This is perhaps the oldest memory I have.
Of when I hadn't even become a Demon Lord, and was just a bit of a Lazy Demon.
I met a single Hero. She was a Hero with lovely silver hair, and her strength… looking back now, I can say she wasn't particularly strong. Anyways, she had transparent courage like a diamond, and her eyes held a strong will honed like a blade. Including my past life, she was the most beautiful thing I gazed upon.
Serge of the Silver Blue. That was the Hero's name.
Just a little bit stronger than others, just a little bit talented, and incidentally, a little bit courageous. The name of a girl with nothing but that to her name.
The name of a warrior, who, even though it was the most she could do to defeat Demons of the lowest rank, she held reckless dreams, and descended into the Demon World by her lonesome self.
Compared to Humans, the Demon World's Demons are transcendentally strong.
Therefore, a teenage girl challenging the Demon World was, without any discussion, simply foolish, and it's probable that her luck was exceedingly good for me to have been the first one she met. I won't move.
My fight with Serge was the height of violence.
Against me, who simply remained limp and sprawled out, the aloof Hero continued to swing her Holy Sword alone.
Her will, and spirit were sufficient in themselves, but the difference in power was clear as day. Those attacks were only barely able to scratch me, and those wounds instantly disappeared. I didn't have any Skills that could kill Serge, nor did I have the will, and Serge's power was only barely able to overcome my VIT.
It was a foolish repetition of the same act over and over again, a death match that would never end. Perhaps it wasn't something that could even be called a battle. If I had to say, I had the advantage, but even with it, I lacked the means to issue a decisive blow.
Even so, the girl who didn't take a step back even after encountering a situation that would go on for eternity's way of life was definitely that of a Hero, and it made me recall that this was indeed another world.
And at the same time, I thought. If I worked hard enough that I oozed blood, if I trained my heart out, if I became strong, I could defeat this Hero.
That might be fine for me.
Demon Lords are ones who eventually have to subjugate Heroes. Even for one who rarely played any games in my past life, I at least knew that. For the Demon Lord, that was the Happy Ending. It's not like I'm living here because I like it. It's just because I hate death that I continue to live on…
… But even that, if it's for this Hero's sake, I thought I could endure it.
Our reunion happened five years later. I had counted the days, so I remember it clearly.
Serge had grown.
From a girl who, while strong for a human, compared to Demons, wasn't particularly strong; who couldn't kill a single Demon of Sloth, and where the only thing that excelled in her was her courage, to one who, could take on a General Class Demon who was born, raised and trained in this great warring era one on one. Top Class within all of humanity… their supreme blade.
In game terms, perhaps she was a broken character.
No, that would be an insult to her. I have no idea just how much training she put in. Enough to make her spit up blood, where if a constantly enervated individual like me were to undertake it, I would give in in a few minutes. There's no doubt she repeated a training like that. In those five years, how many adventures has she had? For someone who did nothing but sleep like me, I had no ways of knowing.
What I know is but two things. Two simple truths.
She had become a Hero who could evenly match blows with a General Class Demon.
And I had become a Demon Lord.
This age, this world is cruel, fleeting, and useless.
The Demon World obeys the laws of the jungle. My Sloth had surpassed Serge's effort. That is all.
The fighting spirit Serge devoted her life to, the blade that was once able to deliver the slightest of scratches to me, couldn't even cut a strand of my hair by the time we met again. An insurmountable gap had been born between us.
It's not always certain that hard work will be rewarded.
That miserable and desolate law from my past life applied to this world as well.
This is something I can only say after having seen the result.
Even though Serge could barely scratch me in the first match, she didn't feel she had to retreat. That as long as she could injure me in the slightest, it was her duty to kill me. That was her first, and last chance. And as she was a human, she was unable to escape the shackles of her lifespan. She had lost that opportunity for all eternity.
She shed tears as she held her sword aloft. That Hero's eyes were, just as when we first met, beautiful, and ephemeral, and looking at the edge of her blade that sparkled like a shooting star, I became sleepy, and dozed off.
