Not Resurrection, Not Possession — A Transmigration
Now I understood why this was neither a resurrection nor a possession, but a transmigration.
"A superstition? What do you mean by that, Lord Kirion?"
"Exactly what it sounds like. If a demon has no demonic traits, then all that talk about the human-looking ones being strong is nothing but folklore."
The demon who'd received the answer stared at Kirion with a long, measuring look. He was handsome for a demon — his face was clean enough that he might even pass for human.
Though his horns are pretty big.
The face-sized horns jutting from both sides of his head were undeniable proof of what he was.
"I myself bear only the faintest trace of demonic traits, and yet I'm called one of the Four Heavenly Kings. If looking human is the mark of strength, then where's the evidence?"
No one answered. To the demons, the notion that horns made one weak was simply a story they'd swallowed from their grandmothers and grandfathers, passed down unquestioned for generations.
Kirion did not like that situation one bit. Sure, they'd held a resurrection ritual for the Demon King — but who was to say the revived Demon King was actually strong? He'd been sealed away without so much as a twitch, which meant the odds of him having grown weaker over a thousand years were far better than the odds he'd grown stronger.
This was the Demon King they'd only barely managed to revive for the sake of the Demon Realm's revival after its long, bitter age of hardship. There wasn't a shred of intent in him to accept some pretty-faced stranger as his sovereign without a single test of worth.
"Then allow me to prove it."
Kirion's lips curled upward at the corners. With that grotesquely split grin, his face was the very image of a demon who delighted in slaughter.
Well, if someone who looks that much like a demon wins, it'll settle once and for all whether the saying is folklore or fact.
The demons, thrilled at the prospect of watching a good fight, erupted into cheers.
Ause, whose Stamina sat at a pathetic 2, vanished in a rush the moment he shuffled out of the audience chamber. I made my way to the bedchamber under the watchful protection of Kira and Lzerbe.
What should I ask first?
The sudden transmigration. A Demon Realm in far worse shape than I'd imagined. There was a mountain of things I needed to ask — the question was which one to lead with so that I'd sound like a revived Demon King rather than a hapless Earthling who'd never set foot in this world before.
After much deliberation, my gaze settled on Lzerbe.
"You there."
She swallowed dryly at my summons, visibly tense. Do my eyes really look that frightening? Enough that a single word from me could cow one of the Four Heavenly Kings? Well — she did believe I was the Demon King, so either way, it worked in my favor. Her nervousness had the paradoxical effect of settling my own nerves, and I opened my mouth a little more easily.
"The Four Heavenly Kings, you say?"
"We are insufficient, but yes, Your Majesty the Demon King."
"Where are the others?"
"Lady Helia and Lord Kirion were both waiting in the audience chamber, Your Majesty!"
Kira, who'd been listening in, chimed in without missing a beat. Lzerbe glanced sideways at me as if to check whether that was acceptable.
Was that the one who locked eyes with me earlier?
Anyone with the audacity to have a staring contest with a freshly revived Demon King was very likely one of the Four Heavenly Kings. I made a mental note not to forget that face, and to steer well clear of it. Even as I resolved to do so, Lzerbe continued.
"He would bid you pay his respects. As for Lord Urbass — he is most likely wandering the world in search of stronger opponents. It has been over ten years since he departed, saying exactly that."
One of the Four Heavenly Kings has been absent for ten years?
Something felt off, so I pressed further.
"Then who commands his legion?"
"..."
Neither Kira nor Lzerbe could give me a straight answer. I'd thought it a simple question — and unease came creeping in at the edges.
"I beg your pardon, but I do not know the details myself. Everyone who was alive at the moment Your Majesty suffered that humiliation a thousand years ago has long since passed... But if the Demon Realm you knew and the Demon Realm of today differ, it is surely because much has changed across those thousand years."
"What do you mean by that?"
"They say that after Your Majesty left us, the Demon Realm fell into great turmoil. Ours is a race that prizes raw strength above law or order, so everyone fought for the empty throne — yet none was strong enough to dare stand in Your Majesty's place... The result was the absurd spectacle of the crown changing hands several times in a single day."
According to Lzerbe's account, this is how it had gone. Demons had never followed structure or law; they worshipped power and nothing else. When their absolute sovereign vanished, chaos broke out as every ambitious demon scrambled for his seat, and as they slaughtered one another, what little order and cohesion remained bled away with them. The demons' collective strength naturally withered, until the idea of raising an army to invade the human realm became an idle fantasy no one even entertained.
And so for a thousand years, they had lived by brawling among themselves, stirring up fresh chaos every single day.
"If one of them dislikes you, or simply wants to test his strength, he'll charge in without weighing anything — that's simply their nature. As you know, no demon ever truly dies of old age, Your Majesty. They're blessed with long lives that need neither food nor sleep, and yet not one of them can put a leash on his own belligerent instincts..."
