The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 146: Learning curve sometimes comes with pain

Chapter 146: Learning curve sometimes comes with pain

"This will really work, right?" I asked Izzi, who stood beside me with a hood covering his bright golden hair.

"Don’t worry, Boss--I’m confident!" he said with a huff, emphasizing with hands on his hips.

I stared at the revolver in my hand, filled with bullets I had been made for the past few days while Izzi made corrections on the magical formations craved on the revolver that we had been working at. My gaze shifted to the wide plains in front of me, bordered by magically crafted trees and stone walls inside my private training chamber.

It all started when I told Izzi about what happened these last few days, to explain why I hadn’t been in the research tower. As I expected, he looked disgusted at the mention of the Sarterian, and gasped horridly at the matter about the Lord of Lust.

"What the hell--that’s sexual assault! In the Lord’s own room? Is he suicidal?!" Izzi shuddered, more because he was scared of the repercussion of facing Natha’s wrath.

But my Demon Lord was pretty chill overall, maybe because he let me handle the punishment? Well--

Anyway, I also told him about those two vassals who annoyed me last night, and he clicked his tongue in response. "Tsk--I bet they’re the same with all those elves who rejected my inventions."

So, unexpectedly, we were vibing. It was quite easy talking with Izzi; he was mentally around my age, and we were both different races than the rest of the castle’s dwellers. And then there was the fact that we both came from different worlds--although he didn’t know that about me yet.

And then, with a mischievous glint, he slammed the revolver on the table. He leaned forward and spoke in a low voice, like a shady dealer in the back alley bar. "Say, Boss--it’s such a coincidence that I happened to finish this yesterday. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could blow some steam--I mean, test this out--now, huh?" he arched his brow, lips curling into a smirk. "What say you?"

And that was how we ended up here. Just me and Izzi, since I sent Jade to Zia--you know, just trying to limit my child from a show of excessive violence.

"Come on, Boss!" Izzi clenched his fists and waved them enthusiastically. "Let’s shoot that cliff!"

He was even more excited than me, since the revolver was originally his craft. I took a deep breath and lifted my arms, trying to remember how my grandfather’s subordinates aimed at the shooting range behind the mansion.

Okay, okay--since the bullets were already filled with my mana, all I needed was to pull the trigger. With heart beating in curiosity and excitement, I pulled the trigger. The bullet flew, struck the cliff far away, and then--

And then it was destruction laid bare in front of my eyes.

Everything was blown to bits; the cliff, the fields, the whole chamber. The land and the sky shook, we got thrown away by the force of the blast, skidding straight into the middle of the training ground. Smoke and debris filled the air, electricity sparked from the clash between the explosion and the security measure of the chamber--which help limit the explosion so it didn’t reach the other chambers.

That, and the black feather barrier coming out of Natha’s brand protected me and Izzi from being shredded by the storm of mana.

My ears were ringing, vague sounds of people coming to me, yelling, hands pulling me up, leading me somewhere. But I couldn’t react to anything, because a memory suddenly awakened in me.

Valmeier’s memory; of a massive explosion of magic wrecking the frontline, ravaging his soldiers, his friends, blowing them to bits. Of screams and cries of agony filling the battlefield, of scattering remains preyed on by the vultures.

Someone helped me seated on a chair, just in time, because I didn’t think I could stand up any longer.

Oh God...

I clasped my mouth tightly, preventing the rising bile to climb out. My throat felt dry and burning, as if I just inhaled the smoke of the mana residue and dirt and all the explosion swirling by the wind and--

I gagged and wheeze, Panne panicking in front of me, rubbing my back and giving me water. But there was only one thing that could--maybe--calm me down right now.

"Izzi..." I called weakly, my breath shallow. And then I repeated, screaming at the top of my lung. "Izzi!"

The hooded elf scrambled closer, surprised. Panne, who got shoved aside, decided to retreat and instructed everyone to vacate the vicinity instead, probably to give me room to breathe.

I gripped the elf’s sleeve and he responded in shock. "What--what?"

I could tell from his sparkling golden eyes that, despite just brushing with death, Izzi was excited. I understood that, since his long-life dream of making usable guns was realized today. It kind of pained me to shatter that excitement, but...

"Izzi...I...I don’t think we should continue with this," I told him.

"What?" he tilted his head, and then widened his eyes as he saw my pale complexion and morbid fear. "Making guns?"

"Y-yeah..."

Along with the memory of the war, I saw something else, another memory. Remember when I said my grandfather dealt with violence? Yeah...before I spent my life in the hospital, I spent it being surrounded by men with guns holstered on their bodies, hidden from sight. But little me would sometimes see those people take out their guns to clean them, inspect them, trained with them.

