By all rights, on a voucher-style tour, you just listen to the guide’s careful arrangements.

You stroll the shopping streets like a breeze through lantern light.

You duck into tiny shops for local specialties, or nap off the road dust.

Day one is usually soft and loose.

Yet the Demon King Army couldn’t relax, like a taut bowstring under winter frost.

Our itinerary had to sync with Shadow Demon Andor’s moves.

Frankly, this trip was laid out for an “otherworld invasion.”

Finding a team that fit my demands was hard.

The Mephi Consortium hadn’t touched tourism, a market long depressed by monsters and ghosts multiplying like weeds.

We had to rush a route to the Endless Sea—pioneers rarely profit, like seedlings in stony soil.

So be it; stingy gain is still gain.

I only shattered a twenty-year master plan, and tossed Colonna coins by the handful—one, two, three, four, five digits—into a furnace of waves.

It stung, like salt rubbed into a fresh cut.

But the die was cast, and the choice was mine.

There’s no reason to rewind the river and change it.

“Dulan, rush in the moment I say you can.”

“Uh… oh, right.”

Brown hair, tall lines; a maid propping a bare greatsword, fresh from sleep like dew on iron.

“Berenz, don’t rush in until I say you can.”

“Tch—”

The petite crimson maid curled her lip.

She didn’t bother hiding her thirst for blood, a blade humming for rain.

“Vega, if I judge wrong, remind me when to rush in.”

“As you will, my forward-looking master.”

Pure nonsense—a double lock on one door.

Vega bowed with perfect grace, manners polished like onyx.

And then—

“Nan Lu?”

“…”

We’d captured Nan Lu at the Tower of Final Stars, back when the Hero Squad first met Anna.

A senior retainer under the Slaughter domain, toyed with and broken like porcelain dropped on stone.

She hugged her crescent halberd, eyes complicated as stormlight, watching Berenz and Vega.

I scratched my head.

Kink-flavored training and domineering-CEO conquest…

I know my maids—when hunger bites and a prisoner is within reach, their limits sink well below mine.

We do owe Anna, since Nan Lu is a top-ranked retainer.

But waste-not… I mean, recycle?

No.

Let her burn out the residual heat, then.

Before Nan Lu dies back to the Demon Realm, I want her to self-detonate and blast open the Time Ruins.

Dark mana is precious in this human world that resists its conversion, like ink on rain-soaked paper.

I’m about to bother the Divine Being, so stockpiling matters, like filling jars before winter.

Nan Lu looked suffocated, that expression I often see on Stini—

You know I’m speaking the optimal choice, yet it grates like grit in teeth.

She walked step by measured step to the marked spot.

At the end, she glanced back at my maids.

Then she detonated, clean and resolute, like a blade choosing its fall.

“…I don’t want to meddle in your private lives.

Just don’t let broken relationships stain the job.”

Time Ruins take a moment to congeal.

I thought it through.

That was the only sentence left.

“Indeed, my master whose horizons are so modest he didn’t even know about yuri—this is your will.”

“Cut it.

I’ve seen things.

Also, watch Berenz.

She doesn’t self-regulate, and I’ve let her roam.

Don’t let her drag my name through mud.”

“Rest easy.

We all know you dislike other men’s DNA.

So if there’s desire and you are busy, Berenz and I will find some girls and—”

We stop the topic here.

Eighteen-plus is fine; with our years, we could argue three-hundred-plus heavy tastes.

The fragile seam of space had erupted, eating the edges like wildfire.

The Time Ruins took shape, returning to churned chaos—

Like the instant the world leapt from nothing into breath.

Behind that door, a Certain One waited—hunger, curiosity, or needs beyond human sight.

It was getting impatient, like a tide gnawing a cliff.

Not good nor evil, not light nor dark.

A greatness beyond death and time, a mountain the scythe can’t touch.

Welcome to my—our (evil) world.

