"What is... this place?" It wasn't that Ronan couldn't speak fluently—he was just curious about the unfamiliar tone of his own voice. After saying only four words, he stopped to listen to himself.
"This is..." The yellow-haired creature gradually calmed down, realizing that the floating figure before him wasn't part of the demon-slaying coalition. He stopped trembling and replied, "The... the Black Forest."
"The Black Forest?" Ronan glanced around.
The yellow-haired creature knelt obediently, nodding as he repeated, "The Black Forest." He was quite sensible and refrained from asking where the terrifyingly powerful being before him had come from.
"Where is the Black Forest?" Ronan wanted to know where exactly he had ended up.
The yellow-haired creature answered honestly, "The Black Forest is just the Black Forest."
"..." Ronan shifted his gaze back to him, staring silently.
Under Ronan's intense gaze, the yellow-haired creature trembled and prostrated himself on the ground.
Ronan frowned, scrutinizing the figure before him from head to toe.
The creature kneeling in front of him didn't really resemble a human—its form was merely somewhat similar to a human. Ronan focused on its hands, which were pressed to the ground. Unlike human hands with five fingers, this creature only had three fingers on each hand. Additionally, each finger was about half again as long as a human's.
The creature's head was vaguely human-like but somewhat deformed, and its lips were yellow. But the most strikingly inhuman feature was its legs.
As Ronan's gaze moved downward from the creature's calves, he noticed that it had no feet. Instead, its skinny lower legs ended in two toes forming a sharp angle, connected by short webbing between them, with claws the same yellow hue as its lips.
The yellow-haired creature shivered under Ronan's inspection and nervously asked, "Do... do you have any other questions, sir?"
He wanted to run—God knows how much he wanted to flee from this place. Compared to the corpse mountain beneath him, the demonic aura radiating from the floating figure before him was even more torturous.
"What's your name?" Ronan adjusted his tone, trying to sound as friendly as possible.
"Ka..el."
"Kael, huh?" Ronan paused briefly before bluntly asking, "What exactly are you?"
He wanted to inquire about the creature's species, but he wasn't sure if Kael would understand that term.
"I-I'm a demon," Kael answered truthfully, though he found the question odd.
"A demon?"
Misunderstanding Ronan's question, Kael quickly added, "A Struthion."
Ronan's gaze shifted back to his feet—Struthion? Hmm, it seems this Struthion is the name of the demon that looks like an ostrich.
"This place..." The black mist around Ronan swirled as he glanced toward the mountain of corpses. "What happened here?"
Kael's face changed as he recalled the massacre that took place over a month ago. He had barely escaped with his life. Although he had woken up a few days earlier, fear kept him hiding among the corpses, pretending to be dead. It was only today that he finally found the courage to come out, and just as he had hoped, the demon-slaying coalition had already left.
"It was those damned humans and the elves..." Kael spat bitterly.
Humans...
"Elves?"
"Yes, the humans and the elves, along with the giants and dwarves. They formed a coalition. As soon as they entered the Black Forest, they started slaughtering demonic creatures, in order to find the members of the demon race. I tried to escape deeper into the forest, but they caught up to me and Caden. And then Caden and his wife..." Kael's face showed sorrow, his voice trembling, "They were both killed."
Ronan, setting aside the humans for now, focused on the key terms he'd picked up: "elves," "giants," and "dwarves." So, they formed a coalition?
Demonic creatures, Demon race...
Having read too many comics in his past life, Ronan's thoughts wandered. He glanced at the mountain of corpses beneath him. "What are all these, then?"
Unknown creatures? Maybe they had another name.
"They're Demonic Beast," Kael's grief was momentarily interrupted, confused by Ronan's odd question.
"Then why are you a Demon?" Ronan asked, curious. Was it simply because he resembled a human?
"Kael was born a demon!" Kael seemed even more confused.
Ronan paused for a moment. "Why do they—I mean, the humans and the elves—why do they slaughter demonic creatures and demons?"
At this point, even Kael's fear had faded, and he responded as if it were obvious, "They just kill us. Humans send their armies and mercenaries into the Black Forest every few years to hunt us."
"So, this time was the same?" Ronan realized that his current situation might not be good.
"Not this time," Kael revealed what he had heard from other demons. "This time, the Four-Race Coalition came to find the new Demon King. They were here to kill the new Demon King, and they just happened to kill us along the way."
Along the way? Along the way, they slaughtered enough to create this mountain of corpses?
Ronan was silent for a moment, then asked another strange question, "What am I?"
"You're a lord," Kael replied.
Sensing that Kael didn't quite understand his question, Ronan clarified, "Am I a demon?"
If he hadn't misheard earlier, Kael had used the word "we" several times.
"You..." Kael hesitated, unsure. The demonic aura of the figure before him was very terrifying, but it hadn't fully taken human form. "You don't look like a human, but you speak human language, so you must be... a demon, right?"
He didn't sound very certain.
Ronan thought about his current appearance and figured that if he wasn't a demon, then he must be a demonic creature. So, he asked, "Can demonic creatures turn into demons?"
"As long as they have enough intelligence and live long enough, they can eventually take on human form."
"And you?" Ronan was curious about how old this ostrich-like demon was.
"Kael was born a demon because my parents were both demons."