Hell remained chaotic.
With fewer dark elements, higher-ranking demons fought more intensely for resources. After over a thousand years of fighting, many high-ranking demons died, but many strong ones remained.
Most high-ranking demons occupied their own territory and avoided confrontation; it was no longer like before when the demon kings were absolute rulers.
Hell, today is not just one place. There are pieces of it in all five realms.
Rachel allowed all demons below rank 3 to leave hell, but soon, it began to be abused. High-level demons sent out their agents. Because they were only subordinates and not avatars or slaves, the codes Rachel set up couldn't stop them.
Rachel had no good solution for this. It is possible to fix it with a lot of coding so that it reads the minds of everyone and determines what their intention is, or it can look at the river of time and predict what they will do once they get out, but she didn't bother.
Too much effort!
So, Rachel closed the barrier again, intending to open it once and for all when dark elements completely disappeared, and the current demon kings died.
Who knows, there may be upright demon kings in a few million years!
While it was open, many demons got out, so today, in all realms of southern, western, northern, eastern, and central lands, along with humans and non-humans, many demons also exist.
They are the most peaceful among all and have become very popular among everyone.
Even in hell, the situation is different. Lower-grade demons are good, wanting to live peacefully, but higher demons are evil, attacking and enslaving newborn demons.
Fortunately, some newborn demons reached rank 5 after this long time, so they are no longer defenseless. But still, a rank 7 demon noble can easily suppress them and destroy all they've built.
Still, there are many big, peaceful cities in hell.
...
Pride #1 was a special demon king. He was always more peaceful than other incarnations, and it remained the same even now.
After Pride's main body died, he took over and became the main Pride.
But he couldn't control the incarnations without the shared mind. So, after the shared mind stopped working, other Pride incarnations started attacking each other.
Everyone fought and dispersed, occupying a piece of the land for themselves.
Pride #1 was helpless. He wanted to stop them, but they were, well, too prideful, not tolerating other Prides.
The fight among Prides would have been much more severe if it weren't for the efforts of Pride #1, who had the Pride sin skill.
The Pride sin skill could be used only by the holder of the sin or the incarnation whom the holder would allow to use it.
Pride #1 kept the skill for himself, not allowing any of the incarnations to use it, and kept it hanging above everyone's heads, preventing them from killing themselves.
Otherwise, their fate would have been like Rage, where only 4 of the original 8 remained. The rest killed each other from, well, Rage.
Originally, demon kings weren't supposed to have incarnations.
They are incompatible with having incarnations, but Tom forced them.
The seven sins are codes of the world. They are embedded within the world, part of its setting.
There should also be seven capital virtues, which are inactive for some reason.
When heaven was still here, gods didn't have 7 good traits like demons have the seven deadly sins. The way of promotion for gods was entirely different, perhaps an experiment by the Great Dream.
Gods like kindness didn't have virtue skills like demon kings who have sin skills.
Just as he was thinking of this, he saw someone appearing before him.
It looked like a human, with black eyes, blue eyes, and short hair.
But, of course, Pride #1 wouldn't be fooled by this. Its true look was a rank 7 demon with a tail, horns, and red eyes!
"Who are you?" he asked coldly.
"I'm Zagronan. I'm here to slap you!" he said with a sneer.
Pride was absolutely stunned!
Is this demon having a mental problem? It's true that after losing the shared mind, demon kings are now weaker, but a wave of his hand can still kill a thousand rank 7 demons!
He got curious about this demon.
"Why do you want to slap me?" he asked.
"Because I can!" said Zagronan. Then, he started to move!
For Pride #1, this movement was like slow motion. He could have killed him many times.
But he didn't!
At the same time, he felt the river of time. Pride, like all rank 9 existences, has some ability to predict the future. Not too much, just enough to sense luck. And he can tell.
When he even thinks of harming this weird demon, his luck shakes violently, as if collapsing!
"What's going on?" he became scared and teleported away! He was unwilling to do something that would send his luck far into negative value!
But, to his astonishment, the teleportation spell failed!
All spells have a chance of failure. No matter how good you are, there is still some remote chance that the spell fails. For someone as strong as Pride #1, his chance of failure is abysmally low.
You have more luck finding an atom of water in the ocean than Pride failing to cast a spell. But this unimaginably rare thing just happened.
He tried again and failed again!
Cold sweat gathered on his forehead.
"What is this disaster out of nowhere? What am I supposed to do?" he thought helplessly. He definitely can't harm this demon, so ...
"I can only let him slap me!" he thought.
If it were other pride demons or another demon king, they would have never let such a thing happen.
But he can think broadly.
Even if he sits here for a rank 7 demon to attack him all year long, he won't suffer a scratch!
So, the best course of action is standing still!
In his view, Zagronan slowly approached and slapped him strongly with his right hand! He used all of his strength!
"No!" the Demon King of Pride thought with fright. He felt his luck going far, far into negative territory!
"Why? Why? I didn't do anything! Wait, it's because if he slaps me with all his strength, his hand might hurt!" As he thought of this, he felt his luck getting better.
