[Kingdom POV]
At the center of the Eldora Kingdom, located in the deepest part of the Royal Castle, was the Round Table Room.
In times of peace, it was a place where the King's dignified voice and the active debates of nobles and generals would fly about, but now, it was enveloped in a deathly silence akin to a cold tomb.
The luxurious King's chair placed at the head of the table was empty.
In its place, sitting at the center of the long desk with a pale face, was the First Prince, Leonhardt. He was a young Crown Prince still in his mid-twenties, but his beautiful blond hair was disheveled, and dark bags had formed under his eyes.
"...Continue the report."
Leonhardt's voice, sounding as if it had been squeezed out, was terribly hoarse.
Surrounding the round table were the Commander of the Kingdom's Knight Order, the Head Court Mage, and the Ministers who oversaw the nation's supreme intelligence agencies. However, every single one of them was trembling as if they had seen a ghost, not even daring to meet each other's eyes.
"Y-Yes... As per the initial report. The Ritual of Hero Summoning conducted in the Summoning Chamber has... met with the worst possible conclusion. His Majesty the King, along with all thirty-six high-ranking mages who participated in the ritual, are... believed to be dead, or annihilated."
The young civil official who stood to report read from the parchment in his hand, his hands trembling violently.
"...What of the corpses? Is it some kind of curse, or the work of an assassination squad from the demon race?"
Leonhardt slammed both hands on the desk and glared at the civil official with bloodshot eyes.
Just a few hours ago, his father, the King, had been laughing loudly, proclaiming, "With this, we can destroy the Demon King's army." Yet, immediately after the pillar of light signaling the ritual's success rose, communications were cut off.
"That is... not a single thing that could be called a corpse remains. The Summoning Chamber is completely overrun by black-purple rose vines, and filled with an abnormally high concentration of miasma. Only the crown His Majesty was wearing was... rolling in the corner of the room, as if it had been kicked away."
"Kicked away, you say...?"
"Yes. And the clothing and staves of the mages had all crumbled to ash... Most terrifying of all, the soldiers of the investigation team who set foot in that room successively fell into severe respiratory distress and are currently in a critical, unconscious state. It is as if the space itself has been transformed into a lethal poison...!"
At the civil official's words, the temperature of the air in the Round Table Room dropped several more degrees.
"Head Mage, what in the world is the meaning of this!?"
The Knight Commander roared at the robed old man sitting next to him.
"Did we not summon the Hero who will save the world!? Why has His Majesty been killed, and why is the royal castle sinking into miasma!?"
"I-I don't know...! There should have been no errors in the ritual's spell formula! The alignment of the stars, the mana offered, everything was perfect! But the soul that was dragged out was far... far too alien!"
The Head Court Mage tore at his own white hair as if maddened.
Before his eyes, projected from a crystal ball, floated the blue screen of the [System Log] in mid-air. It was the law of the gods that managed this world and granted statuses and levels to all humans.
However, the strings of text displayed there were completely deranged.
[Warning: Unmeasurable (Error) entity detected at coordinates: [Royal Castle - Summoning Chamber]]
[Warning: The world's mana is being forcibly plundered.]
[Confirming Target's Titles: [Kingslayer], [Walking Calamity]... Subsequent titles cannot be verbalized.]
[Target's Level: Cannot be displayed (Overflow)]
[Recommended Action: Flee from their line of sight immediately. Survival probability in the event of hostility is 0.000000001%.]
"Survival probability... practically zero?"
Leonhardt stared at the projected text and muttered in shock.
Not even the first-generation Hero who founded the Eldora Kingdom had ever caused the System to issue such abnormal warnings.
Even when executive-class members of the Demon King's army appeared, the System had calmly displayed the enemy's level and weaknesses.
"Your Highness. The System has been incessantly sounding alarms like a mad thing for quite some time now. What emerged from that Summoning Chamber was no Hero. ...It is the pure incarnation of Death itself, something even the Demon King would fear and flee from."
The Head Mage looked at the Prince with despair-soaked eyes.
"The figure recorded on the crystal's playback was... a girl with silver hair, wearing a jet-black dress. Unbelievably, after taking His Majesty's life, she yawned and... muttered things like, 'The light is a bit too strong and hurts my eyes,' before walking right out of the castle."