As host, I don’t leave a guest waiting while I chatter.

My black hair surged, sprouting like ivy, linking back to the vast dark behind my head.

From the shadow in every human heart, I pulled out my authority, my beloved halberd.

Its rear blade bit deep into the ground.

I called the Ocean of Darkness up from far below, from the world’s deepest throat, into the mortal light.

“Vega, stop every evil beast from crossing into the mortal realm.”

“Your will.”

I nodded.

The flow still matched my map—neither too tangled nor too plain.

“If Hero and Demon King clashes are an opera that never loses its voice,

If the wars of gods and demons are an epic for a thousand ages,

Then you—what about you and me?

Is it slaughter, a duel, or shall we sit and share tea?”

Great ones rarely fight directly.

Their thoughts and wills stretch into past and future like constellations across eras.

To drop in rank and swing real steel is slow and senseless, a drum for ants.

You can’t measure “infinite” by size or strength.

You only gauge how much that greatness can touch the material clay.

But—that’s just one case.

Greatness is a wide robe with many hems.

The gods build their godhood with thought and insight.

They set their divinity on pillars of spirit and will.

They wield authority to call down godpower.

The demons are similar—rooted in the Human archetype, the Creator’s great form.

The One opposite me is the other extreme, another branch on the wild tree.

Powerful by folly.

Majestic by blindness.

Immortal by absurdity.

Glutton by hunger.

Words can circle it like lanterns in fog, but never touch truth.

Cause and effect slip the net; its greatness stands by itself, without source or proof.

As does my other half—Endless Demon King Andreas.

A mindless, lawless frenzy; a shape unique in this age.

On another worldline, if Andreas hadn’t perished with Ferrel,

He might have become another outer god.

It walks in voids where even death can’t graze.

No time, so no decay.

No future, so no thought.

Simple immortality.

Simple madness.

Simple cruelty.

Like a black sun without end, its rays burn with insight no human, no world can bear.

Monster tearing monster—perhaps even my ascetic soul can indulge,

If only for a heartbeat, like wine touching a monk’s tongue.

Human flesh, bone, viscera—white wax in a spring flame.

It melts easily, then wraps the knot of hair behind me,

Remolding a physical body like clay re-found.

That nameless grand monster bears a thousand arms, ten thousand bone-wings.

Its swinging authority shatters the sky’s curtain,

Beats down the Starry Sky Divine Kingdom.

It writhes and walks the mortal streets,

Strolling destruction, tossing death itself into the void.

“Come forward, my favorite actor.

Dance with me.”

Faces poured from the dark.

Sick children, coughing crones, elegant sons, vulgar scholars.

High and low, sharp and heavy—countless mouths spoke at once.

Their chorus flowed with visible malice and venom,

And mere hearing would drive a common mind mad forever.

In truth, that grand posture is hollow—a shell, a mask.

Inside, nothing.

To enter a world, you must swap your rules for its weave.

If the Certain One intends to come, it must redefine itself,

Turn into a piece of “concept,”

And squeeze a trail through this ruin of thin “time.”

Even crushed down to the physical,

The instant it breaks the Time Ruins and steps into the mortal realm,

It could press the world flat—

Like the equator’s ice belt at the end of an ice age, with no chance to escape.

Thankfully, the World Saving Demon King is here.

My power is only Savior Demon King Andor’s power.

In our world, that’s enough to bar an outer god inside the Time Ruins.

Stini and Nivifar went wild on the shopping street, buying local trinkets by the armful.

Raven, escorted by Gloria, visited the Truth Seekers Assembly branch,

To submit the legacy Maki and Liqibella left to humankind.

Elina paid a courteous visit to the local church,

Grace like incense in old stone.

And I, by the most primal way,

Waged brutal war with the One Beyond for over twenty hours.

By dinner, everyone returned to the inn we’d booked,

Convinced their first day of travel was full and satisfying,

And deeply meaningful.