Darkness vs. Demon King Kazuma

“So, you probably have some questions,” Smirked the evil man on the Demon King’s chair, tauntingly flicking his left ‘N’ branded earring towards me.

I gripped my blade tightly, trying to comprehend what this creature even was.

He spoke like Kazuma, looked like Kazuma, but he just couldn’t be Kazuma.

Kazuma was dead on the floor behind me. Neck still leaking sour smoke from where his head used to be, even while Aqua knelt beside him trying to cast her revives.

So who the hell was this?

My eyes quickly glanced around the room, trying to find any sign of demon trick or hellish backdrop to unpeel and reveal the real final villain. But instead my fears were realised, I realised this room only confirmed his identity further.

For the most part it was how I always imagined the Demon King’s throne room to have been. Battle scars still scattered the large imposing atrium we stood in. The ceiling soared high above, vanishing into shadow, with dark violet drapes with the letter K creeping down like spider webs. A dark polished floor, leading upwards to the throne where this mockery of my lover sat.

Yet it was in the other details that really illuminated the truth. To the right side of the room stood rows of glass prisons, each housing shelves upon shelves of various painted effigies. So many wild designs of broad shouldered men or half naked women. If it wasn’t for the small futuristic golem statues that resembled what Aqua once made for Kazuma out of egg cartons I’d fear these figures’ true nature.

To the left of the room held even more strangeness. A strange glowing rectangle, larger in size than even myself, playing moving pictures of drawn women fornicating, with bizarre black bars around their genitalia. Other devices were connected through wires to this rectangle. It all resembled the viewing portals of Heaven, but with much more degrading material playing.

The only other thing of note in the room was a single cage, hanging down by a chain and swinging gently back and forth. A pair of blue eyes stared down, peeking through the bars like they dare not reveal themselves from fear of being seen.

Which led us to ‘Kazuma’ himself.

His posture of a bored slouch against his palm was painfully familiar, as if he treated this huge royal throne like a chair in the guild. His body was clad in an armour I’d sworn I’d seen before, its form plated in a darkness so pure black it seemed to kill any light touching it. Dragon claw-like spikes protruded out from his collar bone and elbows, not leaving any sign of his blueish skin bar the cockily grinning head.

Even with all this evidence, this couldn’t really be Kazuma. In a world of mimics, doppelgangers, and shape-shifting demons, this creature was just trying to trick us at the final hurdle.

“Who are you?!” I yelled, sword aiming true at the large demon sitting in front of me.

Megumin took a similar pose with her staff. “And why are you wearing Kazuma’s face?!”

The creature just thrummed its fingers rhythmically against its armrest. Keeping a hand over its mouth while studying us with Kazuma’s eyes.

“Answer me! Your trickery won’t work on a Crusader like I!”

“Pfft… HA!”

The fact he laughed just like Kazuma both annoyed me and took the wind right out of my sails.

“Are you two really trying to act like you’re real party members?! Where the fuck was this when I was leading you, huh?!” He yelled with a grin, slamming his fist against the wood he sat on. “Come on, Darkness! Moan! Make an inappropriate comment about how I’ll dominate you! And Megumin, you should be humping your staff by now, right?” His personalised jabs ate into our annoyance even more. Clearly he was not taking this finale as seriously as we were.

“Answer us!” I demanded, gripping the sword tighter.

The faker rolled his eyes, leaning over to rest his chin on his other fist. “Whatever. You want the truth? It’s pretty simple really. A tale probably similar to yours, my curvy blonde minx.”

Megumin recoiled with a gasp, “He’s become a masochist?!”

His eyes never once seemed to even acknowledge the others, only piercing my gaze with a direct line that made my skin crawl, “I’m sure this one rings a bell. Once upon a time, a masked demon that runs a little shop approached you with a pair of earrings of immense power. Just one little word and reality dances to your whim, hm?”

I didn’t respond, though I could feel Megumin’s eyes glance back at me in confusion. My jaw stayed clenched shut, I needed to hear what he had to say.

“But he might not have told you about what he did with them. The intense hunger for human suffering that befell Axel when Vanir had the earrings…” He spoke dramatically, gripping his fist tight like it was a truly painful memory… only to return to his wicked grin when he snapped his head back towards me, “Or at least, that’s what he thinks.”

