Chapter 407

Chapter 407
## Chapter 407

### The Demon World Temple (1)

An ink-black vapor, creeping forward like a sentient reflection, slithered toward him. Its very proximity felt oddly… familiar.

It conjured up old memories—fleeting visions of a dimly lit ceiling before drifting off to sleep, a makeshift childhood fortress constructed out of bedsheets, the comforting embrace of a parent…

Darkness, offering nothing but tranquility and repose.

An abrupt impulse washed over him, an intense longing to yield to the shadows and welcome the everlasting oblivion they promised.

The undulating silhouettes shifting within the vapor seemed to signal him, their extended fingers resembling those of companions from a lifetime ago.

Just as he stood on the verge of giving in to that mesmerizing gloom,

“Hey! Wake up!”

“Gah!”

…a coarse grip seized him tightly by the back of his neck, holding him in an unyielding clutch.

His frame, resembling a flimsy doll swept up by a gale, was violently pulled backward.

Thump—!

Immediately after, a spike of black vapor, sharp as a shadow-forged pike, crashed into the exact tile where he had been standing only a second prior.

It appeared to be nothing more than an innocent plume of smoke… yet it possessed a solid form, and the force of its strike reverberated through the grand chamber.

“This fellow is completely checked out.”

“That mass over there must be the source.”

Voices, blending with the howling rush of displaced air, rang out near his ears.

He remained suspended in that dragging motion, his limbs hanging loose and devoid of strength.

Knitting his brows as a piercing ache throbbed in his skull, he forced himself with immense exertion to shift his gaze.

One of Davidson’s heads, teeth locked firmly onto his collar, was sprinting forward at maximum velocity.

“Curse it, my brain feels like it’s splitting…”

He ground his teeth together, his vision whirling as the agony intensified.

He was exerting every ounce of his will to battle the temptation to surrender to the void, his muscles scarcely obeying his commands.

“Hey, can you hear me? Are you holding up?”

“Hardly… Damn it, everything makes sense now. Did he hand over this vessel specifically for this moment…? I can feel myself… fading into him… Ugh!”

That dark vapor… it belonged to the soul that originally inhabited this flesh.

He was fighting back, his two decades of… occupancy granting him a marginal upper hand… but that advantage was rapidly slipping away.

‘…This is a terrible situation.’

Davidson, all three of his countenances scowling as his momentum began to flag, picked up on Ken’s agonizing struggle.

[“——!”]

The ink-black vapor pursued their tracks without a moment’s pause.

The sanctuary they were in was colossal, its vaulting roof stretching dozens of meters overhead… yet the shadow-mist, advancing like an incoming deluge, was swiftly filling the expansive hallway, its pressure growing suffocating.

Rumble— Kaboom!

Naturally, he had attempted to strike back.

「Gourmand」 and 「Power of Gluttony」, the distinct traits unique to his existence, were capable of consuming even abstract and non-physical concepts.

However, a critical… restriction existed.

He actually had to… bite and swallow it.

‘…It isn’t completely useless, but the process is far too slow.’

The dark vapor, existing as an amorphous, cloud-like entity, was… scattered across too wide an area.

He couldn’t possibly gulp down the entirety of it in a single breath.

Furthermore, it wasn’t genuine smoke, meaning he couldn’t simply… draw it into his lungs.

‘…And expanding my physical scale to clash with it directly isn’t viable either. It’s far too tricky a foe. Its hexes completely bypass my innate magical defenses…’

The mist drained his vitality whenever he attempted to feed on it.

More importantly, its true objective wasn’t his own body, but Ken.

‘…I cannot permit it to claim him.’

He recognized, with a profound certainty that bypassed all intellect and deduction,

…that a catastrophic… transformation would occur if that vapor managed to assimilate Ken.

For that exact reason, he kept running, refusing to engage in an outright brawl.

“Hey, do you have any idea why that entity is trapped here?”

“Hmm… From what I gather, he was… double-crossed by the Dragon Marquis. The specifics elude me.”

“Snort! That doesn’t help us much!”

“…My apologies. I am barely maintaining my grip on reality. The moment my concentration wavers, I will be… swallowed whole.”

He had already formed a strong inkling regarding the true nature of the vapor.

The very individual whose sudden disappearance had thrown the entire Demon World into utter turmoil.

Tanuin, the 15th Demon King.

‘…If he is locked away in this place… it has to be connected to the divine messenger who paid a visit to the Dragon Marquis.’

Davidson, having translated the ancient glyphs carved into the masonry using 「Xenoglossy」, had successfully deduced the nature of their surroundings.

‘…The man is incredibly meticulous. To think he managed to construct a hidden sanctuary in a place like this.’

A sacred structure dedicated to the divinity chained within the deepest chasm.

Granted, it wasn’t a structure built from scratch.

It was merely… linked to the Demon World via a spatial gateway, a concealed threshold.

The portal situated right behind the massive pillar.

