Gluttony Demon King with the Swampman ~A Man with No Magic Power Who Dreamed of Magic, Wielding Knowledge from His Past Life Through Steady Research and Hard Work to Become the Most Vicious Final Boss~ - Chapter 60.1: The Victor and Ashes

Chapter 60.1: The Victor and Ashes

The Demon King of Thorns, and the hero Cira.

Their offensives were evenly matched.

That made sense. They used the same weapon, the same volume, and the same speed.

When those things clashed, neither side could gain the upper hand.

Countless thorns tangled together, and the hero completely shut out every single one of the Demon King’s invasions.

“Hey, hey, it’s actually working perfectly, Cira!”

“Yes, I’ll kill it. Everyone, please join in and help!”

“Of course!”

The hero’s party charged forward.

Toward the Demon King of Thorns, whose every fierce attack had been blocked, arrows and spells flew through the narrow gaps.

The simultaneous long-range barrage struck the Demon King’s main body directly and scorched its bark-like skin.

A Demon King was an extremely tough creature.

The massive magical power wrapped around its body served as sturdy armor in itself; ordinary mages couldn’t even make it flinch.

But their attacks were never wasted.

By repeatedly attacking to wear down its magic power and then having the hero deliver the finishing blow to the weakened spots—that was the ideal plan for subduing a Demon King.

The Demon King’s thorns multiplied at a horrifying speed, yet the hero’s thorns suppressed them in an instant.

The battle situation looked extremely favorable—

But a Demon King was not something so easily dealt with.

“████████”

It said something.

At the faint voice that came from the Demon King, one of the mages twitched in reaction.

“W-What… that was fairy language!?”

Fairy language—

It was literally the tongue used by fairies, and spells woven in their language were known to produce magic of an intensity far beyond what humans could ever achieve.

Immediately afterward, the Demon King gathered countless thorns and twisted them together into bundles.

They became spears.

An enormous number of thorns were spun into a hundred floating spears in the air—and the Demon King released them all at once.

“! Lord, grant life to these clumps of earth—”

“Here, a barrier to repel magic—!”

The two mages worked together to create a wall of earth.

It was one of the kingdom’s finest defensive spells, yet fairy magic surpassed even that.

The countless thorn spears pierced the earth wall as if it offered no resistance at all and rushed straight toward the hero’s party.

“No way… not a single one stopped…!”

The earth wall collapsed pathetically, and the thorn spears closed in.

Only a hero could stop them—that much was clear. A Demon King was an utterly abnormal existence—

But the same was true of the hero.

“Thorns, fill this place.”

In the end, Cira’s thorns caught the fired spears.

Instead of forming a wall, she extended thorns from all around and wrapped them sideways to seize the spears.

“Th-These are… the same spears that once pierced me… That’s why Haro-sama had already anticipated that you would use spears. A spear with superior piercing power should be stopped not with a wall, but with a net.”

We were prepared, the hero Cira declared as she glared at the Demon King and swung the attache case dangling from one hand.

Indeed, it was a clash of the same weapon, the same volume, and the same speed.

But at that moment, the Demon King had spent a single instant creating the thorn spears. And in that very instant, Cira had continued producing thorns—

As a result, at this point, Cira’s “deployment” had already surpassed the Demon King’s.

To begin with, it was a monstrous growth rate capable of swallowing an entire town in less than an hour.

So even in that brief moment, before anyone realized, Cira’s thorns had isolated the Demon King from all four sides and were closing in to crush it from every direction.

“████████—!”

“That’s why it won’t work.”

A rain of thorn spears woven in fairy language and fired like a barrage. Even the panicked, wildly scattered shots were calmly caught and wrapped up by Cira’s thorns one after another.

What remained was the encirclement of thorns and the hundred spears now halted, entangled in Cira’s thorns.

Then, with a “whoosh,” Cira flipped the spear-covered net inside out, turning the spear tips toward the Demon King.

“D-Demon King of Thorns… tonight, the way I kill you is by impalement.”

—The Demon King’s defenses could not be pierced by anyone except a hero.

That statement was half correct and half wrong. There was one other existence besides the hero capable of breaking through that solid armor of magical power—namely, the Demon King itself.

The spears the Demon King had created by weaving fairy words—now those very spears impaled the Demon King itself.

The swarm of thorns, turned into a bed of needles, swallowed the Demon King in an instant, and the sinister thorn spears pierced straight through it.

Hands, feet, chest, head, and the small, fairy-like main body were mercilessly skewered and torn apart. The Demon King died with surprising ease, screaming as it went.

“The… the Demon King is dying…”

“It’s over already? That fast!?”

“It’s Cira—she did it! Cira pulled it off! First one!”

Her companions burst into loud cheers.

While they did, one of the writhing thorns deeply gouged the Demon King’s chest.

A single crimson jewel that caught the moonlight with a glint was torn out from its chest and floated into the air. Cira lunged forward and caught it.

“R-Recovered… the magic stone…!”

She looked perhaps even happier than if she had simply killed a Demon King.

Rolling around on the thorn-covered battlefield, Cira hugged her master’s gift tightly to her chest. Her companions watched the hero with exasperated expressions, yet—

“Cira, you… you did great!”

“Wah!?”

—they immediately jumped in too and roughed her up in a joyful tangle.