Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The girl that I’d been talking to the whole time turned out to be none other than Princess Charlotte de Gradias. She was the First Princess of the Gradias Empire, the largest nation in the world.

Let’s consider this scenario as if it were real. Let’s say that I was actually a prisoner trapped in the Demon King’s castle, suffering from amnesia. I then tried my best to rescue and console a girl I believed was just a stranger crying and starving. However, it turned out that she was, in fact, the imperial princess held hostage by the Demon King’s army. Okay, let’s assume that we were rescued together, and as her way of repaying my efforts to save her, she treats me with great extravagance in her empire.

Normally, one would describe such a situation as “incredibly lucky,” as people could only dream of being treated like that even once in their lives. However, I was merely disguising myself to appear as a human; in reality, I was just a powerless teenage demon hiding underneath a low-level Camouflage spell.

Yes, I guess you could say that I was... screwed.

Much like a cow being taken to a slaughterhouse, I was led out of the Demon King’s castle and arrived at the barracks of the human army, which was also where the commander-in-chief was. The Princess received care from numerous mages and priests, and the same treatment was administered to me.

Fortunately, I seemed to be fine receiving magic from the priests, and the curative spells the clerics cast on me didn’t have any adverse effects either. Thank goodness demons weren’t allergic to “holy” magic.

Of course, I already knew that there was no such thing as magic compatibility issues between demons and humans. If there had been something like that, I wouldn’t even have dared to be rescued by humans.

Not long after I had become a dirty mess, I was being crowded by many people who were cleaning and washing me up. The act of being cleaned by strangers was extremely embarrassing, but the fear of being instantly killed if I made one wrong move overwhelmed any other emotion.

If the mages had used any kind of dispelling magic on me, that might have undone the Camouflage spell, and that would have been the end of me. Fortunately, a significant number of troops were involved in searching the Demon King’s castle, and the majority of the mages appeared to be overwhelmed with taking care of the Princess alone.

However, the real issue was that Princess Charlotte either had a naturally kind heart, or she had simply fallen in love with me.

“Please, attend to him before me; he saved my life,” Charlotte said.

The problem was that she cared about me too much. Even though her condition was much worse, she kept instructing people to look after me first.

I bowed to the girl who had been my companion just moments ago as I responded, “Oh, no. No, Your Highness, I’m fine. I’m feeling very healthy.”

It was true, I genuinely did not have any injuries; all I had done was roll around on the ground a couple of times.

“No. You mentioned that you lost your memory. You must have suffered a severe curse or something,” she replied.

“Oh, no! No, I’m fine! My memories... y-yeah... it’s fine, it’s not a big deal!”

“How unfortunate,” she said pitifully.

‘Okay, I understand that you are a good person and you want to help me, but can’t you just leave me alone now?’ The single biscuit I had given her was reaping a ten-fold reward.

I convinced the nursing staff that there was nothing physically wrong with me, and all I wanted to do was to rest somewhere else. They listened to my plea and permitted me to lie down in one of the private rooms next to the barracks.

The situation had gotten a bit better, but not by that much; my life had been spared for just a little longer. It was as if I had escaped from a collapsing cave and had entered the tiger’s den instead.

[Event Completed – The Downfall]

[You have received 100 Achievement Points.]

I had somehow managed to clear the first quest.

*** New novel chapters are published on

The princess’s attention to me was persistent. After some essential emergency treatments were completed, she summoned me back to the barracks, where a massive feast was prepared.

“You probably haven’t eaten in a long time. Eat as much as you want,” she said. I could hear the smile in her voice.

“Oh? Y-yeah, okay,” I replied.

However, I felt uncomfortable to start eating anything, as there were too many eyes on me at that moment. The princess stared at me intently for a moment and seemed to understand my struggle.

She apparently got the impression that I was someone who could not eat while others were watching.

The princess quickly glanced at the surrounding guards, mages, and clerics.

“Everyone, wait outside,” she said.

It was like I was considering my novel as some sort of history textbook, interpreting and analyzing my own piece of writing. Authors usually remained ignorant of the narrative’s gaps and the gray areas in their plot, but now, I found myself within one of those gray areas. Those gaps in the plot were being filled with things I didn’t know existed, and would continuously be filled as such.

As this world was now my reality, the missing details of the story had to be connected with the future I knew. I had to deduce how the gaps I’d left in the plot had been filled. I had to infer the missing pieces of the story with the knowledge I had about the future.

My job was to unravel this narrative bridge that had formed when my novel had become reality, and ultimately connect future events with the continuously changing current events. I had to come up with an answer in the midst of this puzzle-like narrative.

