The blood surged into Celoia’s body, and his depleted meridians were instantly filled with endless energy. He let out a soft pant, like a satiated little animal, licking his lips to savor the aftertaste.
Deroville’s thumb brushed against the corner of the boy’s mouth, wiping away the residual liquid. Then, he paused in silence, his gaze wandering over Celoia as if in deep thought. When he saw the faint purple bruise on Celoia’s palm, he faltered slightly, finally making up his mind.
He asked, “Celoia, are you afraid of bitterness?”
Celoia looked up blankly, tilting his head. Confusion almost spilled out of his eyes, not understanding the meaning behind the question. Yet, he nodded almost without hesitation, leaning dependently against Deroville.
“I’m not afraid!”
Deroville’s gaze softened further. He cast a spell, and a mirror formed of mist floated before them.
Celoia peered in and locked eyes with Celine, whom he hadn’t seen for a long time. He let out a delighted “Ah!” and offered her a wide, generous smile.
Celine, who had been intentionally putting on a sour face, immediately broke character. From the slight upward curve of her lips to the smile blooming in her eyes, her joy was unmistakable. She asked in a gentle voice, “Did Celoia miss me?”
Celoia nodded vigorously, blinking expectantly as he confessed his longing in a sticky-sweet voice: “I haven’t seen Celine for so many days. I really, really, really missed Celine…” As he spoke, he used his hands to draw a large circle in the air, trying to use physical scale to express his emotions.
Deroville ruffled the boy’s hair and looked at Celine. His tone turned suppressed and ambiguous.
“Celine, I think… what I did back then needs to be done once more.”
Celine had been all smiles, but upon hearing this, her whole body shuddered. She frowned and looked up at Deroville, her voice tight: “Are you sure? The chaos you caused last time turned the Demon Realm upside down. If you do it again, you truly will be a tyrant in name and deed.”
The corner of Deroville’s mouth twitched. He said flatly, “If I’ve done it once, why can’t I do it a second time?”
“There is nothing I want to do that I cannot achieve.”
Celine’s gaze shifted between the two of them. Recalling Deroville’s original purpose for leaving, she belatedly realized something. Her fingers tightened instinctively, and her tone became urgent: “Is the treatment not succeeding? Is he okay right now?”
Celoia keenly sensed that the matter they were discussing concerned him, and that it was a grave issue for the Demon Realm. He was somewhat dazed; he had never imagined that in their eyes, his value was so high.
An inexplicable warmth spread through his heart. He pressed his cheek tightly against Deroville’s chest, listening to the steady heartbeat, and spoke up to comfort her: “I’m okay! Celine, don’t worry.”
Deroville, however, cut him off. He stared at Celine and dropped a sentence—a statement made too casually for its heavy content, sounding like either a lie meant to provoke Celine or a confession from the bottom of his heart.
“If we don’t follow my method, Celoia won’t last long in the Demon Realm,” he announced coldly. “He will die here.”
The sound of something breaking suddenly came from the other side of the communication.
Celine stood up abruptly, breathing sharply. She struggled deeply to control her emotions, threatening him word by word.
“I will stand on your side. Doing what we did back then again is nothing.”
“But you’d better be telling the truth, Deroville.”
“I will do my absolute best to rush back.”
The communication was unilaterally disconnected by her.
Celoia was still a bit stunned, his eyes wide, but the mist mirror was gone. He hugged Deroville anxiously and asked in a small voice, “Dero, did you make Celine angry?”
Deroville refused to admit it. He lowered his head, his forehead gently touching Celoia’s, nuzzling him affectionately. “That’s not on me, little Celoia. She’s just worried about you.”
The power inside him was surging. Celoia blinked, placing his hands against Deroville’s chest and leaning his upper body back to create some distance. He said with a conflicted expression, “Dero, whenever you get close to me, something inside my body moves very actively. It feels like I just ate ‘Jumping Fruit’; I’m tingling everywhere.”
Upon hearing this, Deroville set him down and pinched his nose. His mana seeped out again; like a particularly meticulous doctor, he cast a spell to re-examine Celoia’s body, then said decisively:
“Alright, Celoia. We can’t linger here any longer. We must set off to return now.”
“Awoo!”
Celoia froze. He glanced at the potion bubbling away nearby, and his eyes suddenly sparked with joy. He tried not to let his relief show too clearly, wanting to pretend he’d forgotten about it, but he was grabbed just as he turned to run out the door.
He turned his head fearfully.
He saw Deroville using levitation magic to move the clay pot in front of him. With alternating flames and ice frost, a perfect potion of moderate temperature was born.
Celoia let out a low whimper as the pot was pressed into his hands.
Deroville suppressed a laugh and reminded him:
“The last bowl of medicine. Don’t let it go to waste.”
Celoia closed his eyes in despair, pinched his nose, and gulped it all down in one go.
Wooo… Dero isn’t handsome at all at times like this. The bitter little victim indignantly revoked Deroville’s charm for exactly one second.
Deroville took Celoia and left Caesar’s hut immediately, not even waiting for Caesar to return, radiating a visible sense of haste.
Celoia was wrapped in thick clothes and held in the man’s arms, looking like a clumsy little penguin. As they left the house, he poked his head over Deroville’s shoulder to look back, his tone tinged with reluctance.
“Are we leaving without saying goodbye to Grandpa? I feel like Grandpa will be sad.”
Deroville squinted to observe their direction, not forgetting to multitask to soothe Celoia.
“It’s alright. There will be chances to meet again in the future. Once your body is fully recovered, I’ll bring you back here to see Grandpa, okay?”
