Lord of Entertainment

Chapter 518: Kneel, Demon King

(3rd Person POV)

Arthur went to the Delly residence.

The moment he crossed the threshold he knew the man he wanted was not in it. What he found instead was the butler, and the butler was already troubled about something.

Aldous. The one who never left Delly's side.

Arthur let himself be noticed.

Aldous turned and his eyes went wide. "Wh-who are you—"

Arthur raised a finger to his lips. "Shh. I'm a guest. There's no need for hostility; nobody's died in this house yet."

Aldous shifted his weight and reached, and Arthur was standing in front of him before the reach finished, one hand closed around his throat.

"You!!!" Aldous got out through his teeth.

"Aren't you the butler of that pig, Delly?" Arthur asked it kindly, the way a man asks after the weather. "Where is he? I have a great many questions for him and I've come a long way to ask them."

"H-he isn't here!" Aldous clawed at the wrist. "He isn't here, I swear it—"

"Then where is he?"

"The Duke took him. He was punished, for failing his mission, the Duke sent men for him two nights ago and they took him out the front door like a thief." The words came out of Aldous in a rush, without a moment's hesitation. "Please. Please spare me, I only kept his books—"

His life was in danger. His master would understand.

"He's at the Duke's castle?" Arthur's eyes lit with interest. "The Graustein one?"

"Ye-yes! Yes, Graustein, that's the one, I'd take you there myself if you—"

The hand opened. Arthur kicked him aside and let him fall.

Aldous lay where he landed, breathing in the cool air of the hall, thankful past all pride. "Thank you," he managed. "For your mercy... Thank you..."

But Arthur was long gone.

Aldous slumped back against the wall. "That man is terrifying. I thought he was nobody. A commoner, a merchant, somebody's clerk." He pressed a hand over his eyes. "I'd bet my life he's worse than the Duke ever was. Thank every god I'll never have to see him again."

---

At the Duke Graustein Castle.

The Duke put his boot into Delly's ribs and rolled him across the floor.

"Not only did you fail to be rid of that Arthur, you lost the properties to him. Lost them. No, you handed them over, with your own two hands, and thanked him for taking them." He came down on him again. "And now every noble who sat under my care is smiling at that damned Arthur's table!"

Delly stayed on his knees. "Fo-forgive me, my lord. Give me a month. A week. I swear to you I'll fix all of it—"

"It's far too late for that." Graustein's jaw worked. "You'll suffer for your incompetence, and you'll do it where the others can hear you. Guards. Take him away."

The guards were on him at once, hands under his arms.

"N-no!" Delly's voice cracked as they hauled him up. "My lord, please! Please spare me! My lord—"

The Duke watched him dragged out of the hall and shook his head.

"A headache. That's all this is." He turned back to the empty room. "I've lost the nobles who were meant to fight for me, and now there's a princess sitting in Eisen City besides."

With the power he had left, taking the whole Eisenmark Region was no longer possible. He knew it, and hated knowing it.

"I'll use the portal. I'll go to the Demon Castle myself and—"

"Did I hear that right?"

The Duke went still.

"Demon Castle?"

He turned. A stranger stood in the corner of his own hall, in a place no man had walked into.

"You..." Graustein's hand went out. "Who are you!?"

The hood came back, and Arthur let him see the whole of his face.

Graustein knew it at once. He had studied that face on a screen, in reports, in the mouths of every noble who had walked away from him; it had sat in him for weeks the way a splinter sits under a nail. "You... I know you. You're that damned Arthur!"

"Indeed." Arthur said it as though confirming an appointment.

The Duke's mouth curled. He had been standing here a moment ago trying to think his way out of a ruin, and now the answer had walked in and taken its hood off.

"I don't know how you got in here, and I've decided I don't care. This is perfect." He straightened his coat. "I'll kill you in this room and take everything you own. That film of yours was interesting, I'll admit that much. It had the power to move minds. Nobles. A princess. Put a thing like that in the right hands and there's no border it can't cross."

Arthur chuckled. "You sound confident. Are you powerful?"

"Of course I'm powerful!"

The wind came off him in blades, filling the hall, terrifying magic by any measure in this world.

Arthur walked into it.

Before Graustein could adjust his stance, Arthur was in front of him, and a fist went into his stomach.

"Kuek!!!" The Duke folded around it. He could not believe what he was feeling. 'S-so powerful!'

Arthur looked down at him with something close to disappointment. "One punch. That's all it took to empty you."

Graustein struggled to get his knees under him. "You... Just who the hell are you..."

"I told you already. I'm Arthur." He crouched to the man's level. "And I'm here because I want your help. I'd like to meet the Demon King. Is that fine?"

He could afford to be direct now. Even if Origin noticed him and looked his way, even if he lost, he could step back along the line to his save point and simply arrive again knowing better. There was no need for the caution he had carried when he first came into this world.

He had Chronette now.

To the Duke, watching from the floor, none of that existed. Only the impossible calm of a man asking to be introduced to a god.

