"Haa...."
I catch my breath and try to remember.
But nothing comes to mind.
Or, more accurately, my mind is too crowded.
"What the hell...?"
The muscles in the body, the skin, the blood, every drop of it, everything was foreign, as if it didn't belong to me. It was as different as the landscape in front of me.
"Haa, haa...."
Still, I struggled to move my feet.
A snap.
"!"
Something sticky catches my footing.
It was blood.
Cold, black, sticky blood that coated my feet.
No, it coated my entire body unpleasantly.
"What?"
The question rises in my foggy head.
...Unpleasant?
Why did I find blood unpleasant?
'It's human sacrificial blood.'
Despite my dizziness, I remembered my demonic instincts. Negative emotions as a source of power. Negative emotions are maximized in rituals where something is sacrificed.
So I had to be happy to be drenched in blood.
"Ew!"
It was more than unpleasant, it was disgusting.
In the confusion, the half-breed demon stumbled.
Barely holding onto the wall, it looked around.
'...this isn't home.'
Everywhere was a fortress of iron.
Even the walls were lined with complex, unidentifiable machines.
Everything was like nothing I'd ever seen back home.
The half-breed demon frowned.
"...Home?
The demon couldn't immediately think of its home.
Two words drifted through its confused mind.
The Demon World and the Arcana Continent.
Ouch, my head hurts like it's going to crack.
Just as I was grasping my head in pain, I heard a voice.
"I hate sacrifices."
"...?"
The woman's voice was high and raspy.
It focused my senses for a moment.
It was more than mesmerizing, it was seductive. But it was puzzling. Now, it was a man, not a woman, who stepped out of the darkness.
"It's disgusting. Even if you give me human blood for free, I refuse."
"...!"
A complex machine clung to the steel wall, a CCTV.
The image on the recording screen was of a demon.
Its appearance is enough to inspire fear just by looking at it.
It was just like the demons depicted in various media.
But the half-breed demon swallowed dryly.
'...Beautiful.'
At this moment, anyone who looked at it.
regardless of its appearance, could not help but be mesmerized.
The same demon was no exception.
The demon says
"Now you're like me, Queen of Mongrels."
The Queen of Mongrels.
"Ugh!"
The word stirs a blur of memories.
Mongrel.
That was how the Seven Deadly Sins of the Arcana Continent referred to the Demon Kings of the Demon World. And queen. The only queen among the demons.... The half-breed demon remembered the past.
"Gremory...!"
56th in the hierarchy.
Apricot-colored hair.
Flawless skin.
A demon king who could deceive even humans.
'Yes, I am Gremory.'
The moment of realization. Gremory's past as a half-breed demon flashed through her mind like a flashlight, and at the same time, she recognized the demon in front of her.
"Lust, you son of a bitch!"
"I see you remember my name, let me compliment you."
"Compliment'? This body, Gremory...?"
Gremory is a reigning queen.
A compliment should have been a humiliation.
Her body would not listen.
Even the insults were as sweet as a lover's whisper.
'Damn...!'
It was all because of this man.
Gremory was not greedy.
The Dark Dragon, the imperial counterattack, the situation on the Arcana Continent was dire. Worst of all, hadn't even the Evil Eye in the sky witnessed the trembling?
I vowed to keep a low profile. That's why I've even brought back the human, the lord I used to play with for fun.
To disguise the Demon Castle of Tears as an ordinary human castle.
All she wanted was the long, lean life of a queen, not a life of rampaging and being hunted. But all her plans went awry.
"How dare you, deceive me?"
Lust.
The Great Evil.
The Seven Deadly Sins.
Bam!
A part of me wanted to rip him apart.
'I can do it.'
I still don't know why I found blood unpleasant, but I could feel my body grow stronger from the sacrifice. But I couldn't.
"You want to kill me? If you could, you would have desperately resisted when I dragged you into the rift, but you didn't, and I can still see the look of delight on your face when I grabbed your head...."
"Shut up! Shut up!"
"No, it's not me who needs to shut up, it's you."
Shut up after being called an insult?
That was the moment Gremory set her nails.
Lust spoke up.
"Because I saved your life, Queen."
" ...save me from what?"
"Except for you and the Ten Thrones, it means that all demon kings have been dead."
The Ten Thrones.
Except for me and those foolish bastards.
All the demons are dead?
I couldn't believe it.
"...Is that true?"
"Of course."
"No way."
The first thing that came to mind was Akshan, the last survivor.
It was him.
That demon hunter had sent the Gamigin of the 4th Throne to hell.
The sheer ferocity and brutality of that battle....
could have hunted down all the remaining demons.
But.
Gremory said sharply.
"You say I was stunned for that long, bullshit."
She knew this because she was a demon herself.
It is not called the King of Demons for nothing.
Gremory continued.
"They must have survived by hiding or begging."
Even if the Demon Hunters had the ability to do so. It would be impossible to hunt all of them in such a short time, even if Akshan were to resurrect.
Lust nodded as if waiting.
"Exactly. You haven't been unconscious for a single day."
"You deceived me again...!"
"But the demons weren't hunted down, they were swallowed by a Bad Omen."
"...Bad Omen? Swallowed?"
I didn't understand what the hell he was talking about.
But I didn't feel like explaining it to Lust.
Gremory, the Demon King that defied the Bad Omen.
That made it clear.
"You shouldn't think outside the box, Claudi."
"You shouldn't think outside the box? What are you talking about?"
