The Demon King Enters the Arena
'Let them distrust one another. Let them turn on one another. Heh heh, that is exactly how it will be for you.'
Of the remaining one hundred and six people, every single one was either an adult or a child — none were the women between fifteen and forty.
And of course, among those women between fifteen and forty, their families were also included.
"W-wait, are we actually voting?" One of the one hundred and six people asked, steeling himself against the fear.
"You can't hear, can you? Correct. You are voting. Even if you call it democracy, you still won't understand."
Kim Jae-hyun spoke coldly while looking at the fifty-three women. "Your numbers are one hundred and six, and the voting targets are fifty-three. If each of you gives exactly two votes to one person, everyone will be tied and no one will die. However, the right to vote belongs solely to you. I will have no say in how you vote — whether openly, secretly, or in collusion. You only need to write the numbers down and hand them to me."
Jae-hyun finished speaking, summoned a wooden desk in front of him, and placed one hundred and six sheets of Post-it-sized paper along with a single pen on it.
"Come forward one by one and write. Don't worry — the paper will be taken by me the moment it's written, so only the person who wrote it will know what number they chose."
Jae-hyun guaranteed anonymity. For example, if one person wrote the number 1, the woman bearing the number 1 and her family would be no different from enemies.
Of course, no one could write the numbers with complete peace of mind. But because Jae-hyun had guaranteed anonymity, they were free to do so.
"Discuss it among yourselves. You have twenty minutes. When twenty minutes pass, voting will begin. Until then, finish your discussion."
Upon hearing Jae-hyun's words, the one hundred and six people began chatting with one another in relief. Jae-hyun, feeling it would be a waste of twenty minutes, called out to Rin.
"Rin, come here for a moment."
"Eh? Y-yes."
Rin hurried over the moment she heard her name. The way Rin walked toward him, her golden hair swaying, was breathtakingly beautiful.
She was not on the level of Selina or Lucienne, but to begin with both of them were the supreme beauties of the Demon World; the only issue was that the comparison partners were so poor.
Standing close to the face of a beautiful girl who still looked seventeen with green eyes, Jae-hyun reached out and gently touched her chin, studying her features. "Beautiful."
"T-t-thank you."
Jae-hyun's praise made Rin's face flush with embarrassment. Since she was a demon, she had no choice but to submit to him, and she did find him difficult to approach. Yet setting those aside, Jae-hyun's appearance was undeniably that of a stunningly handsome young man.
Moreover, after being forcibly summoned to this world at seventeen, he had once been the Hero who defeated the Demon King Reina when he himself was nineteen — and even then his looks had seemed no older than seventeen.
The only difference from his appearance back then was that his eye color had shifted from black to red, but visually he still looked the same age as Rin, a handsome boy of seventeen.
Rin felt her heart flutter uncontrollably and at the same time experienced a surge of nervous tension.
Jae-hyun turned to her and spoke. "From tonight onward, you will serve as my night watch."
"Yes."
There was no surprise, no refusal. Among demons, it was common for a man to sleep with a female black mage possessing an equal or near-equal beauty. Conversely, male black mages enjoying female demons was far from rare, and succubi in particular had an especially strong tendency toward such behavior.
As the Demon King, Jae-hyun had simply issued her a command to become his night watch. She was still a virgin, yet she felt no resistance to that command.
In any case, if she was as beautiful as she was, she would sooner or later be targeted by countless demons summoned to the Intermediate World by Jae-hyun anyway. It was far better to offer her body to the Demon King and receive his favor than to waste it.
Besides, Jae-hyun's own looks were so striking that a woman would not find it unpleasant either.
For these reasons, Rin's answer was delivered with a faint, charming blush. Judging by that alone, she appeared to be nothing more than a lovable beauty; no one would have guessed that she was the black mage who harbored hatred for the world.
Jae-hyun used his Demon King authority to conjure a chair, sat down, and pulled Rin onto his lap.
The actual party involved, Rin sat with her hips pressed against the Demon King's knees and remained perfectly still despite the tension. Her older brother Ron, too, merely sat in silence without a word.
After all, black mages belonged to the darkness and could not defy the apex predator of the darkness — the Demon King. Betrayal or defiance against the Demon King was simply impossible.
On the contrary, thinking it fortunate that the Demon King was a handsome young man instead of some grotesque demon, Ron felt only relief as an older brother.
Jae-hyun placed Rin on his lap not to toy with her body but to ask her about the conditions of the continent. Rin answered every question with complete candor.
He had only been summoned to the Intermediate World for less than an hour — barely thirty minutes — so there was still a vast amount of information he needed to learn. The only way to obtain it quickly was through the siblings Ron and Rin, but by engaging Rin in conversation for the full twenty minutes, Jae-hyun gained far more knowledge than he could have through any other means.
*The betrayers who were not the Saintess Lucretia all had families, but the numbers are even higher.*
From what Rin knew, the Saintess Lucretia had not yet married.