As a demon king, Pride #1's flesh is tough beyond imagination, so even the hand of a rank 7 demon will break if he slaps too vigorously.
With a bitter smile, he intentionally made his flesh weaker!
The slap came, and the Demon King of Pride was shot like a cannon! All his teeth broke, and his neck fractured.
It was because he weakened himself so that this weird demon wouldn't get hurt; otherwise, it would be this demon who would be in a sorry state, not him.
"Huh? Are demon kings all so weak?" Zagronan thought, looking at his hand with surprise. He never thought that his slap could do this much damage to a demon king!
"Demon kings are nothing in front of the main protagonist! You are bullying them with your luck! Now, continue slapping him; I want to know what happens when he attacks!" said Rachel.
The Demon King of Pride was happy because, due to the impact, he was thrown far away.
He hoped this strange demon would let him go.
But he felt his luck suddenly going negative again.
"This is ridiculous!" he got angry.
Already, it was amazing he allowed a weakling to slap him. And the damn demon still wanted to slap him more!
He turned around to run away, but he felt that his luck would plummet even if he took one step. He gritted his teeth.
"I've had enough! It's enough!" he roared.
After all, no matter how smart, he is still the Demon King of Pride. How can he let someone slap him?
He felt his luck going deep into negative territory, but he didn't care. He wanted to use spells but thought that spells wouldn't work, so he started moving with unimaginable speed, intending to kill the demon with one punch.
The demon wasn't even able to react.
As he moved at a fast speed, his luck was getting more and more negative at an increasing rate.
In the history of the world, no one had ever had such unimaginably bad luck. It was so severe that the river of time near him started avoiding him like a plague, creating an area around him that was a time desert.
But he was determined, using his Pride sin skill, 'One in the World.'
With this skill, he was stronger than the strongest person in the world.
The strongest person was Lee, who was half a step into rank 10, so, with 'one in the world,' Pride #1 barely, faintly reached rank 10!
His luck should have increased tremendously now that he was rank 10.
But the opposite happened.
It decreased even faster.
With so much time-water moving away, he would soon be trapped in a time desert, frozen in place.
But barely reaching rank 10, he forcefully manipulated the river of time and prevented the time desert from forming.
His luck was so horrifyingly bad that the world's rules began to twist, attempting to move away from him.
However, it was too late. He was already right in front of the demon.
He struck.
The demon was unable to react at all. The strike got closer, and just as it was about to land, Pride #1 disappeared!
"What?" he looked around and saw some distant light spots.
"What is this? Why am I burning?" He was terrified. Then, he remembered some images from his inheritance.
"Endless space!" he screamed.
It was his final word.
A moment later, the chaos energy invaded and destroyed him instantly.
Pride #1 died!
...
"Where did he go?" asked Zagronan in confusion.
Rachel was thoughtful. "The world ejected him," she said.
The universe hates negative values. It's not just here; almost in every world, when negative values appear, the laws try to remove them.
The reason is that negative values can erode the codes and laws of the world. Like just now, the luck of the demon king got so far into the negative that it damaged some laws of the world.
Rachel actually now has to fix some codes because they got bent.
"The luck of the main protagonist is so terrifying! Zagronan, if you can't reach rank 10 with this, then you should be ashamed," she said.
Zagronan said, "I can do it! Now what?"
Rachel looked at Zagronan's luck and noticed that just a little was consumed, barely noticeable. Obviously, the luck of the main protagonist is more resilient than just one demon king.
She said, "Continue slapping the demon kings!" She still wanted to experiment.
The data is all there in the database, but to understand it clearly, one must witness it up close.
...
Zagronan went around and slapped the demon kings.
Most couldn't tolerate it and were either frozen in a time desert or ejected by the world due to their low luck.
However, some demon kings surrendered and willingly submitted to the slapping. To their surprise, as long as they surrendered and became Zagronan's "subordinates," their luck skyrocketed to an unimaginable level.
Demon kings of Lust #2, Lust #9, Greed #6, Greed #7, and Envy #1 became Zagronan's subordinates. As it turned out, all of them had the appearance of women, so, in fact, they entered the main character's 'harem'!
As for the Pride and Rage demon kings, all he encountered died!
Rage was so mad, attacking without asking a question, and Pride will never allow someone to slap them.
As a result, all demon kings in the southern lands either died or became his 'subordinates.'
Rachel opened a channel for all of them, letting them out.
Then, she closed all the loopholes and repaired the damaged laws. This experiment was fun! She decided to conduct more experiments with luck again.
...
"Who are these women?" asked Lana.
"Servants I brought for you!" said Zagronan.
He wasn't going to have children with them. He loved Lana and was loyal. It seems weird for a demon, but Zagronan was like this.
"Servants? what a great gift! Come here; I have work for you!" Lana ordered.
The demon kings became angry, but as soon as they even thought of doing bad things with Lana, their luck began to shake.
Lana is loved by the main character, so people who want to harm her will pay greatly.
As a result, the demon kings just accepted their fate as servants of a rank 4 demon.