Demon King of the Royal Class-Chapter 449

‘I got it all wrong. It wasn’t about knowing everything and deceiving. It wasn’t about knowing everything to deceive, to take revenge.

‘Even knowing everything, he liked me. Despite knowing everything, he cherished me. A person who had no choice but to hate me, a person for whom it would have been strange not to kill me immediately.

‘That person liked me.’

Not knowing that simple thought, that simple answer...

The feeling of liking Reinhart was inevitably greater than Reinhart liking her.

Because liking a classmate and liking the family of an enemy were entirely different matters.

She had liked someone she shouldn’t have been able to like, but she couldn’t believe it.

She just needed to believe him once, at the most crucial moment. But she hadn’t been able to, and now the world was on the brink of destruction.

Everything was her fault.

This situation had been created by the Demon King’s subordinates, who possessed the strange artifact known as Akasha.

But Reinhart didn’t want this situation.

If Reinhart hadn’t been captured, if the Demon King’s subordinates hadn’t been forced into such an extreme situation to save Reinhart, this wouldn’t have happened.

Therefore, in the end, it was her inability to believe in Reinhart at the most crucial moment that had caused all this.

In the end, it wasn’t the Demon King who had caused this situation, but her.

Everything was her fault.

It was a matter of a single day. The clue had been right in front of her, and at that time, Reinhart had not been in the capital.

If she had just held on for one more day, if she had held on for one day and asked Reinhart about everything first...

This wouldn’t have happened.

All of this was her fault.

Misunderstandings and lies had piled up and intertwined, creating a situation in which she didn’t know what to believe. It had dragged on and on, and this was the result.

A single day’s misalignment and her distrust had caused all of this.

That was what had thrown everything off course.

Riana, Olivia, and Harriet were trying their best to believe in Reinhart, even in the face of this situation.

But she couldn’t.

If the world were to end, the greatest responsibility wouldn’t lie with the Demon King’s subordinates, but with herself.

That was what Ellen thought.

No matter what Reinhart dreamed of, she was the one who had decisively ruined it. She did not even deserve to like Reinhart anymore.

She was a sinner, against the world and against Reinhart.

‘I must take responsibility for this situation. Whether through death or some other means, Ellen Artorius must take responsibility.’

Clang!

“Ugh!”

“Ellen! What are you doing?!”

Ellen had already destroyed the third sword of the Shanapell knights facing her. Clearly, she was not about to let any of them leave the temple.

The Shanapell Swordmasters were horrified by Ellen Artorius and the void sword she wielded, which shattered and sliced through any aura blades it touched.

“Step back. I don’t want to hurt you,” Ellen said.

“If you don’t move, we’ll lose the Demon King... We’ll lose him...!”

“That’s why I’m doing this. Let him go.”

Even though there were five Swordmasters facing her, the aura Ellen exuded promised certain death if they dared cross the line she had set. If they even tried to go past her, she would use the void sword to sever not just their swords, but their necks.

Ellen’s skill was impressive, but the cutting power of the void sword Lament was truly absolute, and even the Swordmasters struggled against it.

Used in tandem with the Sun God’s relic, none of the Swordmasters’ attacks could penetrate Ellen’s defenses.

The knights of Shanapell began to retreat.

Screeeech!

Flying monsters began to enter the Temple through the broken barrier.

“Killing the monsters takes priority over chasing the Demon King,” Ellen said.

The world might end because someone had not been able to believe in the person they liked... Ellen Artorius had become the protagonist of such a ridiculous situation.

If the world were to end, how much responsibility would she bear?

It might well be all of it.

There was no way she could be allowed to like Reinhart anymore. Someone like her was not allowed to have such feelings.

Having resolved that part of her, Ellen knew she had to do something else.

She wouldn’t be able to help Reinhart. That was for those who believed in Reinhart. There was no place for her there. She didn’t deserve it.

Therefore, she had to do something else.

The only other thing she could do was take responsibility for this situation.

She had to support the world that was collapsing because of her.

She had to protect the world that was facing destruction.

She knew it would not be enough to atone, but there was nothing else she could do.

Regaining Reinhart’s trust, rebuilding her relationship with him... Someone like her could never hope for such things.

That’s what Ellen thought.

***

I expected that we would be greeted by even greater pandemonium once we passed through the Temple gate. However, the situation wasn’t as dire as I had imagined.

Rumble...

The massive warp gate in front of the Temple gate had already been destroyed.

The strongest forces of humanity had been gathered inside the Temple, and therefore, the response had been swift.

Typically, the archmages of Shanapell or the Imperial Mage Corps were dispatched on missions across the continent, but because of my presence in the Temple, they had all been gathered in the capital.

