Honestly, I want to take down that troublemaker Anna, drag Catherine back, and stage a hero-saves-the-beauty. Regret settles like cold ash; this isn’t something done easily.

First things first. To bring Catherine back, I have to kill Anna. If Anna lives, Catherine’s body, brimming with Slaughter, will end her the instant she returns.

Killing Anna is the core. But she’s a hard kill. She and I clashed in the Demon Realm for centuries; if she were easy, she wouldn’t still be breathing.

To a Demon King—or to the gods—themself are the personification of a ruling concept. As long as their concept stands, they don’t truly die.

A Son of the Demon King is one step shy of omniscience and omnipotence. We carry fragments of a complete Demon King’s authority. Power varies with how well we wield our domain.

Know this: Demon Kings and gods don’t compare cleanly. As independent concepts, each is all-knowing and all-powerful inside their own domain, with no sway in another’s realm.

So when two Demon Kings fight, and both deny and sever the concepts inside them that fall under the other’s rule, neither can hurt the other.

A Son of the Demon King still has to keep a material shape. Sure, I can swap faces like changing masks, but that’s cosmetic, not a conceptual shift. We can still be killed.

Anna’s hard to kill because her domain is foul—Slaughter. Any act holding the concept of Slaughter becomes part of her. You can kill living things. How do you kill Slaughter itself?

She manipulates her domain with wicked skill, on par with some Demon Kings of the Demon Realm. That covers up her not-yet-a-Demon-King flaw.

Even I’ve only got sixteen ways to end her. Most would scorch my future plans for the Demon King Army, so they’re off the table.

Meaning, I’ve got no clean move on Anna right now. I have to wait it out. Maybe let her taste the formation Stini’s Hero Squad used against Shadow Demon Andor.

To assemble that much EXP and god-tier gear, I need to keep helping Stini’s crew adventure. Killing Anna is a Volume Six job—maybe Volume Five if luck burns bright.

So failing to save Catherine isn’t me slacking off. It’s bad timing. Coming to the underground vault beneath the Hero Academy isn’t a dry-spell detour. It’s all according to plan.

I wet my parched throat with a mouth of wine, heat spreading like embers.

“What are you saying? Nonsense.”

The long-skirted girl with hollow eyes still sat on the chains, unmoved, like frost on iron.

“You asked why I came. A lady asks, a gentleman answers.”

“Is that so.”

Her voice was thin and distant. She turned her head my way, yet her eyes slid past me, staring into a piece of empty air that wasn’t there.

“Want a Baro biscuit? Hero girls love these. Sweet as sunlit wheat.”

“No…”

“How about Liwei tentacle rolls? A snack I recommend. The way they wriggle in your mouth is… addictive.”

“…”

“Tea, red wine—pick whichever you like better.”

“Ah. Who are you.”

Her gaze finally fixed on me. Even I, clumsy at reading hearts, felt the emptiness behind those eyes, a soul meager as mist.

It wasn’t attention to me. More like curiosity at a noisy thing.

Whiter than a newborn. Calmer than dusk. Emptier than the dead. Colder than a butcher’s blade.

She wore the world’s most perfect maiden’s shell, a face as beautiful as dawn. Inside, nothing like the common lot—mess and chaos, fog with no path.

Her not recognizing me irked. I tossed tea leaves worth a fortune into the Shadow, walked up, and lifted her delicate chin.

Still that vacant gaze. A mirror with no reflection.

“Hey, Sun, don’t tell me you forgot me. We chat often. You were dull back then, sure, but not sealed off like this.”

“Ah, you’re… that…”

Her mouth opened and closed a few times, toddler-stilted, words with no meaning. Looks like she almost remembered me.

Her face stayed blank, yet her air softened. A thawed inch on a winter lake.

Maybe… she’s painfully shy?

“I’m not the sun. The sun hangs in the sky, not underground.”

“The one above is the Sun God, Sun. You’re the oldest Sun. That guy is a new god born of mortal worship. Not truly great.”

“If you want, I can make you the new Sun God, hanging high over the living.”

“No… no. I have to guard her.”

Clumsy, yet firm, she pointed at the other girl wrapped in countless chains.

