8th Circle Black Magic's Power
"Withdraw for now and prepare your revenge."
"Yes."
At Jae-hyun's command, Ron rose from his seat and headed straight for the quarters of the 501st Legion—the corps composed of black mages. The moment Ron stepped outside, Irene asked with a playful smile.
"You were going to help him with his revenge anyway. Weren't you laying it on a little thick with the atmosphere?"
Jae-hyun stroked the belly and thighs of Rin, who sat upon his lap, and answered with a cold expression.
"I intend to watch. Whether that boy will disappoint me—or whether he can carry his own weight."
Perhaps it was how coldly the words landed. Rin, seated on his knee, and even Irene flinched in surprise.
"And if he disappoints you?"
At Irene's question, Jae-hyun stroked Rin's hair as he replied.
"If he disappoints me, then he is of no use—and must be eliminated. Dying by his little sister's hand would, if anything, be kinder to him."
At that icy pronouncement, Irene and Rin—both of whom retained a measure of free will—felt a simultaneous chill. Rin, in particular, felt genuine terror at the thought that she might one day kill her own brother with her own hands. Irene, who had only ever known Jae-hyun's gentleness toward her, finally grasped the full face of the tyrant he could be.
Irene had never witnessed it with her own eyes, but Rin remembered what Jae-hyun had done before revealing his true identity as the Demon King.
When he had unleashed ten thousand magical beasts upon Lampas City, Jae-hyun had deliberately used the power of the Holy Sword to slaughter every last one of them—all to burn his presence as the Hero deep into the consciousness of the Holy Kingdom.
Those ten thousand beasts had been subordinates who obeyed his every command.
They may have been monsters, but they had served him with loyalty. Jae-hyun had killed ten thousand of his own subordinates without a flicker of hesitation, treating them as nothing more than expendable tools for his purpose.
Granted a measure of free will, Rin had felt the anxiety of knowing she too could be discarded the moment she became useless. That fear had nearly vanished once she became his concubine—but it was she who had become the concubine, not her brother.
Ron was a man, and so could never rise beyond the status of a subordinate. If Jae-hyun decided he was worthless, he could cast him aside without a second thought.
Worse still, Jae-hyun would make Rin kill him with her own hands. Then she would absorb every scrap of Ron's black mana and grow stronger still.
Please… let it never come to that…
Even as fear gripped her, Rin felt neither resentment nor rejection toward Jae-hyun. Her very soul already belonged to him. If he ordered it, she would kill even her own blood brother—whether she wanted to or not.
"Oppa Jae-hyun… he's a loyal one. Wouldn't killing him over a single disappointment be a little much? If you could just give him one more chance…"
Irene was a Great Archdemon, yet she still carried a human heart intact. She could be merciless toward those she hated—but she still hesitated to turn that cruelty on a loyal subordinate. She ventured the suggestion that he might grant one more chance. Jae-hyun raised a hand and cut her off.
"Enough, Irene. Even if I have allowed you a considerable measure of free will, understand this clearly. You exist beneath me. Remain one who follows me. Do not presume to stand above me. Rin—you take this to heart as well."
At Jae-hyun's warning, Irene sensed that persuasion was impossible and closed her mouth. Rin, too, abandoned whatever hope she had pinned on Irene's appeal.
Jae-hyun usually granted nearly every request Irene made—but this was not a private matter. This was the authority of the Demon King.
As the Lord of Darkness who ruled all who belonged to the dark, he was warning them not to challenge a sovereign's dignity.
If he killed Ron, it would be a monarch punishing a failed subordinate with death.
But forcing Rin to do the killing with her own hands was something far crueler. Sitting upon Jae-hyun's lap, Rin made a plea as his concubine, dreading the thought that she might one day murder her own brother.
"Then… may I make a request as your concubine?"
"That is fine. If it is something I can grant, I will grant it."
Fortunately, Jae-hyun responded that he would hear a request made as his concubine, so long as it was within his power to grant. Relieved, Rin made a request that did not overreach.
"Please protect my brother and his subordinates with the Holy Sword—so that Holy Power cannot touch them."
What Rin chose was complete protection for Ron and the black mages under him through the power of the Holy Sword. And it was a rather shrewd choice.
"The number of those belonging to the dark whom I can perfectly shield from Holy Power is limited to one thousand. Beyond that, I can only strengthen their resistance. Is it that perfect protection you want placed upon them?"
"Yes. A request from the Demon King's woman—to her Demon King."
Rin clenched her hips, tightening around Jae-hyun's penis where it was buried inside her rear passage as she made her plea. Earnest longing filled her green eyes. Jae-hyun, who cherished her second only to Irene, stroked her belly and said,
"I will grant it."
At his words, Rin broke into a bright smile. That smile did not last long before it twisted into pain.
"Nngh…! Ah—! Aah!"
Rin cried out in agony and tensed her whole body. Naturally, her rear passage clenched even tighter around Jae-hyun's penis.
Her cute face contorted with suffering—but Jae-hyun only smiled with sadistic pleasure and gave her an order.
"Give birth just like this."
"Hah… yes…!"
Rin still looked delicate, but as a nine-circle Great Black Mage her body had grown far sturdier than before. Unlike ordinary human women, the pain of childbirth hurt—but it was a pain she could endure, not the kind that threatened death.
