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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Ruby
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Creak…
Bell carefully opened the window in the room.
The outside scenery came into view.
The sun had also risen in the demon realm.
It was quite a strange sight.
“But the landscape is completely crimson.”
Bell gazed at the sky filled with a blood-like red color.
And the sun looked even redder than the already crimson sky.
Yuma and Bell, who had finished preparing to go out, were facing the food laid out on the table.
A table filled with various top-grade demon beast meats.
“Kuooo?”
A demon with red skin, whose face was exactly like an orc’s, pointed to the black-colored meat with an extremely fierce expression using a fork that was very small compared to his hand.
It was a gesture indicating that he could also eat it, but Bell instinctively took a step back.
Bell stared at the black meat with wide-open eyes.
“…Wow, I wouldn’t even give this to Hestia. Ah, would Hestia be curious enough to try it once?”
Bell briefly tickled the ears of Hestia, the cat-clan swordsman who was busily having breakfast in the middle realm.
Yuma and Bell eventually returned to their assigned room and ate sandwiches they had stored in food preservation artifact bags from their spatial pockets.
After finishing the sandwiches and coming out again, the Demon King Lilith was sitting in a chair.
Yuma slowly opened his mouth.
“Are preparations complete?”
In response to Yuma’s words, Lilith nodded.
“Yes, we can depart!”
Lilith, her yellow eyes sparkling, made her subordinate clean the desk completely.
And she said to her trusted aide standing on the right side:
“Spread it out, Ron.”
Ron, an elderly man with gray skin and impressively swept-back white hair, scattered numerous items on the now-empty table.
They looked similar to the objects of magic scholars in the middle realm.
Ron, Lilith’s close aide with a neatly trimmed white mustache, slowly opened his mouth:
“This black circular device on the left completely blocks surrounding noise. We will use this to completely block any sound leaking from outside the building where the clan head of the Seal clan resides.”
Yuma’s eyes widened.
“Does the clan head have a separate building?”
Lilith nodded and placed a piece of paper on the desk.
“Yes, it seems the Berzet side is specially treating the clan head of the Seal clan. Here, it was located about 3 hours away from the original territory of the Levian clan and was being monitored alone.”
Yuma carefully examined the map Lilith had spread out.
Just as Lilith said, beneath the massive walls of Levian, there was another area surrounded by a circular wall.
“From Berzet’s perspective, they’re specially managing the clan head of the Seal clan, but conversely, this special management made our work much easier.”
Regardless of the number of troops guarding this space, the land itself was not very wide, making it seem possible to quickly occupy the area without being detected by the Demon King Berzet.
“It seems they have a half-god-level demon beast stronger than a 1st-rank as a gatekeeper, but that’s something I can eliminate.”
Lilith, a Demon King with god-level power and owner of this massive Purgatory Castle, certainly couldn’t be stopped by a single gatekeeper.
Ron pointed to one of the items on the desk:
“This is an artifact that temporarily distorts the landscape. With this, external observers won’t notice anything happening in the area where the clan head resides.”
Lilith spoke again:
“The distance between Berzet’s Demon King’s castle and this location where the clan head is staying is approximately 6 hours. That would be enough time to have a sufficient conversation after making contact. If we can receive the branding immediately, it might be a bit tight.”
It was a valid point.
Nevertheless, receiving the branding before fighting Berzet would be the best choice.
“It’ll require quite a lot of personnel,” Yuma said.
Lilith drew a crescent moon with her yellow eyes:
“Indeed, but compared to the military force needed to behead the Demon King Berzet you promised to kill, this is just a fingernail’s worth of personnel. You’ll keep that promise, right?”
Yuma nodded without hesitation:
“Yes, I intend to keep that promise.”
To escape being the culprit, to match the combination for consuming Dragon Heart, he needed blood extracted from the heart of one Demon King, so Berzet was also someone Yuma had to kill.
Lilith smiled at Yuma’s unwavering response:
“Good, that confirmation is enough. I’ll clean up the dozens of 1st and 2nd-rank demons monitoring the Seal clan’s clan head’s area with my subordinates.”
Lilith continued:
“Then, we’ll depart in 30 minutes.”
“Okay.”
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About 30 minutes later, the Demon King Lilith took Yuma to a place in Purgatory Castle: where the black panthers were.
A dozen black panthers sat quietly in iron cages, looking at Yuma and Bell.
Yuma and Bell approached the black panthers.
Lilith spoke:
“If you can tame these guys, riding one each would be the fastest way to arrive. Don’t worry. As you saw on the map, we’ll be going through the jungle forest, so we won’t be discovered.”
Yuma carefully observed the black panthers.
Certainly, with their muscular legs, they seemed capable of breaking through any obstacles, whether forest or jungle.