“That puts me in a bind. I very much want to let her out.”

“No…”

Her gaze slipped off me again, turning to nowhere. Troublesome. I dislike talk that collapses after one word. If she wanted something I could trade, fine. But she’s newly born, desire barely a spark.

Trouble, trouble. If I wished, I could grab the Light Jade by force. I have that kind of strength.

But the Light Jade is both key and gatekeeper. Without her assent, these chains sealing the Demon King of Abhorrence won’t open.

I stared at the sleeping girl’s forehead where two complete, savage horns curved, and clicked my tongue.

We fixed an imprint, woke the Light Jade’s persona and shape, and still… no go?

This hollow-eyed girl is the forerunner of the Lunarfolk—the concept made flesh when the Lightfolk severed their Solar factor.

The Lightfolk’s Sorcerer Emperor, Belif, to steady his people’s minds, chose to lessen their power, easing the burden of light on spirit.

After debate, they judged the other races strong enough to guard the world under day. So the Lightfolk cut away their Solar factor, kept only the call to the moon, and became the quiet sentinels of night.

The severed part, refined by the Sorcerer Emperor, became the Light Jade.

When the Golden Age ended, the Lunarfolk wanted to return the Light Jade to the Sun God, Sun, since it held a piece of the solar concept.

But Sun said the Light Jade was a gift from the Creator to the Lunarfolk. It shouldn’t be passed on. He refused to accept it.

The Lunarfolk sought to limit their own strength, so a strength-raising Light Jade was hidden away.

Years later, when the Son of the Demon King of Abhorrence was about to rise and end the mortal world, a Lunarfolk hero and the Hero of that age used the Light Jade to seal Abhorrence.

The seal’s address is the Hero Academy. In a way, the Academy was founded to watch this seal. Guarding it was paramount.

Seeing the seal directly is nearly impossible. But there’s a loophole.

The Light Jade is a union-split of the Lightfolk, holding Solar factors and shards of Lightfolk souls—unstable fragments. I reached from afar, exerted my domain of authority, and woke some concepts: “female,” “beauty,” “humanoid,” “body structure,” “reason,” and more.

It’s not a job for mortals. Most of those concepts already slept inside the Light Jade. Extracting the ones I wanted and combining them was hard. Doing it remotely was worse.

Now I grasp how tiring it is for the Creator to shape the ten thousand things from nothing.

I also made the ghost girl in the Hero Academy library by a similar method. She only needed a “bookish maiden” concept. Far easier.

Not true creation—I drew out what already existed. Being the first to recognize her image, I helped bind it into a material form.

So now, I want the Light Jade to abandon the seal on Abhorrence. I’ve spared no effort.

“Outside holds many beautiful sights. Blizzards on the Everfrozen northern plain. The western desert’s scorching sun. Spring rain on the Fengming highlands. Storms over the Endless Sea.”

I switched to another snack. She only shook her head, like a reed refusing the wind.

What else could lure her outward?

“What’s the point of guarding a Demon King forever?”

I left the Light Jade’s girl, stepped to the sleeping maiden trussed in chains, and studied her fine face, carved like jade and frost.

Touching the chains with malice triggers the sealing array. The Light Jade attacking me is small trouble. Drawing Augustus or other guardians in, seeing the Light Jade turned human—that would be bad.

I haven’t finished shaping the Light Jade’s worldview.

The array triggers on malice—intent to break the seal. But if I merely wake Abhorrence…

I’ve parsed the array’s workings. Without tripping the countermeasures, I set my hand on the chain the Light Jade sits on and gave it a small shake.

“Hey, Sun. Waking her doesn’t break your rules, right?”

She glanced my way, then shifted to a more comfortable seat on the chain. Probably her “whatever” gesture. After a pause, she added:

“You can’t wake her. Her mind and body are locked together. Without my permission, she can do nothing. She can’t think.”

“Really?”

“I have no reason to lie to you.”

I frowned, thinking. I’d planned to wake the Demon King first, then bargain for her exit. That won’t work now.

I have to unseal her first, then claim my payment. Goods first, coin later.

How vexing…