Chapter 40 : It Was a Misunderstanding
Chapter 40: It Was a Misunderstanding
A phoenix that threw itself into molten lava to be reborn as new flames was a mythical beast.
And a mythical beast was a lifeform closer to a spirit than an animal.
Naturally, the phoenix’s corpse was also a type of spirit body.
A mass of mana that was incomparably pure and scorching.
No different from a colossal elixir.
However, mana was a force entirely alien to Demonic energy.
Thus, Berje had intended to take the corpse back to the tower. Just as the tower had been contaminating stored elixirs with Demonic energy, he planned to slowly infect and consume it.
There was no need to rush. For the time being, not even a hero’s blade was pointed his way.
But that had been Berje’s miscalculation.
Fwoosh—
The moment his hand touched it, mana flooded out. The heat of blazing fire seeped through Berje’s entire body.
Rumble—
A raging torrent surged.
‘What kind of insanity…!’
Mana forced its way in, and Demonic energy refused to mix with it.
One force is trying to expel, and the other is trying to enter.
Both energies bared their fangs at each other.
They clashed and tore into one another. Scratched and ripped.
The battlefield was Berje’s flesh. Muscles ruptured, blood vessels melted. Agony struck as bones threatened to shatter.
Berje struggled to control the two rampaging forces somehow.
A time that felt like an eternity—yet perhaps no more than a single fleeting instant.
Mana pushed Demonic energy back. It knocked at the door of his heart.
Thump, thump—
Black blood spewed out violently.
The heart did not open its door.
All Demonic energy rose in defiance. The weakness caused by dimensional interference power was no issue.
Mana, homeless in the face of the landlord’s tyranny, wandered aimlessly. Then it settled somewhere new.
‘…What?’
Berje was horrified.
He had two hearts.
One was large while the other was smaller.
Both housed Demonic energy; one served as the primary, the other as support.
Yet now, the uninvited guest called mana had smashed open the door of the second heart.
The secondary heart’s barrier was far more fragile, and in a state restricted by interference power, it could not withstand the tidal wave of the phoenix’s force.
The heart heated up. As if exploding, the heat spread through his entire body.
His consciousness blurred.
Through that haze, he saw an erupting volcano and himself floating between the blasts.
Berje’s body was hurled away by the volcanic explosion.
* * *
When he opened his eyes at the damp sensation on his cheek, Berje found himself buried in an unfamiliar mountain hill.
All his clothes had burned away—he was completely naked.
“…Get lost.”
The deer licking his cheek was startled by the murderous intent, tumbling over. It hesitated, then bolted away swiftly.
Watching its plump hindquarters bounce away, a question arose.
‘A deer approached me? Licked my cheek?’
No matter how well he hid it, he was still a Demon King and an invader. A being from another dimension.
An animal with developed instincts would have sensed the fundamental difference and never approached.
A moment late, he finally grasped his situation. He recognized the condition of his own body.
‘The phoenix’s corpse was absorbed on its own.’
While battling the Demonic energy for territory, it had abandoned the first heart and settled in the second.
The first heart writhed with far more Demonic energy than usual. A heart swollen to the brink of bursting was hardly good news.
It meant all the expelled Demonic energy had gathered there. And in the second heart—where there should have been nothing—he felt a massive presence sitting comfortably.
Hotter than anything. More vigorous than anything.
Yet strangely, the alien repulsion he had felt before was gone.
‘Why?’
It was still pure mana itself. His body was filled with Demonic energy.
But despite both forces clearly existing within a single body, they did not clash.
The reason soon became apparent.
‘It locked the door.’
The uninvited guest was acting as though it owned the place. It completely cut off contact with the outside so the two alien energies could not blend.
When he prodded with Demonic energy, it burned it away on the spot.
His pride flared. Berje clutched his throbbing chest and ground his teeth.
“You must have no idea whose body you’re staying in.”
He was the great Demon King, Berje Deias.
All Demonic energy surged toward the heart. It pounded relentlessly on the tightly shut door.
He stabbed his own heart with Demonic energy—no different from self-harm.
But such pain mattered less than his crushed pride. The humiliation of losing to the mana of a mere mythical beast enraged him.
