Demon King & Hero Chapter 2.5

After the lovers’ quarrel(?) between Yuria and the demon king concluded, Yuria eventually decided to learn various skills from the demon king.

But the results were tragic. Just where did that lovey-dovey atmosphere from just now go. But instead, the demon king, behaving quite unlike his normal easygoing ways, was actually acting like a demon king.

“You idiiiiiooooooottt!!!!”

The one being called an idiot by the demon king, the greatest hero on the continent, Yuria, looking like a kicked puppy said,

“I thought did it wrong because I dug too deep!”

“Who else would think like you?!”

Out in the fields, the demon king had came out with Yuria to teach her how to farm, but in the brief period of time that he had gone for a drink, Yuria had somehow blocked half the waterways in the field.

“A-at least put up some signs!”

Yuria tried to rebut. But needless to say, there was no way anyone would buy into those excuses.

“Then, ask one of the village kids. They’d probably just call you an idiot?”

“Hiiiiii~”

With an expression that looked like she was about to let loose her own waterworks, Yuria started clearing up the waterways again.

Looking at this sight, the demon king sighed.

‘I think I’ve been sighing too much lately?’

He didn’t think he’d sighed this much before, even back when he was stuck calculating a year’s budget for the demon world. With a peculiar look in his eyes, he stared at Yuria. He couldn’t help but compare this pretty, few-swords-short-of-an-armory village girl with the spirited killer out for his blood that he’d first met.

The funny thing was, he actually found this figure of her digging up trenches, cute.

“Tch. Looks like I’ve properly gone crazy as well.”

But, he didn’t dislike it. Rather, he did like it.

It was when a smile had spread across the demon king’s face,

“Aeiit!”

Maybe it was a rock in the soil, but Yuria, frustrated at her lack of progress, added her ki to the shovel and dug.

Problem being, before this, she was very, very good with the sword.

Already having basically lived for the sword, to Yuria, the shovel was but another slightly oddly-shaped blade.

Under this overpowering force, naturally, the rock broke, the trench was also dug much deeper than the normal waterway… and the rice planted beside it was also blown away.

“Go die, you idiot!”

The demon king blew up for the second time.

“Done.”

Letting out a sigh, the demon king looked at the painstakingly completed rice fields.

“Huu, farming is hard work after all. But, it was worth it!”

Yuria replied with a pointlessly happy sweet smile.

“Although, it took three times longer than it should have due to a certain someone.”

“Urk…”

With guilt relentlessly p.r.i.c.king at her, Yuria shrunk down. If it was only minor, sure, you could have blamed that on inexperience. However, this was beyond being able to be simply called interference, rather, you could say it was on the level of deliberate destruction.

‘Would it really kill you to praise me?’

Looking at the pouting Yuria, the demon king let out another sigh. From her expression, it was much too obvious what she was thinking.

‘She looks so gullible, how on earth did she survive being a hero for so long?’

The demon king actually had a point.

Yuria had been imperilled countless times due being fooled by evil organisations.

However, the said groups were all destroyed by her overpowered skills, her experiences in risking her life and being trapped merely served to strengthen her even further.

The awkward silence persisted for a while longer, and Yuria, whose personality couldn’t stand it, broke it first.

“Um, why is a demon king farming of all things? Wouldn’t life be easier with a different job?”

Even if he tried to hide it, a demon king was still a demon king.

As a merchant, he could have full reign of the continent. Even as the c.r.a.ppiest magician, he could basically be wors.h.i.+ped in a small village.

But instead, he was raising crops and animals in this wasteland in the middle of nowhere.

Yuria simply couldn’t comprehend why he would do this.

But, the demon king merely smirked and lay down backwards in the gra.s.s.

“Demons, the majority of them are born for combat, and basically start fighting from birth. But there are a few cla.s.ses, unlike the majority, that are unrelated to fighting.”

Yuria’s ears p.r.i.c.ked up. A story of the demons.

Not like the traditional tales of demons, this was a story of the demon world from a demon king himself.

“Now, those demons are picked on by others. But since demons have stricter rules on these kinds of things than humans, almost none of them actually die. But hazing is still hazing, the ones who can’t take it drift off to some abandoned wasteland somewhere and live on by farming for a living.”

When the demon king closed his eyes, what he saw was a barren wasteland. One even more infertile than those of the human world. It was there that he had witnessed a miracle.

“There was nothing. Dust as far as the eyes could see. But a few years later, what stood was not empty dirt, but a proper village.”

Closing his eyes, these images came to the demon king.

The dust gradually faded away, replaced with a land of water and fertility.

Where loneliness and misery disappeared, replaced with abundance and happiness.

It was there that the demon king saw a miracle that not even the demon G.o.d could have brought about.

“It was then that I thought would make a miracle like that. Making something from nothing, large from small, and hope from darkness!”

Looking at the smiling demon king, Yuria’s mouth twitched.

‘Why do you feel more like a hero than I do?’

Letting out a sigh of her own, she muttered,

“This precocious child…”

But, a smile turned the corner of her lips.