Chapter 49
“You’re not a welcome face.”
“As if I’d be welcome to you.”
Baal’s face was rigid with strain, and it showed no sign of softening.
“I’m glad to see you, though. While I was stuck in the Abyss of the Void, I kept worrying because I’d left my underprivileged little brother alone.”
“Your habit of speaking carelessly hasn’t changed.”
“It isn’t carelessness. It’s the truth. You’ve always been a sore spot for me. That’s why I gave you that seat.”
“Spare me the nonsense.”
Satan shrugged.
“If that isn’t how you see it, I have no intention of forcing the matter.”
“Tch. I’d appreciate an explanation for what the hell is going on.”
Baal glared at Yoon Sang-hyuk as he spoke.
“I told you it was my last wish.”
“Your last wish? Hah! What you were supposed to do was erase Satan and bring back his heart.”
“Whoa, whoa. Calm down. And I think you’re making one huge mistake here. You don’t get to throw around orders like that, not at me. I’m not your subordinate. We made a deal. I’d return to Earth, and you’d clean up the Demon Realm’s nuisance. That’s the deal. And it’s still in progress. Since when did I say I wouldn’t deal with Satan? I didn’t. But if you come at me all sharp and prickly like this, I might just twist the whole bargain around on you.”
Baal shot him a murderous look. Yoon Sang-hyuk only smiled brightly and pointed at Satan.
“I heard Satan can send me back to Earth too. And unlike you, he didn’t demand some grandiose heart as payment. If you don’t like how the deal is going, say the word anytime. I’m more than willing to call it off. We didn’t write up a contract, so I don’t exactly need to pay a cancellation fee, do I?”
Baal’s gaze cooled to ice.
“Don’t look at me like that. It makes it seem as if I’ve done something terribly wrong.”
Satan stepped forward. Stopping at the foot of the staircase leading up to the throne, he looked up at Baal.
“Once, this seat was yours, and mine was the other one.”
“If you want it that badly even now, then apply for a Clash of Struggle.”
Satan laughed as if the idea was absurd and waved a hand dismissively.
“Do you really think I still care about that seat? It’s nothing but a nuisance. If you hadn’t realized that by now, it means you’re still far from the mark. I only wanted to see the throne I used to sit on. Would you even have let me sit in it for a moment if I’d asked?”
“You know full well I wouldn’t.”
“I’ll be having a duel to the death with that human friend of yours soon, in the Arena of Greed.”
“Why would you do something like that? Many still remember your name. Do you want to show them an ugly final sight?”
Baal could not understand it. Satan might not have been an absolute ruler now, but once, he had stood at the summit. The weight of the throne he had occupied was immense. Those who bore that weight also possessed something equal to it in another form. It was not something one could simply set down, nor something that should be made to look trivial in front of others.
“I gave that sort of thing up a long time ago. I simply wanted my end to be a duel everyone could watch, rather than spending my last days alone in some empty place.”
“No matter what you say, I still don’t understand.”
“I’m not asking you to understand. In any case, it’s good to be back after all this time. You’ve erased every trace of me.”
“There was no need to leave relics of a bygone era behind. And your aesthetic sense was atrocious.”
“Tsk, tsk. Back when I sat here, you used to praise me all the time. Time passes, and everything changes.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk watched Baal and Satan bicker and let out a faint laugh. They were like difficult brothers trading barbs. He almost felt as if their relationship must not have been all that bad even back when Satan ruled.
“I’ll ask just one thing.”
Satan, who had been speaking lightly until now, turned serious.
“Why did you send that human to the Abyss of the Void?”
“……”
“Don’t bother pretending it was to send him back to the dimension he came from. There were other ways, even if my heart wasn’t used. You know that well enough, don’t you?”
Yoon Sang-hyuk looked between Satan and Baal with interest.
“Was my presence too much of a burden?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Hm. This is exactly why you shouldn’t have come here. The conversation is already becoming unpleasant, isn’t it? Do you really need to know the reason?”
“I have my suspicions, but I figured it’d be better to hear it straight from you.”
Baal looked at Satan for a moment, then finally spoke.
“The two of us, both of us in the Demon Realm, was itself a mistake. Back then, I locked you in the Abyss of the Void out of respect for you, but as time passed, I came to realize my choice was wrong.”
“That’s the only reason?”
“Was another reason necessary?”
The corner of Satan’s mouth curled upward.
“Not because of the power that didn’t come to you?”
“I can’t deny that.”
“I felt puzzled after I was trapped in the Abyss of the Void. I had clearly passed the throne of Demon King to you, yet my power had not disappeared. It made sense enough that my personal power remained, but even the authority a Demon King should possess was still intact.”
The conversation was getting more and more interesting.
“The power that should have come to me never did. The Demon King’s authority is directly tied to legitimacy. Imagine a Demon King who has lost his legitimacy.”
“I can’t. There’s no such thing as a Demon King, and a Demon King like that would be no better than nothing. Still, I suppose you did a good job acting. Considering there hasn’t been a rebellion yet.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk asked, “Exactly what is this Demon King’s authority, anyway?”
“Creation.”
“Creation.”
Satan and Baal answered at the same time.
“Ah, I see. Creation.”
A power only gods could possess: creation. It was a supreme authority reserved only for the chief gods among the gods. Then Yoon Sang-hyuk snapped his fingers as if something had just come back to him.
