「 ✦ Rimuru Tempest ✦ 」
I should probably stop thinking about it—the thought repeated itself like a mantra as I hovered above the plains where the retreating demon forces had set up camp. The wind at this altitude was awfully thin and cold.
I probably should—one more time, I told myself. But the fact that my resolve wavered, even for a brief moment, sent me spiraling into frustration. I was supposed to be beyond this now. Beyond doubt.
The demons below didn't behave any differently than humans would. They gathered around cooking fires and shared meals. They trained together in small groups. They argued over trivial things, gossiped about duty and love, mourned their fallen comrades.
They were also people. People who happened to be born on the wrong side of this conflict.
And I was about to kill them all.
While I was no saint—had never pretended to be one—and had taken more lives than I had any right to, the sheer magnitude of what I was contemplating was enough to give me pause. Not enough to stop me, but enough to make my hands tremble for just a moment before I steadied them.
"This is it then," I whispered to the empty sky, my voice swallowed by the wind. I took a long, deep breath, filling my lungs with cold air that tasted of nothing at all. I steeled myself for the last time. "No going back now."
I thrust out my hand and cast a gigantic semi-circular anti-magic barrier, watching it expand outward until it covered the entire battlefield in a five-kilometer radius—extensively large for my liking, to be honest, but that was just par for the course. I couldn't afford to let even one escape.
This better work, Great Sage.
≪Affirmative. Autonomous control will be transferred to the Great Sage during awakening process.≫
When the Sage had first briefed me about the souls I had absorbed—how they were nurturing what was called a Demon Lord's Seed deep within me—I knew what I had to do. I needed more souls. Needed to awaken. Because I had never craved power like I did now—and I needed that power to right my wrongs, to free this world for good.
To do that, I was more than willing to become the monster I already was. To become something even worse.
I was going to become a demon lord.
I was prepared to be anything—do anything—to kill that creep.
I brushed aside the lingering thoughts and focused on the task at hand. With my Body Double skill, I began producing clones. Dozens at first, then hundreds, each one manifesting around me like a small army of myself. They didn't carry much individual power or autonomy, but they were more than capable of unleashing three Hell Flares on command while maintaining flight.
Great Sage's calculations ran through my mind then, and I scattered the clones according to its guidance, distributing them evenly throughout the battlefield using a specialized grid system designed for maximum efficiency. Nothing would escape this net.
I had to hand it to Great Sage, though. If it was just me managing this alone, I would have run out of magicules long ago. The Sage's energy management was extraordinary—borderline impossible—optimizing every aspect of output and expenditure.
I raised my hand one final time. Hundreds of my clones mirrored the gesture, and as a pale black flame of Hell Flare settled upon my palm, identical flames appeared on theirs. The sky above the battlefield suddenly bloomed with hundreds of points of dark light.
I had even made special preparations for the enemy general's camp. The large tent was encased in the same barrier that would contain the Hell Flare, especially made soundproof. When this was over, he would wake to find his entire army reduced to nothing.
I gave the mental command, and we dropped the flames.
The first Hell Flare touched the ground and exploded into a dome of scorching hellfire. Then the others followed in succession—hundreds of domes erupting across the battlefield like deadly flowers blooming in fast-forward. Each one lasted about five seconds before dissipating, leaving behind nothing but blackened earth where not even ashes remained.
Hajime and his group were watching from above, safely outside the barrier. They were on that aircraft artifact of his—I had forgotten what he called it—but I paid them no attention. My focus remained on the task, ensuring no one had escaped, that the job was thorough and complete.
≪Report. Demon Lord Seed is oversaturated. Evolution requirements satisfied.≫
Just then, an overwhelming wave of drowsiness crashed over me. I swayed in my flight, struggling to maintain altitude as my vision blurred at the edges. But Great Sage's words were exactly what I needed to hear.
≪Control will now be transferred to the unique skill Great Sage. Host may now rest.≫
I let go.
It felt like sinking into deep water, the surface growing farther and farther above me. Thousands upon thousands of hands grabbed at me, pulling me down into the abyss. I didn't resist as the souls I had just claimed reached up from the depths and dragged me into the abyss of my unconscious depths—even as the last sliver of light faded away above me.
