Chapter 77: A Life of Consequence

The southern reaches of the Demon Realm were largely barren.

This desolation stemmed from their proximity to the coast, which stretched into the deep, unforgiving ocean.

The ancient demon beasts teeming in those waters instilled fear even in the demons themselves, with lesser creatures daring not to approach the treacherous shore.

Such was the case for a small dominion, its back to sheer cliffs, facing plains, forests, and fields of molten lava.

This territory marked the very edge of the sprawling Demon Realm.

Venturing past the lava fields and descending further, one would find nothing but the vast sea, a realm where colossal demon beasts devoured even larger ones.

Though they feigned indifference, the demons in this vicinity harbored a deep-seated fear of such monstrous beings.

Anyone would, after all, upon witnessing mountain-sized behemoths rise from the horizon, their forms piercing the very clouds.

Recently, however, whenever they gathered in small groups at taverns, a different kind of whisper filled the air.

They spoke in hushed tones, agreeing that ‘better the distant demon beasts’ than their current predicament.

CRASH!

RUMBLE.

The lord’s castle shuddered with a deafening roar.

It was gouged in places as if torn by a beast, and every window lay shattered.

The central portion of the tower had vanished, and collapsed ceilings were a common sight throughout the structure.

Though the lord’s castle had been reduced to little more than ruins, its servants and knights remained.

They huddled together in a corner of the training grounds, their faces etched with fear.

“Why is he like this again today?” one whispered, their voice trembling.

“Has he ever needed a reason to throw a fit?” another retorted.

“It seems the rumors are true, then.”

“Shh.”

A knight gestured towards the main building.

Beyond the gaping hole in the wall, a lone figure could be seen striding down the corridor.

It was the Shadow, the Demon King’s closest confidant.

No one knew their true name; all who knew them simply called them ‘Shadow’.

The Shadow moved with swift, determined steps, their expression grave.

Their destination was a room at the end of the corridor.

Upon knocking, an even louder crash answered them instead of a voice.

The sound of a collapsing wall followed immediately.

Swallowing a sigh, the Shadow opened the door.

The opposite wall, which should have been solid, was blasted wide open.

Through the gaping hole, the landscape of the small dominion and the violet sky were starkly visible.

“Lord Kratus.”

The Demon King did not reply.

The Shadow approached the bed, draped with a translucent canopy.

Standing closer, they could discern the tormented figure beyond the fabric.

Kratus was clutching his head with both hands, gasping for breath.

The Shadow agonized.

Was it truly right to deliver this news to Kratus in such a volatile state?

Wouldn’t it only exacerbate an already dire situation?

‘If I was going to hesitate, I should have done so back then,’ the Shadow thought, a bitter taste in their mouth.

More than two years had passed since Commander Yenis vanished.

The Shadow had regretted their decision ever since.

The Shadow had served as Kratus’s shadow for a very long time.

When the Dragon Demon, destined for monarchy, awakened from the ice, the Shadow had initially sought to devour him.

Instead, the Shadow was subjugated, becoming, quite literally, Kratus’s ‘shadow’.

Kratus possessed unprecedented power, capable of altering seasons and reshaping landscapes.

The Shadow never doubted that he would ascend to become an absolute ruler.

As time passed, the Dragon Demon indeed became the Demon King, just as the Shadow had foreseen.

In the Demon Realm, where strength was the ultimate virtue, the power and authority he wielded were immense.

No one dared to dispute his words.

Despite the long passage of time, Kratus was still considered young.

He was, moreover, a Dragon Demon, the longest-lived among all demon races.

His growth, naturally, was slow.

Yet, this did not imply weakness.

The young Dragon Demon was cruel, highly capricious, and prone to mischief.

Even when demons died in droves from his ‘pranks,’ not a single soul dared to speak out.

Then, one day, the Demon King turned his gaze towards the outlying regions and smiled, a look of chilling intrigue on his face.

It was a truly bloodcurdling smile.

Shortly after, the Demon King, who had left briefly, returned with a man in tow.

‘A new plaything.’

This was the Shadow’s immediate assessment of Aewon Yenis.

The Shadow believed there was no more accurate description.

As if he had found a fresh stimulus, Kratus quickly became obsessed with his new ‘plaything’.

He channeled his cruelty, previously directed elsewhere, entirely onto this new acquisition.

The Shadow felt as if their eyes had been opened, a rare sensation.