When I awoke, what entered my eyes was the form of a kneeling Hero with large tears streaming down her face.
The Holy Sword had lost its light, and having been reduced to a normal hunk of iron, it had been casually pierced into the ground.
There wasn't a single wound on Serge. That's obvious. It's because I haven't laid a single finger on her. But the Hero who would always fight on, no matter what serious injuries she suffered, even if an arm or a leg were blown off, had been reduced to a sobbing little girl.
Not a fragment of fighting spirit remains in her hollow eyes.
It was as if I had broken something within her.
From the moment I first met her, what I felt probably was love. Probably. I don't remember it anymore, but looking back, I think it might have been something like that.
However, in the end, I cannot remember what became of that Hero. All I know is that the exploits of the one called the overworld's shining star of hope, Serge of the Silver Blue came to an end that day.
… The King of Depravity.
It had always been strange.
It was always one of the questions I had from the time I reincarnated.
Why do the other demons have that fiery black glint in their souls? Why do they rage and seek and despise and violate and eat and envy?
Why can't they just quietly sleep?
If they want power as a Demon… just sleeping would be more than enough.
Why do they try so hard to be active?
A Demon's body, if it does nothing but sleep, unlike the humans who can live a hundred years at most, can live hundreds and thousands and millions of years. An endless time, it seems.
I realized that that was a mistake a long time later.
An uncountable number of years passed. I put a countless number of Demons, Heroes and even Angels to sleep, and eventually, someone started calling me some useless name like the『King of Depravity』. When I had become widely acknowledged, I finally realized it.
Ah, this is their nature.
To them, raging, and seeking, and despising, and violating, and envying is their very reason for living, and the validation for their life.
What a useless talk. It's not that they can't sleep. They can't bring themselves to stay sleeping. In order to refine their souls.
To summarize, our resolve was different, and for the Demon Lord of Sloth who simply lived without any meaning, it was likely something he would never be able to understand in his entire overly-long life.
I was never thinking of anything. Power never really mattered. I never had any plans to prove my existence.
From the time I lived in peaceful Japan, I barely had any desire. No hobbies. In the space left by my lack of purpose, sleep was the only thing that could fill my heart.
Apparently, this isn't an uncommon story for youths living in modern society. If they were to be reincarnated into this world, they might all end up as Sloth Demons like me.
I never had a goal. If you forced me to say it, then Sloth itself was my goal, and compared to the Demons who were longing for the power that lay at the end of their desires, that is probably the reason I was able to become a Demon Lord more quickly.
A Boring story.
A world where idleness turns into hard work.
To me, who did nothing but sleep… to me, who did nothing but sleep meaninglessly, Demons and Humans and Angels got on their knees. Within them, there were even other Demons of Sloth.
Depravity? Wrong. To me, this is just my life style.
I'm one who will do what I must when the time comes. It's just that that time never came for me.
Just by closing my eyes, I could gradually feel my own power increasing. I didn't care.
The skills I could use, the things I could do gradually increased. Proportionally, the scope of my activities gradually narrowed. With the power of my Skills, I didn't need to eat or use the restroom. Even breathing became unnecessary. But I didn't care about that either.
… Please, just let me sleep.
A break of a week can put your sense of time in a mess. At the very least, that's how it was for me.
A week became a day, and I started to feel them as seconds. But I didn't need time. Only years started passing. The enemies and allies around me change.
I wasn't counting, but probably after around eighty years had passed.
When even sleeping started to feel like a pain, I noticed. No, perhaps it's something new I obtained at that time.
A power to put myself to sleep.
Just as the Sloth Skill Tree had awakened in me, like an adjoined tree of interlocking branches, a single new Skill Line.
『Melancholia』
Of Sloth that governs cold despair, and anxiety, a Subtree.
And once more, the meaningless loser was able to lie around like garbage.
Where effort and training and even emotions held no meaning, a world covered in pure darkness.
It was, like a thin layer of ice, cold, fleeting, and beautiful.