The Princess had been rescued, but she didn’t appear at all in the later narrative of the royal family.

There were two possible answers to this situation.

First, my act of saving the princess caused a butterfly effect and changed the story. The princess was supposed to just die in the prison cell, whether by suicide or from severe malnutrition. I mean, was the one small biscuit I gave her enough to save her from starvation? The chances of this being the correct answer were very unlikely, but it was still a possibility.

The second possibility was based on the assumption that an event could occur in my novel without my knowledge. The overall result was what I had written, but the process could have been anything. For example, if I wrote that event A happened, there might be an entirely different series of events that happened before resulting in event A.

Let’s say I wrote a part of the novel very irresponsibly, for example, if I said “Oh, this event all of a sudden just occurred!” But that event was so unexpected in the plot that when it became reality, there had to be some kind of supporting events to make that event rational. In other words, some form of causality adjustment had to take place to bridge the gap between the event and the plot.

The teleportation scrolls not working inside the Demon King’s castle would be an example of this.

If this were the case, I would be in a strange situation where I knew about the events that were going to happen but had no clue as to why and how they would occur.

Was this a punishment for writing so recklessly?

So in conclusion, if it wasn’t the case that my existence in this world altered any past events and therefore the latter of the two possibilities was true, there was only one possible situation that was going to occur sooner rather than later. The princess who shouldn’t be alive was going to either be killed, or die.

“Hey, why aren’t you eating?” the princess asked while naively chewing on her food.

***

Even in the everyday, casual novels, villains are also necessary. There might be one without any villains at all, but that’s an endeavor for the authors who are masters of their craft. That’s because the presence of a villain vastly simplifies the progression of the narrative. If people ask, “Hey, why did that villain do this and that?” You can simply respond with, “Because he’s a villain!” and generate a lot of easy-storytelling material from that alone.

Yes, I was one of those unskilled authors who couldn’t write a proper story without villains.

In The Demon King is Dead, the main villain is the imperial prince, Vertus de Gradias. There were actually more antagonists throughout the story, but they were all irrelevant when compared to the prince himself. Villains that appeared inside the school were all kinds of childish, but the prince...he was in a different league. He was a villain who was into conspiracies, murder, and other corrupt activities—the kind of character who would do anything to sabotage their opposition and become the emperor.

From Vertus’s perspective, the First Princess was nothing but an obstacle and disturbance to him. She was bound to get all the attention of the people as she had just survived being kidnapped by the demons, and considering her position as the First Princess, her status in the imperial succession hierarchy was similar to his as well.

The fact that the princess was still alive would surely make Vertus anxious and keep him on his toes, as he probably thought she was dead, and that he had one less rival to think about.

This meant that there was a high possibility that Princess Charlotte would soon be killed—either by Vertus himself or by his associates.

Hence, Charlotte would meet her demise and disappear from the story, as per the plot I knew. Her death would likely come soon, and there was even a possibility that she would die before she returned to the empire.

She was in imminent danger. I didn’t know how or when she was going to be attacked, but I was certain it was going to be soon.

In contrast, it seemed like the princess had fallen into a food coma and had entered a deep sleep after her extravagant meal.

Could I save this girl? My own life was in jeopardy, so was I even in the position to help her? It actually might have been better if she had died, as then I would have had the chance to escape without anyone noticing me.

The moment the thought of saving my own life at the cost of another’s crossed my mind, a chill ran down my spine. I was just an ordinary person. Obviously, this was not an ordinary situation, but I was still a normal human being on the inside. I could clearly sense this because I couldn’t resist the feeling of self-hate and guilt I got from thinking about such a horrible thing.

I had to think positively. Charlotte was the closest thing I had to an ally in this unpredictable situation. If she became my friend, she could help me tremendously, even in the face of unexpected events in the future.

The only time I could talk to her face-to-face was now. Once the meal was over, the guards were going to come back in, and then it would be too late to have any conversation with her.

How on earth was I supposed to tell her that her life was in extreme danger? And how could I explain why I knew all that?

Suddenly, Charlotte woke up, and after wiping away the grease from her lips, she gazed at me. Her innocent expression had vanished, and the look on her face was now cold and serious. The atmosphere suddenly shifted, and Charlotte’s voice became eerily hushed.

“Alright, listen carefully now,” Charlotte said, her demeanor deadly serious. “Our lives are in danger.”

To my surprise, she said the exact words I had wanted to say. Not only that, she didn’t just say that her life was in danger, but “our” lives.