“The Demon Lord…? That can’t be—aaagh!”
“Grrr…”
As the wolf pressed its paw down on the mage’s body, a scream of pain burst out.
The moment I realized this was the world I had lived in during my previous life, I summoned another of my subordinates. It took some time to break through the barrier spread across the area, which was why I had deliberately wandered through the castle, even knowing it was a maze, to buy time.
The wolf’s presence, filling the space entirely, was imposing. Its fur was gray, and eyes the same green as Leo’s stared straight at me.
“Grr?”
The wolf tilted its head.
It had been born later than Leo and was still clumsy at communicating its intentions. Still, the way its tail wagged enthusiastically made its welcome unmistakable. It was fortunate that, unlike Leo, this one had conserved its strength.
Of course, things would be different once it reached Earth.
“Y-you… don’t underestimate me!”
Pinned beneath the wolf’s paw, the mage clenched her fist and then spread her palm wide. A magic circle engraved in her hand began to glow and lifted into the air.
“No matter if it’s a Demonic Hound, this is
my
space!” she shouted and poured mana into the magic circle.
Or rather, she tried to.
Nothing happened.
The mage’s eyes darted around in confusion. “What, why isn’t the spell activating?!”
“Hahaha.” I laughed openly at her.
She glared at me, fury burning in her eyes. Seeing that her magic wouldn’t respond, she finally seemed to grasp what had happened. “Y-you again! When did you steal my control over this place?!”
“Well, you really shouldn’t have let the hero into the castle.”
When Yu Hanul had swung his sword and destabilized the mana structure inside the barrier, I took advantage of that opening to seize control. No matter how solid a building is, once you remove the cornerstone, the entire structure begins to shake.
Of course, Yu Hanul’s very existence was probably outside her calculations.
He was too mentally unstable to do more than disrupt things as I guided him, but if he’d been in his right mind, he might have split the entire castle in half. Still, his confusion worked to my benefit.
“You have my thanks. Thanks to you, I’ve recovered quite a bit of power.”
“Wh-what…?” the mage’s voice trembled violently.
The user’s mana is increasing abnormally!
Rapid level increases may place severe strain on the body. Please maintain balance.
Overall level and physical enhancement levels are critically unbalanced. Excessive mana usage may result in bodily collapse. Proceed with caution.
System notifications had been flashing in front of my eyes repeatedly for a while now. The system’s panic wasn’t unwarranted.
Jeong Daon (Normal)
Potential Ability Rating: S-rank
Stamina: LV. 21 (No cap)
Strength: LV. 25 (No cap)
Mana: LV. 85 (No cap)
Overall Level: LV. 28 → 43
Recommended Dungeons: C rank
Judging by overall level alone, I could already be considered an A-rank Hunter. Calling it an unprecedented level jump wouldn’t be an exaggeration. Gaining fifteen overall levels at once was something some people might never achieve in their entire lives.
Of course, in my case, my stamina and strength lagged far behind my mana, so evaluating me by overall level alone wouldn’t be accurate.
As the system warned, such an imbalance would normally be dangerous. But that wasn’t my concern. There was no way I’d collapse from something as trivial as this amount of mana.
“H-how did you do this?!”
“You really do keep repeating yourself.”
“Don’t mock me! When did you siphon off my mana?!” So furious was she that blood vessels burst in her eyes, bloody tears streaming down her face as she shouted, “Did you use Energy Drain?! That’s forbidden black magic! You stole my mana using something like that…!”
"Hahaha." A laugh slipped out of me naturally.
Yes, what I used was indeed forbidden black magic from my previous life. A spell that steals control over another’s mana and makes it your own.
I hadn’t let the mage pummel me earlier for no reason. Physical contact is an extremely efficient conduit for stealing mana. Thanks to that, I took control of her mana and absorbed it. It hurt, physically, at least, but taking a few hits was more than worth the payoff. And besides—
“Coming from someone who absorbed the mana of every living being in this region, that’s a pretty funny thing to say, don’t you think?”
Krrr—boom!
From somewhere far away came the sound of stone collapsing.
With the mage, this barrier’s core, having her mana stolen, the very structure of the magic began to destabilize, and the castle started to crumble.
“…Please. Don’t do this.”
Perhaps realizing the situation had completely turned against her, the woman who had been screaming with bloodshot eyes only moments ago now slammed her forehead into the floor in front of me. Blood splattered across the stone. It looked almost like a prayer offered to a god.
Bang! Bang!
“Hero!”
…Was she talking to me? I had just introduced myself as the Demon Lord, so I wasn’t sure how she’d missed that. Was it because I’d come with Yu Hanul that she lumped me in as a hero too? It was deeply unpleasant.
“You’re not even a being that belongs to this world!” Her wailing voice was desperate. “Yes, I know it looks horrifying. But please, try to understand. We just wanted to live!”
So that was it. She thought I was doing this out of some sense of justice.
The mage kept pleading. “And the people of this territory, surely living like this is better than dying. They wouldn’t want to disappear either!”
"..."
“If this castle collapses, the souls of the territory’s people will be completely erased! You wouldn’t want that, Hero! If you destroy me like this, it’s no different from you killing them with your own hands!”
"..."
“Please, return my mana. If sacrificing them is what troubles you, I’ll find a way, somehow, to restore their bodies!”
Begging in a frantic voice, the mage crawled toward me on her hands and knees. But—
“Please, don’t trample on my grand design. On the wish I devoted my entire life to.”
“Your acting’s pretty entertaining.”
