Chapter 27

DING!

Just then, the quest was completed as well.

[You have completed ‘Quest: Rescue the Survivors.’]

[Number of survivors rescued: 7]

‘Looks like they made it out of the dungeon safely.’

Suho nodded, thinking of the hunters who had left ahead of him with the survivors on their backs. They had agreed to get aboveground as quickly as possible to avoid being caught by the demons, so now he only needed to make his own escape.

‘Before that, though.’

[Your quest completion rewards have arrived.]

[Would you like to view your rewards?] (Y/N)

“View rewards.”

DING!

[The following rewards are available.]

Reward 1: Stat Points +3

Reward 2: Random Box ×1

“A Random Box?”

Suho’s eyes lit with interest. An ordinary Random Box without the word “Cursed” attached? He had no idea what might be inside.

He accepted all the rewards. He invested every stat point in Strength, and a moment later, a small Random Box materialized in his hand.

‘What’s in here?’

He promptly tore off the wrapping and, to his surprise, found several gleaming gold coins inside.

CLINK.

[You have acquired ‘700 gold.’]

“Gold coins?”

Had he received 700 gold for rescuing seven survivors? What convenient timing, getting gold to spend in the shop as soon as the feature unlocked.

‘A coincidence... Of course it isn’t.’

Suho was beginning to realize something. He could sense the goodwill toward him built into the leveling system he had inherited from his father.

‘... Thanks for the allowance, Dad.’

All the coins went into his inventory, and a display reading “700 gold” appeared at the bottom.

“Open shop.”

The newly unlocked shop window opened before him.

[Shop]

Purchase / Sell

The shop window was exceedingly simple. Just as Suho was about to check the purchase list to see what items were available, a voice interrupted.

[Young Monarch.]

Beru suddenly appeared and asked,

[What shall you do with that demon?]

Suho turned his gaze toward the female demon lying on the floor, dying.

‘Right. I forgot about her.’

The enemy of his enemy was his friend. Since she had been fighting the lesser demons tooth and nail a short while ago, he had left her alive for the time being. Now, however, it was time to decide what to do with her.

First, there was something he needed to check.

“I saw you talking to her earlier, Beru. Do you two know each other?”

[Indeed. When my liege conquered the Demon Realm, the Radir Clan was the only clan that did not attack him.]

The demons of the Radir Clan had acknowledged their weakness and volunteered to become Sung Jinwoo’s slaves. Even then, their surrender would never have been accepted if not for a whim of his.

After all, most demons who had encountered Sung Jinwoo during the war of the Monarchs had died. The only others still alive were cowards like the lesser demons they had met today, who had fled the battlefield early and hidden out of his sight.

[My liege also forcibly captured that demon, Esil, and used her as a guide.]

“Um...”

Esil, still lying on the floor and bleeding profusely, called to Suho in a dying voice.

“Sorry to interrupt, but could you save me first? I really think I’m going to die.”

Just then—

GRRRRROWWL!

A thunderous noise rang out from Esil’s stomach.

“Huh?”

As Suho and Beru stared at her, she rubbed her sunken belly, looking embarrassed.

“I haven’t eaten for a few years, what with being on the run...”

Ah. Apparently, when she said she was dying, she meant she was starving to death.

* * *

To cut to the chase, Suho did end up saving Esil. He had several reasons, one of which was to test the effects of a potion purchased from the shop.

[Item: Lesser Healing Potion]

Acquisition Difficulty: E

Type: Consumable

A potion that restores health.

Slowly restores 500 HP when consumed.

Can be stored in the inventory, but cannot be transferred to others.

‘It can’t be transferred to others? Then can I feed it to someone myself?’

Suho approached Esil and poured the potion into her mouth.

“Ah...!”

As Esil drank the potion, her wounds gradually began to heal.

“What? You’re a healer? By the way, what’s your relationship with Lord Jinwoo...?”

But Suho ignored her wide-eyed stare, concentrating solely on the potion’s performance.

‘Hmm. It heals a little slowly. It’d be hard to use in an emergency during combat. Leveling up really is the best.’

After some time, Esil recovered enough to move around. Her stomach, however, continued to growl just as loudly.

“I’m so hungry I don’t have any strength...”

‘You were fighting just fine earlier.’

The second reason Suho had saved Esil was that the energy he sensed from her was nothing special. In short, she was easy to handle. Even after recovering with the potion, she felt no stronger than C-rank at best.

According to Beru, a demon noble should ordinarily possess S-rank strength. But a combination of factors had reduced Esil’s power to a quarter of what it had been.

‘Still, no matter how weak she is now, I can’t just take a demon outside the dungeon.’

For that reason, Suho ultimately chose another approach.

[Would you like to enter the Shadow Dungeon?]

“Enter.”

WHOOSH!

Suho took Esil into the Shadow Dungeon. No one but shadow soldiers could freely enter or leave this place. It was the perfect prison for a demon.

Once inside, however, Esil’s reaction caught him completely off guard.

“Ah, to think I would return to the World of Repose!”

Gazing at the monochrome world, she began exclaiming in delight.

Then she turned to Suho and asked,

“How do you carry the World of Repose within your shadow when you aren’t even the Shadow Monarch? Just what is your relationship with Lord Jinwoo?”

“I’m his son.”

“His son? Ah! Wait, you’re Suho?!”

