The Burning Lampas City for the Demon King
Rehyun was about to assume the hero’s mask once more when Lampas City was already in the midst of flames and ruin.
Before such total destruction could be prevented, black holes had torn open in every direction above the city. From those voids poured demonic energy, and monstrous beasts erupted like a tidal wave, laying waste to Lampas City. The marketplace was not only the heart of the Holy Astraea Kingdom but also an urgent beacon for support from surrounding cities.
“Please! Strange holes have appeared in the sky, and monstrous creatures are spewing out of them, destroying the city! We have no time! Send help at once!”
The marketplace’s plea for aid traveled not only to nearby cities but all the way to Pantheon, the capital of the Holy Astraea Kingdom itself.
“How could this…”
Saintess Lucretia, having heard the report, stared in stunned silence for a moment before murmuring to herself.
She had no idea what was happening anymore.
Black holes opening one after another, monstrous beasts pouring out and obliterating the city… It was exactly like the day the Demon King had descended.
Saintess Lucretia knew the situation in the Intermediate World before Rehyun, the summoned hero from another world, had even arrived.
Through the black mages, the Demon King Leyrana Francis Sil Erna Ariadne had been summoned.
When she had first descended upon the Middle World, peace had still reigned. But the beings summoned by the black mages had unleashed hordes of darkness, burning peaceful cities to the ground and driving humanity and the allied races into the jaws of despair.
Even with the dragons’ aid, the tide had never turned. She remembered that horrific moment all too well. She had been nothing more than a teenager then, holding the title of Saintess, yet she had lived in utter despair, convinced that the gods themselves were using the Demon King’s army to kill her.
It had taken a full year for the summoned hero Kim Jae-hyun to gain the strength to stand against the Demon King’s forces. Before he turned eighteen, he had been the sole hope left in the world.
Yet here, in the present, the same terrible spectacle of the past Demon King was unfolding once more on the Intermediate World.
“Could it be… a new Demon King?”
Lucretia felt a wave of despair wash over her without realizing it.
It had only been ten years. At that time, the Demon King Leyrana had clearly perished by the Holy Sword in Rehyun’s hands, and her corpse had been taken by the Habsburg Empire.
“Could the Habsburg Empire have somehow… obtained the Demon King’s body and…?”
Lucretia’s suspicion drifted toward the Habsburg Empire for a moment. Then she shook her head firmly.
The Habsburg Empire would never have committed such reckless folly.
The Holy Astraea Kingdom was second in strength and territory only to the Habsburg Empire. Through its religion, it had amassed countless followers and wielded immense influence across the continent.
If the Habsburg Empire had carried out such a monstrous act, it would have become the most hated force on the entire continent.
Ten years ago, when the darkness had devoured the world, the Habsburg Empire had still been one of the few powers standing. It was impossible to imagine them slaughtering every human, every other race, and every dragon on the planet in a fit of madness.
“Then… it really is a new Demon King?”
Lucretia staggered at the thought. Still, she told herself that nothing had yet been confirmed. With a resolute expression, she issued a command from within Pantheon.
She would gather every elite knight and priest in the kingdom and use spatial magic to teleport them to the region nearest to Lampas City.
The overall commander would be none other than herself, the Saintess!
Long ago, the relationship between priests and mages had been famously poor. That had been in a distant, ancient age, however. The Holy Astraea Kingdom now recognized the necessity of mages. Even though priest-mages were impossible because holy power and demonic mana were mutually exclusive, there were still many mages among the faithful who worshipped the goddess Astraea.
Those mages had always served as the kingdom’s greatest strength. By now, even priests had become comfortable using magic circles, and mages’ communication arrays were taken for granted.
Thanks to those arrays, Lucretia herself had received news of the disaster in Lampas City at lightning speed.
Using a spatial teleportation circle, the Saintess Lucretia led one thousand elite knights and five hundred priests toward Lampas City.
* * *
“Grrrrrraaaah!”
A middle-aged man screamed in agony, blood pouring from the socket where his eye had once been. A crow-shaped beast had torn into it in an instant, leaving him half-blind. Clutching the ruined eye, he collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain.
“Kyiiieeeeek!”
A hellhound lunged at him next. It sank its fangs into his outstretched leg and began to tear at the flesh.
“Aaaah! Get off me!”
Even through the agony of being bitten, the man’s survival instinct drove him to kick the hellhound’s head as hard as he could. The monster, however, barely flinched from the blow of a mere human foot.
Crow-beasts swarmed him in turn, stabbing and devouring his entire body. The man screamed until his voice cracked, fighting with desperate claws, but he could not endure it. His eyes rolled back, and he went still.
“Mom…!”
“Husband…!”
“You bastard…!”
