Dawn peeled like silk from the window, and the warmth curled in my arms was gone; Vega had slipped away like a cat and moved into the kitchen to cook.

Sleep still dragged at my bones like wet cotton, so I rose from the sofa, yawned like a creaking door, and rubbed grit from my eyes like sand from a shore.

In the end, the Son of the Demon King is just mortal; power and essence are a clay jar with a rim, and spirit runs like a measured river.

So when sleep calls, I sleep, and when morning bites, I bristle like a hedgehog in mist.

“Is everyone up?” My voice drifted like steam from a cup.

“My drowsy master, Stini taught Raven swordwork, then drifted back to a nap like a tide returning.”

Vega came out of the kitchen with fried eggs and toast, heat blooming off the plates like pale clouds.

“Oh? Everyone already ate?”

“Miss Elina has returned. Princess Golia is on a second lesson, teaching Raven body arts; Stini… today she’s not a maid but your friend, so let her sleep like a stone in sun.”

“Fine, fine. By the way, how far has Raven gotten?”

I asked it lightly, as casually as wind over grass; this wasn’t like a conquest plan you whisper under a new moon.

“Raven has no gift for swordwork, and her conditioning is middling. Forgive me, but she shouldn’t learn the sword. If she wants strength, she should keep building what she’s good at—magitech.”

“Ah, that,” I murmured, and let my focus sink into spreading jam, a sunset-red gloss over bread that asked for patience like a monk raking gravel.

When time is a lazy river, this motion is fun; when every morning is jam-and-bread, the same motion turns to rain on stone—slow, sticky, stubborn.

And I’m a bit of a perfectionist; uneven jam itches like a crooked picture frame.

So fussy; is there really no tool to spread the jam fast, like a brush over lacquer?

“You can use a roller, I bought one recently. Also, what exactly is that ‘that’ you mentioned?” Vega’s curiosity flicked like a cat’s ear.

“It spreads easier, sure, but the roller gets sticky, and jam clings and wastes away like dew; that offends my perfectionism,” I said, setting the roller at the jar’s mouth, then thinking better of it like a kite reeling back.

“You’re the future Demon King. Please don’t fret about waste like a squirrel counting acorns. What is ‘that’?” Her voice knocked like a spoon on a pot.

“Hey, even a Demon King can go green; not to save the world, but because anything with value should be used to the last drop, like rain wrung from a cloud.”

“Then pour the jam straight from the jar onto the bread! Please say what ‘that’ is! I’m dying to know, like a kettle on full boil!”

I tried it her way.

Oh. The viscous jam flowed like lacquer and hushed across the bread, a glossy tide; one pass of the knife and it dressed the whole slice—perfect.

Strangely, it didn’t needle my neatness; it dodged waste and soothed the eye like a calm lake. Perfect.

Such luxury didn’t trespass on my aesthetics; a Demon King eats like thunder and pays like rain.

“Thing is… won’t pouring it straight be too sweet?”

I bit in. The sweetness swelled like a flood.

“My dear master…” Vega’s smile twisted like a bent blade, her whole body trembling like a bowstring, fists clenched, the corner of her mouth twitching like a fish’s tail.

Serious people don’t love jokes; they wear straight lines like armor.

“Alright, alright. I’m sorry—watching you get impatient was too fun, and I got carried away; forgive me,” I said, letting the wind out of the moment like air from a bellows.

I wanted to see more of her flustered cuteness, but the Demon King Army’s logistics had already chewed through her stamina like moths through silk; piling more on would be cruel.

“That ‘that’ means don’t interfere.”

I stuffed the bread into my mouth; the sweetness surged like syrup in a spring, and the jam beaded at the edge, ready to drip and make laundry for Vega like rain on linen.

“What do you mean?”

“Look there. Judge with your knowledge—how’s Raven doing?” I pointed out the window, at Raven tangled in combat with Gloria like two gold comets colliding.

“It’s awful. Overwhelming. One-sided punishment, like wind beating a reed. My master who doesn’t understand girls, if you stop this merciless training now, your favorability will spike like a flare.”

“Don’t say I don’t understand girls, as if you do,” I said, letting the blade of my words stay sheathed. “Just assess her form. Spare me the glitter.”

“Well then,” Vega moved to the window, her gaze sharp as frost.

Gloria didn’t hold back; she wasn’t slick like a human diplomat. If it was a fight, it was a fight without mercy, like iron on iron.

Two golden-haired girls crossed fists like flashing starlight. Gloria, with lead-gray eyes, pressed the tide with steady moons.

Left-left-right combo—Raven barely parried, arms shivering like bamboo in wind. Gloria spun and chopped a low kick; Raven saw it, but her body was thunder a second too late.

Raven tried to shift and brace, but missed a beat; the kick knocked her off-balance, a stutter in a drum. Gloria surged in close—short punch, elbow, knee—a storm that dropped Raven.

Raven lay prone, gulping air like a stranded fish, then, after a long breath, pushed herself up, reset her stance, and waded back into the stream.

“No suspense, right, Vega? Peak physical fighter versus a rookie; I wouldn’t bet a pebble, not even for two billion to one.”

“The only handicap Gloria gives is raw physique,” Vega said, voice cool as shade. “Her battle sense and hand speed are still at the world’s peak. Raven reads the flow well, but her reactions lag behind her mind. Like I said, you can still stop this overwhelming fight, and it will count for much.”

