Flash Magic Swordswoman Irene VS Former Hero, Current Demon King Kim Jae-hyun
p>Having settled even the disposition of the traitorous holy knights and priests, Jae-hyun decided at once to head for the imperial palace of the Habsburg Empire, taking only Selina and Lucien with him.
"It's about time I delivered a warning. And it's about time I went to reclaim Irene."
He offered no detailed explanation for the decision. But he was the Demon King, and if he said it was so, then it was so.
"Yes, my Demon King."
"Yes, my Demon King."
Selina and Lucien bowed their heads as they answered. There had never been any choice for them. Unless Jae-hyun himself granted them leave to voice dissent, so long as he was the Demon King and they were demons, they were thralls bound to obey his commands—and they had no choice but to obey.
"...So you're finally leaving?"
Saintess Lucretia asked. She was not nailed to a cross this time, but standing still, completely naked. She was the one who had spoken, yet the moment Jae-hyun's crimson eyes fixed on her, terror seized her; she trembled and lowered her head at once.
Even so, though she had been kept naked for barely two days, she already seemed thoroughly accustomed to it. Lucretia made no move to cover herself.
Jae-hyun approached her slowly, lifted her chin with his hand, and admired her beautiful face up close as he spoke.
"Hmph. What a genuine waste. If you hadn't been one of the principal causes that rebirthed me through hatred and the thirst for revenge, you would have received my affection in abundance."
Lucretia's beauty was something Jae-hyun sincerely regretted. Even so, his pleasure outweighed the regret.
When Lucretia was happy, he was displeased. When she suffered, he felt joy and contentment. Having chosen the path of the Demon King and returned to life for the sake of revenge, that much was inevitable—it was the very reason for his existence.
Still, his hatred for Lucretia ran especially deep. In intensity, it was second only to his hatred for Ferdinand, once the crown prince and now the emperor.
Ferdinand had been the mastermind behind every scheme the traitors had woven against him, and, decisively, the one who had forcibly stolen Irene—the person Jae-hyun held most precious.
That Lucretia ranked next after him was likely because betrayal from someone for whom he had once felt fondness cut all the deeper.
Jae-hyun had long since discarded such things as faith and trust.
He could no longer even extend trust to Irene, whom he had loved so dearly, nor to the family he had longed so desperately to see again upon returning to Earth.
And that was not all. He could no longer be certain whether he still loved Irene and his family at all.
In the days when he had been the Hero, his feelings toward Saintess Lucretia had fallen somewhere short of love and above mere fondness, and he had even felt guilt for being unable to accept her proposal.
Yet whenever he looked at Irene, affection rose in him of its own accord, and he could feel that he truly loved her.
But now?
No—even in the very moment he had been reborn as the Demon King, it had been the same.
He could think of Irene as a lovely woman, yet he no longer felt that mad, consuming love for her. There was only possessiveness: that she had always been his, and that he must take her into his hands and make her his own.
The Jae-hyun of old might have found this state of himself pitiful. The Jae-hyun who was now the Demon King took it as natural, and felt not the slightest anguish or torment over it.
He was no longer human, but a demon—and the Demon King at that. That was why.
"Aaaagh!"
Lucretia screamed in agony. Without warning, Jae-hyun's hand had seized one of her bursting, full, springy breasts and kneaded it as if he meant to crush it outright.
"Yes. This is it."
Listening to Lucretia's cries of pain, Jae-hyun wore a pleasant smile. As expected, Lucretia was at her most beautiful and lovable when she was suffering.
Then, abruptly, he flung her toward someone else.
"Kyaa!"
The one who caught her and gathered her into his arms was none other than Baros, the Incubus King. Jae-hyun spoke to him at once.
"Baros. Play with this bitch until she screams and wails."
"Understood, my Demon King."
Baros looked genuinely delighted at the prospect of freely enjoying such an extraordinary beauty.
The continent's foremost beauty was always said to be Flash Magic Swordswoman Irene, and the beauty named next after her was invariably Saintess Lucretia. Though her body had been violated by demonic beasts countless times and subjected to endless degradation, regenerating again and again, Lucretia's exquisite female form still drew involuntary admiration and made mouths water at a glance.
Lucretia, held in Baros's arms, trembled pitifully. Yet the sweet fragrance rising from her body and the soft, resilient feel of her flesh only excited him further. Knowing he was free to use her as roughly as he pleased, Baros fully intended to make her scream and weep in pain.
Clutched against him, Lucretia shook with terror in a way that was almost pitiable—but to demonic eyes, that only made her look all the more appetizing.
And with that, Jae-hyun left the Demon King's Castle—the former Grand Temple of Pantheon—taking only Selina and Lucien with him.
Most of the others were still gathered at the Colosseum. After the women who had not yet become thralls of darkness, the humans who had become thralls of darkness were now taking turns violating, en masse, those among the traitors' families who could still bear children and who had themselves been turned into thralls of darkness.
Forty million lives had fallen into his hands, and still it was not enough.
To force open a dimensional gate required the souls of more than a hundred million humans.
And if souls ran short, forcing humans to mate and breed was another method. At the same time, it served as revenge against the traitors—killing two birds with one stone.
But returning to Earth through a dimensional gate was a matter for later. The problems before Jae-hyun now were reclaiming Irene, who had originally been his, and taking revenge on those who had betrayed him.
Ferdinand von Habsburg. You, especially, I will not leave in comfort.