Celoia had always been a reasonable child. Hearing this, he immediately narrowed his eyes and said “Okay” obediently, then proactively tucked his face back in so Deroville wouldn’t worry about his face getting wind-chilled.
He tapped his fingers, slowly counting them one by one as if talking to himself.
“Mm… I left candy for Grandpa, so his future patients won’t have to drink such bitter medicine. And the little flowers—Grandpa should find them very pretty. Those flowers are very fragrant…”
Before he could finish counting, Deroville’s voice suddenly rang out. Though it was flat, it was inexplicably tinged with a sour note.
“How come I didn’t get anything…”
Celoia made a soft “Uh” sound, his hands instinctively rising to cover his cheeks. He stammered:
“Dero has some too…”
Deroville raised an eyebrow. Driven by an unknown impulse, he added bossily, “I don’t want a gift like Caesar’s. The gift for me must be unique to me. Can you do that?”
Celoia’s face turned bright red instantly, mixed with a hint of hidden dejection. He let out an “Awoo,” hid his face in the man’s chest, and told him muffledly:
“But what should I do? I already tucked a flower in for Dero before.”
Deroville’s moving figure paused. He pondered Celoia’s words before saying with certainty, “You prepared a gift for me in advance.”
Celoia gave a soft “Mm,” his fingers tangling together nervously.
“I… I put a gift in for Dero every day,” his face flushed even deeper, extremely embarrassed. His words were slurred with a child’s raw shyness as he explained: “It’s hidden by the side of Dero’s office desk. I wanted to give you a surprise.”
The corners of Deroville’s lips curled up unconsciously, his mood becoming inexplicably pleasant. He opened his mouth to respond, but his gaze suddenly sharpened. One hand held Celoia tightly while the other swung out.
Surging mana poured from his palm, flying toward a certain direction with lightning speed. The mana began to condense in mid-air, continuously absorbing energy from the surroundings. Celoia blinked, watching as the originally small mana wave transformed into a massive, dark tide of energy.
This mana tide wasn’t fast; it had a sense of stagnation, as if it had absorbed so much power that the energy was too heavy, nearly rending the air itself. However, the target of this power was terrifyingly precise. It pressed down heavily, colliding head-on with another streak of mana.
BOOM!
A deafening explosion rang out.
The mana forces collided, devouring each other. Ripples spread from the point of contact as the two sides engaged in a violent tug-of-war. Celoia was so worried his eyes were round, and he made a slight grinding sound with his teeth. But before he could be nervous for more than a few seconds, the massive tide released by Deroville gained the upper hand. It swallowed the opponent’s mana in one gulp, then exploded in the sky. The resulting wind gusted outward, making Celoia’s face sting.
Celoia gasped. He was overly sensitive to demonic energy but far too weak in strength; thus, he could only feel that the surroundings were saturated with mana, yet he couldn’t find the source.
His gaze searched the surroundings warily, but he couldn’t see who the ambusher was. He could only clutch Deroville’s clothes helplessly, pursing his lips as he looked around.
Deroville gave his back a reassuring pat. When he looked up, his gaze was cold enough to cut. He didn’t seem to care about the ambusher at all; his heartbeat didn’t even flicker. Instead, he radiated an air of effortless confidence.
He parted his lips.
“Roll out on your own, or should I help you roll out?”
Rustling sounds came from the shadows. Suddenly, people emerged from all directions, as if to completely trap Deroville in a snare.
The leader was draped in a black robe, completely covered. His voice droned with a buzzing sound, making his original tone unrecognizable.
“Deroville, you should have known this day would come—the moment you ascended to this position through underhanded means.”
He seemed to be intentionally hiding his identity.
Deroville let out a cold laugh, raising an eyebrow. “I didn’t know I had done anything wrong. This position was won fair and square. If you wanted it, you could have challenged me back then. Why act so sanctimonious, staring at me from the shadows like a worm? You only succeed in being disgusting when you jump out.”
The man was enraged: “It seems you still don’t know where you went wrong!”
He gritted his teeth, appearing to hate Deroville to the extreme. He was eager to pin a crime on him, wanting to cover him in every foul reputation possible: “You insidious villain! You took advantage of the previous Demon King’s trust and betrayed him to seize the throne. Did you think that would make us submit? Impossible!”
Deroville was amused by his emotional outburst. He covered Celoia’s ears, not wanting him to hear these foul words. His tone was even lazy as he stared at the frantic man like he was watching a joke, asking flatly:
“Oh? So that’s how you all think of me.”
“But how come I remember that when I took the throne, I passed the Demon Realm’s recognition using the most legitimate methods?”
The man’s chest heaved as he hissed, “That’s only because you killed the former Demon King first!”
Deroville’s gaze turned cold. He stared at the man, his lips curling into a candid admission: “That’s right. I killed him. So what? He oppressed women, bullied men, and slaughtered the innocent. Didn’t you all hate him back then too? What was wrong with me enacting justice on behalf of heaven?”
His gaze was mocking as he sneered: “Could it be that you wanted to take the throne yourselves, only to find I beat you to it, and now you’re throwing a tantrum out of shame?”
“If that’s the case, why didn’t I see you popping up when I first became the Demon King?”
The man’s pupils shrank. Seeing the deepening smile on Deroville’s face, his body actually began to tremble slightly.
He felt as if he had been transported back to that day.
The dim castle, blood covering the floor. The former Demon King, who had been invincible in their eyes, sat slumped on his throne, devoid of breath. A massive hole gaped in his chest; the heart that should have been beating was gone, leaving only an empty void.
And in front of him lay a long strip of red cloth soaked in blood.
On the cloth, a line of bold, flowing characters was written:
The new Demon King, Deroville, welcomes your challenge.