I shook my head and sipped tea, warmth pooling like sunlight in a cup.

“Vega, if you want to pursue a girl, goodwill is a must, but you can’t build it on playing dumb. Some girls like that worry. Raven doesn’t.”

She’s clever, and she likes the clever. I carved the line like a mark in wood.

“Right now it’s obviously a meaningless, one-sided beating,” she said, as flat as a lake. “There’s no hidden lesson.”

“No. This is the Valkyrie Series,” I said, and the words rang like a bell. “Raven’s never been dumb; she knows she lacks talent in body arts or the sword, but her gift lies in—”

I pointed at a Construct Baro Rabbit Raven had given me; the mechanical bunny gnawed a mana crystal like a squirrel with a nut, then, sensing my gaze, its metal ears sprang up like reeds.

It reared and stared at the table like a hunter at a trap.

“—in rendering things through magitech. Look at this rabbit; its motions copy a Baro Rabbit’s behavior. Vega, what if Raven can render swordplay and body arts through magitech?”

“You mean, she wants to copy a peak warrior’s techniques through Constructs?” Vega’s words clicked like beads.

“Exactly. Write a warrior’s awareness and choices into code. Load it into magitech. Wear it as external armor like a second skin. What then?”

The Baro Rabbit tried to steal my only sausage; I caught its head like a hawk pinning a mouse and tossed it toward the wall. It took the landing like a real rabbit, then whooshed away, skittering like wind-chased leaves.

“…That’s terrifying,” Vega breathed, a chill like nightfall. “If Raven pulls it off, we’ll face an army that never tires, each unit at a peak warrior’s level.”

“That’s the point of magitech—let the weak stand beside the strong, not with muscle, but with mind, like lanterns lit along a dark road. The Valkyrie Series is a line of external armors. Raven doesn’t want to be strong; she wants to know how motions move and how peak fighters fight. She’s gathering data and expressing it through magitech.”

“My far-seeing master, do you want to stop her? Do you need me to kill her?” Her voice cooled like water over iron.

“Hey, hey. Aren’t you and Raven good friends? You jump straight to killing like a blade that only knows one dance.”

“That’s only by assignment, like your assignment as Andor Mephy, a Shadow Sorcerer from the Western Frontier, and mine as ‘Raven’s friend, maid Vega.’ If it’s your will, I won’t hesitate.” Her certainty sat like a stone.

Vega stood by the window, her face veiled in Shadow like a crescent moon, a smile touching her lips with a hint of blood-scent, like roses after rain.

The Demonfolk always lean toward darkness and ruin, like moths to flame. Neither Vega nor I are exceptions.

“Your loyalty’s admirable… but like I said, I won’t stop her.”

“Why?” The word fell like a pebble into a well.

“I’ve been posing this long just to hear someone ask ‘why,’ so I can answer from on high like a mountain speaking to clouds,” I said, then laughed, excitement fizzing like soda. “Sorry. I won’t stop Raven’s development. I’ll do nothing. If I must do something, let me think… I’ll heat her bathwater and hand her a towel.”

“I don’t understand,” Vega said, brow knotted like knuckled wood. “If prior epoch-making inventions shook the Ocean of Darkness, then by your logic the Valkyrie Series should be stopped even more.”

“Know this: perpetual motion isn’t scary, freezing bombs aren’t scary, a mana-expanding prism isn’t scary; no matter what black-tech Raven forges, it isn’t scary. Throw a boulder into the sea and the sea keeps its face. What’s scary is when Raven makes something that even a commoner can understand. We can destroy magic swords, shatter relics, even corner an immortal like hounds cornering a wolf; but we can’t kill knowledge once it spreads. That’s the Divine Being’s domain, under Head’s protection.”

“Giving mortals the same combat power as the chosen—how is that not a great trespass?” Her voice shivered like strings.

“This time, it’s not. Only this time, it’s not.”

“Why?”

“Because I know this one is different. Raven won’t accept the ordinary anymore. She won’t call herself ordinary anymore. She’ll spend everything beyond ordinary, and with that hazy, brilliant talent she’ll make the Valkyrie Series. It’ll be mysterious, uncopyable, a singular masterpiece. It won’t spread. It won’t push the world forward. It will just add one more irrelevant thing to the world—irrelevant except that it can do the irrelevant deed of ‘saving the world.’”

“I don’t understand why you’re so certain, my evasive master,” she said, confusion like fog.

“Because it’s fated, as it was, as it will be,” I said, the words like a path I’d walked before.

Vega clearly couldn’t follow; her work-sense is razor-sharp, but she isn’t as clever as Head, and the sky is a wide roof.

She bowed in silence like a willow in wind and went to the bathroom to heat the water.

Vega says I have the largeness to rule monsters, but not the skill to rule monsters; I admit it, like a fisherman admitting the sea is big.

But why stay confined to being a monster? Why not become something greater, like a Demon King, like a Divine Being—like a storm that owns the sky?

All I need is to shed the mortal shell and step past this human world like a bird over a hedge. Then Raven can climb higher, and we can end with a joy that fits everyone like sunlight.

That’s why I came back to the past.

I tossed the last bit of bread and egg into my mouth, a sun and cloud in one bite.

Still too sweet, like drowning in honey.