I never once lowered my blade, “‘What he thinks’?”

The evil man nodded, “Yeah, turns out Vanir sucks at making people suffer for real. He’d be stuck in D tier if anyone actually compared him to what a real demon could do with the power over reality itself.” He said, flexing his arm when emphasising the word ‘real’. “That guy only wanted to set up tickle traps and bad tasting cakes to get his kicks! Surface level human suffering to get his emotional diet. Seriously, I never realised how absolutely lame that guy was! What kind of demon gets ultimate power, takes over the world, then refuses to subjugate anyone? Just letting the humans do what they please, as long as they had occasional bursts of unhappiness to feed him. Hmph, I guess that’s why he brought me in.

“Vanir approached me at the height of his power with an idea. It was hard to really care what he was doing back then thanks to the normality field, which is why he crafted a second pair of earrings. Said my inventive mind from another world could probably come up with some fun things to do… but he didn’t expect what happened next.

“See it turns out, he’d swiped the earrings from a different demon; Alderp. That fatass had been resurrected as the perverted devil, ready to wreak havoc on the world with his new earrings, but Vanir stole them before he could. Vanir goes on to use the earrings himself, not realising that Alderp was lying in wait for a time to get his earrings back. As soon as Vanir placed those earrings on my head, he jumped into my body. The perverted demonic energy leveled me up to make this wonderful demon body you see before you, and the rest is history.”

“?”

“I fucked around, got laid, took over the Aegis armour, killed whoever I wanted–it was a huge upgrade really. Everyone always called me a demon pervert. That crafty, underhanded loser that everyone made fun of suddenly got new desires for all you shitty humans to suffer, cry and scream. I got to watch as the last of their pointless lives faded from their tearful eyes.”

“Just imagine full scale **** and destruction, then times it by 20. With these earrings I could do it all! Wrecking homes! Burning castles! God, I still have no idea why Megumin cried when I blew up her village. I did it for her ridiculous explosion fetish and that’s the thanks I got! Cunt was probably jealous of my superior boom.”

It was all so stomach-turningly unbelievable… but knowing the capability of the earrings in the wrong hands… “And now you’re here? Just living in the old Demon King’s castle?”

His gross grin finally left his face to morph into a grumbling grimace, “You can thank the asshole Vanir again. On one of the more boring days, I decided to just obliterate the Demon King once and for all, mostly so I could go back to my Earth and fuck with things there…” His expression suddenly grew much angrier, slamming his fist against his throne again. “But that masked dickweed just cut off this whole section of world from time! Like I was a lump of mould! He fucking trapped me here in this castle! In a pocket of reality without any chance to get back to my Axel or my Earth! Then he rewound time to before he ever got the earrings!”

His outbursts didn’t phase me, though something wasn’t adding up, “But you have the earrings? Surely you have the power to escape this castle.”

“The earrings interact with each other weirdly. Vanir trapped me in what is essentially an alternate universe time bubble, so my earrings can only affect shit in here. I managed to figure out ways to slip some demons through, set up the Destroyer to get me seen, but ultimately it’s all just fluff to get what I really wanted.”

“W-what is that?”

His grin returned, and more worrying is he slowly stood up. Taking slow casual steps down the stairs towards me, “So this earring changes shit when you say it’s normal, but remember the other one? Its normality field spreads out like a mind toxin. Makes people more susceptible to changes. But that’s the crazy thing, brains can totally adapt to the poison. I’m sure you noticed at first people didn’t react to you doing things, but that changed over time, huh?”

I thought about it, remembering the times long ago where Kazuma and Aqua barely acknowledged my existence due to the earring’s reality perception filter. Even when I bared my breasts, they thought I was but a banal bore… “Vanir said that was his doing…” I mumbled.

“Vanir says a lot of shit. In reality, the longer people are around you with those earrings–the more they get mind warped by new normalities–the more they get used to the strangeness of normality.” He explained, reaching the bottom of the stairs to point to his left, “Haven’t you noticed that you’re the only one caring about this? Look at your Megumin, she’s already stopped giving a shit ‘cause of my earring.”

I snapped my head over to where he was referencing, not having realised what had been happening.