‘…The Dragon Marquis must have provided assistance… but the feat remains staggering. And he actually contrived to… overpower a Demon King and reduce him to that state…’

He found himself wondering what the Demon God, the ultimate sovereign of the Demon World, was doing while this transpired.

In contrast to the cast-out deity, who was now utilizing any desperate tactic available, the true Demon God was a genuine immortal bound by cosmic codes and restrictions.

“Gah!”

Ken let out a sharp cry as a dark cord of mist, resembling a shadowy scourge, snapped violently toward them.

Davidson whipped his body aside to evade and bit through the structure, but the dark vapor that scattered into the air from the severed line still left a devastating impact on them.

Crack!

“Ugh! Dammit!”

Ken’s frame shuddered violently, his skeletal structure popping and snapping as he strained to push back the invading gloom.

Davidson, throwing a backward glance at him, bared his teeth in frustration.

The corruption was eating away at his smooth coat, causing patches of fur to fall out in ragged heaps.

‘…We can’t keep this up. A countermeasure is required.’

His arsenal was poorly suited for fighting non-corporeal manifestations.

He could withstand the damage through his innate mending factors… but Ken had reached his absolute threshold.

He needed to execute a counter-move before the boy was entirely overwritten.

Yet, how could one realistically wage war against a former Demon King who had degenerated into a… living, breathing hex?

‘…Is Hans my sole remaining card? He possesses the means to handle this…’

However, a major… underlying risk remained.

This domain belonged to the Human God’s temple.

Even a deity cast down from grace would retain a certain… spiritual tether to this location.

He would undoubtedly possess the capability to… oversee what transpired within.

‘…He might very well be… scrutinizing every inch of this ground right now.’

He wasn’t overly concerned about being watched while operating in his current ‘Davidson Mode’—his true might and traits were bottlenecked, and his 「Seed of Madness」 remained heavily locked down…

…but he was fiercely opposed to displaying Hans’s unmitidaged strength before the Immortal King, his primary adversary within Auterica.

‘…Furthermore, Hans’s “Immortal Heart” originates directly from that fallen deity’s sacred essence. There is a chance he could… snatch it back.’

As he weighed his rapidly dwindling options,

…an idea, a sudden burst of clarity, cut through his frantic thoughts.

‘…A living hex?’

Tanuin, the 15th Demon King, having surrendered his physical shell and suffered the degradation of his spirit, had literally transformed into a curse.

His baseline reservoir of energy and his ranking remained staggeringly high… yet his core essence, his fundamental definition, had been… fundamentally altered.

‘…Just maybe…’

His three distinct heads, working in perfect synchronization with the intellects of his alternate vessels, began running complex calculations, vetting various scenarios.

The final verdict arrived…

‘…This actually stands a chance.’

The likelihood of a favorable outcome was high.

Initiate the strategy.

—

Tanuin had climbed to the rank of the 15th Demon King only after surviving an endless gauntlet of brutal trials and tribulations.

Yet, even after grasping the crown he had coveted for so long, peace eluded him.

He was fully aware of the internal machinations of Dragon Marquis Krushaior, specifically his plots to assassinate L’rei’e, the 14th Demon King.

After all, he had personally taken part in that very conspiracy back when he held the rank of a mere Duke.

However, executing a former competitor who had already bent the knee… it would ruin his reputation.

It would present him as… fragile, terrified of a ghost from the past.

Consequently, he had been biding his time, searching for an unassailable pretext…

…and Krushaior, reading his hesitation perfectly, had taken the initiative.

He had approached the throne, presenting an invaluable offering.

“A shard of divinity?”

It was a temptation no ruler could possibly turn down.

A portion of a higher power!

Tanuin, having attained a semi-divine condition upon ascending as the Demon King, recognized its immense worth instantly.

Sacred energy, a relic of a god’s true self, originating from an entity equal to, or perhaps even greater than, the Demon God.

If he could successfully synthesize it into his own being, his grandest, life-long yearning…

…his obsession to… cleave the heavens themselves, a fantasy he had nurtured since the first moment he gazed up at the sky of the Demon World…

…might finally materialize within his grasp.

Naturally, he hadn’t simply… swallowed it down without implementing rigorous safeguards.

This was, after all, a token from Krushaior, the Dragon Marquis—his fiercest competitor.

He exerted his supreme authority as the Demon King to dissect the artifact thoroughly, measuring its traits and establishing several layers of contingency plans.

Should Krushaior attempt any treachery, he would obliterate him once and for all.

At long last, when he felt entirely confident that his semi-divine state would allow him to absorb the celestial shard without any negative blowback…

…he integrated it into himself.

[“Khehe— Your own insatiable desire has sealed your doom, Tanuin!”]

In that exact moment, the unthinkable occurred.

The shard of divinity… it was not… unmoored from its creator.

“Krushaior! You wretched snake!”

The relic, activated by the fervent incantations of the divine messenger, established a direct line to its master, an unnamed deity.

