Chapter 100: Awakening of a demon emperor
The gentle warmth of sumr was suddenly replaced by an oppressive, suffocating heat. Shadows crept across the sky as the once-blue heavens darkened. The laughter of children that filled the air just monts ago faded away, replaced by a deep, eerie hum that vibrated through the earth itself.
Shin blinked.
The amusent park lted around him.
He expected to wake up in his bed, perhaps a bit shaken from a strange dream. But instead, he found himself standing alone in the middle of a crimson forest.
The trees towered above him, their bark raw, oozing sap like open wounds. A thick red fog slithered across the ground, curling around his legs like serpents.
And then... that voice.
A familiar language whispered in the distance—foreign, haunting, and impossible to understand, yet it stirred sothing deep inside him.
He turned and saw her.
She stood there in silence. Breathtakingly beautiful, ethereal, and undeniably dangerous.
Her eyes, slit like a serpent’s, glead with ancient knowledge. Her smile was slow and knowing, the kind that chilled the blood despite her beauty.
"You saved . Expectedly..." she said, voice soft and silky, like velvet stretched over steel.
Shin didn’t flinch. His heart pounded furiously, but his feet stayed rooted to the blood-colored soil.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
"You already know," she whispered, tilting her head slightly.
His hands curled into fists. The black mist, dormant for so long, began to rise around him once more.
"Tell ," he growled.
She took a step forward, bare feet touching the earth without a sound. She stopped just in front of him, so close he could feel the coldness of her aura.
"You forgot your na, didn’t you?"
"...What?"
"Not the na they gave you. The real you."
His breath hitched. He stared at her, transfixed. It felt like he’d been searching for her all his life without knowing why.
"You hadn’t changed," She lifted her hand and gently pressed a single finger to his forehead.
"Here, I’ll give you a little push... Wake up."
---
Shin jolted upright, gasping.
He was in his room. The ceiling above was familiar. The soft rustling of tangled sheets beneath him grounded him to reality.
But before he could breathe a sigh of relief, a sharp, unbearable pain stabbed through his skull.
He clutched his head, his body trembling, face pale. The agony was unlike anything he had felt, like his brain was being shattered and stitched back together, only to be torn apart again.
He rolled on the bed, teeth clenched, trying not to scream.
Veins bulged across his forehead and arms.
His childhood mories flashed rapidly—so warm and real, then distorted, replaced by fragnts of sothing ancient. Sothing... not human.
Voices surged inside his mind, overlapping in a chaotic chorus.
"The scent of demonesses from Avernus... How I’ve missed the Capital’s treasures!"
"We’re approaching the Capital, my King."
"Your majesty, the little Crown Prince is missing again!"
"The curse of the throne must never leave the forbidden forest!"
"My addiction burns like an eternal fire... and still, I surrender."
Chains clanked. A thousand tongues whispered. Known and unknown languages twisted and echoed, crawling under his skin.
Then...her again.
The woman who looked like Yeri.
But this ti, it wasn’t the Yeri he knew. The one who made him laugh. The one he couldn’t stop thinking about.
This version held sothing darker, tragic and terrifying. Her smiles were laced with sorrow. Her affection, deceptive. Her presence, cursed.
Shin’s eyes widened. He didn’t know what hurt more—the fragnts of truth or the whirlwind of emotions they dragged with them. Anguish, rage, betrayal... loss.
In a mont of desperation, he banged his head against the bedfra, trying to silence it all.
His cries turned into laughter, and his laughter warped into screams.
A terrifying transformation overtook him. His eyes bled red. The air thickened with a violent, ominous mist. The very room seed to tremble with his unstable aura.
Outside, nature responded. Thunder cracked overhead. Rain poured in sheets. The sumr night turned wild with wind and lightning.
Then, footsteps.
Calm. Unhurried.
The doorknob clicked, and the door creaked open.
Tristan stood there and froze.
Shin sat on the bed, drenched in shadows. His red eyes glowed with madness, and a twisted smile tugged at his lips.
Tristan swallowed hard.
"Faris Helle," Shin said in a voice that could tear through steel. "You dared to seal ?"
Tristan forced a smile, though inwardly he cursed all the demons. He had only just hurriedly returned from abroad, but still he was too late.