"What!?" Graustein spat blood onto the stone, and the insult of it got him upright faster than the pain. "You think you're grand enough to walk in and meet the Demon King!?"

Arthur did not bother hiding his power any longer. "What if I am?"

"You— don't you dare look down on the Demon King!!!"

Graustein could not bear another word of it. He pulled mana until the air in the hall thinned, and the chant that came out of him was one no duke should have known.

"Taste this, the power of wind! Oh hear me, lord of the wind! Let this man draw breath no more!"

A barrier of moving air sealed around Arthur.

"There is no air left inside that," Graustein said, panting. "None. You cannot breathe, you cannot chant, and your fate is sealed—"

Arthur was not even mildly thrilled. "Mm. Impressive." He turned his hand over inside the seal. "But what made you think you're the only one who can do wind?"

The wind that answered him shredded the barrier apart from the inside.

"What!?"

"Is that it?" Arthur smiled. "Then if that's the whole of it, go and prepare the portal to your Demon King. I've kept him waiting."

"I'm not done—"

Arthur's hand was at his throat before the sentence finished. "Do you want to die?"

"Urgh!!!"

The answer was in his hands and his lungs and the floor tilting under him, and Graustein was not a brave man where his own life was concerned. "I-I understand! I'll take you to the Demon King! I'll open it myself, just— just let go—"

Arthur laughed. "Good."

---

At the Demon King's Castle.

Alukah sat listening while the First Demon Commander, Morag, gave his report from one knee.

"Your Majesty, it will not be long before the human border gives. Legion Swords has done its work well; we've set their lords against each other in three realms and they're spending their strength on themselves. I have no doubt of it. The human realm will be ours."

The ministers took it up along the walls. "Praise the Demon King! Soon the world will be in our hands!"

Alukah smiled, feeling every inch of what he was. "Good. I expect great things from you, Morag—"

Beyond the doors came the sound of fighting, and then shouting over it.

"Intruder!!!"

Morag's head came around. "What is that? What's happening out there?"

The doors opened and figures came through: Arthur, with Duke Graustein hanging from one hand.

"Interesting." Arthur looked up, and around, taking the hall in like a man pricing a room. "So this is the throne room of the Demon King." He let the Duke drop. "My thanks, Graustein. This is an excellent opportunity."

Morag's eyes went to the beaten shape on the floor. "Duke Graustein? What are you doing here?"

The Duke trembled under the weight of every demon in the room. "Fo-forgive me, Lord Morag. This man— he forced me. He made me open the portal to the Demon Capital, I had no—"

"You idiot!" Morag was on his feet. "That portal is known to us and only to us. Do you understand what you've—"

Alukah raised a hand and the hall went silent.

"It doesn't matter." The King's eyes had not left Arthur. "I never troubled myself over the portal, because no one foolish enough to challenge me would ever set foot in it." He tilted his head. "It seems I was wrong."

Arthur looked back at him and asked the obvious question. "Are you the Demon King?"

"How dare you!" Morag's voice tore across the hall. "Kneel before the King. Kneel, now—"

"You're loud." Arthur's foot struck the floor, and he was standing beside Morag before the last word left him. The First Demon Commander died where he stood.

The ministers came off the walls to answer it, and Arthur annihilated all of them.

Alukah's eyes went wide. "What?" He half rose from the throne. "I didn't even see that. How are you so fast!?"

"It doesn't matter." Arthur brushed the front of his coat. "I'm here to enslave you for my cause. Be my servant, Alukah Trump."

Alukah shook, and it was not fear. "You dare use my full name in my own hall?" His hands closed on the arms of the throne. "You'll pay for this—"

Arthur began to chant.

Arthur began to chant. "Embrace the loss of your freedom." He did not look away from the throne. "Chronette. Bind him."

She came out of the air beside him, wings holding her steady, her lantern-eyes fixed on the throne.

"«Binding Chains: Eternal Enslavement»."

Alukah shrieked as it took hold. "Ahhh!!!"

"I shall make you the loyal servant of my master," Chronette said, "Arthur Pendragon."

The pain intensified until it filled the hall. "Ahhhhh!!!"

Duke Graustein could not believe what he was watching. Even the Demon King, the terror this whole realm was built around, was no match for the man he had brought here himself.

The blinding light went down.

"Master..."

The Demon King knelt.

The Duke's eyes went wide and he began to shake. "It... It cannot be!!!"

Arthur ignored him entirely. "Live for my cause from this day," he said to the kneeling King. "And I want the demon realm to learn a name. Speak it everywhere, and speak it the way they used to speak yours. The Demon God, Arthur Pendragon."

Then, in front of the Duke and the King both, Arthur let his demon form show.

Whatever loyalty the contract had put in Alukah, the sight of it drove deeper. "I shall obey!"

Arthur nodded, and thought: ''The demon realm is mine. Their prayers will find their way to me soon enough, and a whole realm's faith energy is more than what's coming will ask of me.'