“Hey Aqua, there’s some really cool figures over here!” called Megumin, casually admiring the cabinets without a care in the world.

“MEGUMIN!”

In my panic, Demon Kazuma had quickly bridged the gap to loom his huge armoured body over me.

“To explain why I haven’t left, it’s simple. I needed the earrings that originally trapped me here to escape from the time slice.” His voice was low, full of tauntingly cruel malice as he flicked my ear, “Which you’ve thankfully delivered. So, let me just kill your friends and we can get on with leaving already.”

My sword swiped upwards, missing Kazuma but making him jump backwards. His attitude one of playing with me.

“Normally you’d stop where you are!” I barked.

He looked shocked, snapping his gaze down to his feet. He seemed to struggle, unable to move his feet… only to then do so easily. Doing a taunting dance to prove his point, “Ohh, swing and a miss, Darkness. Sorry, the normality field of my earrings also acts as a protective barrier against yours. Learned that when I was battling Vanir. Does mean I can’t just kill you directly, but it leaves those you care about ****.” His hand dramatically went up towards the still uninterested Crimson Demon, “Normally an anvil will fall on Megumin.”

My feet moved before I could think. Seeing the huge metal slab falling towards the distracted Megumin. I ran as fast as possible to jump and cover her body with my own.

“OOPH!” I exclaimed, barely managing to stay standing after such a massive weight had slammed into my back. The anvil crashed into the marble next to us and created a crack that spread about ten feet around us. If not for my high defence and health I’d probably be dead from such a blow.

“Darkness? Look at that one. Her boobs are nearly as big as yours.”

I panted, feeling more than a little winded, “Please… snap out of it, Megumin…”

“But they’re cool!”

I didn’t have time to argue, turning to see what this evil Kazuma was doing next. To my horror, he was approaching my other girlfriend. Aqua still knelt by Kazuma’s corpse, slowly healing his missing head with various spells, and not really caring about the looming Demon King studying her.

“So you kept your Aqua, huh?” He commented, circling her while stroking his chin, “Well, it’s still early days. Plenty of time for the awful bitch to become unbearable to you too.”

“GET AWAY FROM HER!”

The words fell on uncaring ears, “Did you know she can cast ‘auto-revive’? It’s a spell that will basically make you immortal since she has infinite mana to cast it. Coulda made me immortal, but nooo~ the useless idiot just wanted to ‘stay useful’ to us and never cast it. I did the only thing that made sense and take the one thing she was good for…” His large hand reached dangerously close to her shaking head. “...and I absorbed all that godly power for myself.”

“It’s normal for me to have Aqua attracting gauntlets!” I yelled in a panic. Activating the newly formed gloves made the bluenette tumble forward away from his purple glowing hands. I caught her body heavily, but she was safe.

“Oh, hey Darkness!” She beamed in my arms.

Kazuma just seemed bemused, “Pft, you’re so cute. Too bad the anvil is normally also called Aqua.”

I raised my foot quickly and slammed it into the flying anvil. The intense pull of my gauntlets wanting to pull the anvil to crush ‘Aqua’ against Aqua. With all the strength I could muster, I kept the magnetic pull apart while shifting the anvil around… “Normally I can set it to repel!” I growled in my strain, having lined up the anvil to shoot directly towards the demon.

‘Kazuma’ barely dodged in time, having an anvil fly past his cheek to crash into the opposite wall. The only problem was Aqua’s body repelling back into me and forcing me to abandon the gauntlets to fly off my hands in opposite directions.

Instead of being angry with the near ****, Kazuma whistled at me while clapping. “Gotta say, that was some impressive quick thinking. You’ve certainly become quite capable with the earrings. Much smarter than my Darkness was.” The evil doppelganger reached down and picked up the lifeless body of himself. “Of course, still not that smart. You’ve forgotten about that massive normal screen behind you that hypnotises your friends.”

Aqua’s previously happy hug now fell limp in my arms. Her eyes became a series of colours one after the other as she drooled on my shoulder. I couldn’t even turn around to see if Megumin was equally affected.

“Stop this!” I yelled, emotion cracking my voice, “We’re you’re friends!”

Evil Kazuma had been holding his headless doppelganger up by the shirt when I yelled that. A chord seemingly struck somewhere inside him that made his face darken.

