“It’s already fine.”

Muen gently set Vick—who had already passed out—down on the ground.

This young soldier had been badly hurt. If Muen had arrived just a few minutes later, it might truly have been beyond saving.

Fortunately, he was just an ordinary person. A simplest kind of magic scroll was enough to easily heal all of his external injuries.

As for the exhaustion of stamina and spirit... one good sleep would do.

But it was precisely a person like this—precisely such an ordinary person, so weak that in Muen’s eyes now he was fragile to an extreme—who had just escaped from a demonfolk camp crawling with danger, snatching life from death.

They didn’t have to walk toward death like this. They could have escaped far more easily.

As long as they quietly passed through this tent, according to the intel Pink Bear had given, they would soon reach the Empire’s Abyss frontline as it stood now.

But they still came.

“Don’t worry. From now on... leave everything to me.”

Muen stood up. First he looked toward the quiet camp not far away, then at the small bloodstained path that had been dragged out along the ground, and only then... did his gaze settle on the demon in front of him.

This demon was much taller than an average person. His whole body was wrapped in armor, and the skin exposed through the gaps wasn’t the red or green most common among low-ranking demonfolk, but pale.

His appearance already resembled a human quite a lot. Only through the slits of the visor could one faintly see a pair of blood-red pupils, leaking a brutality and savagery that no normal human would ever have.

“So you’re... that Sorin guy, huh.”

Muen sized him up, rubbing his chin. “The legendary high-ranking demon. Yeah. I’ve been wandering the Abyss for two days now, and this is the first time I’ve seen a so-called high-ranking demon with my own eyes. You really do look different from low-ranking demonfolk.”

“Who are you? And how do you know my name?” 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Sorin’s body tensed instantly. His hand closed around the hilt behind him, and his armor scraped with a harsh clatter.

Before Muen spoke on his own, he hadn’t even realized when this human had appeared here.

“My name? Some demon who looked kind of dumb told me.” Muen smiled. With a flip of his fingers, it was as if ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) shattered souls were screaming in his palm.

“But compared to a small question like that, what I want to ask is... you don’t recognize me?”

Muen blinked in surprise, then pointed at his own head of golden hair.

“I figured I should be pretty famous in the Abyss by now.”

By Muen’s own reasoning, if the Kingdom really had reached some kind of private agreement with the demonfolk, then after that exchange tournament, there was a high chance the Kingdom had secretly passed his intel to the demonfolk.

That was something Muen had already prepared for before coming. He’d even been thinking he’d get to experience that protagonist treatment where wherever you go, you get hunted down...

But he hadn’t expected that after finally meeting a demonfolk with a slightly higher status, the other side wouldn’t even recognize him.

“You? Do I need to recognize you?”

A mere human, and this arrogant.

Sorin frowned, feeling that the human in front of him was far too cocky. But after hearing Muen’s words, he still began to examine Muen carefully.

After thinking for a moment, when Sorin’s gaze fell on that extremely eye-catching golden hair, it was as if he finally remembered something. His expression slowly shifted into realization... even shock.

“Right. I remember... I know who you are!”

“Looks like I wasn’t wrong after all.” The corner of Muen’s mouth lifted slightly, sketching a look that said everything was under control—

“You’re Campbell’s dumb son!!”

Sorin suddenly roared. “That’s right, that golden hair—you’re definitely that Lion King’s dumb son!! The Demon General showed me your portrait!”

“...!”

Muen’s smile froze.

“Huh? Dumb son?”

What the hell?

For a second, Muen was genuinely blank.

After that exchange tournament, shouldn’t his impression among the demonfolk have been something like terrifying beyond belief, making people suck in a cold breath, this one must never be allowed to live?

What was this “dumb son” nonsense?

“That’s right—dumb son!” Sorin clapped his hands together and declared with certainty.

“I didn’t take part personally, but I watched from far away. Before, that Lion King was always yelling at our demon army front lines about how ‘my son got eighty on his exam’ and stuff like that. Getting excited for so long over scoring eighty one time—if that’s not a dumb son, what is?”

“A dignified Lion King actually has a dumb son, and his dumb son even ran into the Abyss. Looks like this is what they call fate!”

The more Sorin spoke, the more excited he became. The demonfolk’s greatest enemy, Lion King Campbell, having a dumb son as if it were some kind of retribution—among demonfolk who hated that Lion King so much their teeth itched, it was a topic absolutely worth dragging out and talking about.

“...”

So that was it.

Muen’s cheek twitched.

Father...

Muen slapped a hand to his forehead. Inside, he sighed in despair and wanted nothing more than to find a hole in the ground to crawl into.

He remembered that magic exam—eighty points—had been almost a year ago. And yet this demon was still bringing it up, which meant that the duke in his family had shouted that humiliating line not just once...

It was very likely he’d been shouting it again recently.