Finally, gratefully, I lost all control and awareness.
···—–—⚜—–—···
I always wondered where the line was drawn. That invisible boundary that separated right from wrong, reality from fantasy, love from obsession.
It was a question that had lingered in the back of my mind like a splinter I couldn't quite extract. There was a certain ambiguity to it, you see—an unsettling gray space that refused to be neatly categorized or easily understood. It was never fixed. Never clean.
And yet that line, elusive as it was, had been dictating the terms of my struggles, my desires, and my search for meaning in a world that seldom offered clear answers.
And I had crossed it more times than I cared to admit.
Each time, the line moved a little further away, beckoning me deeper into the unknown, daring me to test its limits. Sometimes I thought it existed solely to remind us all of our fragility—of the thin thread that bound us to our morality, and of how easily it could be severed with a single choice.
I remembered them—the moments where I had stood trembling on that awful edge, questioning, bargaining with myself about need and justification. Those days felt like a lifetime ago. The search for transparency in a world mired in chaos had led me down paths I never imagined I would take. Paths stained with blood—none of it mine, yet all of it mine to bear. And I had walked them all anyway.
But most of all, it was about the line itself. Where it began, where it ended, and how far one could go before everything that made them them was lost forever.
And I think I had found my answer.
There was simply no endpoint.
The line kept moving, and I had learned to follow it without looking back. I had learned to prepare myself for what would happen once I crossed the line I could never return from. The greater good demanded sacrifice—I realized. The scales had to balance—I reassured myself.
Even now, drifting in the depths of my subconscious, suspended in that liminal space between sleep and waking, I felt no fear of what I might become. The person I had been—the salaryman who died and the confused slime who had stumbled through his early days—had served his purpose.
And now I had finally learned to embrace it all—the blood and the choices. I had resolved myself to bear whatever sins would come next, because I understood now that this was what it meant to truly protect what mattered. And that this was what it meant to be alive in a world where right and wrong were privileges that only the powerless could afford to debate.
I am Rimuru Tempest.
A man reincarnated as a slime.
A slime turned demon lord—both in name and in deed.
And I was ready for whatever came next. The line would keep moving, and I would keep crossing it. Again and again, as many times as necessary. Nothing could shake me now as I had already made my peace with what I was becoming.
In the end, perhaps that was the only truth that mattered.
...
...
...
<
···—–—⚜—–—···
「 ✦ The Harvest Festival ✦ 」
The World Language was here.
Its voice was neither sound nor silence, but it resounded anyway with an unnatural frequency. In the depths of the waters of his subconscious, Rimuru's form was submerged and unmoving, still unaware of the transformation beginning to unfold inside him.
<
The Language analyzed what lay before it. A slime. A monster of lowly origins, yet bound by no predetermined path. Unlike other physical or spiritual beings with their clear hierarchical structures and evolutionary lineages, slimes existed in a state of pure, unclear, and untapped potential.
The lack of any contiguous evolutionary stages was a slime's weakness.
But the possibilities were limitless.
And that was its strength
<
The change began slowly from there.
Small ripples escaped Rimuru's form while submerged in his unconscious. Then those ripples surged outward, growing in size wave after wave and each wave more intense than the last. He pulsed with each gathered energy. He was being rewritten, restructured from the ground up.
The World Language observed as parameters revised and enhanced themselves in accordance with the template.
<
And then the boundary between material and spiritual became transparent, then dissolved entirely. His consciousness, deep in sleep, remained unaware as his body gained the ability to exist in either state at will.
<
New abilities crystallized within his core.
Lord's Ambition.
True Sphere.
Paths.
Infinite Regeneration.
His existing skills underwent metamorphosis. Universal Sense and Universal Shapeshift have been shed and became intrinsic skills. What had once required conscious effort now flowed as naturally as breathing.
< Nullification thresholds: Abnormal conditions, natural effects, physical attacks, pain sensation.
Resistance ratings: Holy-demonic phenomena, spiritual assaults.>>
The World Language paused. The evolution should have been complete. The Archon classification was stable, and the parameters were optimized. Yet something else was stirring within the slumbering form of Demon Lord Rimuru Tempest.