And Tanuin, who had just bound it to his core, was dragged into that connection.

He was undeniably a semi-divine entity himself, having forged his own shard of godhood upon taking the mantle of Demon King… but his avarice had betrayed him. He found himself utterly crushed by a vastly superior divine weight before his system could even begin to process his new power.

“Do you truly believe you can break me?!”

Yet, he was not a creature to accept annihilation quietly.

He was Tanuin, the 15th Demon King, a veteran of a thousand slaughters, a hardened survivor of the Demon World’s eternal campaigns.

He fractured his fundamental essence and scattered it across the far corners of the realm, ensuring his executioners would inherit nothing but ash, while reshaping his own soul into a localized curse—a lingering manifestation of pure malice targeted at his betrayers.

[“…Tanuin, you prove yourself a disappointment even as a corpse.”]

Though he had shattered their grand designs, the divine messenger and the Dragon Marquis refused to abandon their ambitions.

They had gambled a priceless celestial relic; they couldn’t simply… allow the venture to end in total failure.

They pushed forward with alternative plots while meticulously harvesting the scattered remnants of Tanuin’s broken self, aiming to siphon away his lingering authority.

Their goal was to graft the stolen authority of the Demon King directly into Krushaior’s physical vessel, utilizing the exact same methodology they had enacted upon Ken.

[“It matters not if the Demon God denies me his blessing! I shall claim the title of Demon King by my own hand!”]

If he could successfully usurp a Demon King’s physical container and cement his dominion over the territory…

…he would ascend to the throne of the Demon King, completely independent of the sovereign deity’s endorsement.

Thus, several lifetimes slipped away.

The Demon World degenerated into absolute anarchy, precisely as orchestrated, and Krushaior, the Dragon Marquis, finished assembling the shards of the 15th Demon King to prepare for the final ascension ritual.

Then, one ordinary day, a fascinating rumor reached his ears.

Whispers of travelers from another realm—beings who existed entirely outside the established doctrines of this reality.

Shortly thereafter, denizens of Earth, including Ken, began to be systematically abducted and dragged into the depths of the Demon World.

—

An endless stream of crimson alerts rippled across his heads-up display.

Hesperon, encased within the heavy frame of his fully powered Titan exoskeleton, rapidly scanned the incoming telemetry.

-Energy Detected: 326,711,730

-Threat Evaluation: SS

-Output reading matches the core reactor of a Terra-class dreadnought. Deploy immediate evacuation protocols.

“Incredible.”

He couldn’t restrain a low whistle of astonishment.

A Terra-class dreadnought was a colossal piece of engineering, spanning well over a kilometer in length.

The absolute pinnacle of tomorrow’s warfare technology, capable of tearing through folds in space and armed with devastating localized weaponry and impenetrable particle barriers.

‘…That magnitude of power… concentrated inside a single entity?’

And that reading was registered after the target had been… severely diminished and broken into fragments.

It was a preposterous concentration of force, even taking the warped laws of the Demon World into account.

Rumble—!

The structural vibrations intensified, drawing nearer by the second.

Hesperon, his muscles locking into a rigid stance, exhaled a deep breath and finalized his combat configurations.

With a heavy metallic snap, the mechanized Titan plating shielding his right upper limb uncoupled and dissolved out of view.

Nothing remained but his bare arm, tightly swathed in linen wraps adorned with bizarre, glowing hieroglyphs.

He looked down at his exposed right hand, its bare appearance looking almost… delicate when contrasted against the massive, armored bulk of the rest of his frame.

[“——!”]

Suddenly, a hollow, guttering screech, a sound capable of freezing blood, vibrated through the air.

He raised his eyes to see a massive, three-headed canine standing directly in front of him, a battered demon clamped firmly within its jaws.

“Are we ready to begin?”

The linen wraps uncoiled themselves spontaneously, slithering down his arm like a nest of awakened vipers.

Right after, a pitch-black, draconic emblem that decorated the entirety of his flesh began to… twist and writhe.

This was no ordinary mark etched in ink.

Whoosh!

Validating his thoughts, the draconic form—its dark scales rippling and catching the light—abruptly tore free from his skin, accompanied by a violent eruption of dark, abyssal fire.

The 「Right Arm of Longing」, an asset that had remained entirely dormant until this moment.

The Black Flame Dragon sealed within, its gaze igniting with a feral, unyielding wrath, began to swell in size.

“We haven’t cut loose in quite some time, have we? Now then…”

He lacked the raw capability to overcome a ‘Demon King-grade hex’ utilizing his standard power set.

The disparity in their respective levels was simply an unbridgeable gulf. Attempting a direct clash would result in him being completely dissolved and wiped out, taking Hesperon, his mortal anchor, along with it.

However, utilizing this specific trait…

“Go ahead and feast.”

…the paradigm shifted entirely.

「Curse Devourer」.

Hesperon possessed absolute immunity against every hex in existence.