In the Forest of Nightmares, the palace where the Demon King resided, a war took place at this moment for the freedom of those souls that had been taken by demons. Dragons, with their ear-deafening roars, together with the mesmerizing song of sirens, made the war look like a one-sided annihilation. Demons were slaughtered everywhere; they were nothing without their generals. They fought without strategy, and their hunger for blood resulted in their demise.
A young man was running towards the castle. In every swing of his sword, blood splashed out, limbs were cut, and heads fell down. He killed without mercy.
'This is it; for the sake of the people, I'll end this thousand-year war with my blade,' the young man thought.
As he walked through the corridor, an ear-piercing sound reverberated inside the whole castle. He raised his sword to cut the projectile thrown at him, but as soon as it proceeded towards him, it vanished before colliding with his sword, and then blood started to drip down from his shoulder.
"Anelia," he murmured.
In the next few seconds, a beautiful woman walked out with a graceful appearance. She was dressed in a pitch-black battle gown, and her skin was as white as snow, which would lead everyone to wonder if she still had blood running through her veins.
She was one of the Four Darkness Generals, the Queen of Vampires, the Crimson-Eyed Melody of the East, and the Demon King's wife, Anelia de Stygeia.
As her crimson-red eyes, filled with sorrow and grief, looked at the brave young man, hundreds of black orbs appeared out of nowhere and surrounded him. And with the wave of her porcelain hand, each of those orbs exploded, destroying half of the castle walls.
Despite the explosion, the young man emerged unscathed and aimed his sword at his enemy's neck, but Anelia simply flicked her tongue to produce a massive wave of sound, sending him into the debris of the castle wall.
"Ren!" a dragon shouted before it landed beside the debris.
"Oh, the cute lizard is here; for you to be the king of dragons, what a shame; I honestly want you to be my pet." Anelia chuckled as she bombarded the dragon with wave after wave of sonic sounds.
The red dragon flew upward, and the next moment, he roared. Giant flames engulfed the whole castle for a second, but a much bigger blue flame toppled the red flame, which then diminished as if nothing happened.
A white-haired man appeared standing on the roof of the demon king's castle with a cane in his hand. His beautiful facial features would make every woman's heart skip a beat for a minute. He looked at the dragon king and grinned.
"Is that the flame you're so proud of? What a child's play!" He said. The dragon king trembled upon seeing the existence before him. The King of Demons, Cinhard Beelze, at long last left his throne and joined the war for extinction.
. . . . .
A few minutes before, in the deepest part of the castle, a man sitting on an enormous throne was fidgeting with two different colored dice: one was black with white dots, while the other was a red cube with a white skull engraved as its numbers. Cinhard Beelze, the strongest existence ever recorded, the Conjurer of Blue Flames. The one who fought for power and united the demonkind to worship him as their Supreme Ruler.
The castle shook while the chandeliers fell due to endless vibrations.
"Anelia's upset, huh? The main characters are all here, and I will look bad if they don't receive a proper greeting from the Lord of this Castle," Cinhard said.
"But seriously, those ants don't know when to stop." He sighed.
"Has the world become so peaceful that those fools forgot what I'm capable of?" With a tap of his cane, he disappeared from the throne, leaving the two dice behind.
. . . . .
"Cinhard, this will be the day that you'll become a part of history." The Red Dragon shouted with anger in his tone.
"Hmnn, that's a pleasure to my ear—a history where the Demon King killed the king of all nations," he replied.
Afterward, he appeared like a ghost in front of the dragon king and kicked his head from above. Blue flames emerged upon contact at the sole of his foot and burned the scales of the dragon while plunging downwards.
The next moment, the Dragon King found himself lying in the center of a crater, ten feet below ground. His eyes widen, analyzing what happened. His size was ten times bigger than the demon staring at him from above, yet it just took one kick from that being to pummel him below ground.
"Oh, I guess I'm getting rough. I intended to kill you with that kick, but you managed to live." Cinhard provoked the Dragon King.
"How long are you guys going to watch? The sneak attack won't work on me, though." He said this while looking at the dragon. The next moment, a whirlpool of wind burst behind him, aiming for his back, but a ruffle of sound parried the whirlpool, changing its direction.
Anelia looked at the occurrence happening above the castle while evading the sword of the young man named Ren with the slightest movement possible, and this made the young man furrow his brows.
'This is frustrating, I can't land a single hit, as if she's reading my mind; she's not even paying attention to me.' Ren complained in his thoughts. However, Anelia's thoughts were not the same; she evaded Ren with smooth movement, yet even a simple brush from his sword attack gave her chills.
'This guy is a threat to the king,' she thought. Then she reached the side of her right leg and pulled a silver-gray flute with a black onyx embedded at its center.
A bewitching melody covered the whole battlefield as soon as Anelia started to play the flute while keeping an eye on Ren's sword attack. The demons that heard the song lost their rationality and became much more dangerous beasts, while the vampires savored the tone and enhanced their magic capabilities.