Click. Click. Click.
He snapped them again and again.
“So that’s why you used to do that so often. You were pretending you had the power of creation. Right? In truth, it wasn’t creation at all, but magic. How about that?”
“Hah! The Demon King’s authority should have come to me in full. But it didn’t. That said, I couldn’t exactly go down to the Abyss of the Void and ask Satan to hand it over.”
“Stupid pride. That damned pride ruins everything.”
“This has nothing to do with pride.”
“Then what is it?”
“If I had met Satan again back then, one of us would have had to…”
It was Satan who answered.
“Be erased.”
“Ah!”
Yoon Sang-hyuk finally understood why Baal had reacted so sensitively to Satan’s visit. If the two of them met again, one of them had to be erased.
“Still, if you didn’t have to deal with him personally, isn’t that fine?”
“Hah! I couldn’t care less whether that bastard gets erased or not. And if he does, the authority will naturally come to me.”
“You’re as prickly as ever. Fine. I think I get how this whole thing works now. All right, let’s sort it out.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk pointed at Baal.
“You, Baal. You can’t kill him yourself, but you need to reclaim your authority, so you sent me. Fine, got it. Now Satan.”
He pointed at Satan.
“You can die without making a fuss, but before you go, you still wanted to see his face one last time.”
Baal and Satan gave no answer.
“I don’t know exactly what kind of relationship the two of you have, but I think I’ve got the situation figured out. And now it looks like things are mostly settled, doesn’t it? Satan, you got to see Baal’s face, so that’s done. Baal, Satan’s going to be erased by my hand soon enough, so that’s done too. Happy? Everyone ends up satisfied. Well, of course, the ending Baal imagined is a little different from this one, but I hope he can live with that. Instead, let’s do this.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk pointed at Satan.
“Let’s give that bastard the finest ending we can.”
“The finest ending?”
Finest and ending.
They were words that did not naturally go together. But Yoon Sang-hyuk thought they fit this situation perfectly.
“A spectacular end worthy of Satan, the Demon King who ruled the Demon Realm before you. Naturally, it’ll be a clash between the strongest man alive and a magnificent opponent that never existed before and will never exist again. We’ll stage the final battle in the Arena of Greed, where every being in the Demon Realm has gathered. But if we just charge in and do it straight, the result will be bad. There’s no way the beings of the Demon Realm will like a story where Satan, the former Demon King, gets erased by a human.”
Click!
Yoon Sang-hyuk snapped his fingers as he continued.
“So let’s do it like this.”
* * *
“Haha, I thought I’d never get to see you again.”
Zephyr lifted his glass high and laughed loudly.
“I came back because I wanted to check whether the rookie Demon Lord was doing his job properly.”
“Haha, I’m so glad to see you again.”
“Good. I’m glad too. Zeronia, you’ve got some real Demon Lord presence around you now. How’s life as a Demon Lord treating you?”
Zeronia set her glass down and answered.
“I wanted it so badly, but now that I’ve actually achieved it, it’s nothing special. If anything, I think I was freer before.”
“You figured that out early. That’s how the world works. You want something desperately, but once you get it, it’s nothing much, just like you said. In fact, the chase is what makes you happiest. That’s why you end up wanting something else. Because you’ve already learned how much fun it is to work for what you want.”
“Then should we set another goal too?”
“Of course. How long were you planning to keep playing the bottom-ranked Demon Lord, anyway? And there are others eyeing your seat.”
As Yoon Sang-hyuk said that, he glanced toward Creatin and Arnin.
The Zephyr brothers were already aware of Creatin and Arnin. Instinctively, they could feel those two were stronger than they were.
“They’re comrades who traveled with me all the way to the Abyss of the Void. Pretty ambitious guys, too. But they said something interesting. Since you all have ties to me, they won’t challenge the seat of Demon Lord until they rise above you in rank.”
The Zephyr brothers’ faces stiffened. They knew Creatin and Arnin were stronger than they were. But being weaker did not mean they had no pride. More than that, didn’t they have something Creatin and Arnin did not? The authority they had gained by becoming Demon Lords.
“Lord Sang-hyuk. How can you put it like that? Don’t misunderstand us. That isn’t what we meant. The meaning is similar, yes, but what we were trying to say was that since both the Demon Lords and we ourselves are connected to you, it would be better not to cause unnecessary conflict. You met us before you met them, so naturally, we think it’s only right that you stand at the higher rank.”
“You really are a boring one.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk looked at Arnin and let out a faint laugh.
“I’m not going to tell you all to get along. But don’t go being hostile for no reason. It wouldn’t be so bad to have a few Demon Lords who actually suit your tastes.”
“Understood.”
They all answered in unison.
Zeronia asked in a tentative voice, “I heard you’re going to fight Satan.”
“Yes. It’ll be my last battle in the Demon Realm.”
“After that battle, are you returning to your original world?”
“I have to. I’m sorry to you all, but there are many people waiting for me there.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk picked up the bottle and refilled the empty glasses.
“Why did the mood suddenly get like this? Come on, raise your glasses. Even if today turns out to be the last day granted to us, let’s enjoy this moment.”
He lifted his glass high.
“I’m truly happy to have met all of you. Cheers!”