His head felt like it was about to split open.
The throbbing pain was bad enough to seem excessive, and Ranok furrowed his brow.
It was only belatedly that he realized the pain wasn’t limited to just his head — and his eyes snapped open.
“…….”
For a moment, Ranok couldn’t make sense of the situation. He just moved his eyes, scanning his surroundings.
The first thing he noticed was a carriage — one that must have looked quite grand in its original state, but was now completely demolished.
Demolished? More than that. Part of it had even caught fire, and the wreckage was burning away in a sorry, pitiful state.
To add one more unfortunate detail to that picture: it appeared to be the carriage he had been riding in — not someone else’s across the way.
The reason he thought “appeared to be” was because Ranok had never boarded that carriage.
He had been dead, after all.
“Huh, this prince guy’s actually alive?”
Ranok had barely managed to prop up his torso, staring blankly at the burning carriage, when a voice came from above his head.
He looked up. Standing there was a man who had swathed himself head to toe in wrappings — everything covered except his eyes — in a way that was suspicious to anyone who saw him.
If everyone walked around with their identity written above their heads, this one would say criminal.
“Huh? Even with the carriage smashed up like this? ……Wait, he really is alive?”
And there wasn’t just one of them. Another man, identical in appearance, emerged from behind the carriage.
The two began chatting with each other in a perfectly composed manner, as though the fact that their target had survived wasn’t any particular problem.
“See? I told you we should’ve done a confirmation kill.”
“You’re right. What an unnecessarily tenacious life. It would’ve been better for everyone if he’d just gone in one shot.”
“Exactly. It’d be so much more convenient for both sides if he’d gone down in one hit like that guy over there.”
The first man to appear pointed a finger toward one corner. The “that guy” he was pointing at was the carriage driver.
Whether he’d had the misfortune of landing headfirst or not, the driver’s neck was broken — clearly dead to anyone’s eye.
“…….”
Ranok’s brow furrowed. It wasn’t the men’s flippant way of making light of someone’s death that grated on him.
It was the memories crashing through his mind.
Nearly two decades’ worth of someone else’s memories were churning through his head all at once — even if he hadn’t been injured when the carriage was destroyed, the headache would’ve been inevitable.
Having identified the cause of his headache, he clicked his tongue inwardly. He’d been wondering where these strangely garbed men — looking like they’d pulled socks over their heads — had come from, but it seemed they were assassins.
Quite a flashy way to go about an assassination, though.
Not knowing how to interpret his silence, the first man who had appeared sneered.
“Not reading the room, are you, Your Highness? You’ve been thrown away.”
“Even a dimwit prince would know that much, wouldn’t he? Word is he threw every tantrum in the book when he was made to leave the kingdom. Surely he isn’t stupid enough not to know that being sent as a hostage to the empire means he lost the succession battle.”
“He should’ve known his place and kept a lower profile.”
It was around that point that Ranok recalled the name belonging to this body.
Milano. Milano Mortiel. The legitimate heir of the Mortiel royal family, and first prince.
A good-for-nothing who couldn’t resist a pretty woman, had nothing but air between his ears, and caused trouble at every turn — a reckless fool that everyone agreed was no fit ruler.
A loser who had been pushed aside by his younger brother in the succession struggle and recently sold off as a hostage to the neighboring empire.
……Had been. Until just a moment ago.
“Why isn’t he reacting? Did he hit his head and get even more useless? Why does he look so blank?”
“Who cares. Either way, we just have to kill him.”
When their target still didn’t react to the continued taunting, they seemed to lose interest, and the men moved in closer to finish the job.
“Don’t hold it against us.”
“Try living a little more virtuously in your next life.”
“If there is a next life, that is.”
Never letting up on the mockery until the very end, they drew their daggers at a speed the eye couldn’t follow and slashed at the prince’s throat.
Blood sprayed.
“Gck!”
“Aaagh!”
The one thing that differed from what the men had expected was that the blood was their own — not the prince’s in front of them.
Threads of black demonic energy burst up through the ground and pierced through the men’s bodies in an instant.
“Wh— what!”
The men cried out in shock at the act of the prince, who was famous as the very symbol of incompetence.
Milano Mortiel. The Mortiel royal family’s resident disaster.
His body itself had been born with fine stock — thanks to his mother, who had been a knight — and he’d inherited the mind of his father, a mage-king, so they said as a child he’d earned the label of genius at whatever he turned his hand to.
But his nature was lazy through and through, and all he ever wanted was to play — so now, as an adult, he was a dimwit prince who couldn’t do a single thing properly, whether it was swordsmanship or magic.