Yes, he was strong but compared to the Emperor, who nearly brought about the downfall and annihilation of the demon world, his strength was laughable.
"How could I possibly disrespect you, Your Majesty? Our re existence here is already a threat, a violation of this realm’s Universal Law..." Tristan paused, glancing out the window. Shin’s awakening had brought forth a calamity and worse, a possible dinsional distortion.
"It was more of a restraint than a seal. If you’d truly been sealed, your spiritual consciousness wouldn’t have found her."
Suddenly, a thick, relentless, and terrifying dark mist surged at Tristan, forcing him to drop to one knee.
Damn it! he cursed inwardly as golden threads lit up on his fingertips.
Shin scoffed. With a single stomp of his foot, the threads shattered, and Tristan, weightless as a pillow was flung against the wall.
Blood trickled from his mouth. He felt his human body beginning to break. Like Shin, his eyes turned a deep, glowing red.
The two clashed, black and gold auras colliding violently, destroying the entire room in their wake.
Oddly, no one ca. Not a soul stirred. Tristan had already taken care of that.
Against the Mad Emperor, humans were worthless. Unnecessary. Insignificant.
They wouldn’t survive the awakening of a demon emperor.
Outside, the thunder rumbled louder. Lightning struck a nearby tree with a deafening crack.
Anyone else would’ve been terrified by the strange and sudden weather shift.
Tristan lay on the ground, bloodied, breath ragged.
The room looked as if a titan had torn through it. Rain poured in, mixing with his blood
Before Shin could attack again, Tristan gasped, "Rember your deal with the Light Realm. If this world falls...she falls with it."
Shin stilled. A flicker of fear crossed his blood-red eyes.
Slowly, the black mist began to recede.
Tristan, battered and drenched, gave a breathy laugh. "Why do you always choose violence over a conversation? At this rate, if you don’t suppress your aura and rein in your demon consciousness, this realm will collapse into catastrophe."
Just like a human body’s immune system detecting foreign invaders and launching an attack, every realm instinctively recognizes threats, those who don’t belong. Natural disasters are its response, its defense.
And if this realm continues to resist... the weak, helpless humans will beco its first casualties.
---
Morning arrived.
The sun rose, brilliant and beautiful, casting warm light that brought hope to every corner of the land.
Butler Hong was in a particularly cheerful mood. Humming softly, he went about his morning routine. When he peeked out the window, he blinked in surprise.
"When did it rain?" he mumbled to himself.
He didn’t dwell on it, thinking less watering to do, and fewer plants to worry about in the sumr heat.
Outside, the gardeners were already clearing a scorched, fallen tree.
"Was the rain really that bad last night?" Butler Hong asked, pausing.
The gardeners shrugged, equally baffled. None of them rembered hearing a storm. They had all slept deeply through the night.
In the kitchen, Butler Hong found Father Keir seated at the breakfast table, sipping coffee while watching the news.
Noticing him, Father Keir nodded. "The weather apparently turned bad last night. Thunderstorms, lightning. A tsunami hit the West Island, and Crystal City reported a landslide. Luckily, the rain didn’t last long."
Since it was a natural disaster, they didn’t think much of it.
They continued chatting until Butler Hong rembered sothing. "By the way, I heard Miss Zhi was also involved in that night market incident..."
Father Keir froze, his hand trembling slightly around his coffee cup. If anything had happened to that girl, his son might really beco a lifelong bachelor... celibate, at that.
His dreams of grandchildren would vanish like mist.
Just then, Shin entered the room with a blank, unreadable expression. He grabbed sothing from the fridge and vanished again like a gust of wind.
The two didn’t even get a chance to ask about Yeri’s condition.
Last night, Shin had already restored the destroyed parts of his room and a section of the villa.
Monts later, there was a knock at the dining room door.
Tristan stepped in, still wrapped in bandages. "Uncle. Butler Hong. Have you seen Shin?"
Father Keir stared in shock. "Kiddo, did that bad-tempered boy beat you up?"
Tristan smiled awkwardly. "We were training with Hexion. It just got a little serious."
Though Tristan could heal faster than normal humans, the superficial wounds remained. If Shin had been willing to help, he could’ve erased every injury, just like he restored the villa overnight.
But given Shin’s temperant and the lingering grudge for having been "sealed
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