The small private room off the street was hushed, a nook shaped after eastern highlands. Incense smoldered in a corner; coils of smoke climbed like pale vines, deepening the hush. Catherine sat perfectly straight in her seat, statue-still, making the rental feel wasted.

The door sighed as Liebich pushed it open, shepherded a server in with steaming dishes and soup, then slid into her chair.

Though she was Demonfolk, she wasn’t a rabid maniac; their art was disguise, a mask of skin they wore to move and work like ordinary people.

Maybe it was their bend toward evil and chaos, maybe dull wits; yet unless they fell in battle, Demonfolk didn’t end. Time pooled for them like a dark lake, enough to study and fathom mortals.

“Eat, eat. Hey, don’t space out. Start eating.”

Even with a new face, Liebich still wore a high-slit qipao, silk like night water. She fetched a big bowl of soup from the counter, set one before herself, and another before Catherine.

She tore bread to dip, then paused; Catherine didn’t move, staring at the soup like it might stare back.

“Gone stupid… or still trying to die?”

Liebich only ate to mimic humans, a ritual for show. Catherine wasn’t a true retainer yet, just a mortal packed with dormant “Slaughter,” and she still needed food to keep the candle burning.

Given any chance, she refused to eat at all, her mouth a locked gate.

Liebich’s brow knotted, and her fist thudded down on Catherine’s skull; the girl’s face plunged into the bowl. Broth exploded outward like startled fish.

“Um, miss…”

“Beat it. Not your business.”

Liebich waved the server away like shooing a fly. The server hesitated, worry flickering, then saw Catherine lift her head from the soup without a word, and retreated.

“Eat.”

Irritation flared hot as a spark. Liebich grabbed Catherine by the hair, dragged her close, and hissed the threat.

“I’ll say it again. Eat. Without my lord’s leave, you can’t die. You can’t enter the ‘being killed’ before death, not by hunger, not by your own hand.”

Catherine didn’t budge. Her eyes were cold lake ice as she met Liebich’s gaze.

“Fine. Seems my lord’s training did nothing.”

Frustration sank heavy; scolding her was like cursing a rock. Liebich pushed her back into the chair and, resigned, pulled out the little whip Anna had given her. Catherine shivered like a leaf.

“In my lord’s name, invoke ‘Slaughter.’ I order you: eat.”

Catherine jerked in a brief spasm—then settled, machine-still, and began to eat, a sip of soup, a bite of bread, clockwork steady.

“What a pain. A royal mess. Killing one student so you could borrow her face to slip into the Hero Academy was already annoying. And that teammate of yours—Abigail? She’s a bigger headache.”

She crossed her sultry long legs and drew a few sheets from beneath her skirt hem, notes scraped together over days. Shallow stuff, puddles not wells, yet she held her temper and reviewed them again.

Thinking work wasn’t her craft; “intelligence” was a word with no handhold. So she walked the streets and caught passersby, asking about Heroes like casting lines into a river.

She’d considered kidnapping someone with pull and wringing answers out, but truth and lies wear the same face under screaming, so she let it go.

Normally, the Son of the Demon King, Anna, made a handful of puppets and ran many lines at once, netting info by talk or by force. Liebich rubbed her brow, sour with doubt; she still didn’t know how her lord sorted true from false.

Now Anna had sunk her true body into the Ocean of Darkness, hunting the Son of the Demon King of “Dispute,” Daviya, at full power. So she had no hands to spare, and Liebich had to fish intel alone.

Divine Beings were all-knowing and all-powerful; their opposite, the Demon Kings, were too. But a Son of the Demon King not yet ascended could only use a narrow slice of their domain, gaps like missing teeth.

“Stine-Saya, daughter of the Hero Augustus-Saya. Her mother is the elf saint Ibera-Lingo, the world’s only half-blood. Often seen wandering the streets.”

“Raven-Segrito, daughter of a fallen noble house. Buys pricey alchemy reagents and cheap meals; looks like an alchemist. They’re always like that.”

“Gloria-Colonna, princess of the Iron Kingdom Colonna. Usually shows up with Andor, mooching food and drink—what kind of princess is that?”

“Elina, not originally from the Hero Academy. Surname unknown, details thin as mist.”

“Last, the important one: Andor.”

The name wasn’t the same as “Andor” in the Demon Realm tongue, yet Liebich couldn’t help thinking of that Highness, the greatest of the great.