That was who he was.
Ah.
Ranok finally understood the men’s attitude. If a wretch like this had gone around throwing his weight as a prince, it was only natural he’d earn resentment rather than goodwill.
On top of that, from an assassin’s perspective: he’d been discarded even by the Mortiel royal family, had not a single guard knight, was easy to kill, and there was no retaliation to fear.
Why wouldn’t they be pleased to have the honor of putting a fallen royal blood to a wretched end?
But none of that had any bearing on Ranok.
“Haa.”
Ranok sighed and got to his feet. Whether this body’s natural build was genuinely not bad, this sturdy frame had been flung from the carriage and come away with nothing more than some bruises.
Still, the frail human body screamed in protest. Ranok groaned at the unfamiliar sensation, then looked at the men — still skewered through by the shadows of demonic energy, mouths opening and closing soundlessly.
“Sorry.”
Ranok offered them a light apology.
They had performed their mission splendidly. Milano Mortiel had just died, after all.
It was simply unfortunate that something unclean had taken up residence in that body — so as a result, their mission was a failure.
“This body isn’t used to looking up at anyone.”
Ranok said it to the men in a tone of genuine regret, as though their deaths were due to that reason and that reason alone.
If Ranok’s former subordinates had heard those words, they would have trembled head to toe and said:
You would have killed them even if you were looking down at them, sir.
Crack.
After snapping both men’s necks simultaneously and discarding the bodies without a second thought, Ranok surveyed his surroundings. The overturned, ruined carriage. The scattered corpses. The blood.
Everything was a mess.
Not only the wretched life of this body, but also himself — having possessed this body at the very tail end of that wretched life — was a mess.
Why did I come back to life?
Ranok remembered the moment of his own death clearly.
What had he thought of in that final moment? It wasn’t lingering attachment to life, nor the relief of finally putting an end to a life that had gone on for an unbearably long time.
Just a faint wish that his death alone would bring them happiness — and a small, quiet joy in knowing his calculations would surely prove correct.
So what was this?
“……Casioth. Gerard.”
In that moment, Ranok had dazedly whispered those dear names aloud.
— As expected. Even reborn, a Demon Clan creature’s nature never changes.
Something buzzed directly inside his head, as though someone were speaking straight into it, and Ranok looked up.
Before him, a small being scattering glittering specks of light around it hovered with beating wings, looking down at the corpses of the two men Ranok had killed.
If it had been a human — or even a non-human who recognized the sanctity of faeries — they would have thrown themselves flat on the ground in reverence the moment they laid eyes on it. Unfortunately, however, the one standing here was Ranok.
A faerie?
The moment he had assessed it, Ranok reached out without hesitation.
— Squawk! You vulgar creature! Touch a faerie and your soul will be cursed! I go through all the trouble of bringing you back to life and this is the thanks I get, you insolent thing!
The faerie had clearly not expected its target to simply grab a noble faerie with its bare hand, and let out a shriek.
All the trouble of bringing him back to life?
Ranok paid no mind to the faerie throwing its multicolored fit and asked:
“Talk.”
— What?
“What is happening here.”
The situation had to be assessed first.
Rejoicing at being brought back to life could wait — the situation didn’t look remotely favorable.
Going by this prince’s memories, this world wasn’t in particularly good shape either.
It was far too different from what Ranok had calculated. He hadn’t expected brilliance, but he hadn’t thought it would be this broken.
And it had been revived — and by a faerie, no less?
Why?
He couldn’t make sense of the reason at all. Why had Ranok — who had been the Second-in-Command of the Demon Clan — ended up as Milano Mortiel.
The Second-in-Command of the Demon Clan, the Demon King’s right hand…… the man called Ranok had died and disappeared. From this world, forever.
And that, if this prince’s memories were correct, had been a full ten years ago.
No matter how powerful a Demon Clan member Ranok had been, that was more than enough time for his corpse to have rotted away to nothing.
But the faerie shrieked back at Ranok’s question as though it were the most outrageous thing it had ever heard.
— Isn’t it obvious? Because the world is on the verge of destruction, that’s why!
“What’s obvious about that? And more importantly — what does that have to do with me?”
— What does it have to do with you? It’s because of you!
The faerie trembled furiously, as though Ranok’s clueless attitude were the height of shamelessness and impudence.
— The Hero — and the Demon King — both fell apart after you died! The world has become a disaster! The flow of everything has gotten tangled up!
“What?”
— Do you have any idea how deeply the goddess grieves because of you? You wretched Demon Clan creature!
