CH 210

The work on Zermelt 13 was neatly completed. I informed the rest of the crew that the ‘real culprit’ behind Red’s murder existed and I had killed him. Because they completely trusted and relied on Red, there was no need to tell them about the truth. It would lead to an unnecessarily complicated situation where they would become emotionally distraught even though they still had to survive being caught between the two suns. The atrocities of Red and the AI “How Color” will forever be buried deep only in our memories.

“Aracelli. Let’s go.”

“It was a pleasure to meet you and your companion, Space Detective Yoo Seodam. I hope to see you again next time.”

“By the way, how are you going to leave without a spaceship?”

“We have detected the signal of the rescue ship, so you can wait here…”

“We’ll be fine.” Instead of elaborating further, I grabbed Aracelli’s hand. The ‘probability’ I absorbed from the last world could still be used about three more times more, so it was possible for me to move together with Araceli again. So, from now on, we would start to do dimensional traveling, not space traveling.

<Where would you like to go next?>

‘Let’s choose a world with moderately dangerous destruction progress.’

<I understand. There’s a world with a high hunting success rate and in state of moderately dangerous level of extinction progress.>

‘Where is that?’

The client posted the hashtag in front of me.

『The Demon King Raises the Demon King Castle』

#FantasyDungeonManagementGrowthZone

#Villain #DemonKingCastleisMyGirlfriend

‘What a messy hashtag…’

<It’s a trend these days.>

Really? That messy long sentence which wouldn’t pass the grammar test is a trend? I could not believe it.

‘Don’t lie.’

<It’s true you know!>

‘…’

Since when did the system become this emotional?

<We will go right away.>

Slowly, a ray of light spread and enveloped both my and Aracelli’s body. At the spectacle the astronauts took a few steps back.

“Take care of yourself!”

“Yes. You guys too. Stay safe until the rescue ship comes.”

When the surroundings began to distort. A series of familiar texts appeared in front of me.

[Moving to Ascanta, the world where the protagonist ‘Diablo Kim’, resides.]

[10…9…8…]

[2…1…0]

[Moving complete.]

When the sensation settled, I opened my eyes.

But suddenly, something I had never thought would happen to me, happened.

“Ohooo, are you the Hero of this generation?”

“Eh?”

I was greeted by an old king draped in a fancy red robe. He was seated on a throne flanked by two golden dragon statues which stood proudly. 

[You have become the ‘Hero’ of Ascanta.]

What in the world…

When the king forced his heavy body out of the comfort of the throne, his belly shook violently. Once he stood, he fixed the position of the crown above his head and swept the sweat on his face before speaking with his arms wide open. “The Hero has finally arrived to save the world from the Demon King! Let everyone rise and bless him!”

Boom, boom boom!!

At his words, colourful fireworks exploded across the sky, and women in pure white priestly robes started dancing in front of me. Rows of knights cladded in silver armor raised their sword high into the sky, and at the same time, a woman in a pink dress appeared from behind the king, and she burst into laughter.

Looking at the development of things, it seems like she’s a princess.

“Hero, please save our world!”

“Haha…” I let out an empty laugh. 

It was an extraordinary situation that I had never experienced in my life. However, it wasn’t bad at all. Humans were adaptive animals, and I considered myself to have a slightly more extraordinary talent for adaptation. So, I would be able to adapt easily.

“Kuhum.” I cough deliberately to get some attention. “Excuse me…”

As I slowly parted my lips, everyone around me who had been celebrating my appearance looked at me.

“If I kill the Demon King, how much is the reward?”

“…”

“…”

Just because my identity in this world was a hero in this world, I had no intention of doing it for free even though it aligned with my goal. Like I said so many times before, only a crazy person would work for free.

“What… are you talking about?”

Looking around, I saw Aracelli plopped down. It seems like she felt motion sickness as a result of moving through dimensions with me. Then she looked at her body before looking around. It seems like she was confused and was trying to learn something. After all, unlike the Aracelli-style dimensional transfer, the system’s dimensional transfer was powerful enough to be able to preserve clothing, etc.

“First, let me introduce myself. I can say that I am a veteran ‘hero’ who travels around numerous worlds and specializes in hunting Demon Kings.”

“Oh, oh!!!”

“However!” I raised my finger up with a serious expression on my face.

“As a veteran hero, how can I move for free? Think about it… Hunting the Demon King is a really hard thing to do. We have to cross through the scorching heat of desert, traversing the humid jungle, passing the land of death infested with the beasts of hell, before finally reaching the Demon King. That is not the end yet, I still have to fight fiercely to kill the Demon King! Do you know how much mental energy is consumed in the whole process?”

“That’s… that’s right.”

“But what if you guys pay me? This veteran hero here, will do all he can to kill the Demon King. That’s why His Majesty The King must pay a reasonable reward to the hero.”

In fact, even though I talked about reward or what not, there’s very little reward I can receive for doing this. After all, even if I do get it, I won’t be able to take most of it to Earth. But I have a reason to still ask for it.

“But… all the heroes throughout history did it without any reward. The valor of the Hero and his comrades became a song sung by many bards and the most beautiful poem. how can you claim a reward?”

“Sigh… There was a time when I did that too. But these days, times have changed. This hero is tired of the ever-increasing difficulty of subjugating the Demon King, yet he didn’t even get a helping hand from whoever summoned him.”

