How Much Time Has Even Passed...
How much time could possibly have passed? Already his mana had climbed back to roughly half. Perhaps it was because he had become a lich—the rate at which it recovered was nothing short of insane.
But the situation was not over yet. The ten royal guards had not been the whole of it. Rats were still hiding among the demons—no, more of the royal guard. The space where they stood was already in Yujun's hands, and the spell of Space Domination was still holding.
Crack. Crunch.
He finished the three royal guards who remained as well. The demons flinched and trembled at the thought that they might be next, but after that, no one else died.
"……Shin Yujun. You really are strong. Stronger than I imagined. Good thing I didn't make an enemy of you."
Manuela said it with open admiration.
"The Demon King is going to move in earnest. Let's get out of here."
"You already killed thirteen of the royal guard. You think the Demon King would even step in?"
"He won't just sit still. That much is certain."
Yujun's true objective was the Transcendent Stone. He had already collected the Martial Tournament reward, so there was no reason to linger any longer.
Fruit of Evolution.
A broad grin spread across Yujun's face. The hologram window from earlier had stated it plainly: he had obtained a Fruit of Evolution.
They hand out a Fruit of Evolution just for winning some martial tournament once?
Once he confirmed the fruit resting in his inventory, Yujun left the banquet hall.
"Where are we going?"
Manuela asked.
Yujun decided to let her see a little of the true intent he had been hiding.
"We're on bad terms with the Demon King right now, aren't we."
"Yeah."
"And you still need to get back the money you were cheated out of, don't you?"
"Th-that's right."
"The Transcendent Stone. I have a feeling it's here. What do you think?"
"……The Transcendent Stone?"
"You prophesied it yourself. Someone was using a Transcendent Stone, and the background around them was a lavish castle."
The largest, most magnificent castle in the Demon Realm was none other than the Demon King's Castle—and it certainly gave off a lavish air.
"Ah……now that you mention it!"
Manuela's eyes went wide.
"This Demon King's Castle… it looks a lot like what I imagined."
"You said you'd been here before."
"Yeah."
"Then why couldn't you remember right away?"
"Good question."
"……"
Either way, that was not what mattered. From here on, they would have to depend on Manuela's memory if they meant to find the Transcendent Stone.
"The place you saw. Can you tell where it is?"
"No."
"You can't picture what it looked like?"
"I haven't forgotten the scene from the prophecy. The problem is the one holding it looked blurry."
"So the location?"
"I think I'll know if we walk around."
"All right."
The direction had more or less taken shape: wander this place, enemy territory in all but name, and search for the Transcendent Stone. If Yujun's party moved that way, Jonas would have a far easier time carrying out his own work. It was not one-sided help.
In a way, Jonas is drawing their attention so I can find the Transcendent Stone…
The guards inside the Demon King's Castle grew busy, the look of people hunting for someone. They had surely been ordered to find Yujun's party. There was no room to take their time.
"Shouldn't we be moving under cover, Mr. Yujun? Don't you have something like an invisibility spell? The way you hid those demons that were tailing us earlier."
It was Manuela, not Yujun, who answered Do Jiyun.
"The barriers spread over the Demon King's Castle make it impossible to hide our appearance with magic."
"What? It worked earlier, didn't it?"
"That was spatial distortion. It's too much to use while we're moving from place to place. It burns an enormous amount of mana."
Yujun nodded at the witch's words.
"As Manuela says, spatial distortion isn't something we can use right now. And an invisibility spell that turns the body transparent is blocked by the barriers."
"Hasn't our description already spread everywhere? We're undead to begin with."
"Magic isn't the only method."
Yujun opened his inventory. As always, the last resort was waiting inside it.
The eighty-eighth floor, not far from the very top of the Demon King's Castle. Corpses beyond counting lay strewn in every direction.
Tap. Tap-tap.
Duke Jonas, and the dozens of demons who followed him—a force handpicked at its peak to face the Demon King. As such, most of them held noble titles.
"In raw strength, our side is far ahead. There aren't many nobles lending the Demon King their power right now."
Jonas nodded at Horshi's words.
"Even so, we must not grow careless. The enemy we have to face is the Demon King, and the one assisting him may be called a half-wit, but he is a duke in name, at least."
"Yes."
The real problem lay with another duke. Duchess Philena had never shown much interest in the Demon King's seat—but would she truly stay quiet? He could not be sure. There was every chance she had been hiding her ambition all this time without ever revealing it. Duchess Philena was the greatest variable of all, and the reason he could not be certain the rebellion would succeed even though their strength outstripped the Demon King's side.
Should I have kept those undead as a card, just in case?
Duchess Philena did not possess the Demon King's complete immunity to magic. Against her, the undead might have been able to buy them time. But there was no use regretting what had already passed.
And we've already benefited from them.
A considerable portion of the guard forces protecting the Demon King's Castle had been drawn down to the lower floors. Slipping into that gap, Duke Jonas had reached the eighty-eighth floor with relative ease, and their losses were almost none.
