than slip the locations of his followers, which he had already mapped out, out of Murka’s sight, so that one more life might be spared.
In the eyes of the demons, helping the Nameless One followers was a crime worthy of death.
Nervous that he might be found out, he was next ordered to spy on Murka, who had crawled into human territory.
Eventually, Murka came face to face with Zetto, and that’s how he met him.
Zetto’s abilities were similar to those of the Nameless One he knew.
As he watched the battle and silently cheered Zetto on, but it was Zetto’s resurrection that prompted him to take action.
Heneryes’ miracle had felt like a revelation.
“So you think I must be the second coming of the Nameless One…and that’s why you want to serve me?”
Zetto, who had been listening to the explanation and was wiping his brow at the unexplained dizziness that had suddenly occurred, asked.
“Yes, that’s exactly it!”
The demon, whose face brightened, nodded.
“What exactly are the similarities?”
Speaking of the Second Coming, Zetto had some clues since he heard Heneryes mention his previous lives and that in some of them he was a demon.
“The fact that you held your sword in a reverse grip…The spirits you’re working with must be the same, because the descriptions in the records I’ve read are quite similar to the spirits I’ve seen in Lord Zetto battles, though I didn’t realize that the Shade of Shadows, the dark spirit that the Nameless One was working with…was such a cute little thing.”
“Do you see Sheddie?”
At Zetto’s call, Sheddie, who had been nonchalantly scratching his ears with his paws at his feet, let out a low, wailing whine.
“Sheddie…? Ah, you’ve given it a name, yes, I can see it, I’ve been dealing with spirits for a while now…I have a lowly dark elemental, but he’s my eyes and ears.”
The demon smiled brightly at the mention of his elemental.
“Aside from that, you seem to be quite similar in that you value your comrades, for the Nameless One is said to have cared deeply for his people.”
“Companions…”
Zetto then slowly recounted his explanation.
From what the demon said, he was an informant directly under the Chief of Staff.
That means he’s quite competent as an informant.
‘It’s like he’s borrowing the spirit’s vision to get information.’
It was said that those who could control spirits were rare among demons, and there were many people in this world that could not even sense their aura at all, so he was competent in that way alone, but the information he was currently gathering was enough to show his competence.
‘The battle with the Murka, the presence of Sheddie…’
He was already dipping his toe into information that would never be easy to find out.
And now Zetto was trying to find an informant, someone who could keep tabs on the demons but he didn’t think it was possible to work with a demon
“So that’s the end of the villain’s story, right?”
Suddenly, Zetto tilted the sword he was holding to the demon’s throat.
He was sincerely trying to decapitate him.
[Disciple, that guy… even though he’s a demon, he seems to be quite capable…]
Then Sierra blurted out in a flustered tone.
‘That’s the problem, Master.’
It’s too good to be true.