“Spare me the cliche dialogue. I am not this weak-ass bitch version Kazuma.” He growled, throwing the corpse behind him in a horrific tumble, “What would you like this story to be, Darkness? Am I a version of Kazuma who got the earrings and turned evil? Or a version of Kazuma who was turned evil by Adlerp? Did power corrupt me or was I corrupted by power? Which answer would make you feel better? Because I’ll tell you: it doesn’t fucking matter. I have the powers of a God. I’m not going to be won over to the light side by speeches or gestures. You’re looking at a 100% genuine demon, with desires to make you shitty humans suffer. Cry. Bleed. Now give up and submit to me.”

I bit at my lip, feeling powerless in the moment. For all my bluster declaring that wasn’t Kazuma… his words still stung. His face still glared at me angrily. And ultimately, I knew I needed to face the man I love with all my strength. I have to stop him before he escapes and hurts everything I care about.

“Megumin… Aqua… normally the hypnotic screen will break and you’ll act like he wants to kill you!” A shattering noise rang out behind me, and I could feel Aqua’s body spring to life.

Both of them quickly jumped into defensive positions, all while he rolled his eyes sarcastically at us.

“Oh no, tweedle dee and tweedle dumbass are on the case. Now the tides have turned.”

Aqua looked panicked but determined, “Darkness, what do we do?!”

“Darker than dark, blacker than black…” Megumin mumbled, already collating her strength to blow this putrid doppelganger into smithereens.

“Aqua, go left! Megumin, stay behind me!”

We broke, with me keeping a firm stance between Kazuma and Megumin as she continued to charge her explosion spell. Aqua scrambled to the left, keeping an eye on the annoyed demon as she attempted to get around to his back.

“What do you want from this shit, Darkness? You want me to play with the kids for a bit?” He growled, throwing his arms up in frustration, “Fine. Watch out, little stupid idiot, Aqua! You’re about to step on something dangerous! Normally the next step tile you step on will summon a horde of mosquitos that’ll give you cancer!”

Aqua’s arms flailed wildly as she tried to keep balance on her foot without bringing the next one down, “W-woah! Woahhh!”

“Normally Aqua’s goddess aura vaporises mosquitoes in a thousand foot radius!”

I had spoken just in time, hearing the sizzle of insects dying around us right after Aqua stumbled her foot down.

“This is getting TEDIOUS!” Kazuma yelled, tapping his foot impatiently, “Normally your Aqua’s trapped in a glass pyramid and your Megumin wants to kill you.”

“AH!” I hissed as the small wizard started biting down hard on my neck. Usually I was very much into this kind of rough play–especially since Megumin could never really hurt me with physical ****–but Aqua was trapped and I had to save her. “Normally A-Aqua is strong enough to break glass and Megumin’s murderous urges satiate when she tastes someone!”

Both of them were free of their control in seconds.

“S-sorry Darkness!” Megumin awkwardly hopped off my back.

Aqua took a different approach, haughtily puffing out her chest, “Hmph! Mosquitos and glass to stop me?! You should know how unstoppable I am, fake Kazuma!”

What I hadn’t seen coming was Kazuma walking up and grasping my neck tightly.

“Don’t you see how pointless it is resisting? One little word and I can make it so their next breath would ‘usually’ be their last. Just give up on the two useless idiots, Darkness.”

“N-Never!” I choked, trying not to give him the satisfaction of getting aroused by this.

“Leave her alone! Sacred Barrier Punch!” Kazuma and I both were not expecting Aqua to suddenly summon a barrier with her hands, making him drop me while pushing him back towards the stairs he’d walked down. Aqua pinned the demon, pushing forward with her barrier… though it was clear he was already fighting back, claws gripping tight on either side of the barrier. “Megumin, now!”

His eyes went wide as he snapped over to the huge plume of mana surrounding my favourite wizard.

“Die a thousand deaths!” Megumin yelled, snapping her staff forwards, “EXPLOSION!”

I quickly leapt forwards, prepared to take the full brunt of the blast in such a small room to protect the other two.

The firestorm completely enveloped him… but only for a second.