Of course, Yenis, experiencing Kratus for the first time, did not comprehend the subtle shift.

Yenis shuddered at the sight of demons dying for trivial reasons, yet the Shadow found it difficult to suppress their own elation.

The number of deaths, which seemed countless to Yenis, was less than half of what it had been before his arrival.

Furthermore, as Kratus began to commit targeted killings to pressure Yenis, the numbers dwindled even further.

For those who died, there now had to be a plausible reason.

The Shadow willingly stood by and watched.

Their king was notoriously capricious.

The Shadow believed this artificial peace, brought about by the new plaything, would not last long.

That was a grave misjudgment.

Kratus’s interest in his ‘plaything’ showed no signs of waning.

As time passed, the Shadow began to feel a growing unease.

‘Is that truly the gaze one directs at a mere plaything?’ they wondered.

The thought sent a chill through their gut, a literal freezing of their insides.

The potential for ruin stemming from that single assumption was so vast it made their head spin.

Thus, the Shadow did not stop Yenis when he departed, clearly harboring some hidden intention.

The eyes the Shadow inadvertently caught were strikingly different from their usual vacant stare.

A tiny spark flickered within those pupils that had once been as lifeless as a corpse’s.

The Shadow realized Yenis intended to commit suicide, or something akin to it.

A fierce determination to escape Kratus, by any means necessary, was evident in his gaze.

The Shadow believed removing the Commander from Kratus’s side was the solution.

This was their second grave misjudgment.

Though usually the Demon King’s wise advisor and strategist, the Shadow, being a demon themselves, was unskilled in matters of emotion.

It was the emotion that taught fear to the cruel, unyielding demons, forcing them to constantly look back.

Had they known the name of that incurable illness, they would never have made such a choice.

Kratus went berserk.

The duke who first rebelled, along with all the demons in his territory, were annihilated.

Literally, not a single ant survived the brutal purge.

The Shadow clicked their tongue, expecting things to settle down, but they did not.

It was merely the beginning.

The rampage continued in the Demon King’s castle itself.

Half the castle was blown apart, and the corpses of slain demons formed several gruesome mounds.

The surrounding land froze completely, and a blizzard raged.

Sparks flew in the air from the excessive outpouring of demonic energy.

The Demon King’s castle was reduced to ruins, its chaotic interior utterly uninhabitable.

The Shadow, observing the devastation, offered a suggestion.

They proposed that while the Demon King’s castle was being repaired, Kratus temporarily reside in the castle Yenis had once inhabited.

It was the first and last time Kratus nodded without destroying anything or killing anyone.

He continued to stay in Yenis’s small castle even after the Demon King’s castle was perfectly restored.

More precisely, he secluded himself in the very room Yenis had used.

In everything within the room, Kratus saw and felt the Commander’s traces, and a furious rage consumed him.

Yet, he could not rage like he had in the Demon King’s castle.

As he suppressed and restrained himself, a sliver of reason finally returned.

Kratus commanded the demons: “Find him.”

“Turn the entire Demon Realm upside down if you must, but bring him back before me.”

The consequences if they failed to find him were unspoken, yet clear to all.

The demons were desperate, literally overturning the battlefield where Commander Yenis was last seen, searching every inch.

‘He couldn’t possibly be found,’ everyone thought.

‘If he were alive, his master, bound by the contract, would surely have found him.’

They merely dared not voice such thoughts aloud.

Who would dare tell a lord, whose eyes were bloodshot and who tore demons to shreds, that the one he sought no longer existed in this world?

Kratus’s confidants and subordinates merely feigned searching, wandering the Demon Realm for two years.

They considered the deaths of their kin, slain by their impatient master, a necessary minimum sacrifice, living lives of mere survival.

Only one was different: the Shadow.

Initially, they too believed it was suicide.

This conviction was strengthened by Kratus’s despair and the inability to pinpoint Commander Yenis’s location.

It was impossible for someone bound by a contract to hide from their master’s gaze.

Nevertheless, the Shadow could not be certain of his death.

The Commander’s eyes, the last time they saw them, continued to trouble them.

Those were not the eyes of someone going to their death.

Rather, they seemed to burn with a faint hope, as if a method had been found.

With a mind swirling with complexity, the Shadow left the castle and wandered the plains alone.

‘Assuming the Commander is alive, and if he managed to hide from Kratus’s eyes, what method could he possibly have used?’

It was a pure coincidence that a gate opened before the pondering Shadow.