It was true that monsters were appearing, bodies were strewn across the streets, buildings had collapsed here and there, and people were screaming and running. However, it didn’t seem like the entire capital was on the brink of destruction.

The flying monsters in the sky were being shot down one by one by lightning bolts, fireballs, or other unknown magic from the ground.

The emperor had chosen to drastically reduce the forces tied up with me to focus on dealing with the greater disaster within the capital.

It seemed he had listened to my suggestion to destroy the mega warp gates first.

While all this meant that the capital was taking less damage, it also meant that, with the bulk of the empire’s forces concentrated in the capital, the damage that the other regional strongholds would suffer would be greater.

The empire’s forces couldn’t intervene in every location and in every situation. While the capital stabilized quickly, the damage dealt across the continent would only increase, and the rapid stabilization of the capital wasn’t necessarily a good thing for me.

We still needed to escape the capital. Fortunately, the guards, as well as the elite forces of the empire and the Order of the Holy Knights, were busy dealing with the monster situation, so the area around the Temple gate, though marked by destruction, was eerily quiet.

Rumble!

A crack appeared in the air, and a woman with reddish-brown hair emerged from it.

“Your Highness!” Eleris exclaimed as she appeared and embraced me tightly.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“...”

In response to my concern, Eleris only bit her lip, unable to say anything.

Eleris had activated Akasha. She was the only one who could do it. There would have been no other way to rescue me with the excessively small force they had without causing this level of chaos.

Even so, it wouldn’t have been enough without the unexpected help of Olivia, Harriet, Riana, and Ellen. I wouldn’t have made it out of the Temple’s main gate without them.

“For now, you must leave this place,” Eleris said. I could see the emotion in her eyes, but she did not seem to believe that discussing her feelings was of any importance at the moment.

Since no one else with me knew who Eleris was, there was a hint of wariness about them.

Harriet was the first to speak, having gone through her memories of Eleris before. “Isn’t this person...?”

This chapt𝒆r is updated by frёewebηovel.cѳm.

Harriet recognized Eleris as the person I had assisted in the lich’s tomb. The one who had lent her tremendous magical power had appeared again.

“There’s no time to explain things in detail. I’ll tell you everything once we’re out of here,” I said to Harriet, and she nodded with a firm expression.

Screech!

Roar!

The cries of unknown monsters filled the air.

—Aaaah!

—The judgment of the gods has come!

The screams of people driven mad by fear came from everywhere.

“Galarsh and Lruien are casting Mass Teleportation at the southern part of the capital. If we can just get there...” Eleris said.

How far had we already run?

Some of the knights, who were rushing around trying to deal with the monsters, spotted us.

“Scotla Kelton...”

We had run across the path of Scotla Kelton’s unit. He was the leader of the third squad of Shanapell.

He had been present during the interrogation in the auditorium earlier.

Could we break through these Shanapell knights, now that we had Eleris with us?

Seeing their expressions, Eleris spread her arms protectively and pushed us back.

Scotla Kelton watched us silently.

As a knight of Shanapell, he had a duty to prevent our escape.

The knights, with a Swordmaster among their ranks, slowly approached us.

“Your Highness, I will—”

“Quiet,” I interjected.

I knew what Eleris was planning to do and what she wanted.

“Don’t go looking for your grave in front of me.”

It was as clear as day what Eleris wanted, and I couldn’t willingly let her die.

She wasn’t my real mother, but since coming to this world, Eleris had always been like a mother to me.

Even if she had failed to achieve her wish, even if her hopes had crumbled, even if she had opened the gates of destruction with her own hands, I had no intention of letting her find peace in death.

She had to live a little longer.

Even though I could have prevented all this from happening just by doing nothing on my part, because I hadn’t known that, I had ended up causing this insane situation.

Nevertheless, just as I was trying to continue living this life that had been bought with the lives of many others, Eleris had to live on as well.

She had to live on and do something.

Even if she couldn’t atone for her sins, trying to escape everything through death would be cowardly.

She couldn’t atone for her sins through death, and I had no intention of letting Eleris find a place to die.

As I watched the approaching Swordmasters, including Scotla Kelton, I grasped the Flame of Tuesday.

“You said it reacts to dark emotions, right?”

Eleris had told me that it was an ominous object that reacted more intensely to murderous intent, hatred, and anger when she had first given me the Flame of Tuesday.

In truth, I hadn’t used it often.

The emotions swirling within me at that moment were surely dark emotions. No, they weren’t just dark—they were the emotions found in the depths of an abyss.

Despair, anger, pain.

And yet, the compulsion to survive.

