Kuro no Maou

On the 4th day of the month of Gloom, at evening, when he was reading the Spada newspaper and relaxing on the dormitory’s lounge,

“Brother! I can’t deal with this person anymore!!”

Simon, who had come back from Latifundia forest came clinging in tears.

“O-oi, Simon, what happened?”

Simon shouted with rage and teary eyes, without even letting him say ‘welcome back’.

“What happened?! Look at this!!”

Simon turned over his beloved dimension poach and a long lump of scrap iron came falling out.
And it had the shape of 6 long tubes bundled up–

“Wait, this is the Gatling gun, isn’t it?! Why is it snapped in half?!”

“And this isn’t even all!”

He shook his poach once again.
And again, a junk of steel came out falling on the floor.
It looked like a rifle at first glance.
However, that long barrel’s tip was burst out like a trumpet.

“Even the prototype rifle… Oi, Simon, exactly what did you do to break it like this?”

“Just listen! That person is really bad! Ahh, so frustrating!!”

And just when he was about to start explaining how her beloved weapons died a horrible death in the battlefield,

“Wait a bit, this is really just some unfortunate events piling up on one another—really just a very unfortunate incident and nothing else….”

A sorrow filled voice was heard and along with it, Simon’s partner, the mysterious strong female adventurer Sofie, came in quietly.

“Uwah, here she comes!”

As if he had just seen a monster, Simon quickly hid behind me.
his reaction was cute enough to make me wonder if he had regressed into an infant but it seems like he is being quite serious here.

“C-come on, you don’t need to hide…”

“Don’t come any closer! My guns will break again!”

“I won’t break them, I’m telling you, come on.”

“I will never forgive you if you even break Yatagarasu!”

Simon roared like a mad dog.
Although from his appearance, he only looked like a Pomeranian, it seems to have dealt some psychological damage to Sofie.

I could tell her beautiful face was painted with sadness behind that magic veil.

“Listen to me, I never meant to—”

“Yea, yea, just leave it at that now.”

Lily made a gallant entrance, waving her small hands.
It’s really like her to save me from these scenes of carnage and chaos all the time.

“Sofie, retreat for now.”

“Kuhh, but, however….”

“I don’t know of the details but, to make Simon this angry, you are quite something, you know?”

“T-that is… an unfortunate crossing of paths…”

“I will listen to your excuses all you want later.
We will have a reflection meeting now, alright?”

“Gnnn….”

And like that, Lily pulled on Sofie’s robe’s sleeves and took her away.

“That’s not it—by going through a rough situation, I was—”

“Geez, it’s cause you get greedy like that—”

My sharp ears heard something along those lines from the hallway but it seems like it would be best not to listen in.
I don’t know where that is heading but it looks like that reflection meeting will go on for a while.

“Well, I don’t know what happened but it must have been tough, huh..?”

“Yea, really, it was so tough….”

And that’s how I had to listen to Simon’s story filled with a large amount of complaints.

He actually headed towards the dungeon to test the Gatling gun in action and his prototype rifle’s battle endurance and what not but it seems they only encountered consecutive completely unexpected troubles.

Like Sofie bringing a huge horde of goblins, or Sofie breaking the super tough alloy made Gatling gun with her superior ice magic, or Sofie going to sleep beside him when it’s her turn to lookout at night which ultimately led to them being surrounded by a huge army of slime.
But that didn’t even matter as Sofie just annihilated the whole army of slime with one shot of her original ice magic and the after-math of it broke his prototype rifle.
There’s more—Sofie did this, Sofie did that—Well, in short, it’s all Sofie’s fault.

“–And like that, we were finally able to return today.”

“…..You’ve worked hard.”

As he finished telling his story, Simon sunk into the chair, completely exhausted.
So I tried brewing tea like Nell and handed it over to him.
For now, have some tea and calm down.

“Even still, isn’t it great that the Gatling gun did good?”

If his crank type Gatling gun which can fire up to 200 rounds a minute operated properly, it means that Simon’s equipment have reached that level of America’s weapon during the civil war time period.

All the infantry would be blown to bits with just one round of this.

“Well, yes.
I am glad I made it in time.”

He held the cup of tea and tried to take a but then realized it was too hot for him and decided to put it down for a while.
I gave out a sigh.

“….It seems like you already know.”

“It would be impossible to not notice.
It’s my 2nd time feeling the tensed environment of war.”

Being a pure Spada, Simon had experienced the previous war—The 4th Galahad war.
It was exactly 10 years ago.
Simon had just turned 7 then.
But even his young mind could feel the tension.

At that time, Emelia had also just turned 18 years old so after graduating from theological school, she was rounded up as a knight.
However, thanks to the war, she took the first step towards becoming a young general.

“Are you not, scared?”