Chapter 94

That night.

"... You killed three of them in a row?"

An aged voice reached Suho's ears, breaking the silence while everyone slept. Sitting in his cell, he turned toward it.

The old man—or rather, the shabby old demon—still lay far away in the darkness with his back turned. Suho watched him without a word. After a moment, the demon clicked his tongue.

"Tsk, tsk. Every so often, there's a demon like you who takes well to Frenzied Blood Poison. But you'll regret ignoring my warning and eating that food in the end."

As the old demon said, Suho had killed three Frenzied Blood Demons sent out by the Demon Jailers, one after another. The astonishing spectacle had sent the stands into a frenzy.

For slaves who lived under oppression, watching a weak-looking demon turn the tables and execute demons far more powerful than himself had been immensely cathartic.

But that was not at all what the Demon Jailers wanted to see. What they had intended was for the strong to cruelly kill the weak, to toy with them and devour them. That would sear the absolute truth of submission to the strong into the slaves' minds.

What Suho had shown them was the exact opposite.

"... Still, you did well not to eat those Frenzied Blood Demons."

The old demon continued speaking to Suho. Just as he said, Suho had killed his opponents in the arena without eating their corpses.

Normally, demons hunted other demons and grew stronger by consuming the demonic energy dissolved in their blood. But Suho wasn't a demon, so he had no reason to drink their blood.

Vulcan's Horn devouring their souls was another matter entirely.

The Demon Jailers had no way of knowing his reasons. When events failed to unfold as they had intended, they finally halted Suho's execution matches. Continuing would only mean wasting valuable Frenzied Blood Demons on pointless deaths.

"It's perfectly natural for demons to eat other demons. But you must never drink the blood of demons afflicted with Frenzied Blood Poison."

"... Why?"

At last, Suho spoke.

"Because the more Frenzied Blood Demons you eat, the more Frenzied Blood Poison builds up in your body. You'll grow stronger, but the pain will grow just as much."

"That wasn't what I was asking."

Something else had piqued Suho's curiosity.

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"... I told all the others, too. They simply wouldn't listen."

That was only natural. Painful though it was, Frenzied Blood Poison amplified their strength. Telling someone facing execution not to take it was no different from telling them to meekly accept death.

That was precisely why the other demons here mocked and condemned the old demon.

"Once you become a Frenzied Blood Demon, all that awaits you in the end is a miserable, agonizing death."

"Like you now, old man?"

COUGH!

Instead of answering, the old demon coughed up black blood.

[The Queen of Insects, the Monarch of Plagues, watches the blood of a demon thoroughly afflicted with Frenzied Blood Poison.]

"... At first, I ate whatever they gave me, too. I fought and won countless execution matches, drank the blood of countless corpses, and grew stronger and stronger. Then I finally saw it—the fate of the Frenzied Blood Demons who had survived as I had, until the poison reached their very marrow."

After another long fit of coughing, the old demon chuckled.

"The Tyrant King waits until we've ripened to our tastiest before he eats us. That's the most efficient way."

Once he realized that, the old demon had stopped eating. Even when he won an execution match, he never ate the loser's corpse. The moment the Frenzied Blood Poison in his body grew concentrated enough, the Tyrant King would devour him.

"This colosseum is a farm and a food store for the Tyrant King. Heh heh."

["Now I see why that old man's so scrawny," Esil muttered.]

["Suho, I think the food you ate today was the last meal they'll give you here. From now on, if you're hungry, you'll have to kill and eat your opponents in the execution matches."]

"That's downright demonic. I hate this sort of thing."

Shaking his head, Suho took the opportunity to ask the old demon something else that had been on his mind.

"Anyway, old man. Where does this Tyrant King usually hide?"

"Hide? Heh heh. That's so accurate, I'm afraid someone might hear you. Youngsters these days certainly are hot-blooded."

For the first time, the old demon shifted and turned his head toward Suho. Looking directly into Suho's eyes with his own hollow gaze, he whispered softly.

"No one knows where the Tyrant King lives. He's a terrible coward."

"A coward?"

"Heh heh. Yes. The Tyrant King may be the absolute ruler here, but he's also the tastiest prey. Even someone like me could become powerful in an instant if I ate his corpse."

As he spoke, the old demon's eyes gleamed with intense greed. He licked his lips with a snakelike tongue, apparently relishing the mere thought of that impossible future. He truly looked every bit a demon.

["Let me make something clear," Esil suddenly said to Suho.]

["This nightmare of eating and being eaten only happens among weak demons. Don't go thinking refined demon nobles like me behave that way, all right?"]

'I didn't ask.'

["No, I'm serious! You've seen me eat plenty of times. We don't crudely tear into corpses ourselves. Absorbing bloodstones is much cleaner and more efficient."]

'Bloodstones?'

That reminded Suho of the intermediate demon he'd hunted before entering the Demon Realm.

'Come to think of it, you said that demon ate a bloodstone to amplify his strength, didn't you? What exactly is a bloodstone?'