It was something natural to me, seeing killing weapons laying about, and it desensitized me from the fact that it wasn’t something that should be treated as normal just because I never saw them using it.

I couldn’t before, but seeing the two memories overlapping, I could easily picture it now; somewhere I couldn’t see, those weapons that I saw as a normal tool, were used to kill people. And that the same scenery as the one in Valmeier’s memory, could be easily replicated with our product.

But Izzi, of course, wasn’t easily convinced.

"Hey, I got it that you’re shocked because the effect is too great, but we’ve been working on it for so long,"

"Izzi..."

He moved his hands frantically, panicking as his sponsor wanted to retract the project. "And...and it’s not like we’ll make a lot of that, since you’re the only one who can make it, so--"

"No," I shook my head. "Even the other guns..." I bit my lips, closing my eyes shut at the repeating images of dying soldiers. "We’re trying to make people kill others easier," my voice started to shake. "I--"

"So what?"

"...what?" I raised my head, staring wide eyes at his response. Izzi looked at me with a stubborn frown, lips twisted like every time he hated to compromise.

"People do that all the time," he told me, in a dry tone that couldn’t care less about anything. "The magicians that make destructive spells did it fully knowing that their spells would be used to create destruction, to kill people, so what’s the difference?"

Yeah, of course. That was what people would think. That was, probably, what every weapon maker would think. It was just for profit, and we lived in a dangerous world anyway.

I thought so too, at first, until I saw those images in Valmeier’s memory flashed in my mind. It was probably hypocritical, or self-righteous, as stopping our own weapon-making wouldn’t make the world any safer anyway.

"The difference is not anyone can use it," I said, looking at his eyes keenly, grabbing his sleeve tight in the hope I could get through to him.

The spells that magicians used, the weapon arts that were being distributed--everything needed mastery and training before usage. And the ones who used it would know what their weapons would cause.

But not with guns. Not with the one we wanted to create, the one that was designed to be usable for anyone as long as they had mana. There was no need for extensive training, and even if a child get their hands on one, as long as they could infuse mana into something, they could pull the trigger.

"We’re trying to create something that could be used by anyone."

And it wasn’t good, I saw it now. I was blinded by the normalcy of having a gun around me in the past, blinded by my ignorance of something that I never saw with my own eyes, even though it was happening everywhere.

I couldn’t make the world safer, but at the very least, we shouldn’t make the world even more dangerous than it already was.

"We’re...we’ll be creating murderers, Izzi..."

He flinched, taken aback by my words. "That’s...that’s too far, isn’t it..?" he denied it still.

"Izzi!" I gripped him tighter. The fear and guilt and frustration swirling in my head and sent me into panic again. "You...have you been in a war?"

"...no?"

I laughed. "Me too!"

He blinked, frowning, and took a double take. "...what?!"

"I’ve never been in a war too," oh, God, I still laughing, wheezing, I felt like I might be crying. "Even though I knew it happened, even though I knew it was happening, I was desensitized to it, because I didn’t experience it myself," I buried my face in my palm, grasping my head. "I only see it through other person’s memory, only read about it in a novel--"

"W-wait, Boss--"

"No--I guess it’s because I still think this world is a novel," I stared at my palm; they were shaking. Or was it my eyes that were shaking?

It suddenly made sense to me. Why could I focus on looking for a cure rather than dealing with any kind of trauma that should be rising from seeing the leftover destruction of war. Why did I accept living between demons, the races that looked totally different from me, even though all I knew about them from Earth culture was vile things.

I just thought that I was quick to adapt. I just thought that I didn’t care about anything anymore since it was my second chance in life. And there might be some truth in it. But if I had to seek honesty...

"I...I still think that the event and the people are just mere characters on a pap--"

"Boss!" Izzi clamped my mouth with his palm, frantically glancing at our surrounding, and then hissed in my direction. "L-let’s get out of here for now," he stood up, pulling me from the chair, and dragging me through the Colosseum hall. "Hurry!"

I was quite in a daze then, just let me get dragged across the castle’s outer field. I heard Panne calling for us, and the guards following hastily. But elf was faster than demons, and I had the favor of the wind, so we arrived on the eighth floor of the research tower way ahead of anyone.

Still, Izzi pushed me into the alchemy room and locked the door, before looking at me with wild eyes and bated breath.

"Boss...what the hell were you..." he gripped his head, golden eyes flickering. "Damnit--are you actually...like me?" and then he said it, the thing I had kept secret from everyone. "You’re...you’re an otherworlder?"

I didn’t realize until then, that I had unconsciously told the elf, with my own mouth, about our secret.

"Ah..."

He stared at me, eyes wide, hand clasped over his mouth. "Fuck!"

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