The Empress of the Habsburg Empire
In the **Demon World**.
When the Holy Kingdom of Astraea transformed into the Demon King Kim Jae-hyun’s Dark Empire, 208 dragons had desperately tried to evacuate holy knights and priests from the Intermediate World to serve as important forces there. The outcome, however, was that every last one of them had been captured and locked away in the **Demon World** prison.
What made it truly strange was that male dragons and female dragons were kept in completely separate cells. As one would expect, they were all wearing collars, bracelets, and anklets—restraints that forcibly sealed away every ounce of their power and forced them into human forms.
“Ghhk! Damn it all!”
One of the red dragons snarled, fury boiling over inside him. Thinking about how they had ended up in this humiliating situation was enough to make anyone explode.
No matter how much the dragon clan had learned to be humble, the red dragons’ inherently bloodthirsty temperament remained unchanged. They had simply added the virtue of humility to their former arrogance and become a little wiser.
And now, even though they were human, the situation was still more than enough to make them furious.
In the Intermediate World, the Holy Kingdom of Astraea had already fallen completely into the Demon King’s grasp and been reborn as the Dark Empire. Moreover, by absorbing more than 90 percent of its population, the **Forces of Darkness** had grown to an unprecedented level in the history of the Intermediate World.
It was not a hundred thousand but millions upon millions of **Forces of Darkness**. And the greatest danger of all was that every soldier and mage had been transformed into an **Astral Knight** or **Astral Mage** armed with demonic energy and black magic, growing at a terrifying speed.
These were the very people who had signed a contract with none other than the Demon King himself.
Originally, the number of mages or black mages who had made pacts with demons was small, yet the stronger the contracted demon’s power, the faster those warriors and mages could become.
And these were not ordinary demons. These were the Demon King! The very Demon King who had defeated the strongest Demon King in history—Laylana.
In other words, the number of people who had made pacts with the strongest Demon King in history exceeded forty million!
Not every single one of them was a warrior or a mage, but those who walked the path of warriors or mages would grow several times faster than normal **Astral Knights** or **Astral mages**. They would also be able to learn from the knowledge of the demons already present in the Intermediate World and the senior black mages, allowing them to grow even faster in their daily lives.
And that was not all. Even ordinary people, not warriors or mages, not even holy knights or priests, had their bodies strengthened. Their movements might not be refined, but they would possess overwhelming strength and speed far beyond that of ordinary humans.
With most of the soldiers of the Holy Kingdom of Astraea now having become **Forces of Darkness**, their physical abilities had become overwhelmingly powerful. From a military standpoint, that was a catastrophe.
**Astral Knights, Astral Mages, Astral Holy Knights, Astral Priests.**
Fearsome monsters and demons.
And finally, the Demon King himself—Kim Jae-hyun.
In comparison, the power of the Intermediate World’s major faction—the Holy Kingdom of Astraea, the core of the **Army of Light**—had collapsed. Moreover, Saintess Lucretia had been captured as a prisoner, most of the priests and holy knights had fallen, and only a handful remained among the foreign priests and holy knights.
The dragons’ plan to rescue the remaining priests and holy knights inside the kingdom had failed completely. Instead, it had only resulted in 208 dragons being captured as prisoners.
It was abnormal not to feel furious in such a terrible situation. In fact, not only the red dragons but every dragon, even the gentle silver dragons and green dragons, were grinding their teeth and trembling with barely contained rage.
Someone had entered the cell where the male dragons were held.
“Looks like the so-called protectors of the Intermediate World have quite the shameful lot of miscreants.”
The voice that mocked their current state belonged to a woman. A breathtakingly beautiful woman with long black hair and a slender, elegant figure. She wore a black dress that exposed her delicate cleavage and shoulders.
On the surface she looked fragile, but every dragon there recognized her.
She had not hidden her presence at all. And she was the one who had thrown them all into the **Demon World** prison.
**Serphius, the Dark Dragon Lord.**
That was her true identity. Along with the **Vampire Queen** Selina and the **Dark Elf Queen** Lucien, she was counted among the top two strongest beings in the **Demon World** after the Demon King.
Yet like a true **Demon World** creature, she possessed madness.
The **Vampire Queen** Selina was the closest to sane, for she at least enjoyed the hunt. But **Lucien**, who went mad for slaughter and felt pleasure in torture, the **Incubus King** Baros who indulged in every perversion imaginable, the **Succubus Queen** Lillian, the leader of the fallen angels **Mastema** who got aroused by torturing others—Serphius was no different. She was insane too.
And her insanity was experiments. Specifically, she was obsessed with magic experiments. Anyone who walked the path of magic would find her strange, but that was not all.
She was also obsessed with biological experiments. She paid close attention to acquiring test subjects and performed every kind of inhuman experiment.
To her, the dragons were perfect test subjects.
Although she had been born a dark dragon, tracing her lineage back showed that her ancestors had all been dragons. The only thing that had happened was that they had been stained by the demonic energy of the **Demon World**.
Even now, apart from the demonic energy and black magic she possessed, she was no different from the dragons in species. It was only the gap between black mages and ordinary human mages.