Esil gasped in astonishment, exclaiming again and again.

“My goodness! That tiny baby is already this big? Humans really do grow quickly.”

“You know me?”

Suho could only tilt his head at her words. His sealed memories might have returned, but that did not mean he remembered every face he had seen as a child. Besides, there had been so many soldiers living in Sung Jinwoo’s shadow world.

Looking away from Esil, who was delighted to see him, Suho asked Beru,

“What is this World of Repose, anyway?”

[Another name for the Shadow Dungeon.]

Beru explained.

The world ruled by the Shadow Monarch went by many names. The World of Shadows. The World Beyond Death. And the Domain of Repose.

The other Monarchs, now dead, had also had worlds of their own to rule. But only the Shadow Monarch carried his entire world within his shadow.

“This Shadow Dungeon is a world I rule?”

[To be precise, it is the world ruled by my liege. Yet somehow, when you were born, Young Monarch, that world split in two. More accurately, perhaps I should say it replicated itself.]

“Either way, one of them became my shadow.”

Suho nodded.

Enough small talk. It was time to get down to business. He looked at Esil and asked bluntly,

“You said your name was Esil, right? Anyway, I saved your life, so tell me everything you know. What are the demons plotting on Earth? And what happened in the Demon Realm?”

“Well...”

Esil began bitterly.

“At first, everything was fine after the war ended. Lord Sung Jinwoo had killed all the other nobles, so our Radir Clan became the highest-ranking demons. He even let our clan stay in the shadow world, since we had nowhere else to go.”

By then, the Demon Realm had already lost its Demon Monarch and been torn into fragments drifting through the gaps between dimensions. Under those circumstances, Sung Jinwoo had allowed the demons of the Radir Clan, who had helped him, to live in his world.

But that had not lasted long.

“In the end, we couldn’t become residents of the shadow world.”

“Because your souls were contaminated?”

“You know about that.”

As Suho had experienced himself, demons were fundamentally souls with contaminated mana and could not be extracted as shadow soldiers.

“So we had no choice but to return to the Demon Realm. No, to be precise, the Demon Realm called us back.”

“The Demon Realm did?”

“Yes. While we were living in the shadow world, a Red Gate to the Demon Realm suddenly opened in front of us. Then it started sucking us in.”

Having lost its Monarch, the Demon Realm had lost its unifying center and was drifting in pieces through the gaps between dimensions. A world without a Monarch would inevitably call for one. It was only natural for the Demon Realm to summon the Radir Clan, the sole surviving demon nobles.

But the Demon Realm was governed entirely by the law of the strong devouring the weak, where only strength commanded respect. The Radir Clan, which would have ranked a mere twentieth without Sung Jinwoo’s help, lacked the power to seize control.

Once the war ended, the demons who had hidden from the Shadow Monarch throughout it crawled out again and began challenging the authority of the seemingly easy prey that was the Radir Clan.

‘If we just get rid of the Radir Clan!’

‘We can become nobles too!’

‘Devour the nobles and drink their pure blood!’

‘Consuming pure blood will amplify our demonic energy!’

... And so, all the demons united to attack the Radir Clan. Already among the weakest nobles, the clan lacked the strength to suppress their rebellion.

“Weak demons have no right to live. They devoured us and drained our blood. Now I’m the only demon noble left alive.”

[Is that why you have grown so weak?]

“... Yes. I nearly died several times, and they drained a lot of my blood. That’s why I’ve lost so much power.”

Beru, who had been listening beside them, added an explanation for Suho.

[Demons have their hierarchy of power determined at birth. They do not speak of purebloods and mongrels for nothing. Their power is rooted in the blood they are born with, which is why they are so desperate to consume blood.]

‘Just like what happened to Gray.’

Suho nodded. Now that he had heard the explanation, wasn’t this much the same situation as Gray of the Fang Clan?

Esil nodded emphatically at Beru’s words and added,

“That’s right. That’s why demons are terrified of losing their power. Noble or mongrel, if you’re weak, you get eaten. Which makes those demons who summoned me earlier all the stranger.”

“Stranger?”

“Yes. They came to Earth by possessing human bodies weaker than their own. Making themselves weaker like that is completely unlike demons.”

Unlike demons, was it? Suho realized what Esil was getting at.

“Are you saying there might be someone else behind the demons?”

“Yes. The way they summoned me was strange, too. We demons are good at destroying and killing, but we don’t know magic that can force open dimensional barriers.”

“Then someone taught them? Who?”

Listening to their conversation, Beru let out a long sigh.

[... Could it be the Illusion Realm?]

“The Illusion Realm?”

[Gate magic was a method frequently used by Yogumunt, the Monarch of the Illusion Realm.]

“The Illusion Realm...”

Mulling over Beru’s words, Suho pieced together a picture in his mind.

“So the remnants of the Demon Realm and the Illusion Realm have joined forces behind the scenes?”

And there was one more thing.

‘Stardust.’

Mist Burns were one of the ingredients used to make Stardust. More precisely, the blue mist that was the main ingredient in Mist Burns was mana from the outer universe, capable of dissolving the boundaries between dimensions.

“... It looks like those bastards from the outer universe are using the remnants here to plot something.”

[Yes. I believe so as well.]

Beru nodded gravely at Suho’s conclusion.

[Perhaps... those from the outer universe have already infiltrated Earth.]

It seemed the invasion had already begun.