And then, at some point—
The door opened. The blazing mana slumbering within the heart burst out like a waterfall.
‘…?’
At the same time, Berje’s expression twisted as he saw the Demonic energy crawling back into its home against his will.
But soon, as his physical form began to change—
“……!”
He was horrified.
* * *
The Demonic energy Berje had detonated.
And the Demonic energy that boiled in response to Draxon’s fury.
All the heroes of Tarta sensed the two sources of Demonic energy.
They immediately went to the lord of Tarta to report the gravity of the situation, and the news was sent straight to the Hero Guild.
The city was thrown into turmoil, and a report was delivered to the royal capital.
And amidst that chaos, the wounded princess of the Dwarven Kingdom arrived.
“Demons and monsters attacked us. The Second Prince of Ormus struggled until the very end to protect us, but he was slain by the overwhelming demons. I wanted at least to bring back his body, but…”
When Louise finally broke into tears, the warriors of Tarta were enraged.
“Vengeance for the prince!” “Heaven’s wrath upon the wicked Demon King!”
The entire Kingdom of Ormus trembled.
“We shall sever the Demon King’s head and soothe the prince’s spirit!”
The king raged, and the ministers raged.
Countless messengers were dispatched to heroes and guilds across the continent.
Warriors gathered under a nationwide conscription order.
Everyone sensed that whatever had happened, it was something tremendous.
* * *
‘What in the world is going on?’
Granada was living in Hortonwork. He had returned as captain of the Red Hawk Mercenary Company, training mercenaries while receiving documents sent from the Golden Moon Merchant Company.
Among the Demon King’s newly issued orders was one instructing him to purchase elf slaves and send them to the Demon King’s Tower. These documents had been compiled for that purpose.
Locations where slave markets opened, places with many slave traders, places with large elf populations, and those listing elves at auction.
The joy of being able to rescue his kin and the sorrow of having to sell them to the Demon King coexisted—but for now, Granada believed they would eventually understand his intentions.
Rather than die miserably as slaves, it was far better for them to fight for the Demon King, take revenge on humans, and eventually earn their freedom.
But once chaos erupted across the continent, he could no longer focus on his original task.
“Why would the Beast Demon King suddenly do this?”
There was no doubt that Demon Kings were frightening beings, but they were not absolute beings that could never be killed.
The Demon Kings understood that themselves, and a precarious balance of coexistence had been maintained for hundreds of years.
‘The Beast Demon King was one who kept the line fairly well, if anything.’
At least, that was the case as far as Granada knew. If he had not kept that line, he would not be alive now. Like the Lust Demon King, he would have been beheaded long ago.
But the situation was far too large to dismiss as a simple rumor.
Especially since the Second Princess of Berfht had felt her life threatened, and the surrounding heroes had sensed a terrifying Demonic energy—details that added weight to the claims.
“An upper-level demon led dozens of demons and hundreds of monsters and ambushed us.
The Second Prince of Ormus fought desperately to protect us, but he lost his life, and we barely managed to escape.”
The princess who had fainted for two days—Louise—had many holes in her story if examined closely.
The greatest question was why Draxon, who had been quietly withdrawn, would suddenly kill the prince. And the claim that the Second Prince of Ormus—known to be selfish and greedy—threw away his life to save Louise sounded ridiculous.
Granada had never personally met Prince Max, but he had heard plenty of rumors about him.
A man who gathered power and used every method imaginable to take the throne over his older brother—that was how they described him.
Those who doubted it were surely not limited to Granada alone. But it was impossible to fully dismiss it—the Demonic energy had been blatant, and Princess Louise and the dwarves were severely injured.
In the end, the enraged King of Ormus issued a mobilization order, summoned warriors, and requested aid from the Hero Guild.
Heroes who sensed the scent of a grand quest began gathering in Ormus one by one.
At this point, it was no longer a matter of whether the Beast Demon King had done it or not.
‘Should I go too?’
For now he needed to gather the elves, but once the hero’s march toward the Frost Tower began, assisting Hillan was another one of his duties.
But then what would happen?
Would they still head straight toward the Frost Tower?
Or would the planned hero’s march change direction?
Would Hillan still be the commander?
Would a new hero step forward?
