Chapter 292: Episode 292_Descent of the Demon King (1)
1.
For a mont, silence fell.
Everyone’s gaze snapped to Han Simin, who had shouted with such urgency.
There wasn’t a trace of playfulness on his face.
Anyone who saw him would have thought he had just witnessed a murder—no, a serial killer.
He shouted again.
“That bastard is the Demon King! Are you all insane? How could you open a Gate to the Demon World! That one was connected straight to the Demon King’s castle! Those damn warlocks. They hid that from us and pulled this stunt right before they died.”
Everyone was struck speechless.
The sheer urgency in his voice made everyone feel an inexplicable need to act.
Han Simin’s performance was that convincing.
He looked like a veteran player who had instantly recognized a boss’s attack pattern on the first try. He knew everyone needed to dodge, but his party mbers were just staring blankly in a panic, and he was furious about it.
A few seconds.
In that brief span, the first person to regain her senses was the Imperial Princess.
In truth, she hadn’t wanted to be the first to regain her composure.
What she had wanted more than anything was to run to Han Simin and throw herself into his arms.
She had wanted to ask him.
’Are you hurt? Did you miss ? I missed you so much I thought I would die.’
She had wanted to act cute, to cling to him with all her strength and shake off the anxiety that had been eating at her.
That was the natural desire of a woman, of a wife in love.
But she was the Imperial Princess.
The daughter of the Iron-Blood Emperor, the ruler of the continent.
At this mont, she stood not as a wife, but as the Imperial Princess acting in her father’s stead.
She had to respond to the words “Demon King” before she could yield to her desire to run into his arms.
Between the Demon King and Han Simin—
The internal conflict didn’t last long.
She was that fast.
Before anyone else had even fully co to their senses.
The Imperial Princess’s gaze swept coldly over the Heavenly King and the ten Celestials standing on the magic circle.
She knew there was no ti.
If Han Simin was right, they should imdiately surround and capture them. But there was still a chance he might be wrong.
If she were judging as Han Simin’s wife, she would have issued the order on the spot.
However, because she had decided to judge as the Imperial Princess, she had to at least consider the possibility that he was mistaken.
That was the mark of a true leader.
Of course, her eyes were already filled with the conviction that these strangers were demons.
She might deny it, but to the Heavenly King and the Celestials, her gaze wasn’t one of cautious verification; it was the look of soone searching for a pretext.
’Just give
one reason.’
Sensing this, the Heavenly King shouted in a panic.
“No! We are Celestials! I am the Heavenly King!”
Strictly speaking, there was no need for him to protest his innocence like this.
The Heavenly King was the absolute ruler of the Celestial Realm.
Every priest on the continent, including those of the Great Temple, was bound to obey him as the one who represented God. There were countless ways to prove his identity.
He could simply display his divine power or deliver an oracle to the Pope standing right there.
Even so, there was one reason he was crying out so desperately.
He had sensed it, too.
The girl standing beside Han Simin in the distance, waving her hand with a seductive smile.
Demon King Epia.
All her demonic traits had vanished.
’So I’ve ended up like that, too.’
He couldn’t feel his divine power, and his back felt light.
Along with that ca a single, clear thought.
’That human bastard. He’s cunning.’
He didn’t even have ti to shout that this was all nonsense.
That expression, that tone, that inflection.
The disadvantage was entirely on his side.
In the Celestial or Demon Realms, the Heavenly King, who held the Sanctuary, had always been in a favorable position. But now, he had lost all his power, brought only ten Celestials with him, and even they were now nothing more than upper-rank Celestials who had lost their strength.
anwhile, the other side could control every human present.
At least, that was how it looked to the Heavenly King.
So he had to explain.
He had to buy enough ti to at least escape.
It was a choice he could make precisely because he was truly intelligent and had ruled the Celestial Realm for so long.
He cast aside all pride and, without a mont’s hesitation, decided to persuade re humans with words.
To make such a decision without the slightest delay—to plead with humans—would surely be recorded in Celestial history as a legendary display of quick thinking.
Unfortunately, his opponent was the Imperial Princess.
And she was already completely blinded by love.
The Heavenly King had read her determination to seize on any flaw, but he hadn’t realized just how deeply in love with Han Simin she was.
In truth, she had already believed him.
She believed him, and the words were already on the tip of her tongue.
Her cold gaze had already picked out a mountain of flaws.
Before the Heavenly King could even begin his excuses, her lips parted.
“Surround the Demon King and the demons!”
“...No, that’s not—!”
As if they had been waiting for the order, the knights and soldiers moved to encircle the magic circle.
The circle was enormous, but they had deployed even more troops than they had against the warlocks, just in case the Demon King erged.
Their numbers were smaller than during the war, but the force was far more elite.
The Heavenly King panicked, but there was no way to turn the situation around.
Not only the commanders but even the rank-and-file soldiers were watching them with suspicion.
This was not sothing he could fix with words.
It was understandable, at least from the perspective of the Heavenly King and the Celestials.
The situation was too perfectly damning.
They had opened the Gate, but in the end, it was the warlocks’ transfer circle that had activated.
They had erged from a Gate connected to the Demon King’s castle, and they had no way to prove their identities.
The magic circle spread out beneath their feet, splattered with blood. The corpses of the warlocks who had been sacrificed to activate it gave off a sinister atmosphere.
And to put the final nail in the coffin, there was the blood on the Heavenly King and the Celestials.
They had been busy slaughtering demons, so they couldn’t refute it.