["It's a crystal formed by highly concentrating the mana within demon blood. Some nobles with vulgar tastes do eat demons directly, but refined nobles like our Radir Clan dine on bloodstones."]

'Isn't that the same thing?'

["No, it's completely different! We can harvest a few bloodstones without even killing the other demon. If nobles ate every demon serving under them, who would ever want to serve us?"]

'Oh, that's a fair point.'

Esil defended herself earnestly, worried that Suho might think poorly of her.

["So what's happening here is that someone who isn't even a noble is clumsily trying to imitate one, raising and eating his own kind indiscriminately. It's inefficient, and all it does is reduce the number of demons."]

As Esil spoke at length, Suho neatly sorted out what he needed to do.

"So, in the end, I have to look as tasty as possible to catch the Tyrant King."

"W-what did you just say? Did you say you're going to catch the Tyrant King? Bwahahaha! You're insane!"

Apparently finding Suho's words utterly absurd, the old demon burst into hearty laughter. The noise woke the other demons one by one, and they began to complain.

"Ugh! What's all that noise?"

"Has that old bastard gone senile in the middle of the night?!"

The previously quiet prison suddenly filled with curses. But the old demon's laughter showed no sign of stopping. They were all held in solitary cells to keep them from harming one another anyway, so no one could shut him up.

Amid the uproar, Suho looked straight into the eyes of the old demon laughing at him in the distance and spoke.

"Old man, may I ask you one more thing?"

"Heheheh! Of course! What are you so curious about?"

"What do I have to do to look tasty to the Tyrant King?"

"Bwahahahaha!"

This time, not only the old demon but the others burst out laughing as well.

"What's that lunatic saying now?!"

"What? He wants to look tasty to the Tyrant King?"

"We've got a real nutjob this time! Hahahaha!"

Word of what Suho had done at today's execution matches had already spread throughout the colosseum. But most of the demons had been locked in their cells, and none of them had actually witnessed it.

Suho might have defeated three Frenzied Blood Demons in one day, but the demons imprisoned here were all convicts who had survived by eating countless Frenzied Blood Demons themselves. In their eyes, Suho was still just a rookie who wouldn't live to see another day.

"You got lucky and survived once today, and now you've completely lost your mind!"

"Your arrogance knows no bounds!"

"You want the Tyrant King's attention? Hoping to catch his eye and become one of his subordinates?!"

"That's easy enough!"

"Eat and eat some more! Keep devouring us in the execution matches until even your brains are thoroughly soaked in Frenzied Blood Poison!"

"Then the Tyrant King himself will appear before you!"

"Aha."

For a moment, Suho felt regret. If he'd known they were this helpful, he would have asked ages ago.

"... Aw, if that's all it takes, I shouldn't have passed up eating them today."

Somewhere, a being recoiled in horror at Suho's muttered words.

[The Queen of Insects, the Monarch of Plagues, is startled by your savagery.]

[The King of Beasts, the Monarch of Fangs, snickers, saying that the strong do indeed devour the weak in this world.]

"Well, then..."

CRACK.

Slowly rotating his wrists, he gave a meaningful smile.

"Shall we put on a proper mukbang?"

* * *

Suho's mukbang began the very next day.

"Yesterday was your first day, so we only sent out weaklings."

"But today will be different."

The Demon Jailers smiled viciously as they sent Suho out for his execution match.

"You'll regret coming back without eating those corpses yesterday."

"You're right. I regretted it all night."

"... What?"

"So I'm going to start eating today."

Suho's unexpected reply left the jailers looking puzzled.

"You're just a One-Horn..."

"Enough with the empty bravado."

"It ends today."

Firmly convinced that Suho was already afflicted with Frenzied Blood Poison, the jailers were equally certain that yesterday's exertion would have left him weaker today.

It was only natural. The more mana a demon used, the more blood the poison burned away. After all, wasn't having her blood drained by countless demons the very reason Esil was now so much weaker than she had been as a demon noble?

"... With that in mind."

Looking up at an opponent even more fearsome than yesterday's, Suho grinned. Then he shot forward like a cannonball and drove his hand into the demon's body.

BOOM!

The tremendous force slammed the demon into the ground.

"Eat all you want this time and get some strength back, Esil."

["Now that's what I like to hear."]

At his words, the eyes of the demon noble dwelling within Vulcan's Horn lit up.

SHLUUURP!

At that moment, black energy began flowing out through Suho's hand, still embedded in the demon's body. The energy condensed into tiny points that rose into the air like beads.

"W-wait!"

"What's that?"

The stands reeled at the bizarre sight.

"Impossible! Could those be...?!"

"Bloodstones?!"

Even the Demon Jailers stared wide-eyed in horror—far more shocked than they had been yesterday.

Their surprise was only natural. Extracting bloodstones from an opponent's body before even killing them...

Only one kind of being could do that!

"A-a noble?!"

"He's a demon noble!"

"Holy shit! There was still a noble alive?!"

WHOOOOSH!