"The Queen is with us; kill the treants; capture all beings with blood; and we'll offer them to her highness," cried a vampire after he drank blood from a siren.
The tides of war started to change. Gargoyles and Lycanthropes, together with all horned demon creatures who became mindless beasts, wreaked havoc on the battlefield, annihilating all the enemies in their paths. The treants and dragons that acted as the vanguard of the soldiers fell one after the other. Priests and druids did their best to cast a large-scale healing spell for their allies but were continuously interrupted by witches and dark priests who put curses and restrictions in the war zone.
With hopes all broken, an enchanted voice echoed in the sky, and like a miracle, all the injuries of all the humans, dragons, treants, druids, elves, and sirens healed instantly.
. . . . .
Above the Demon King's Castle, Cinhard swung his cane in a sideward slash in the direction where the voice came from, and a crack formed with burning flames appeared in the atmosphere before it shattered in full, revealing four figures.
An old man wearing a black loose robe with golden phoenix embroidery, his long white beard that reached the tip of his feet, swayed like a curtain. He gave off the aura of a ruler who won't bow down to anyone; all should give their respect when in the presence of the Human Emperor, the embodiment of the rising phoenix. On the right side of him, a young elf was gritting his teeth while looking at Cinhard. He was the son of the Elven King, who joined the war for revenge after Cinhard burned his father alive in front of his eyes a few years ago.
"You're still as hot-headed as you are even though a thousand years have passed, Cinhard," a large voice rang out from a bulky, tanned man; his whole upper body was covered with tattoos that looked like ancient alphabets. Aside from that, the most distinguishable feature of him was his eyes; instead of pupils, sparks of green lightning were flickering without pause.
"It's better to be hot-headed than to be a musclehead like you, Spirit King," Cinhard replied.
"Stop provoking him, Calix," said the same voice that echoed a moment before, owned by a beautiful woman with blue-green hair similar to the ocean waves. The Overseer of the Oceans, the Queen of Sirens, Kizhaia Atlantica. She was standing next to the Spirit King, and her deep blue eyes, which looked like a bottomless abyss, stared at Cinhard with regret.
"Now then, shall we start?" Cinhard asked with confidence.
Afterward, a jet-black darkness enveloped the whole forest, and the light from the sun vanished without a trace. And at the center of it was Cinhard; his cane now had the appearance of a sword; blue flames covered its shaft, and a white outline that curved from the handle down to its tip formed a translucent, burning blue blade.
"Here he comes; be prepared," the Emperor said on purpose. Then Cinhard jolted forward in their direction, leaving a trail of blue flames behind him.
The Spirit King clenched his fist with bolts of lightning and said with a smile written on his face, "We'll fight till one of us vaporizes from this world."
Then he leaped into the air and aimed a punch enveloped in thunderbolts at the incoming Cinhard; however, Cinhard vanished, leaving a silhouette of blue flame that collided with the Spirit King's punch. A loud bang echoed from the explosion of flames and lightning.
Afterward, a figure of Cinhard emerged in front of the old emperor. He performed a downward slash, putting half of his strength into it. Yet the old man stopped the burning blade with only one hand. The blue flames burst, burning the right arm of the Emperor. The Elven Prince and the Siren Queen attacked as soon as the Demon King appeared with torrents of water and a barrage of wind aimed at both sides of Cinhard, forcing him to leap backward.
He glanced at the emperor and murmured with annoyance. "Tsk, what a troublesome Legacy."
Then he placed his burning cane at his back without a single thought to parry the thunderbolt punch from the Spirit King, followed by a reverse sidekick focusing on Calix's temple, when ripples of water appeared between the two of them.
The shield made of water was not sturdy enough to stop an attack from the Demon King as it dissipated upon receiving damage, but that split second it gave was just enough for Calix to evade Cinhard's kick and retreat a few meters away.
Meanwhile, Kizhaia started to cast a healing spell to treat the Emperor's burning arm, however, the Emperor ignored her, and the blue flames died upon waving his arm in a flash, leaving him unscathed.
The Emperor stepped ahead, and Kizhaia was left there dumbfounded. As far as she knew, the blue flame that the Demon King wielded was the highest grade of fire, and it needed only seconds to burn everything to nothingness. Yet, no burn marks could be seen on the Emperor's arm.
'Is it because of his Legacy? I think I need to reevaluate humankind,' she thought.
"Sneak attacks did not work on him before, much less now that we're inside of his domain. Leave him to us and help the young man subdue Anelia." The Emperor commanded Calix with a heavy tone.
"But that was not the—" Calix retorted but was unable to finish his argument due to a sudden burst of purple flames released by the old man.
"I alone am enough," the Emperor said before he averted his eyes from Calix and looked at Cinhard, who was now bathing in blue flames.
. . . . .