God of Trash

Chapter 216. You’ve Realized

Rhys turned. Daran stood slightly behind him, his arms crossed, gazing at the dark filth the same as Rhys did. He nodded at Rhys. “I take it you’ve comprehended the technique, if you’ve come here?”“I think so, yeah. What is it?”

Daran shook his head. “I don’t know. I was the first to find it… in our region. I tried to use it, taking a tiny portion of its immense power and creating curse power from it, spawning cursed techniques and curses alike, culminating in my ultimate weapons, the beings you now know as the Remnant Weapons.”

Rhys eyed him. “And yet, you seem hesitant about it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Your demeanor. That… and Straw. He’s basically a sponge for curse power. You felt guilty… or no, probably nervous is a better word, about this power you’d unlocked, and you created Straw to clean up after yourself.”

Daran snorted. He looked at the power again, then lowered his head a tad. “You aren’t wrong. I began to experiment with it, and before I knew it, the entire region was full of curse-wielding dark mages who claimed to be my disciples and soldiers. The dark filth was there before I started, but I unlocked the way to use it for mages… at least for my generation, and our region. And then… and then they began to blame me for creating the darkness at all, and the Alliance was forged to destroy me, and here we are now.”

“Ah, right. You ‘just happened’ to have dark mages spring up around you, by no fault of your own,” Rhys said mockingly.

“I certainly wasn’t recruiting anyone,” Daran insisted indignantly.

“Or turning anyone away.”

“Why would I?”

“No, no, you’re right. Anyone would become a Demon King under those circumstances,” Rhys said, grinning.

“All because I tried to enforce a little law and order among those outlaws, suddenly, everyone’s calling me king and acting as if I was in charge from the beginning,” Daran complained.

“Oh, is that what happened?”

“It is.”

“No… conquering on your part?”

Daran harrumphed and crossed his arms. “Well, what was I supposed to do, sit back and let the states continue warring uselessly? Watch the mage schools waste their resources and their precious students’ lives in meaningless intra-region conflicts? I wasn’t conquering. I was consolidating resources.”

Rhys raised his brows. He gave Daran a look. “It sounds a lot like you were conquering the realm to me.”

“A plebian like yourself wouldn’t understand the intricacies of ruling a region.”

Rhys shook his finger at Daran. “It’s when you say things like that, that I doubt that you were a well-intentioned person who just happened to get labeled a Demon King by the Alliance, and start to wonder if you were exactly the kind of warlord you claim you weren’t.”

“I spent time in the company of philosophers—”

“To your detriment.”

“—what kind of warlord spends his time pondering his morality?”

“You’d be surprised. It’s big in the J-novel sphere. And manga. And in Western novels, shockingly. Not really big in C-novels or K-novels, but nothing’s perfect.”

Daran stared at him. Rhys stared back. Daran was the first to look away, with a heavy sigh. “You shouldn’t constantly remind me that you’re an otherworlder. Just because I can only talk to you now, doesn’t mean I’ll be like this forever.”

“Is that a threat? Does someone not want to be revived?” Rhys asked, putting a hand over his mouth in mock-shock.

“I won’t. But if you ever ran into a situation like this again, you ought to be more careful. Not every immaterial ex-Demon King is as nuanced, moral, and upstanding as myself.”

Rhys nodded slowly, looking Daran dead in the eye. “The next time I encounter an immaterial Demon King and tell him I’m an otherworlder, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Daran narrowed his eyes. “Are you mocking me?”

“Almost constantly. It’s the only way I keep myself from stabbing you, really.”

“Really?”

“Stabbing is a bit of an exaggeration. Beating your ass until you stop being so annoying is definitely on the table, though.” Rhys thought for a second, then beamed. “Actually, I think we should make you material again. I think it could be very cathartic.”

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“I would accept a beating if it meant I could be material once more,” Daran accepted gracefully.

Rhys twisted his lips. Somehow, that took all the fun out of it. He waved his hand. “If I bring you back, I’ll do it because I want to, not because I wanna beat your ass. So don’t think being annoying is a route to a body.”

“I did consider it, briefly,” Daran allowed.

heless, as if it were an enormous manifestation of intent left behind to rot by some unfathomable being.

Rhys frowned and glanced at Daran. “This is under our entire region?”

Daran nodded. “It is.”

“Huh.” If it was intent, what kind of being could manifest an intent that large? What was the purpose of the intent—the original intent, so to speak, that had rotted into… this? Something so virulent and destructive that to touch it was to risk his life, even someone who specialized in virulent and destructive substances like Rhys? And… why? Why was there a huge block of rotten intent under their entire region?

Rhys opened his mouth.

“I don’t have any answers, so don’t ask. I don’t want to be accused of being evasive. I truly do not know,” Daran said, before Rhys could speak.

Someone really wants a material body, Rhys thought. Since he’d been able to threaten Daran with not getting him a physical body, the man had been much more cooperative. He waved his hand. “That’s fair. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting you to have answers about this, one way or another. What I was going to ask, is if my resident void expert knows somewhere I can exit the void into a quiet, secluded part of the Alliance, where no one would think to look for me.”

He had his exits, but they were all in the Empire, and in the worst case that the Alliance had threatened or tortured his friends…or the slightly less worse case that they’d asked some member of the fast food crew nicely, and the crew hadn’t known not to trust them, they knew all about them. Even if his exits weren’t compromised, they were still in the Empire, not the Alliance. He’d have to sneak across the border, and they’d be on the lookout for him coming from the direction of the Empire. One way or another, it was risky to use his exits. On the other hand, if Daran, self-proclaimed void expert, had an exit everyone had forgotten about, it would probably be within the Empire, and no one would expect Rhys from one of the Demon King’s old void exits, if they even knew where Daran had hidden them.

Daran smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”