When the Demon Emperor heard the words of the human hero Dominic, he nodded with a smile. This was indeed how the hero operated. He was a heartless man whose only true pursuit was power. It would not be unusual to have reared a half breed child to help him in such a goal, but it seems that the idea had failed.
"Very well," The Demon Emperor said with a smile. "Since you dare to come here, you must dare to taste my weapon as well!"
Dominic had no reaction. He came here today, after all, to simply assuage his reputation. The demons had gloriously spread the word that Dominic had birthed a half breed with the demons and run away. While intermixing was not as harsh of a taboo among humans as it was among demons, it was very much frowned upon. This was especially so for a powerful hero considered to be an idol by the human race. He had come here to defeat the emperor and resolve the stain on his persona. He didn't really care about the child. To him the child was simply a wasted experiment with no further use.
The tense atmosphere suddenly exploded when the Demon Emperor's Shadow Weapon, the Piercing Thorn, manifested in all its bloody space cracking glory. Dominic was not too far behind as a lightning bolt made of gold manifested within his right hand and a silver bow in his left. He quickly drew the bow using the golden lightning as a quiver, targeting the Demon Emperor's forehead. The Piercing Thorn was rotating at an extremely high speed in the air, also targeting Dominic. The two stood against each other in apparent stalemate for a long time. People on the sidelines only struggled to look at the battle and felt their backs wet with sweat. Not a single move had been unleashed yet, yet they felt as if the apocalypse was arriving.
Then within a moment, the two figures blurred. A powerful mushroom of bright light exploded in all directions and they were standing in the same positions, except their locations had been swapped. There was a gigantic hole on Dominic's forehead and the Emperor looked like he had charred black. Soon however, the two began to recover in the blink of an eye as they observed each other carefully.
"It seems to me," The demon emperor said with a slight smile, "that you lost."
Dominic Nile who had been quiet once again felt a hole appearing on his forehead. It didn't take long before the the hole was regenerated and the wound vanished, but like some pernicious disaster, the hole began to form again. As the body began to recover again, Dominic realized that his body was ageing rapidly. The cycle of the orifice appearing at the center of his forehead before healing continued for another twenty times while the Demon emperor watched it all with some curiosity.
At the end of the twentieth cycle, Dominic had turned into a decrepit old man, a bare husk of his older self. "Devouring Life, huh? Seems like I underestimated the depths of your strength, Emperor Deva." He said calmly without much worry at all. "Next time we meet, you can bet I'll be prepared." Then Dominic died. However, the moment he fell down, the body began to transform until it turned into the corpse of a small ten year old child.
"He turned his own child into a Projection Clone?" The Demon emperor laughed. "Humans can sometimes be even more ruthless than us demons!"
At that moment, Duke Abraxas came out from the distance as he bowed to the Emperor. "My Emperor..." He trailed off. The Emperor did not respond for a while as he seemed to be in his own thoughts. "Release that brat Leon." He said after much thought.
The Duke, who had an open enmity with the Rist clan raised an eye in puzzlement. It had been him who had asked for extensive torture of that stupid brat at the request of his own son who had once been humiliated in public by the kid. The Emperor showed a smile as if understanding the Duke's confusion.
"There is no bigger motivator than hatred. Explain to him how this is all the fault of that human hero and set him loose. He is a powerless and talentless brat, but a dull hidden blade is still more lethal than having no hidden blade at all." The emperor said a curled smile, enjoying the cleverness of his own plan.
The Duke looked a bit suspicious of the plan. "My Emperor, he could easily turn on us as well." He warned. He had inflicted great harm on the brat and felt that leaving anything to chance was risky.
The emperor smiled. "The possibility indeed exists, but without risks there are no rewards. I trust that you have means to ensure he does not indeed become a risk." After saying his piece, the emperor flew back to the palace and returned to his private quarters. the battle with the human hero had allowed him to gain a great many insights.
---
A dazed Leon stood blankly in front of the gates of the capital city of the Incidence Empire. He still hadn't grasped that he was now surprisingly a free man. The pain had disappeared and after what seemed like an entire day, a faint flicker appeared within his deep blue eyes, a sign that life had not yet left him. A memory was branded into his mind, of the previous battle with the emperor and the decisive evil of his 'father'. The moment the memory flashed within his consciousness, and he grit his teeth so hard that blood began to ooze from his gums. However, he soon calmed himself down, though a hint of craziness could be seen manifesting within his facial expression.
"Looks like I have been banished." Leon murmured and turned his back to the gigantic gates of the capital city and walked on the road, without any supplies without knowing which direction he was headed to.