*Ah, so she hasn't married yet? Saintess Lucretia...!*
Jae-hyun and the Saintess Lucretia had a complicated relationship. It was true that Lucretia had developed feelings for him to the point of considering marriage.
But Jae-hyun had given his heart to Irene, so he had rejected her. In response, she had chosen the path of betrayal and death, convinced that since she could not have him, she would destroy him instead.
Whether she had once loved him sincerely or not no longer mattered. Since she had tried to bite him and kill him, she was an enemy, a traitor, an object of hatred, and the one he would have to avenge.
Considering the malice she must have felt toward Irene for the betrayal, he could only imagine the things she had done to her.
*Iren would be disappointed.*
But as Demon King Jae-hyun, he was more focused on the fact that he would be the one to exact revenge on Lucretia first. Irene would not get the chance to avenge her.
And now the twenty minutes were nearly up. It was time to decide which woman would become the experimental subject to test the revenge methods against the Saintess Lucretia.
"The time has come. Come forward one by one and write the numbers."
Following Jae-hyun's command, the one hundred and six villagers approached with caution after their discussion. The fifty-three women stared at the villagers with desperate expressions, tension evident in their faces — because their very lives hung in the balance.
*Please... please...*
If all one hundred and six people gave two votes each to the fifty-three women, no one would die. He prayed they would show the unity they had discussed.
The villagers took their seats and began the vote. One hundred and six ballots had been cast.
Jae-hyun folded the ballots without revealing the numbers, took them, and even shuffled them to put the villagers at ease.
Of course, he knew exactly who had written what on which paper, and folding could not hide the numbers inside anyway. He remembered every single vote.
Yet because of the promise of anonymity, Jae-hyun unfolded each ballot one by one, checked the numbers, and the villagers waited in growing tension.
Especially the fifty-three women who might die; they were the most anxious of all.
"Hmm."
Jae-hyun, still sitting with Rin on his lap, finished checking the ballots and looked at the five young Briders — the little ones that had just finished devouring the corpses of middle-aged men — waiting with their adult Briders at his command. A cruel smile spread across his face.
"The targets of your eggs have been decided."
The faces of the fifty-three women turned deathly pale at Jae-hyun's declaration. His words meant that among the one hundred and six people, there were traitors.
Everyone had agreed to give two votes, yet anxiety still lingered. Who would betray their families and not vote? They had ended up casting foolish votes on the women with the most families, thinking they would not be targeted.
Two votes on one woman was nothing, but dozens would doom entire families.
The result...
"Number 35 received eight votes, number 29 seven. Number 29 survived by one vote, but number 35 got eight — you can guess what happens next, right?"
Jae-hyun smiled coldly at the woman bearing the number 35. Ironically, the woman was a thirty-five-year-old married woman.
She already had a daughter who had just turned fourteen and a son who was sixteen, and her husband was thirty-eight — three years older than her. If she died, her entire family would die with her.
The eight people who had voted for her had gone pale, realizing what they had done.
"W-who are you! Who voted for thirty-five! You bastards!"
The husband of the woman with number 35 screamed in rage as death approached. But fate was already sealed.
"H-honey! Honey!"
The woman with number 35 screamed in terror. A moment later, the adult Brider advanced and extended its tentacles toward her.
"Kyaahhh!"
The tentacles pierced her skirt and plunged into her vagina. The tentacles rubbed against her inner walls and reached her womb, where they began laying eggs from the tip.
"UUUUUUU!"
The woman, not only feeling the terrifying tentacles inside her but knowing exactly what they would do, fell into despair.
"Now, let's see what happens. Hehe."
Jae-hyun laughed cruelly — pure demonic mirth.
"Y-you cruel demon! How can you do this! Even demons are afraid of the gods, aren't they?!"
The woman's husband, realizing he was doomed, shouted curses at Jae-hyun. Jae-hyun chuckled and replied calmly.
"If you fear gods, then the Demon King must be abolished, right?"
Jae-hyun stated the fact that he was the Demon King in such a peaceful tone that it chilled everyone to the bone. When the villagers first learned that the man who had summoned them was the Demon King — the king of all demons — their eyes filled with terror.
"Well then, let's take a look first. Hehe, and to that woman there — you are going to have a third child, so I will give you my sincere congratulations in advance."
Jae-hyun sincerely congratulated the woman's husband on the third child.
"Ah, and congratulations to you two as well — you are going to have a younger sibling. Kukuk!"
As Jae-hyun finished speaking, the woman finally let out a scream that tore her throat. Instead of being born normally, the new Brider pierced her belly from the outside and, instead of emerging, forced its way through the vaginal wall and out into the world.
It looked exactly like a child being born.
"Kukuk... kuhahaha!"
Watching the scene, Jae-hyun laughed heartily, genuinely delighted. But in his mind, only one thing remained: the beautiful silver-haired Saintess Lucretia.
*Wait for it, Lucretia. I will make you bear a hundred children. Kukuku.*