"Still, things have more or less muddled along! Most of them are simple creatures, you see — once they lose, they accept defeat cleanly, and they follow greater strength with almost blind devotion. Their only flaw, if you can call it that, is that they'll come back for a rematch the very next day..."
Kira's voice trailed off into an apologetic murmur. Apparently even to her own ears, her people sounded utterly pathetic.
To mine as well, they were a hopeless race with no answers at all. But that wasn't the real problem.
So you're telling me any one of them could challenge me to a fight as early as tomorrow?
She was saying that if I looked weak, these were demons who would pick a fight with their own sovereign without a moment's hesitation. The instant I understood, the image of that skull crushed into pulp right before my eyes flashed back into my head. The faint, fishy smell of the blood that had splashed onto the back of my hand was still vivid.
I am so, so screwed.
I barely managed to hold onto my sanity as it tried to flee my body. But when else would I get a chance to ask questions this directly? After all, there was a decent chance I'd be dead within the hour. All I had going for me were a fierce pair of eyes that could make even demons nervous, and the title of Demon King. If I wanted to stay alive even a little longer, I needed every scrap of information I could get.
"Ah — ahem. So, er, why did you decide to resurrect me in the first place?"
I asked, masking my trembling voice with a cough.
"It was Lord Ause's proposal."
Among the simple-minded demons — who had survived all this time without a single backstabber or schemer among them — strange things had begun happening several years ago. A disease had broken out that made people stupid for no reason at all.
"Demons are already... not exactly bright, are they?"
The words slipped out before I could stop them, cutting off both Lzerbe and Kira mid-explanation. I had no intention of insulting my own people to their faces, but — well, that's what the entire explanation had been so far.
"You may think so, Your Majesty, but this sickness was on another level entirely."
"People who had been conversing and fighting quite normally would suddenly transform into beasts, without warning."
According to the two of them, a demon stricken by the disease became indistinguishable from a demonic beast.
"The afflicted rampaged a bit at first, but nobody thought much of it in the beginning. It was only as time went on that people realized what a grave problem this was. Demons who'd been planning to duel the next day would suddenly turn into beasts, you see. The grievances piled up."
Kira added the most absurd detail of all.
"And so Lord Ause made his proposal: that we needed our Demon King back. I'd guess more than half of them simply wanted to see how strong a revived Demon King would be — but either way, everyone rallied."
And THAT ridiculous reason is why I got transmigrated.
A hollow laugh escaped me, but the logic held up, annoyingly enough. A bunch of half-wits performing a Demon King resurrection ritual for the silliest of reasons — of course the resurrection came out wrong. Even as I thought this, my survival-obsessed brain was already working overtime.
Right before I was transmigrated, I had been reading a romance fantasy featuring a Demon King. One whose plot matched Lzerbe and Kira's story exactly — a novel about demonic beasts, transformed from demons, ravaging the human realm. In that novel, the heroine was a saint who awakened after a thousand years, and the story ended happily when she struck down the Demon King, the final boss. Admittedly, most of the book wasn't about the Demon Realm at all — it was a classic reverse-harem epic about the heroine being ground through hardship after hardship and entangled with every male lead candidate before her awakening.
If I really did fall into that novel...
Then maybe, just maybe, I could escape this world by seeing the ending through. I'd take over the heroine's tasks, accelerate her saint's awakening event, deal with the swarm of male lead candidates myself, track down the true male lead, and set the two of them up together.
And then — what if I seal myself away?
I'd read the original, so it might actually be possible. Before anyone figured out that I was really just an ordinary Earthling — I had to reach that ending.
Having finally spotted a way out, my brain kicked into an even higher gear. What clues could I use? I racked my mind over and over, but nothing useful surfaced easily.
Honestly, that book was so not my taste.
It was badly written. The heroine was an airhead, and the male leads fell in love with her out of nowhere, for no discernible reason, ready to lay down their lives on command. Page after page spewed the heroine's nonsense — "violence is never the answer!" or "forgiveness is the truest revenge!" — followed by the male leads swooning over every word. It was genuinely impossible to keep reading. The parts with the Demon King were where it finally started getting interesting, so I'd pushed myself to finish it, but I couldn't stomach watching him lose to idiots like these, and ended up tossing the book aside.
Which meant I had no idea how many male lead candidates there actually were, or who the true male lead turned out to be.
Damn it all.
The sigh burst out of me on its own. Kira and Lzerbe, taking it as a condemnation of the sorry state of the Demon Realm, shot me anxious glances.
"I-I have something to report on this matter, Your Majesty."
Lzerbe spoke up — though I wasn't paying particularly close attention.
"I believe the Serna Church is involved in the Demon Realm's current plight."
That is, until she mentioned the Serna Church — home to one of the male lead candidates who would become the very first stepping stone on my path to the ending.