A white light consumed the nearby demon beasts, then vanished without a trace.

Such occurrences were not uncommon; gates had been opening like this for about a century.

They would suddenly appear, swallow demon beasts or monsters, and then disappear.

The weaker the creature, the higher the frequency of them being drawn in.

At first, the Shadow wondered why. ‘Is it because they’re easy prey?’ they thought, but that wasn’t it.

It seemed each gate had a predetermined total amount of demonic energy it could handle.

It wasn’t that demons weren’t swallowed, but rather that they couldn’t be swallowed.

Thus, what was sent to the intermediate realm was always…

‘No, wait.’

A lightning bolt struck the Shadow’s mind.

They immediately returned to the Demon King’s castle and scoured every bookshelf.

What they sought was in Kratus’s office: an ancient teleportation magic circle.

When they discovered unfamiliar handwriting in the corner of an opened page, certainty solidified within them.

It was the Shadow who had been the only one to notice Yenis’s transgression and had turned a blind eye.

With this hint, it was not difficult to deduce how the events had unfolded.

They dispatched subordinates to search every nook and cranny of the Demon King’s castle.

Though they followed orders, their reluctance was palpable.

It was only natural.

The saying ‘the darkest place is under the lamp’ only applies when it’s true.

Knowing the nature of the contract, this was clearly a waste of time.

However, the Shadow was not looking for the Commander.

“Lord Shadow, sir.”

As expected, a subordinate soon came to report, hesitantly.

It was in the basement: five skeletal demon beasts and a faded teleportation magic circle.

Returning to the dominion, the Shadow claimed the parasites spread across the plain as their familiars.

Their weakness did not matter; the purpose was verification.

To that end, it was better to send a multitude of familiars that could be perfectly controlled.

In this type of contract, even the most powerful subjugation contract was already weakened.

There was no guarantee that even familiars would remain unaffected.

‘Still, it makes me uneasy.’

In addition to the parasites, the Shadow sent Rephtha, whom the Commander had raised, and their pack through the gate.

And in just one week, they had their answer.

“What is it?”

The Shadow snapped back to attention.

Beyond the canopy, Kratus, still clutching his head, growled fiercely.

“I told you not to report unless you found him.”

The Shadow steeled their resolve.

Nothing could get worse anyway.

The most important thing now was a motive to pull him back from his deepening despair.

“Traces of Commander Aewon Yenis have been found.”

The slowly moving body froze instantly.

Swoosh.

His head turned sideways.

The canopy could not fully conceal the fiercely glowing blue eyes.

The Shadow involuntarily swallowed dryly.

“Where is he?”

With each word he spoke, the surroundings froze.

The frost that spread from the bed soon enveloped the entire room.

“Where is he?”

RUMBLE.

The walls vibrated, and the floor shook.

The Shadow calmly reminded Kratus that this was the Commander’s room.

Kratus’s eyebrows arched upwards.

The earthquake subsided, and the frost melted away.

‘Now, speak.’

The piercing blue gaze remained.

The Shadow hastened to speak before their young lord’s patience completely wore thin.

“The Commander is in the Intermediate Realm.”

“…The Intermediate Realm?”

Intermediate Realm. Intermediate Realm. Kratus muttered the words several more times.

“Of course. Yes. Why didn’t I think of that?”

He seemed utterly bewildered, but the Shadow knew.

If others heard the circumstances, they too would understand.

It was because he had been so overwhelmed by emotion that he couldn’t even entertain such a thought.

Kratus rose from the bed.

He went into the bathroom for a shower, then requested new clothes.

In just a few minutes, the man had returned to the lord the Shadow once knew, his eyes gleaming as he made one final confirmation.

“Are you certain?”

“The synchronization rate was low, but the thread of consciousness was definitely received.”

In truth, the parasites had sent back only two words: [Lord. Found.]

That was enough.

Kratus nodded and strode out of the room.

‘When was the last time he left that room?’ The Shadow’s hands curled inwards.

In the end, it was the Commander, who had fled to the Intermediate Realm, who had driven their master from beginning to end.

‘A plaything?’

The Shadow no longer uttered those words, not even as a jest.

“Gather the ‘Fragments’.”

Kratus spoke, radiating vibrant vitality and chilling bloodlust in equal measure.

“I will open the gate myself.”

The calamity that began in the Demon Realm now set its gaze upon the Intermediate Realm.

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