"What happened to the pursuit unit!?"
Leonhardt turned back to the Knight Commander. If she walked out of the royal castle, the guarding knights couldn't have just stayed silent.
"...Annihilated."
The Knight Commander shrank his robust body slightly and ground his back teeth together with a creak.
"In the corridors of the castle, the unit of thirty heavy infantrymen who went to intercept her... without leaving even a trace of a battle, were simply turned into red sand. Not a single drop of blood, not a single fragment of armor remains. There is merely red sand softly piled up by the moonlit window."
"Red... sand...? Not burned by magic?"
"Yes. According to the testimony of a survivor, that silver-haired girl merely waved her hand lightly, as if shooing away an insect... With just that, thirty fully armed men were pulverized in an instant."
Those at the round table forgot to even breathe as they listened to that report.
Not even permitted to cross swords. With a single wave, veteran soldiers were turned to sand. That wasn't a battle; wasn't it merely "cleaning up"?
"A-And after that!? Where did she head!"
"It is believed she passed through the castle gates and headed toward the Silent Forest on the outskirts of the royal capital. We immediately dispatched a pursuit unit into the forest, but..."
The Knight Commander paused there, contorting his face as if recalling something terribly frightening.
"Half of the pursuit unit was swallowed by an impossible bottomless swamp within the forest. They say the ground suddenly turned into mud in the moonlit forest, and the soldiers sank while struggling in agony. According to the survivors' accounts, a woman wearing a jet-black maid outfit had somehow appeared behind the girl and was attending her."
"A maid, you say...? Where did she spring from! Was it not just one person summoned!"
"We don't know! However, they say the moment that woman appearing to be a maid snapped her fingers, the ground turned into a bottomless swamp... If it were the monsters lurking in the forest or ferocious Dark Beasts, we would know how to deal with them. But that... that is not a physical entity. It is the embodiment of unreasonable death!"
Leonhardt strongly pressed against his throbbing temples.
To oppose the Demon King's army, his father, the King, had dabbled in the taboo ultimate summoning art. As a result, what he called forth was not a savior, but a "true devil" that caused even the System to spit out incomprehensible errors.
She was currently walking through the Silent Forest, right on the doorstep of this kingdom.
Without any known objective, merely advancing a path of overwhelming devastation.
"...If this fact becomes known to the people of the royal capital, the country will collapse from the inside before the war with the Demon King's army even begins."
At Leonhardt's low voice, everyone agreed with silence.
"With the threat of the Demon King's army approaching our eastern borders, having such an anomalous monster squatting in the forest behind us is far too fatal. If left alone, there's no telling when the royal capital might be turned into mountains of 'red sand' or 'black roses.'"
"Your Highness, what shall we do...? With our military strength, clashing with them head-on will only increase the casualties."
"I know!"
Leonhardt slammed his fist on the round table. A heavy thud echoed.
"...First, accurately determine the current location of that silver-haired girl and the maid. Engagement is absolutely forbidden. Use only far-seeing magic or scouts specialized in stealth. Do not, under any circumstances, enter their line of sight."
"Y-Yes, sir!"
"Simultaneously, through the Adventurer's Guild, issue an emergency summons to all S-Rank adventurers currently residing within the country. Send missives to the Sword Saints and Great Sages in other nations as well. Spare no expense. Even if we must empty the national treasury, we must gather the highest fighting force available."
Leonhardt looked out the window.
The pale blue moon was illuminating the royal capital with an eerie beauty. Under the light of that moon, what could that monster possibly be doing right now?
Was she slurping lifeblood like a beast starved for gore? Or was she massacring the monsters lurking in the forest, ravenously devouring their power?
(...Please. Please, just do not head toward the royal capital.)
The young prince burdened with the fate of the kingdom could only pray to the moon.
—— They had no way of knowing.
That the incarnation of Death plunging the entire kingdom into the depths of terror was, at this very moment, in a forest cave, having cleared away a top-tier mahogany table, falling into a blissful slumber on a fluffy, custom-made canopy bed while thinking, "Ah~, silk sheets truly are the best~."