In other words, you broadcast it on repeat in front of the demon army like a town crier for that long?

Just imagining imperial forces facing demonfolk forces, the atmosphere grim and murderous—while a booming voice echoed over the Abyss yelling “my son scored eighty on his exam”—made Muen start trembling with anger and chill.

Terrifying.

No wonder that even if the Kingdom had passed on intel, these demonfolk still didn’t have that terrifying beyond belief, cold breath, this one must never be allowed to live kind of thought.

After being brainwashed by Lion King Campbell’s demonic audio loop for so long, the demonfolk high command aside—these brainless mid- and low-level ones probably had long since turned it into a stereotype.

You could only say stereotypes killed. The enemy’s words could never be believed.

Otherwise, the consequences were severe.

“Alright.”

Muen’s expression turned cold. He waved a hand casually.

“Since things have gotten to this point, I won’t waste time talking nonsense with you.”

He couldn’t erase everyone who’d witnessed his black history, but at the very least, out of sight was out of mind.

“Nonsense? Heh. Good. I was thinking the same.”

Sorin’s smile also slowly turned cruel.

He’d come only to toy with a few rats, but he’d just gotten an unexpected windfall.

Campbell’s son...

If he could catch him—especially capture him alive—that would be a tremendous merit. He might receive even greater rewards from the Demon General, and perhaps even truly become...

Sorin felt the noble blood in his body beginning to boil. In his mind, he was already planning how he would torture this Lion King’s son afterward...

“You still haven’t noticed?” But at that moment, Muen suddenly asked in a strange tone.

“Noticed?” Sorin blinked, frowning in confusion. “Noticed what?”

“Noticed...”

Muen took a step.

But though it was only a single step, Sorin abruptly felt dizzy for an instant.

When he came back to himself, that Lion King’s “dumb son” was already beside him, like an old friend, gently patting his shoulder.

“The battle you think you’re in ended a long time ago.”

“Huh?”

Sorin squeezed out that sound from his throat, blankly.

But he suddenly realized that though it was only a simple syllable, it came out extremely blurred.

Like it had been stuck in a broken bellows, then smeared over with thick liquid.

Because that syllable truly had been squeezed out of... his “throat.”

“Ghk... ghk...”

Blood-colored bubbles rose and fell along the smooth line of his neck with the air his lungs were pushing out. Sorin stared blankly as he lifted a hand and touched the warmth at his throat.

Then—

He felt the entire world flip over.

Things that had been so small in front of his towering body suddenly became huge. He could no longer look down on anyone. His cheek slammed hard into the muddy ground—and yet he couldn’t feel any pain.

Because the pain from everywhere else was already enough to destroy his nerves.

In the corner of his eye, he saw the lower half of his body—everything below the waist—still standing there.

The precious armor on him hadn’t protected him at all. Even the cut surface of the armor was perfectly smooth.

Just like how he had once used the blade in his hand to slice through the flesh of those frail humans.

“W-why... ghk...”

Sorin couldn’t believe it. This human hadn’t even drawn a weapon, and yet he himself had been like a fish on a cutting board—deboned and carved in an instant.

“What’s so strange about it?” Muen looked down at him. In those deep, vivid blue eyes, Sorin’s dismembered misery was reflected clearly.

“You treat the weak in your eyes like rats to play with. But in the eyes of someone who can see you as weak... aren’t you also just a rat?”

No.

Even less.

Because even a weak rat could still throw everything it had into struggling.

But Sorin... couldn’t even struggle.

“...Ghk... it shouldn’t... be like this...”

His vision steadily dimmed.

Sorin no longer even had the strength to raise his head.

The gaze that had once been so lofty finally fell—kept falling—until it hit the very bottom.

And only then did he realize.

Why the camp that had once held over a hundred demonfolk was now so quiet—so quiet you could call it dead.

Blood.

So much blood.

Enough blood to dye the entire camp red.

It flowed out of the demonfolk corpses that had died without a sound, mixing little by little with his own blood.

As if it meant to drag him down to hell with them.

...

...

“Compared to last time, you’ve gotten stronger.”

Behind Muen, King Yintuo—whose existence Sorin had never noticed from start to finish—spoke suddenly.

Sorin and the other demonfolk had failed to see Muen’s movements, but King Yintuo had seen them perfectly clearly.

And because of that, he could tell that compared to the night of the Belrand upheaval, Muen’s strength had indeed improved by a noticeable margin.

“When you fight a cheater monster like Ariel, you’ve gotta improve a little,” Muen shrugged with a smile.

“...”

King Yintuo lowered his eyes and didn’t reply.

He had also watched that battle at the Academy in silence. That little girl named Ariel—by his standards—really was a little monster.

But someone who could fight a monster to a six–four split, even close to fifty–fifty...

What could that person be, then?