From every corner of the city came the wails of countless people. The screams of the dying mixed with the heartbroken sobs of those who had lost their loved ones. The sounds of monsters slaughtering the innocent echoed endlessly.
And the Hydra’s terrifying presence was beyond anyone’s ability to withstand.
“Shaaaah!”
Already, all the knights and priests inside Lampas City had been swallowed whole or crushed beneath the Hydra’s coils, unable even to leave their corpses behind.
Moreover, the Hydra’s fangs carried deadly poison. A single bite meant instant death, and even a mere graze was fatal.
“It’s over…”
The marketplace knelt, his voice trembling with despair as he muttered the words from afar.
Some had escaped through shelters, but as the marketplace, he had clung to hope in the arriving reinforcements and refused to flee. He was not driven by any false sense of duty as a ruler. According to the law of the Holy Astraea Kingdom, a market official who abandoned his post during a crisis would face execution.
With Saintess Lucretia herself leading the reinforcements, he had held out hope. Yet it seemed the reinforcements would arrive too late.
Even if they used spatial magic, the coordinates she could set would only be a short distance from Lampas City. The current area was saturated with demonic energy, and countless monsters were everywhere. A poorly placed teleportation circle would be disrupted by the interference, and if that happened, the Saintess, the knights, and the priests would be crushed into nothingness by the spatial pressure itself.
They had no choice but to endure until the reinforcements arrived. But from the looks of it, that time would never come.
* * *
“Woosh!”
A blinding flash of light erupted from the sky.
“Kyaaaaaah!”
The Hydra, drenched in the overwhelming radiance of holy power, staggered with a pained cry. And there they saw it.
A black-haired, black-eyed youth hovering in the sky, wielding a Holy Sword.
“The Hero…?”
The marketplace whispered in bewilderment. Although he was far away and could not make out the face clearly, the black hair and the Holy Sword in his hand told him everything he needed to know. It was the summoned hero from another world, Kim Jae-hyun.
He had clearly defeated the Demon King Leyrana in battle. Yet it was said that he had been unable to escape her final blow and had fallen with her.
But the youth floating in the sky was unmistakably the Hero.
The Holy Sword itself proved it.
Jae-hyun’s expression above the city was cold and emotionless. To anyone watching, he must have appeared stunned by the massacre unfolding below. Yet Rehyun felt nothing but joy.
Come quickly, Saintess Lucretia!
He forced himself to suppress the smile that wanted to break free. Destroying her and trampling her underfoot to exact revenge for the betrayal was a pleasure he would savor to the fullest. The first chapter of the tale of vengeance against the betrayers was about to begin.
As the Demon King who wore the Hero’s mask, he felt no fear or sorrow at the flames consuming the city. After all, he himself had lit the fire.
He had razed this very city, slaughtered tens of thousands, and now he stood here with the Holy Sword in hand, playing the part of the Hero once more.
It was the most ruthless deception a demon could ever commit.
Yet those who did not know the truth were cheering wildly.
“The Hero has arrived!”
“Our Hero has returned!”
Countless citizens, ignorant of the Demon King’s true identity, felt hope surge at the sight of the Hero’s blade and erupted in joyous applause.
They did not know he was the one who had murdered their children, their brothers, their friends, their parents.
They did not know he was the one who would soon lead them all into damnation.
The nine heads of the Hydra turned toward Jae-hyun.
The Hydra had been created for exactly this moment. As a monster belonging to the darkness, it existed only to live and die for its king, the Demon King. Even now, it could offer no resistance when Jae-hyun’s gaze turned toward it.
From the outside, the Hydra’s charge appeared to be an attack. But the beast knew better. It would never have been able to harm Jae-hyun even if it had tried. The true rebellion of the Hydra was flight. What it was doing now was simply obeying his command; its own will had nothing to do with it.
[Die for me, Hydra.]
Jae-hyun coldly sacrificed his ten thousand loyal monsters, using them solely as the foundation for his revenge. He was a tyrant without mercy, a dictator who crushed everything beneath his boot.
The Holy Sword in his hand swung once.
“Woosh!”
A vast wave of holy power spread across the entire city. The Hydra and all ten thousand monsters began to scream in agony as they perished.
The entire city of Lampas City was bathed in holy light. The sight of that colossal radiance ascending into the sky was one that Saintess Lucretia, rushing to save the city, could not miss.
“What… is that light?!”
Lucretia’s eyes widened in shock as she watched the holy power erupting from the city. As a Saintess, she knew exactly what kind of power it was.
Only one being on the continent could wield power that transcended even the immense holy energy possessed by someone like her. And when she saw the colossal holy power that enveloped the entire city, the signature of Jae-hyun’s Holy Sword, something stirred deep within her.
Rehyun smiled without a single person noticing.
Hurry and come, Lucretia… The first page of my revenge story is about to turn.