From within the inferno, a figure stood. Not running. Not even bracing. Just waiting, hand outstretched like a man expecting rain. The flames bent inwards, spiraled around his palm, and–in one surreal, stomach-dropping moment–squished down into a tiny ball of flame as if the explosion itself had been tricked into obedience.

Evil Kazuma calmly popped the tiny ball of light into his still grinning mouth.

Crunch.

The lingering detonation crackled like brittle candy between his teeth. He chewed, swallowed, and sighed in satisfaction, as though Megumin’s ultimate magic were nothing more than a cheap snack.

“Mm. You know…” he said, thumping his chest like he’d eaten a mildly spicy taco, “I actually missed your magic. Among all the other things I made ‘normal’ in my fights with you, explosions now taste like caramel if you let them melt on the tongue.”

Megumin collapsed to the ground, eyes wide with horror from her face-planted position, “You–you ate it!?”

“Oh yes. And I can shoot it back too.”

His eyes locked with Aqua just seconds before he let loose a huge burst of fire similar to Musume’s. She managed to barely get her barrier back up. The torrent of flames scorching the room, smells of burning holy magic filling our lungs, the air becoming thinner before he finally ran out of explosion breath.

I had to think of something to slow him down, “It’s normal for Megumin to have enough mana to run and get help!”

She scrambled up and took off as soon as my sentence had finished.

“Oh dear! Too bad it’s also normal every time I snap my fingers her legs break.”

“NO!”

Snap!

An unholy cracking sound rang out in the room. “AAAHHHHH!” came Megumin’s pained scream, crashing back down to the floor hard.

“MEGUMIN!” I called out.

“Heal!” Aqua quickly threw a magic field out, though it was clear Megumin was still feeling hurt by the blow.

This wasn’t working. I’m just keeping Megumin and Aqua in harm's way like this. I’m protected by my earrings at least… which means this is all up to me.

“Normally my Aqua attracting gauntlets come alive and try to fly down your throat!”

Kazuma hadn’t expected my discarded gauntlets to come back into play, now targeted arrows of destruction. They flooded his mouth with crawling fingers, trying their hardest to dive down his gullet, “Hrk!”

I had seconds before he could talk again, I had to make this next normality count, “Normally, everyone but me who entered this chamber in the last ten minutes will have a trap door open up beneath them to send them back to a safe space in the castle!” I yelled, watching as Aqua and Megumin’s bodies disappeared into the black marble beneath them. Their pained looks of shock are perhaps the last friendly faces I’ll see, but I wasn’t done yet, slamming my hand on the door we’d entered from determinedly. “Normally this room will lock down with unbreakable magic, letting only the winner leave!”

I could feel the environment shift and change around me. Like seductive cold chains on a warm night, magic seemed to pour off the black marble walls. The huge pillar-like doors slammed shut, leaving only me and Demon Kazuma inside.

He finally destroyed the two gauntlets that had been trying to **** him out, laughing while catching his breath. “Darkness! You dog! I thought it was implied that we wouldn’t cover each other’s mouths! Sneaky girl~”

“It’s over, Kazuma.” I hissed back at him, once more raising my sword as the sole protector of my world, “I will defeat you and secure your entrapment in this room, forever.”

Returning to fully standing position, he seemed to be considering my words, “Interesting stakes. ‘Only the winner’ is pretty vague. But it could work in your favour… if I wasn’t already one of life’s winners.” He brushed a hand through his scruffy hair confidently. I didn’t react, choosing to stay battle ready instead. Kazuma just shrugged, falling back to lean against the stairs he’d walked down, “I mean, I don’t even need to leave the room! I’d like to go kill your friends, but I can break your mind just as easily from in here.”

“Shut up and fight me.”

“Lol.” He replied, stretching himself out a little then scratching his face, “Doesn’t it feel better now that the rif-raf is gone? Mm, like we’re finally alone to discuss adult matters. I’m gonna grab a coffee, want anything?”

“Fight m-! UNG!”

I was suddenly pushed back by a fist slamming into my chest. My boots skidded along the marble, as I saw… about a dozen women of various shapes and sizes in maid outfits. All looking like they wanted to kill me.

“If you’re that dead-set on fighting, let’s see if you have what it takes to beat my sexy maid collection first, shall we?”