“From the western frontier. Carries an unusual hatred for wraiths. Guarded the academy during Yakfarro’s raid. A hero idolized by underclassmen, skilled with the Greatsword and Shadow magic…”

At the word “Shadow,” a chill crawled up her spine like a wet thread, then faded.

By Liebich’s digging, he seemed to be courting Raven. Funny thing—when Abigail saw the “student” Catherine was mimicking show her power and invited her to team up, she’d said, “I want to beat a rival in love. Lend me your strength.”

“What was supposed to be a simple, vacation-style job ballooned into a storm. Sure, killing in the arena doesn’t get you charged, but stack too many bodies and you draw torches.”

Liebich bit bread, knocked back her soup in one go, and flipped to the last page of her notes.

“I figured I was clumsy and this intel work would net nothing by the end of the Combat Festival. Didn’t expect to hook a big fish.”

The last page said it plain: “For unknown reasons, Augustus is missing.”

While buying sundries for Catherine, a lady smith had grumbled, “Augustus hasn’t come by in ages. Hah, did he go heartless?”

Nothing rang odd then. Later, with a different face at the temple to buy HolyWater for energy-form Demonfolk, the High Divine Healer had sighed, “Poor child, if Augustus hadn’t gone out…”

The rest was fluff. But Augustus—the current Hero, the academy’s head, the man who once slew a Demon King alone—seemed truly absent.

Was it the battle with Beowzwoof, the “Sky-Bearer,” that wrecked him so badly he went to heal?

Or had he gone off on another purge of Demonfolk?

Liebich leaned toward “wounded.” That clash with the Sky-Bearer shook heaven and earth; the lands around the Tower of Final Stars turned into a dead zone, the terrain ripped and remade. She’d walked it herself; the damage from humanity’s strongest at full burn was apocalyptic. Crawling back alive from that field beggared belief.

“How does flesh escape?” Anna said that often, pointing at the hard line of physics. Liebich agreed; for a mortal’s body and magic, Augustus surviving was a miracle.

“He still can’t match a wraith, that walking calamity, but… he truly had the right to challenge my lord.”

But now, if… suppose… if Augustus truly left on business, then…

Maybe a gap opened. How many in the Hero Academy could beat a brawler like her? At least, the vice principal, Gugwen, wasn’t her match.

She could try to seize the Lunarfolk’s treasure, the Creator’s gift, the embodiment of the “Sun” concept.

“The Light Orb… I should contact my lord first.”

Liebich swallowed her last bite of bread, gripped the little whip, and ordered Catherine:

“I need to contact my lord now. You stand guard. Don’t let anyone into this room.”

Catherine—no, the “Slaughter” inside her—accepted the command. It moved her body like gears, and she marched to the doorway. Liebich exhaled, then drew the contact charm, tuning it to the Ocean of Darkness, to the domain that belonged to “Slaughter.”

“My lord, I have something important to report.”

The vision opened like a god-realm library. Countless books and shelves drifted in the air; you rose without climbing and took whatever volume you sought.

Everywhere breathed a golden glow. Darkness never nested here, and minds could rest, thinking and trading philosophy like lanterns along a calm river.

The peace didn’t last. Someone entered with abyssal night at his back, and that world was stained. People feared and wailed, rushing deeper inside like birds before a storm.

Only one person didn’t flee from the embodiment of slaughter. He finished his notes, set a neat label, closed the book with care, then looked up into the crimson eye that led to death.

“What brings you here, Lady Anna?”

Daviya, the Son of the Demon King who held the domain of “Dispute,” asked with a faint smile.

Among the Sons, he was the most like a philosopher. His usual face wasn’t overly handsome, just an ordinary man’s. But a deeper nobility in spirit showed through him, and the Demon Realm adored him.

Unlike the usual brutal kind, standing near him felt like standing by a quiet pond; though he was the Demon King of “Dispute,” he oddly stilled the will to fight.

Yet what all Demon Kings shared still lived in him.

Blood-hunger. Kill-hunger. A nature bent toward evil and chaos.

It was lava under a mountain—heat that could eat bone; if the mountain didn’t erupt, it became a soothing hot spring.

Daviya stroked the book’s cover, set it back with care, and stood, meeting Anna’s eyes level.

“I want to ask you to kill someone.”

Anna breathed out venom, words like smoke. She said it flat.

“Who?”

“A few mortals. It takes a touch of craft, so I’m entrusting it to you.”

“If that is your will, Lady Anna.”

Daviya smiled, slight as a crescent, and inclined his head.