“That…”

“Should I just go home now? You guys are not even paying my salary…”

“Come on, wait! In order to summon you, the ‘2 Empires, 4 Kingdoms, 1 Church’ all worked together and consumed the amount equivalent to 5 years of the Empire’s national budget! Our kingdom is responsible for this summon. If you return, we will be in a perilous position!”

So what if you already spent a lot of money? I had no intention of changing my mind whatsoever.

“So, how about taking my offer?”

There is only one answer the king could say anyway. After all, the king could never go against the words of the Hero.

* * *

There were 8 ‘Demon Kings’ in this world. They were all spread all over the world to increase their own power. Except for the fact that their inclinations were ‘evil’, they were similar to the ‘2nd Empire, 4 Kingdoms, 1 Church’. Their power was also comparable to that which was called the strongest nation of humans, so there are few wars amongst them, but they never invade human nations.

After hearing the story, you might be wondering why the Demon Kings had a comparable power to the human nation when the humans have 7 strongest while the Demon Kings camp have 8. Well, the reason was simple. The Demon Kings were the type that gets stronger in the Demon King’s Castle, and the Demon King’s Army’s troops were very few in number. There are only a few elites in their ranks. On the other hand, humans sometimes have ‘Expert-level’ masters, and the number of ordinary soldiers in their rank was also very large, so the Demon Kings can’t attack humans recklessly. 

However, the power was not so equal from the beginning. There was a time when the number of Demon Kings reached 30. At that time, of course, the power of the Demon King’s Army was stronger than that of humans, and there were times when their numbers reached a point where they could cover the whole world with demons.

At that time, humans summoned an unprecedented ‘Heroes’ through the ‘hero summoning ritual’. Those heroes were crazy beings who could cut the mountain, overturn the sea, and destroy the sky with one swing. Once, a hero cut down seven Demon Kings as soon as they were summoned, while another stopped a war caused by the union of the five Demon Kings alone.

Every time they appeared, it was clear that they would leave their name in history.

Elite demons? Strategy? Numbers?

It was something they didn’t think about. The Heroes were humans who grow powerful simply by existing. Over time, humanity began to depend more and more on the existence of  a Hero. It was around that time that Hero Summoning became a tradition and a custom.

Nearly 200 years have passed since then, and now the power of the Demon Kings has barely reached a level similar to that of humans. The fear for the Demon Kings was not the same as it used to be. They were no different from sandbags now.

‘In such a world, the protagonis reincarnated as a Demon King!!’

5 years before Hero Yoo Seodam was summoned to the world, An ordinary student, ‘Kim’, who lived in a world far from this world, one day got into a car accident and woke up in this world when he opened his eyes. He was reincarnated as one of the 8 Demon Kings. However, the Demon King he reincarnated as was the weakest amongst all.

The new name given to him as a Demon King was ‘Diablo Kim’.

When he is still trying to regain his bearings and figure out what to do, his ‘Demon King’s Castle’ constantly repeats the same words.

[Hunt adventurers and absorb experience points.]

However, it was simply something he couldn’t do.

‘I mean, I’m not good at fighting…’

Kim was an ordinary student who lived in a world where magic and war never existed. The only fighting experience he had was fighting against an 8-year-old boy in his neighbourhood. So, he would have been killed if he faced the Hero directly.

For that reason, Diablo Kim decided to invest in the ‘Demon King’s Castle’ rather than hunting adventurers to increase his power. It was a madness which had never been seen in the long history of Demon Kings. It was proven by the fact that the Demon King’s Castle kept saying ‘what kind of Demon King does not develop his own power and only cultivates his castle?’ at his decision.

After all, no matter how strong the Demon King’s Castle is, the one who has to be strong is the Demon King himself!

However, he had a different mindset from other Demon Kings. Trap, strategy, betrayal, and alienation was his modus operandi. He lured adventurers to the Demon King’s Castle and killed them using a cowardly and dirty way which didn’t fit the name of Demon King.

Then five years passed. Rumour about a new Hero had been summoned to the world began to spread. At the same time, Demon King Diablo Kim became one of the strongest Demon Kings. Although the original power of Diablo Kim was very weak, the one which made him become one of the strongest was the power of his castle.

“A hero was summoned?”

-Yes, my lord.

Diablo Kim, who had become a dignified Demon King, looked at the woman with purple hair in the picture who was bowing toward him.

She used to be an existence that could be called as a Demon King’s Castle, ‘Darkness Delete’ itself, but now, she has manifested into the form of a woman.

-My lord. Heroes are the beings who imprinted fear on the demons throughout history. We could never match them alone. Please ally with other demon kings.

“Do you think I will lose to those skinny humans?”

Although his power is only at the level of a human knight, but with his Demon King’s Castle on his side, the title ‘strongest’ was too far-fetched for him. His arrogance was also founded since other Demon Kings wouldn’t dare to attack him, and no other Empire or Holy Church dared to challenge Diablo Kim.

“I won’t leave the Demon King’s Castle anyway.” Since the Demon King’s Castle was the strongest, it guarantees absolute invincibility. But what if the Hero got tired and came to his castle himself?

“At that time, the Hero will become my experience.”

Diablo Kim’s mouth curved upwards. He began to look forward to the day when the man called the Hero would come to his Demon King’s Castle.