A Discourse on “Demon Lord”

In the translator note of volume 7 I discussed about how I find the translation of the phrase ” 魔王種 ” to “Demon Lord Seed” (Yenpress) to be inaccurate. I guess I was a little vague in the explanation.

In the context of the slime world, the phrase itself “Demon Lord Seed” does “happen” to make sense, because ” 魔王種 ” is the prerequisite for a monster to awaken and become a ” 真なる魔王 ” (True Demon Lord). However, in both the web novel and light novel, we see passage such as this:

解。主は既に、魔王種の条件を満たしています。魔王への進化に必要な条件には人間10,000名の生贄が必要です 。

(EN) Master has already fulfilled the necessary condition of a “Demon Lord Seed”. The evolution to “Demon Lord” requires the sacrifice of 10000 humans.

WN Chapter 68

What this shows is that while Rimuru, at this point of WN/LN (prior to harvest festival) has already met the condition of a “Demon Lord Seed”. This however implies that ” 魔王種 ” is more or less a measure of power, i.e. racial level like how a ” 魔人 ” (Majin) is considered stronger than an average monster. The WN is more vague, the LN elaborates more with the example of Karion and Frey, who are unawakened yet still considered as Demon Lord of the world because they fulfilled two conditions:

1) 魔族（魔人）は成長の果てに「魔王種」へと至ることがある。

They have become “Demon Lord Seed” after growth as a Majin.

2) この時点でも他の魔王達に承認されれば魔王を名乗ることができる。

They went forth and gained acknowledgement from the other Demon Lords and can openly claim themselves as “Demon Lord”.

Volume 8.5 Racial Terminologies Apparently it’s a fusion of story + 8.5

I think these are all indications that ” 魔王種 ” is the general term for describing monsters that reached the racial level of “Demon Lord”, i.e. either it is a “Class” or a “Breed” (I’m considering changing it to class as Breed sounds somewhat strange). It is not however a specific term of “Seed”, indicating that the characters who are already ” 魔王種 ” is somehow not Demon Lord, they are, just not awakened to a “True Demon Lord”. (Similar example refers to Guy Crimson dialogue with Karion in Chapter 6 of Volume 6).

But this is just my opinion, if Fuse uses twitter like Maruyama I can probably clarify it better, but as of now, I will not use the phrase “Demon Lord Seed”.

Tell me what you think about this in the comment, if anyone actually read kek.

PS: also as someone who at least understands kanji, translating it to “seed” gives me the impression that someone separate the term “魔王” and “種” and translated them individually to “Demon Lord” and “Seed”, whereas in any other instance of “種” being used in this novel as well as other media it is referring to a species or a racial class. kek Idk man.