Then the Demon King's Castle shook hard, once.
"This tremor……"
Jonas's face hardened. The castle had been shaking without pause for some time now, and the phenomenon was anything but normal. Who could possibly rock this enormous Demon King's Castle—a fortress so solid it would not so much as flinch if a meteor came crashing into it?
"The barriers are intact. Probably……"
Jonas nodded at Horshi's words.
"Someone definitely unleashed large-scale magic inside the Demon King's Castle."
"Could it be that lich lord's doing?"
"We had better hope not."
"Yes? What do you…"
"There is a high chance he bears a grudge against us. Considering what we did, of course he would."
"Didn't you face him yourself, Your Grace? Was the lich really that strong?"
"Hard to say… We did not clash for long, so I cannot be certain. What I do know is that he is a far superior mage to me."
Horshi bit his lip.
"I have a bad feeling."
"Precisely. Too many variables. Tch."
The more time passed, the more it felt as though he had used those undead as bait for nothing.
"For now, the best we can do is focus on our own task. We move."
Jonas started upward once more.
BOOOOM! BOOM!
"He's insane……"
Do Jiyun's mouth fell open. At the magic Yujun cast in the form of a lich lord, dozens of demons were blown away—no, that was not the right way to put it. Their bodies were torn to shreds. She could not even tell what kind of magic he was using. It ran on an entirely different track from anything she had ever seen. All she knew was that explosions kept erupting in front of her, and every demon that charged died, one after another.
BOOOOM! BOOM!
Another tremendous blast, a destructive force that defied words—an explosion that shook the Demon King's Castle to its foundations.
How did it end up like this…
It had not been like this at the start. The goal had been to stay hidden and search for the Transcendent Stone. Yujun had even succeeded in drawing some item from his inventory and turning their bodies transparent. But the Demon King's Castle was laced with every kind of barrier. The instant the party vanished from sight, warning alarms rang out all across the castle, and their location was exposed. The naked eye could not find them, yet the alarms spread only from where they stood. The invisibility had become meaningless.
So Yujun forced a breakthrough. The moment the demons charged in with killing intent, he swept them away with magic. It was a crude, brute-force method, and an extremely efficient one. Overwhelming strength. There was no need to wear out one's mouth explaining the power that came with it. Yujun hurled spell after spell as if his mana were infinite, and in truth it never ran dry even once.
All I can say is that he's truly insane…
Do Jiyun had survived five years on the Continent and climbed to the very top, and still the Yujun before her possessed a level of power her common sense could not begin to grasp.
Just because his items are that good?
His level, as shown in the party window, was plainly far below her own—a figure past one hundred. Convert that into stats, and it came to three hundred.
And yet his stats look at least two or three times higher than mine…
No matter how much one inflated one's stats with items, a gap like that did not make sense.
There's definitely something I don't know about.
Do Jiyun guessed that the difference might well come from some perk.
That has to be it.
They were in different leagues. Yujun seemed like a man from another world.
I can barely handle a single count…
That man, transformed into a lich lord, annihilated a demon count with a single spell. The difference was so stark that she could not even muster jealousy. Dozens of demons appeared at once, Yujun cut them down, and the whole thing repeated until she was sick of it.
"But is it all right to keep going down?"
At Do Jiyun's question, Yujun looked to Manuela. Manuela spoke.
"My feeling is it's somewhere around the middle floors."
"The Transcendent Stone?"
"Yeah."
"I hope that hunch is right."
Do Jiyun said it with a stiff face. She had a strong, reliable companion, but wandering a place crawling with demons still sent a chill down her spine.
If they found the Transcendent Stone, they had agreed Yujun would be the one to keep it. Surprisingly, Manuela raised no objection to his claim.
"I haven't done anything."
In truth, locating the stone through prophecy alone was already a considerable contribution, but she had not distinguished herself in any noticeable way inside the Demon King's Castle. Manuela's greatest concerns were the Demon King being replaced, and the bounty on her head being lifted. Even a pure-blooded witch who could wander the Demon Realm as if it were her own home seemed to feel a vast difference between being wanted and not. Do Jiyun, for her part, had truly done nothing at all.
Then I can search with an easy mind.
He kept cycling detection magic, hunting for an object that gave off an unusual wavelength, but there had been little result.
Do I just have to trust Manuela?
The demons poured in without end, far more of them than before.
"Will you be all right, Mr. Yujun?"
"Yes."
Yujun took out a highest-grade mana potion and tipped it into his mouth. His mana was beginning to run short. Until a little while ago the gaps between the demons' appearances had been long enough to give him room, but that was no longer the case. The potion's effect was considerable: his mana filled to its maximum in an instant. The wider the mana pathways within the body, the more a mana potion's effect was amplified—and Yujun's pathways were incomparably broader than those of any other mage.
BOOOOM!
A chain of explosions. The roar shook the Demon King's Castle once more.