"It means that you have my blood running through you."
"...What, what?!"
"Can't you feel the change? You're gagging at the sight of blood, it's so obviously different from the instincts of the mongrel carved into your flesh, if that's any proof."
Lust muttered with satisfaction.
"Indeed, Claudi."
Gremory, Demon of the Demon World.
Lust, a Demon from the Arcana Continent.
Mixing the blood of two completely different demons, she became a half-breed.
It was worth the gamble, throwing myself into the rift.
"And I quite like it."
This land was a different world, even more so than the Arcana continent.
Although it seems plausible on the surface.
It means that the inside is festering and bursting.
Best of all, adventurers were not hard to come by. I was sure of it. I couldn't think of a better place to put my plan into action.
Lust looked at the player corpses and spoke grimly.
"Gremory, from now on, you might as well go on a rampage."
"Rampage? Me? Why?"
"Because by now, you should know that Claudi is.... No, you mongrel, you don't understand. Yes, the last survivor of Akshan will be tracking you, and that means you will not waste the blood and life I have given you."
"...!"
Lust turned and disappeared.
'On second thought.'
There were survivors in the Claudi family.
And that Claudi was in Akshan.
The last survivor in Akshan, too.
"There is such a thing as a twist of fate."
Barr.
Lust shuddered at the mere reminder. Yes, there was a reason Lust had taken this gamble.
"Time to make a decision."
At this rate, he'd be hunted soon enough.
Lust realized.
He cast aside his pride as a vile, Seven Deadly Sins Lust.
Then he realized the path.
If it was a half-breed ritual....
To be precise.
'If only I could mix blood with a high-ranking demon king.'
The possibility of gaining power against him who carried both Claudi and Akshan. Not that Gremory, a mere guinea pig, would ever know.
Gremory screamed at the back of Lust's head.
"Damn you, you bastard, where the hell am I supposed to be? Maybe it's the Arcana Continent, but.... Adventurer's World, what the hell am I supposed to do in that shitty land...!"
"What do you think half-breed means?"
"?"
"It's the power you crave, mongrel. My power."
"!"
Gremory's pupils dilated.
She wasn't upset because she was called the queen of hybrids.
It was Lust's power.
The power to make even a Demon succumb.
Something that strongly stimulates primal instincts.
What would it be like to wield that mesmerizing power...?
Gremory muttered, looking at her blood-soaked body.
"...Maybe it's not that bad?"
For the first time, color returned to her face.
*
Standing in front of the mirror, I adjusted my outfit.
From my point of view, it's still overdressed and underdressed.
Humans are creatures of adaptation. I'm getting used to this.
Flutter.
I threw my jacket over my shoulders and turned around.
If you ask me if I'm going early in the morning to live up to the name of Dawn.
I can't argue.
I have enough on my mind.
Another burden, unintentionally.
'We'll see. Archmage training.'
Jesse and Mary.
The Archmage class quest begins in earnest today. I haven't heard from Jesse about the specific quest objectives yet, but I'm sure it won't be a pleasant one, given that she's chosen the Zero Mountains for the location.
'Because it's not another class, it's an archmage.'
A different hidden class.
Even the Demon Hunter class quest is unimaginably difficult in the second half. Of course, I'm not going to accompany the two of them just to shiver in fear.
seug─
I walked out of the office and looked down at the stairs of the magic tower.
The staircase of the magic tower is generated in real time with each step I take. It's early in the morning, so there shouldn't be any people, and there's nothing blocking my view to the lowest floor, so I can see the portal right away.
That's my first priority.
That was the portal.
Or, more accurately, a modification of the portal.
─Progress Toward Anomaly (Ongoing)
●Determine the source of the Magic Tower. (Successful)
●Track down the unknown source of the Bad Omen. (Failed)
●Pioneer a new solution. (Ongoing)
I saw the potential in twilight magic.
That meant I had to find a way to add twilight to the portal's interference process.
'I was actually going to eat it raw.'
My last day on the Arcana continent.
As I waxed and waned, I was able to return to reality with Mary's assistance, and I wondered if she could easily modify the portal in the tower.
-"Explore, Interfere, Manifest.... So there's a foundation there."
But after a brief conversation, I realized that it would be impossible.
Twilight was primal magic, to use an easy example.
It was meant to be the magic and magical power of twilight that was more primal and therefore more intense.
So I quoted.
'Better than Mary learning magic now.'
It would be much quicker for me to learn twilight magic, so I've been walking around since the crack of dawn, just to look over your shoulder.
The tower was quiet in the early morning hours.
The mages of the tower are also human and need to sleep.
Since you're more superhuman than human, don't you need sleep?
'There's an excellent counterexample to that question.
I'm talking about Tower Master, the cat who just takes a nap on an empty day.
Except, of course, for me, who is suffering from the effects of the [First World Tree Blessing]. My body has always been in top shape, never complaining of sleep deprivation.
Thanks to this, I didn't miss a beat.
"...!"
kkeugeukkeugeugeug─!
The Magic Tower in the silence of dawn.
The first sign of life.
It's been a long time since dawn.
It took me a moment to swallow my sigh.
As a chief, I can't turn a blind eye to what's happening in the Magic Tower.
"I believe you were prepared to disrupt the process from the beginning."
I walked without delay.
The lowest floor of the Magic Tower where a presence was felt.
Into the nothingness of the Magic Tower's basement.
Ttogak─