Reborn As An Overpowered Villain

The Hero King had supposedly wandered the world challenging others to prove his strength, and a dwarf who was a master of his craft had gifted him a particular sword, a blade said to be the bane of any demon. The history described it as a sword forged not from any metal or material but from the finest raw mana, a weapon that shone and glistened like rays of sun in the Hero King's hand.

At that time, demons had been rampaging across the land, and where they came from was not known with any certainty. The history books offered only theories. Some held that the demons arrived from another dimension entirely. Others believed a particular dungeon had ruptured, releasing them from within. The argument for a single dungeon was a strange one, given that other dungeons sprawled across the world and spawned all manner of creatures, wolves and orcs and wyverns, yet none of them spawned the particular kind of creature that was being called a demon. The definition of a demon in those records was rough and inconsistent, but the prevailing image was of a creature with horns and skin of an unnatural color, yet otherwise bearing the features of a human: two eyes, one nose, a mouth, and so forth. And, the troubling fact was that no demons existed in today’s world, so, it was very hard to understand what demons looked like.

"Hah," Lucien exhaled, feeling the pressure building behind his temples as he tried to make sense of this thoroughly knotted excuse for history. It read as though someone had taken every known fact, tangled them all together, and then filled in the gaps with whatever imagination they happened to have on hand.

Back then, since the demons had been growing in number, the kingdoms and empires had eventually formed a coalition and brought their plea to the Hero King. He had accepted without great reluctance, for he had already defeated every powerful warrior the world had to offer and had no equal left to face. A party was assembled: the Hero King, the Saintess of the Goddess of Light, and other formidable individuals who ventured out across the land cutting down demons wherever they found them.

This continued until the day a Demon God finally emerged.

It was written that the demons, watching their numbers dwindle, had gathered in desperation and sacrificed themselves to tear open a portal and summon the Demon God. The Demon God was the most terrifying shadow the world had ever witnessed. Its body could swell to the size of a mountain, and with a single footfall it crushed entire villages beneath it. It was there, in that moment, that the battle which decided the fate of the world was fought.

The Hero King and his party clashed against the Demon God, and the Demon God did not come alone. Swarms of lesser demons poured through the portal behind it, and though they were weaker, the battle was no less grueling for it. The Hero King fought on for three days and three nights until at last he drove his sword into the Demon God's heart, and the creature fell.

But the Demon God did not go quietly in its final moments. Even as it died, it drove its own hand through the Hero King's chest, piercing his heart in return, and with its dying breath it unleashed a torrent of black miasma into the air, corrupting everything the darkness touched.

The place where that legendary battle had taken place now lay within the northern territory of the Eldoryn Empire, and the greater part of it fell under the Northern Duchy.

The black miasma released by the Demon God had spread outward from that point, but for reasons no one had satisfactorily explained, it had concentrated most heavily in the forested regions of the continent. It was not limited to the north alone, for there were other pockets of corrupted forest scattered elsewhere, but the heaviest and most suffocating corruption lay at the far northern end of the Northern Duchy, and it was there that the great stronghold and its wall had been built to hold back the corruption and the beasts of the forest that had been warped by the Demon God's released miasma.

And, what was even more surprising was that the history book said nothing of what had become of the Saintess or the other members of the Hero King's party. Nor did it address the more troubling question of why the Demon God's body had not been purified or destroyed to reduce the ongoing corruption. Because it could not have released all of that dark miasma in a single dying breath, right? The body must have continued to release dark miasma into the world long after death, and likely accounted for well more than half of the total corruption that now plagued the land.

Lucien sighed and slipped the book back into his dimensional ring. He flicked a finger and the obsidian throne dissolved. He was not satisfied. There was nothing to be gleaned from that twisted history, nothing concrete to act upon, but one thing was certain: the Hero King had been the most powerful being in the world and had still died alongside the Demon God. Whatever doom was approaching this time would require Lucien to become incomparably stronger, strong enough to match the doom itself, strong enough to tear it apart with his own hands. Only then would he have any peace.

And there was something else gnawing at him. The Demon God was likely not dead. Its body had never been found, and the history made no clear mention of what had become of it. More than that, the original story he had read in his previous life had contained references to the Demon God's worshippers, cultists who had been working in the background to bring their god back.

It was entirely possible that those same worshippers had been the ones muddying the historical record over the centuries. And in the original story, when Lucien had been discovered for killing a student at the academy, there had been reports of many other missing students, despite Lucien himself having killed only one. And, even in the actual story there was slight foreshadowing that the Demon God's worshippers had been the ones taking those students for use in their rituals. If that was true, then it was entirely possible that the Demon God had not died at all but had instead barely escaped the Hero King's blade and had been slowly recuperating ever since, deep in some space, waiting to be summoned back again.

Lucien took another slow breath, trying to let the pieces settle into something orderly. He turned away from his thoughts and looked out to find that the sun had already pulled itself above the horizon and was climbing steadily into the sky. He checked the time. Six in the morning.

Lucien looked around the running track and saw Melissa laying flat on her back, drenched in sweat and entirely seemed to have lost strength to crawl up from the ground.

Lucien walked over to her. "You did well today," he said, looking down at her with the same measured calm he brought to everything. "Make sure you are on time tomorrow."

Melissa's face had brightened for a moment at his compliment, but the second half of his words hit her like a bucket of cold water and the brightness collapsed into a pout. She lay there for a moment longer, staring up at him with an expression caught somewhere between protest and resignation, before she finally gave a reluctant nod. "Okay," she murmured.

Lucien nodded back, produced a rejuvenating potion and held it out for her to take, then turned and walked away from the training ground.

***

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