Gazing toward the Habsburg Empire, Jae-hyun thought it with murderous intent filling his crimson eyes, already thick with rage and hatred.
Ferdinand! That one, above all, had to be made to regret that he was still alive.
Nor could he forgive the man who served Ferdinand so loyally—Griffith Ricardo, who had the gall to bear the title of Great Sage. Word had it that he now held a ducal rank and lived quite comfortably as head of House Ricardo. Jae-hyun intended to make the rest of that man's life a misery as well.
I will kill neither of you. Better that you curse the reality of remaining alive, and suffer without end.
With that thought, Jae-hyun's feet left the soil of the Dark Empire's territory, and the Holy Sword and the Demonic Sword settled into his hands.
"Conceal my presence, and leave a phantom aura in this place—Holy Sword and Demonic Sword."
As master of both the Holy Sword and the Demonic Sword, Jae-hyun gave the command, and both blades answered.
"As you command. My lord."
"We heed your will. My lord."
Holy Sword and Demonic Sword exerted the same power for a single master alone. From now on, his presence would remain here by the strength of both blades.
Of course, that presence itself was an illusion—but with it, he could evade every gaze. Even the dragons would not know he had moved.
Not that he feared the dragons. It was simply that moving too openly might spark a war far too soon.
By his plans, the time for war had not yet come. Move carelessly, and the traitors might die comfortably, without suffering.
And in any case, while the false presence crafted by Holy Sword and Demonic Sword was being projected, Jae-hyun had already perfectly concealed his own. Even Selina and Lucien, specialists in assassination, found the feat worthy of open admiration.
"Selina. Lucien. Are you ready?"
"Yes, my Demon King."
When both bowed their heads and answered as one, Jae-hyun nodded.
"We depart."
Hovering in midair, Jae-hyun vanished like a single streak of light, and Selina and Lucien followed in his wake at a terrifying speed.
For Jae-hyun, crossing the Habsburg Empire's borders undetected and infiltrating all the way to the imperial palace was no difficulty at all. Countless magical barriers stood in the way, but having inherited the knowledge of every Demon King before him, his mastery of magic already far surpassed even the dragons. He simply deceived the wards and slipped inside.
Had he dispelled or damaged them, he would have been discovered. But by fooling the magic itself as he entered, none of the defensive enchantments spread throughout the Habsburg Empire registered a thing—until even the palace defenses had been breached.
Having completed the intrusion into the emperor's palace with almost absurd ease, Jae-hyun gave Selina and Lucien their orders.
"Stay concealed. If any interference appears—dragons or the like—deal with it."
"Yes."
That was the entire reason he had brought them. He had left a false presence behind in the Dark Empire, but activity here still carried the risk that the dragons might notice.
He did not want the moment of his revenge interrupted by anyone.
Jae-hyun then surveyed the auras within the palace and found one that was familiar.
So this is what they meant by experimenting through Laylana's corpse?
The presence of the previous Demon King, Laylana—whom his Holy Sword had slain—could be felt inside the palace.
Among the intelligence he had extracted from Lucretia was the fact that the Habsburg Empire was researching Demon King Laylana's remains, so that much was no surprise. What they were actually doing with her corpse, however, even Lucretia had not known.
Jae-hyun focused on a place where an overwhelming aura—one the Hero he had been ten years ago could never have overcome—mingled with a sense of something frail and incomplete, and listened to the voices coming from within.
Age had altered the voice somewhat, but Jae-hyun knew it at once for that of Ferdinand, now emperor of the Habsburg Empire.
So he means to remodel Irene using Laylana's corpse.
Irene's talent was the kind that appeared once in a thousand years, if that. What effect remodeling her with data gleaned from researching Demon King Laylana would produce was impossible to say.
Without knowing how much information they had actually extracted from Laylana, even Jae-hyun could not guess the outcome—but at the very least, it was clear Irene would become stronger.
I'm not too late.
Unwilling to watch anyone lay further hands on what was his, Jae-hyun moved at once to where Ferdinand was. Concealed from every eye, he arrived—and what he saw was Ferdinand holding a naked Irene in his arms, stimulating her sex with his hand, trying to bring her to climax.
Jae-hyun had no intention of killing or seriously wounding either Irene or his hated enemy Ferdinand. He formed a light aura blade and swung the Holy Sword in his right hand.
But Irene, true to form, immediately drew a sword from subspace and blocked the strike.
KWAANG—
Holy Sword and Irene's blade collided. The explosion of force rolled outward; a nearby table shattered under the shockwave. Yet the defensive magic Irene had raised left Ferdinand completely unharmed.
"Wh-what?"
Ferdinand's voice cracked with confusion—then his eyes found Jae-hyun's face, and he cried out in pure horror.
"Kim Jae-hyun!"
"It's been a while, Ferdinand."
So saying, Jae-hyun turned his gaze to Irene.
She was under an illusion spell, but that was nowhere near enough to deceive the eyes of a Demon King. Jae-hyun had known from the first that she was naked, and he took in Irene's beautiful bare body without obstruction.
At twenty-eight, Irene was much changed from the fresh young girl of ten years past. Having matured into a full beauty, her allure seemed stronger than before—if anything, she looked even more beautiful.
Even so, Jae-hyun felt that the Irene of before had been the more lovable one.
"I suppose I can't say it's been a while to you. The you of now is nothing but a doll without a self."
For the Irene standing there was nothing more than a puppet without a will of her own.