And once Rin's labor began, Selina, Lucien, Serphius, and Lillian were summoned as well. They too had to give birth while seated upon the laps of Jae-hyun's clones, perched on the other wooden chairs in the room.
From the very start, their treatment was worse than Irene's, who had at least delivered in a relatively ordinary fashion upon a birthing bed.
"Hmm."
Having finished his preparations to assault the Gray County's territory, Ron surveyed the black mage legions arrayed before him. He had already heard the news that his little sister Rin had given birth to Jae-hyun's daughter the day before, and he had even seen the infant's face.
Unlike Irene's child, the half-human, half-demon baby had not yet opened its eyes—but he had been told that the biological rhythms of such children differed somewhat from those of pure humans.
With a Demon King for a father and a nine-circle black mage for a mother, the child would possess considerable talent—even if it could not quite match Aleyna, the daughter Irene had borne.
And thanks to Rin's request of Jae-hyun, Ron and the black mages of the 501st Legion under his command now enjoyed the Holy Sword's protection, rendering them completely immune to Holy Power.
Attacks merely fashioned from Holy Power—attacks that used it as a foundation but were no longer pure Holy Power themselves—might still pose a threat at a certain level. Pure Holy Power itself, however, would not touch them.
Unlike pure priests, the real danger would come from the combatants who wielded Holy Power—mages and warriors among the celestial race, or holy knights.
But Ron was not worried. The 501st Legion under his command numbered three hundred black mages: ten at the seventh circle, forty at the sixth, and two hundred fifty at the fifth.
Black mages possessed formidable offensive magic in their own right, but their greatest strength lay in commanding powerful undead as summoned servants.
Beyond low-grade undead such as skeletons, ghouls, and zombies, there were higher-order spectral undead like specters and phantoms.
And above all, mid-grade undead such as dullahans formed a substantial core of their forces—while their ultimate strength lay in the vast numbers of Death Knights and Death Mages.
Obtaining the corpses of fallen knights and mages had been easy.
Within the Holy Kingdom of Astraea, the noble houses still held the remains of knights and mages who had once belonged to their bloodlines.
The bodies of high nobles had been preserved as mummies, but most other noble remains were little more than bare bones.
Even so, so long as the bones had once belonged to the original knight or mage, turning them into Death Knights or Death Mages was no great difficulty—aside from the drawback of consuming more than twice the usual black mana.
Thanks to that, the black mages had secured far greater numbers of Death Knights and Death Mages. The demonkin, for their part, could even field Death Knights and Death Mages of Grand Master or Archmage caliber.
At present, however, not a single black mage present possessed undead of Grand Master or Archmage rank.
Even Ron himself—an eight-circle Great Black Mage leading the 501st Legion—had received from Jae-hyun undead that were largely of the same ordinary grade as everyone else's.
As someone who had spent years in hiding to evade pursuit, he could hardly have manufactured Death Knights with ease. He had mostly stockpiled low-grade undead like skeletons in sheer numbers.
But now, with a considerable force of Death Knights and Death Mages under his command—combined with the undead held by his three hundred black mages—he had more than enough strength to assault a single territory.
And the black mages' own skill was nothing to dismiss.
At Ron's side stood a beautiful celestial woman with pure white wings and sky-blue hair, posted like a bodyguard. She was a mid-rank angel, a formidable asset with the martial prowess of an upper-tier Sword Master.
At last… I can take my revenge.
Ron clenched his fist as the Gray County's territory slowly came into view in the distance.
With the fall of twenty fortresses, the nobles of the former Frankish Kingdom—those who still held territories in what had once been Frankish lands—had all fortified their defenses and sworn mutual pacts to dispatch reinforcements should any one of them come under attack alone.
The central government of the Habsburg Empire had already sent celestial troops as an initial wave of support, and word was that a massive reinforcement army would soon be raised and hurled against them in overwhelming numbers.
He had to seize the Gray County before that happened.
"All of you—summon your undead. We advance from this moment."
"Yes, sir!"
The instant Ron's order fell, the three hundred black mages began summoning their servants in unison.
A grand host of undead totaling more than one hundred eighty thousand took form.
The ten seventh-circle black mages held a combined forty thousand mid- and low-grade undead, along with five hundred twenty Death Knights and five hundred one Death Mages.
The forty sixth-circle black mages held a combined forty thousand mid- and low-grade undead, along with one thousand two hundred ninety Death Knights and one thousand two hundred twelve Death Mages.
The two hundred fifty fifth-circle black mages held a combined one hundred thousand mid- and low-grade undead, along with three thousand eight hundred two Death Knights and one thousand three hundred one Death Mages.
Death Knights alone numbered five thousand six hundred twelve. Death Mages alone numbered three thousand fourteen. It was an overwhelming force. Add the more than one hundred eighty thousand mid- and low-grade undead, and the army approached one hundred ninety thousand—and that figure did not even include the undead Ron himself commanded.
Most of the great black mages of the past had been slain by Jae-hyun himself in his days as the Hero of the Holy Sword, leaving the black mages' power absurdly diminished from what it once was. Even so, their strength remained formidable.