No, they didn’t even have ti to.
“Capture them! If they resist, you may kill them!”
You had to give soone a chance to speak if you wanted them to say anything.
Their physical abilities were still decent enough to resist, but the Heavenly King shook his head.
Nothing he said or did now would get through.
He had hoped this kind of situation wouldn’t arise, but there was nothing to be done.
Ti would pass, and the mistake would have to be corrected.
At least there was one consolation.
He had not been annihilated.
The Heavenly King clung to that belief.
No matter how clever the Demon King’s trick, no matter what trap he had fallen into, this was still the continent.
The people of the continent would not be so easily deceived by the Demon King and thrown into chaos.
At the very least, the Pope and the Saintess would not.
Once he recovered even a fraction of his power, there would be countless ways to prove the truth.
And so, the Heavenly King and the Celestials, branded as the Demon King, were captured alive.
*
Kenji’s Kingdom Conquest War was broadcast live.
From the infiltration operation to the grand spectacle of Dino’s dazzling magic.
The spells he had kept hidden until his second Awakening were more than enough to make viewers gasp in awe. No, they did more than suffice; they were overwhelming.
They weren’t teors, but the bombardnt of small falling stars from the sky was a rain of fire that embroidered the dark dawn.
The blazing projectiles poured down, mocking the sturdy walls.
Castles were, by design, open to the sky.
No one on the continent had ever thought to build a roof to guard against such an attack.
So there was nothing they could do.
Fireballs rained down inside the castle.
The bulk of the firepower was focused on the main gate.
Only a tiny fraction of the soldiers on the walls were able to launch counterattacks.
Even those few couldn’t land a proper hit on the fewer than one hundred mbers of the Kenji Guild.
They were too busy scrambling to dodge the fiery rain to even think about stopping the enemy.
It was a spectacular sight.
Kenji watched the broadcast with a satisfied smile.
He had spared no expense on Dino for this very day.
Lately, he had been pouring more money into Dino’s Story Quests than into wars or his own spec upgrades.
Even so, Dino said the Story Quest was only halfway done.
Kenji had no idea how much more he would have to invest.
But now, he wiped that worry away in one stroke.
’He’s this strong, and he’s only halfway through.’
He had grown this powerful.
The Legendary Archmage class had already been so overwhelmingly strong that no one on the continent could compare, but now it felt more than ten tis stronger.
And he had only cleared two quests.
The money? He didn’t regret a single coin.
He had always been a businessman who invested in people.
If he could secure talented individuals through investnt, he wouldn’t hesitate to sell off a few of his companies.
And now, he saw hope.
’I can surpass you, Simin.’
A user who possessed two of the only five Legendary classes on the continent.
The only user who had monopolized everything in the early ga and was still monopolizing the Main Quest.
For Kenji, who had been planning to catch up and overtake him by different ans, this was a ray of hope in the darkness.
A head-on clash of forces.
He might be able to match him on that front as well.
There was no reason to hesitate in his investnts.
However, despite his joy, the viewer count was lower than he had expected.
Even though this was the day of the decisive battle.
There were fewer viewers than on the days he had been preparing for war.
He was puzzled.
’What?’
The smile of satisfaction on his face froze.
Was there a problem?
He checked again, but the viewer count hadn’t changed.
A thousand different thoughts ran through his head.
No matter how rich or powerful a man was, a strear was still a strear.
They lived and died by their viewer count.
No matter how satisfied they were with their own content, if the viewers didn’t like it, they couldn’t help but feel dejected and wonder what they had done wrong.
Fortunately, Kenji wasn’t quite that fragile.
He knew how to assess himself with cold objectivity.
The siege was undeniably overwhelming, and he had neatly and decisively cut down the tedious ti usually spent breaking down walls.
There would definitely be vicarious satisfaction in that.
In fact, the chat window was flooded with ssages of amazent.
So he analyzed the situation from another angle.
“Is it because it’s so early?”
The dim, gray hour before dawn.
Maybe people were asleep.
He had taken that into account.
If he had wanted a bigger audience, he could have done this in broad daylight, but that would have been putting the cart before the horse.
Even considering the ti, the numbers were too low.
Unable to figure out the reason, Kenji glanced at the chat.
It was overflowing with admiration, but scattered among the comnts were lines that had nothing to do with his stream.
—Han Simin’s channel is currently streaming the final episode of the Demon World content.
Leeches, advertising soone else’s stream in his chat.
He didn’t bother kicking them out.
They were cockroaches; even if you squashed them, they never really went away.
He just tilted his head in puzzlent.
He knew Han Simin was streaming. He just hadn’t cared, since it was just a recording.
’Has everyone gone over there?’
Kenji kept his eyes on the rapidly scrolling chat, and finally, his persistence paid off as the answer appeared before his eyes.
—Coordinates: Simin’s channel. The recording just cut out, and a live stream started. It’s insane. Legendary. Both the Demon King and the Heavenly King have crossed over to the continent, but starting with the Imperial Princess, then the Pope, and even the Saintess, they all mistook the Heavenly King for the Demon King and dragged him away. This is seriously god-tier content. That crazy Simin... I an, it’s definitely fun, but is this even allowed? Anyway, I’m just here to spread the word, then I’m heading back. Co if you want, or don’t. Your call.
It wasn’t a recording.
It was live.
Han Simin had gone live.
And he had kicked it off with a massive twist, one that would shock every viewer who had just finished watching the Demon World episodes.
*
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