Despairing at all the destruction around me, even though I was the one who had caused it, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Still, I had to survive.

Without even understanding what I was feeling, and only knowing that this mix of emotions was darker than anything I had ever felt before...

I grasped the Flame of Tuesday, and enhanced it with the power of Self-Deception and Incantation.

I gave a command, imbuing the essence of the flame with the darkness swirling within my despairing heart.

“Burn.”

BOOM!

“Ugh!”

“What... is... this!”

A massive wall of flame rose between the Swordmasters and us, so fierce that I was sure it would melt away the world.

Where the wall of flame rose, the ground melted and boiled like lava.

“Let’s go.”

With that wall of flame between our enemies and us, we ran south.

***

The defensive lines of the capital, Gradium, had collapsed.

While they were somewhat managing to deal with the monsters pouring out from the warp gates, they didn’t have the capacity to capture the Demon King who was racing to escape the heart of the capital.

Scotla Kelton’s unit also had no choice but to focus on dealing with the monsters slaughtering citizens rather than pursuing the Demon King.

The price that humanity had to pay for finding the Demon King and for not believing him was steep.

Rumble...

The main building of the Temple had collapsed, and only the ruins of the auditorium remained.

Sabioleen Tana had been held up by Effenhauser and Loyar.

But Effenhauser, Loyar, Sarkegar, and Lucinil had to pay the price for buying time.

Lucinil was immobilized, bound by magical chains, and Sarkegar, who had proven a nuisance with his shapeshifting abilities, was trapped in a spatial barrier. Loyar had reverted to human form and was covered in blood, groaning.

Amidst the rubble of the collapsed building, Sabioleen Tana quietly looked down at Effenhauser, who was bleeding from the abdomen with Tempesta embedded in him.

“Why?” Sabioleen Tana asked, her voice trembling. “Why did it have to be this way, Effenhauser?”

As far as she knew, Effenhauser was a patriot. He loved the empire more than anyone and had a strong desire to protect it. He had been an active member of Shanapell for a while, before leaving and becoming a teacher in the Temple’s Royal Class to focus on training successors instead.

Sabioleen Tana, who had seen Effenhauser up close, never doubted his nature. Yet he had sided with the Demon King.

It was understandable why the demons had fought. They were demons, after all. But Sabioleen Tana couldn’t understand why Effenhauser, a human who loved the empire more than anyone, had made such a choice. She was the one who had delivered the decisive blow, but she was also the most confused.

“You, more than anyone else, were on the empire’s side. Why did you do this?”

“...”

Effenhauser, bleeding from his forehead, looked up at Sabioleen Tana.

“He too... more than anyone else... was on the side of... the empire... Of humanity...” Effenhauser said.

“... The Demon King?”

Effenhauser nodded silently.

Sabioleen Tana could not yet fully accept the idea that the Demon King did not wish for humanity’s destruction.

After all, hadn’t they suffered the beginning of a disaster that seemed like it would bring the whole world to ruin? Even if the Demon King had offered a solution, wasn’t that still the truth?

But Effenhauser was Reinhart’s teacher. At least, he had watched over Reinhart longer than she had.

“Did you already know that Reinhart was the Demon King?” she asked.

“...”

Effenhauser didn’t answer.

Effenhauser wasn’t a man who acted impulsively or without reason. The fact that he had done something so incomprehensible meant that his stance was supported by his own belief and conviction.

Even knowing that he would die, he had opposed Sabioleen Tana, the strongest humanity could offer. He wouldn’t have dug his grave in a meaningless place.

Bleeding and dying, Effenhauser flashed a subtle smile in the face of death. “And...”

Sabioleen Tana had seen Effenhauser many times, but it was the first time she had seen him smile like that.

Her junior, who always wore a stern expression, was slowly dying.

As he lay dying, he spoke.

“A teacher... saving his student... Is that... really such a special thing...?”

As if he had only done what needed to be done.

Sabioleen Tana watched Effenhauser’s breath grow shallow and then cease.

“...”

Lately, she had been feeling a sense of doubt about everything she had built up.

Reinhart, the Demon King... And humans who believed in and followed the Demon King, even though he was the Demon King.

There were those who believed in and loved the Demon King, despite the fact that they were not supposed to.

She remembered the many faces and aspects of the Demon King she had seen until now.

The Demon King who claimed he did not wish for destruction and wanted to save humanity... If he had truly wished to sow division within humanity, he would have revealed that the demon attack on Raziern had been a fabrication by the empire, but he had never mentioned it.

In this situation, in which it was almost certain that if people had truly believed the Demon King’s words, none of this would have happened...

“Now... I don’t know anything anymore.”

Sabioleen Tana felt lost.