“The method to tame them is simple. Ride them. Just don’t panic. Demons are fundamentally those who follow those who rule over them and bare their teeth at those who fear them.”
At Lilith’s gesture, one subordinate stepped forward and brought out two massive black panthers from the cage.
Yuma mounted the leftmost panther without hesitation.
Not being afraid of beasts that were no different from predators.
This was the same for the war horse Hector and the griffin Ethan that Yuma had tamed before.
Wondering why a human had mounted it, the panther tensed its muscles and heightened its senses for a moment.
“Grrr…”
However, once Yuma mounted and calmly stroked its fur and massaged its neck to ease the tension, the panther retracted its bared teeth and relaxed its tense body.
“Woah!”
In contrast, Bell, who mounted the panther on the right, seemed less experienced and only fully gained her balance after deploying her defensive energy.
Lilith laughed, revealing her white teeth:
“Hahaha, let’s depart now.”
Ron’s selected 200 1st-rank demon troops all began moving, riding black panthers.
Yuma and Bell, mounted on their own black panthers, followed behind.
The jungle forest was true to its name, filled with massive vine-like structures resembling monstrous snake shapes.
The black panthers traversed this chaotic forest effortlessly with their innate physical abilities.
Crash!
Vines obstructing their path were smashed to pieces as they rushed forward.
They continued running for over 5 days.
The 6th day of their journey began.
They ran until the sunset started to approach.
Only then did something start to become visible.
A dense gray wall that left no gaps whatsoever came into view.
A perfect wall that simultaneously blocked all external entry.
And dozens of Berzet’s troops surrounding these walls.
Lilith, who spotted them from a distance, raised her hand to make everyone simultaneously stop.
Ron bowed to Lilith:
“There are a hundred people outside the wall, and about the same number inside monitoring the clan head. Half of the carefully selected demon troops are skilled in stealth, so we can completely annihilate both inside and outside the wall.”
While deploying a silence spell would prevent this commotion from leaking out, it was safest to process everything as quickly as possible.
“We’ll disguise the troops outside with demons who have transformation abilities and those who can create dummies, making them appear normal.”
This way, the area’s occupation wouldn’t be discovered until Berzet directly sent personnel.
The owner of all blessings, Berzet, was among the five Demon Kings who were so powerful that even the gods of the demon realm would be insufficient.
Despite not having raised their blades against each other for a very long time, they never relaxed their vigilance.
That was why they had separately extracted and individually monitored the clan head from the most important clan among those who create the branding, the source of their power.
Berzet’s cunning lay in not directly managing the surveillance troops himself but delegating it to his subordinates, agreeing with the subordinate’s opinion that the Demon King would not move directly.
Thud─
The necks of 2nd-rank demons both inside and outside the wall twisted abnormally.
A knife piercing through the backs of 1st-rank demons emerged beyond their hearts.
Swish!
Lilith instantly attached red threads to the thirty 1st-rank demons who looked at her after she confidently entered the wall.
Whoosh! Whoosh!!
With a single clap, those 1st-rank demons instantly burned to ash.
All that remained was the half-god-level demon beast, the red great tiger.
A massive tiger charged.
Lilith created a massive fire sphere and threw it at the beast.
Boom!
Half the tiger’s head was torn off with the explosion, but it didn’t stop its charge.
Roar!!!
With a thunderous roar, it swung its legs like massive weapons.
Thud!
Lilith, who stepped forward, grabbed that weapon-like leg.
Scream!
And she covered the great tiger’s entire body with her authority, the catastrophic fire.
Boom!!
The tiger crashed to the ground, its entire body blackened and charred.
Lilith turned her back while brushing off her hand.
At that moment, a fierce light suddenly erupted in the tiger’s eyes.
“Ha, you insect─”
Lilith ignited a flame in her right hand and turned her head, but.
Crash!!
In that brief moment, Yuma’s foot struck away the tiger’s attack.
Boom─!
The tiger’s body burst, having directly faced an attack 10 times its own power.
Massive flesh rolled on the ground.
“Didn’t even properly confirm its death. Pathetic, Demon King.”
Yuma moved forward without even looking at Lilith.
The demons of Lilith’s clan, who had just witnessed Yuma’s rumored power, swallowed hard.
“T-this guy was incredibly tenacious! Ugh!”
Ignoring Lilith, Yuma opened the door of a dilapidated house.
Creak.
A female figure was visible, sitting in a chair.
“Are you the clan head of the Seal clan?”
As Yuma spoke, the woman slightly turned her body to look back.
Their eyes met. Yuma’s brow furrowed.
Platinum blonde hair.
And silver-colored eyes.
“…Who are you?”
“-[Don’tScrewMeOver], what an interesting name. Are all human names this intriguing?”
They looked exactly the same.
And the name was the same too. Selene, who was the Demon King in the game
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