Everything was uncertain.
At that moment, the crystal sphere rang.
『Have you been able to contact the Demon King?』
“I haven’t tried, so I don’t know.”
『You’re still as arrogant as ever.』
“Just tell me what you want.”
『If you manage to contact him, tell him to reach out to me. And the hero’s march that was scheduled for the Frost Tower has been cancelled, but for now, continue fulfilling the mission you’ve already been assigned.』
“Cancelled?”
『It was for show anyway. There’s a much stronger justification now—no reason to start two major operations at once. Thanks to that, I’ve lost my chance to take the commander’s seat of the march, so I’m a little annoyed, though.』
“…That’s unfortunate.”
Granada disliked this insincere hero, but those words were genuine. Especially since he knew the Demon King had placed considerable expectations on him.
『It’s fine. There will be plenty of opportunities. And the money I invested was all covered by the sponsor anyway.』
The way he referred to the Demon King was rather insulting, but considering how heroes typically treated Demon Kings, it was oddly fitting.
‘So investment means lobbying.’
Knowing how the world of heroes worked, Granada clicked his tongue. Truly—without money, one couldn’t even be a hero.
The connection ended.
“For the time being, I’ll have to focus on finding the elves.”
But he couldn’t get through?
He infused mana into the direct communication crystal leading to Berje.
It was unresponsive.
* * *
“Say something that makes sense!”
Boom—his fist slammed down. The sturdy hardwood desk lost its shape entirely.
“That I killed the Second Prince? That I slaughtered all of them? And where the hell are the ones I released!”
“…We suspect Princess Louise and the dwarves killed them all to hide their own shame.”
“That damn bitch!”
The lycanthrope standing beside him caught a beating for nothing. Its breastbone caved in, and it collapsed, choking.
“Should’ve confirmed it to the very end!”
Being distracted by the intruder and failing to pay attention gnawed at him like a lifelong regret.
“Please compose yourself, Demon King.”
“Not only did I lose the phoenix’s corpse, now I’m being framed as the one who killed the prince!”
The phoenix’s corpse vanished with the volcanic explosion. The overflowing mana had swept the surroundings clean, not only killing all the Grizzly Bears but also erasing every trace of the intruder.
“If I’d at least had that corpse, things wouldn’t be this screwed!”
Damn it. Draxon spat a curse.
In truth, what mattered far more than the phoenix was the death of Ormus’s Second Prince.
The dwarven princess had declared him the culprit without hesitation, so what followed was obvious—no different from a scripted play.
A Demon King might kidnap a prince or kidnap a princess. Heroes and kingdoms tolerated such things to a degree.
But there was a line that must never be crossed.
Killing an heir to the throne.
It was striking at the reverse scale of a kingdom. The Lust Demon King, Tyras Hindler—the one who had touched the First Prince of the Kingdom of Arkan—was erased for that very reason.
“Heroes will move. A hero’s march will begin.”
This wasn’t just any prince among many—it was a key figure competing for first or second in the line of succession in Ormus. And he was dead.
“I will never, ever die like Tyras.”
He couldn’t say his death was certain.
Objectively, Draxon was not weak. Among countless demons, he was one of the strongest, and he had graduated from the Demon King Military Academy.
After coming to Arein, he couldn’t live as freely as in the Demon Realm, but he had steadily cultivated his tower, gradually undoing the interference power.
He hadn’t lived the ideal life of a Demon King because of Arein’s circumstances, but while lying low, he had sharpened his blade and prepared.
Murderous light flashed in Draxon’s eyes.
“Bring me a list of high-ranking heroes capable of joining this hero’s march.”
“Watch the hero’s march closely—where they gather, in what numbers, how they move—report every detail to me.”
“And monitor the movements of Ormus and the Hero Guild.”
Casey bowed silently. At Draxon’s gesture, she left.
Draxon quietly pulled out a communication crystal.
“Damn it… A Demon King reduced to this pathetic state…”
Even so—if there was even the slightest thread of hope, he had to seize it.
Grinding his teeth, he infused Demonic energy into it. After a long moment, a response finally came from the other side.
“Everything is a misunderstanding. I have never—absolutely never—killed Ormus’s Second Prince.”