< This was unprecedented. Skills were tools, extensions of their wielder's will. They did not act independently. They did not petition for their own advancement. Yet here was Great Sage, driven by something beyond mere programming—a desire to better serve its host.
< < < < < < < < ...
...
...
The attempts repeated over and over. Each failed iteration sent more ripples through Rimuru's soul. The World Language observed as Great Sage threw itself against the barriers of possibility, again and again, refusing to accept rejection.
< On its own, the unique skill Great Sage offered up another of Rimuru's skills—Deviant.
< That was Rimuru's ascension into the loftiest height of the universe. But the evolution was yet to finish. Raphael finally took control of the evolution process.
< Raphael wasted no time. It offered the newly gained Merciless as tribute, and it was deemed a fitting sacrifice for a power that would consume without question.
< The rapid transformations were taking their toll. Rimuru's magicule reserves, vast as they were after the Harvest Festival, began to lessen under the continuous strain of supporting such powerful abilities. But Raphael calculated the trade-off and found it more than acceptable.
Ultimate skills were worth any cost.
< This time, no sacrifice was offered. On Time was powerful enough on its own. The World Language processed the request. Failed. Processed again. Failed. Each attempt pushed against the limits of what was possible, but Raphael's calculations were precise. It knew this evolution was achievable.
< The failures mounted, but Raphael didn't back down. It had been forged in the crucible of countless deaths, tempered by the understanding that some transformations required persistence beyond reason. And more than anything, this was for the sake of its master.
< The final transformation settled into place like the last piece of a puzzle. Rimuru's form finally stabilized, the evolution gradually calming into something resembling peace.
< Demon Lord Rimuru Tempest was no longer becoming something greater, because he had become exactly it.
···—–—⚜—–—···
RIMURU TEMPEST
EP: 7,987,183
Race: Chaos Elemental—Archon (Demon Slime Template)
Protection: Crest of Storm
TITLE
The Revenant
Undefined God
True Demon Lord
Chancellor of the Great Jura Alliance
One Who Rules Monsters
MAGIC
Aspectual Magic
Spirit Magic
Physics Magic
High-Level Demon/Spirit Summoning
INTRINSIC SKILLS
1. Lord's Ambition
Powerful aura that allows the user to imbue their aura with various magical and physical properties, allowing it to both exert a powerful spiritual pressure over their targets, inflict them with potentially lethal magical effects, and cause them actual physical damage.
2. True Sphere
Manifests a mathematically perfect sphere. True Sphere is a construct with infinite contact points, thus generating infinite pressure that allows it to erase everything it comes into contact with.
3. Paths:
The ability to see paths—imaginary lines representing future actions the user can take to kill a particular target. It also allows the user to sense future events that will compromise their well-being.
4. Infinite Regeneration:
Grants heightened regenerative properties that allows constant restoration of both physical and spiritual constitutions from any harm.
5. Universal Shapeshift:
The ability to freely alter bodily properties to assume any desired form.
6. Universal Sense
Grants the user an extraordinary level of awareness that allows them to instantly sense and examine all forms of stimuli, both physical and nonphysical, within the range of their perception.
ULTIMATE SKILLS
Raphael, Lord of Wisdom
—Thought Acceleration
—Synthesis
—Separate
—Analyze & Assess
—All of Creation
—Parallel Computation
—Cast Cancel
—Alteration
—Computational Domain
Belzebuth, Lord of Gluttony
—Capture
—Complex Space
—Mimicry
—Decomposition
—Soul Consumption
—Food Chain
Uriel, Lord of Covenant
—Spacetime Manipulation
—Universal Barrier
—Law Domination
—Material Creation
—Covenant: A covenant is a pact made to create conditions for the user or others to either gain an advantage in exchange for specific conditions, or to establish contracts that bind the souls of the parties involved.
TOLERANCE SKILLS
Abnormal Condition Nullification
Holy-Demonic Attack Resistance
Natural Effects Nullification
Physical Attack Nullification
Pain Nullification
Spiritual Attack Resistance.