If the dragons in front of her turned pure magic into black magic, they would become dark dragons. In truth, though they denied it, the dark dragons and dragons were almost the same kind.
But to Serphius, the dragons before her were nothing more than test subjects.
The female dragons had been separated because she needed them at different times, but the male dragons—102 of them—had been granted permission by Jae-hyun to be used as test subjects whenever she wanted.
“Serphius, you bitch!”
“Ghhk!”
The dragons felt fear in the eyes of the woman who saw them only as test subjects and shrank back.
“Then… who will be the first test subject?”
A cruel smile spread across Serphius’s beautiful face.
* * *
When the fate of the male dragons had been decided, the fate of the female dragons had been decided differently.
All 106 female dragons were locked away in the forms of beautiful human beauties. Naturally, they too wore collars, bracelets, and anklets that sealed away every last drop of their dragon power.
And they had been stripped naked and taken by succubi, who were inspecting them one by one.
“This one’s ass looks the prettiest.”
“But I don’t think the Demon King would find her cuter anyway.”
The succubi were choosing the female dragon concubines who would serve as the Demon King’s personal attendants.
The 106 female dragons were too precious to be consumed as test subjects. And although they had to be punished for not preventing the betrayers’ capture, they were not betrayers.
They had merely obeyed the dragons’ orders. Jae-hyun believed that anyone who followed orders was ultimately responsible, regardless of whose command they followed.
“Ugh…”
“Stop, stop!”
The female dragons felt deep humiliation at the treatment of the succubi, but since their power had been completely sealed and they had fallen to the level of ordinary human women, it was impossible for them to resist the succubi.
And the **Succubus Queen** Lillian, queen of all succubi, was a seductive beauty with long red hair and red eyes. She wore a dress with deep cleavage and bare shoulders, and its hem was so short that it barely covered her thighs. The mature allure of a woman radiated from her, yet surprisingly, despite being a succubus, she carried herself with dignity and elegance rather than vulgarity.
*The woman I will offer to the Demon King must be perfect. No mistakes allowed.*
Lillian’s loyalty to the Demon King ran extremely deep. The reason was simple: their bed.
The Demon King had already slept with every beautiful woman in the **Demon World**. Of course, he had slept with Selina and Lucien, but he had also slept with Lillian, the **Succubus Queen**.
And on the bed, she had been completely defeated—crushed by the Demon King’s pride as a succubus queen.
Her powers of seduction and pleasure had shattered and then amplified several times over, flooding back into her body until she had orgasmed countless times and fainted. She had felt the overwhelming power of the Demon King—his monstrous strength?—and had fallen madly in love, becoming fiercely loyal.
It was only natural for a **Force of Darkness** to become loyal to the Demon King, but her loyalty was even deeper than that. Perhaps she would have stayed loyal even if he had not been the Demon King.
Because of that, the Demon King’s personal meal had become a condition she had to satisfy.
*But the Demon King seems strangely fond of blondes.*
Lillian often stroked Selina’s golden hair. She had also seen how much Jae-hyun cherished the black mage girl Lin, who had golden hair in the Intermediate World, and had seriously considered dyeing her own hair blond.
And here, among the female dragons, whose pride was as strong as any dragon’s, she watched them tremble with humiliation and shame even though they did not cry. Some were resisting, suffering pain in exchange, and letting out painful sounds.
Watching them slowly, Lillian’s gaze naturally turned to the red-haired female red dragons—her own modest effort to slightly steer the Demon King’s tastes toward the red-haired side.
* * *
In the **Habsburg Empire**.
“The Demon King?! Kim Jae-hyun has become the Demon King?!”
The Emperor of the **Habsburg Empire**, Ferdinand, felt uneasy after hearing the news of what had happened in the Holy Kingdom of Astraea.
He had always hated Jae-hyun deeply and had also coveted his lover, Irene, too much. He had wanted to kill him. Yet because of Irene’s interference, he had only allowed Jae-hyun to slip through the cracks, and the wounds he had inflicted had been far too severe. He had never expected Jae-hyun to survive.
Yet here he was, the Demon King, back and having seized the Holy Kingdom of Astraea. He had turned more than forty million citizens into the **Forces of Darkness** and kept all one million elite **Forces of Darkness** intact.
Moreover, the number of dragons had dropped to fewer than a thousand after 208 had been captured as prisoners. And no one could even guess how strong the current Demon King was—the hero who had defeated the terrifyingly powerful Laylana.
Especially when considering the miraculous growth speed he had shown as a hero, the power he possessed now would be far beyond imagination.
*Not only that, my own authority is in danger.*
Ferdinand worried about his imperial authority. It was true that a continent-wide discrimination against the hero, an outsider, had existed everywhere.
But in his eyes, Jae-hyun had been dead. And discriminating against a dead man meant nothing. The betrayers, of course, but even ordinary people had recognized Jae-hyun as the hero who had saved the continent.
Even in the Holy Kingdom of Astraea, while they might criticize Jae-hyun for his betrayal once the truth was revealed, they would not have many people willing to die for him. They had simply defended him because they feared the new Demon King’s threat.