Realizing her words weren’t working at all, she bared her teeth. “…You bastard!”
Well, if the real hero were standing here, it might have worked. If the mage died, the souls of the territory’s people trapped within the barrier would indeed lose cohesion and vanish.
At last, her face completely crumbled. She screamed, “Why are you doing this to me?!”
How desperate she must have felt. The magic she had devoted her entire life to was collapsing helplessly, and the spell meant to summon a hero had instead brought someone like me, someone who ruined everything.
Imagining her despair, I broke into a wide smile. “Just because.”
“What?”
“Just because. That’s all.”
Sometimes, causeless malice feels the most overwhelming of all. I wanted to crush her completely, the way others had been crushed by this magic.
“Just because I don’t like you.”
As I said that, I clenched my fist.
Why?
Crack!
"Ugh!"
I snapped my foot upward, kicking her square in the jaw. The sound was almost cheerful. As her body lifted into the air from the blow, I followed up with a punch. This time, she didn’t even manage to scream before slamming into the floor.
“Don’t worry. I won’t kill you right away.”
To be fair, I usually prefer delivering judgment through elegant magic rather than crude violence like this. But I’d just learned, after over a week of training with Yu Hanul, that moving my body directly was an excellent way to relieve stress. Another advantage was that magic tends to end things in one hit, whereas with my current physical strength, no matter how hard I struck her, she wouldn’t die.
And what stress had been piling up, you ask?
The quest "Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings¿" is in progress.
I’d avoided it through loopholes until now, but no matter how angry I’d been, I’d never beaten a human from Earth this badly with my own hands. However, the mage in front of me was classified as a
monster
by the system. So…
Thud!
No matter how hard I beat her, it didn’t count as violating those restraints.
“Cough—s-stop…!”
Thwack!
I should have hit her mouth first. Then I wouldn’t have had to listen to all that useless noise.
For a while, I beat her to my heart’s content, far more times than she’d hit me earlier. The mage couldn’t even scream anymore. She could only take the blows in silence.
That should be enough.
Once my anger had cooled, I grabbed her by the jaw and forced her head up. Her face was completely ruined. Earlier, it had been twisted with fury and hatred at the incomprehensible situation she was in. Now, what covered it was fear.
I cast a small healing spell only around her bloodied mouth. “You can talk now. I have something to ask.”
“You… demon…”
“Yes. A demon.”
At this point, that kind of insult was hardly new. Besides, there seemed to be another demon here, one far worse than me.
“You didn’t create this triple-layered barrier alone, did you?”
The first barrier protected the mage inside the inner castle and absorbed mana. The second turned the territory’s inhabitants living within the outer castle into lifeless idols, reinforcing the first barrier. And the final barrier spread around the outer castle, preventing outsiders from entering at all.
“So,” I continued, “who taught you this magic?”
“What are you talking about? I created all of this myself—”
“Don’t lie. If, as you claim, this magic was something you built by pouring your entire being into it, you wouldn’t have named the final barrier something like ‘Foolish Honor’.”
“…Wh-what?” The mage’s face drained of color. “Foolish Honor…?”
“Looks like you didn’t even know the name of the spell.”
Foolish Honor.
When we’d first broken into the barrier using Xuemei, the system had displayed the spell’s name, the name given by the mage who had originally created it. If the woman in front of me had truly created every part of this magic herself, there was no way she wouldn’t know it.
“From that moment, I was sure another mage had been involved.”
No mage who took pride in their own magic would ever choose a name like that.
“Why… why would it be called that…?”
As she muttered to herself, the expression slowly drained from her face. It was an expression I hadn’t seen when the hero rejected her, not even when I beat her mercilessly. It was the look of hope itself being extinguished.
Soon, all emotion vanished from her face. What remained was absolute despair.
Yes. In truth, what truly breaks a person isn’t anger, hatred, or fear. It’s hope.
After a long silence, the mage finally spoke. “Every spell requires a teacher. I had one as well. Following what I was taught, I sought my master’s help to cast this grand magic; to fulfill the noble cause of saving the world. Our goals aligned. So while I endured the long years managing the souls within the barrier, my master agreed to prevent outside interference. And yet… why—”
“That’s enough.” I waved my hand, cutting her off. I hadn’t come here to listen to her self-pitying talk about noble causes. There was only one thing I wanted to know. “So. Who was your master?”
Honestly, I already knew the answer. But confirmation mattered.
And soon enough, her lips moved. “…Orbis. Emperor Orbis.”
Thud!
With that, the mage’s body went limp and collapsed to the floor, completely unconscious. I stared at her fallen form for a moment.
Orbis.
I’d expected it, but hearing it confirmed only made it more absurd. That was the name my sibling had used in my previous life. How many years had it been since I’d last heard that name?
“Grrr…” The wolf bristled and let out a low growl toward the unconscious mage. It wasn’t a name that creature welcomed either.
“Don’t be so angry. It belongs to someone who’s already dead.”
There was no need for me to dwell on it either. In this life, that person was surely using a different name altogether.
And I had no intention of letting myself be bound by that nightmare again.
“More importantly, could you carry that mage for me?”
“Grr!”
The wolf obediently picked her up, clamping her head in its jaws and lifting her. Leo would have thrown a tantrum and refused outright, but maybe because this one was younger, it was much more cooperative.
With the mage dangling from its mouth, the wolf tilted its head curiously. “
Hm?
”
“We’re going to the hero.”
By now, he should have regained his senses. It was time to make use of him for my own purposes.