In A Parallel World With Random Skills, I Reluctantly Become A Mafia Boss?

Chapter 21: Deceived

I could sense a certain amount of magic being used, but it must have been my imagination.

Leaving that aside, the case about children missing in the forest seems important, so I listen closely to his next words while thinking of the scary thought that Elle might be the next victim in the future. I will make sure that doesn't happen though.

To summarize what Ed had talked about, along with chief Oren, it seemed that the monsters in the forest were growing awry and were taking unsuspecting children who strayed from the village, into the depths of the forest.

Realistically, they should have been already eaten or worse by now, but Oren surmised that we should inspect it today ourselves as to what really happened. It sounded a bit sketchy, but for some reason, I had no problem going along with it.

Lode even agreed with the plan as well, so even if monsters attacked, we could protect the village leaders along with the guards. By guards I was talking about the village guards. Only about four or five would be coming with us for an inspection, so its not much.

In spite of the danger that the expedition, under the guise of an inspection entailed, none of the leaders voiced their opposition towards it. They were either brave or stupid.

We quickly dismissed the meeting, and prepared to depart towards the direction of the 'Izajes Rainforest' while taking along some of the village guards...

Either way, we have some leeway if it came to a fight with monsters as long as the others stand back and let me and Lode deal with whatever comes.

But oh, how terribly wrong I was...

The careless thoughts I had at that time, which was induced by some kind of strange magic, were thoughts I wish I took back.

Right now, we were dealing with something a hundred, no a thousand times stronger than monsters. A being that could be called a 'disaster' itself...

We tried to protect most of the village leaders, but only succeeded in letting Roy, one of the officials get away with major wounds. I sincerely hoped they were not fatal.

Among the scattered corpses with limbs amputated and missing torsos, spraying blood everywhere, dying the grass and leaves with a metallic red color, a lone boy surrounded by large amounts of demonic energy stood haughtily in front of us.

The innocent little boy which had a confident air during the meeting, had just finished 'devouring' Oren, the village chief's corpse.

Yes, he literally ate the dead body of Oren, his supposed father. Which me and Lode had already known by now, that this boy really wasn't his son, albeit too late.

Now that my mind and thoughts were cleared when the enemy dispelled his demonic magic, I finally remember that the real name of the chief's son was Pal-kun. He was a cute brown-haired child, and liked to play around with the village kids most of the time.

Just thinking of that innocent Pal-kun suffering at the hands of this monster...

"Ed, no, Demon King, what did you do to Pal-kun?"

Instead of the flaxen hair and innocent eyes and smile of Pal-kun, the Demon King pretending to be him finally released his disguise, and his appearance immediately changed into someone else.

Dark, murky hair that seemed like it would suck you in, eyes that looked down on everyone was permanently embedded in his gaze, and a condescending grin, completely unlike a child was revealed as the large amount of demonic energy had swirled into forming countless tentacles with eyeballs and jaws with sharp teeth. The fear brought down towards me and Lode was heavy. He still looked like a kid though.