Demon Lord: Erotic Adventure in Another World-Chapter 500: The Heart That Wouldn’t Break

A trembling hand wiping tears.

A figure whispering a name into someone else's sleep.

One mirror showed her watching him. Always watching.

From behind another woman's eyes.

Not a queen.

Not a rival.

Just a shadow pressed against a window that never opened.

She turned her face away, but the images followed, orbiting close like judgment.

The blade in her hand twitched. The ice hissed against the ground. The storm still moved at her command, but even its rhythm had begun to slip.

He hadn't spoken yet.

But he hadn't retreated either.

His approach was slow.

Measured.

Each step hissed against the frost, steam rising with each imprint.

He wasn't just approaching her.

He was claiming the battlefield.

Her halberd lifted again. The wind circled tighter, a cyclone of cold magic bound to a throne no longer steady.

"I gave everything," she said, voice thin. "Everything she felt. Everything I wanted."

He didn't answer.

A final mirror floated between them, its surface smooth as untouched snow.

Inside it stood another woman, warm-skinned and human, with starlight eyes and a smile that reached no one else.

Behind her stood a second figure. Familiar. Watching, silent, forever left behind.

The reflection didn't speak.

It didn't judge.

It simply waited for her to see it.

She stared.

The halberd fell from her hand.

The crash was soft, but final.

Behind her, towers collapsed like exhausted lungs. The arches buckled inward, unable to support the weight of devotion turned into rot. Frost peeled off the walls in slow sheets, revealing nothing beneath but darkness and dust.

The mirrored palace dissolved into haze.

Only the cracked, snowy ground remained.

And him.

No longer facing a throne.

Only a woman.

Stripped of divinity.

Out of names.

The halberd fell.

But her knees did not.

Not yet.

She looked up through her curtain of silver hair, lips parting, breath coming shallow. A wave of frosty breath filled the air with each gasp.

The palace had crumbled. Her second form flickered at the edges, patches of skin fracturing into frost before repairing with jagged pulses of unstable magic.

Something inside her screamed.

Not in fury.

In pain.

She took one staggering step forward.

Then another.

But the one who walked was no longer the Queen.

Within her body, the veil shifted.

The ice cracked just enough.

A softer voice pressed against the surface — warm, aching, terrified.

Riel.

The original.

The succubus.

She had never been this strong.

But she'd never needed to be.

Because she had always been near him.

And that had always been enough.

Until it wasn't.

Asmodeus saw it.

Her eyes had changed.

Gone was the hollow silver-white glow.

Now they shimmered faintly violet.

And wet.

"Please," she whispered.

"Let me try… one more time."

Her arms lifted, trembling. Magic flared wildly, uncontrolled — half of it belonged to the Queen's monstrous will, the other half to a woman begging for his gaze.

She ran.

No technique.

No pattern.

Just a straight, desperate charge across the ruined frost.

Asmodeus didn't move. Not until the last moment.

He spun his axe once, shifting it backwards.

Then stepped into the swing.

The flat of the red-hot blade struck her chest like thunder.

A shockwave split the air.

Snow blasted outward in a wide ring. Her body flew backwards — a streak of light hurled into the storm's heart.

The silence afterwards was total.

He exhaled slowly.

Let the weapon rest on his shoulder.

Snow began to fall again, softly, gently this time.

He didn't look toward where she'd landed.

Not yet.

When he finally did, she was lying on her back, arms spread across the slush, halberd embedded in the ground beside her like a fallen banner.

Her hair no longer shimmered.

Her armour had cracked.

And her eyes, still open, stared up at the sky.

She smiled.

"I felt it," she said softly, with a childish giggle. "You didn't hate me."

Asmodeus gazed at her silently, before his eyes flicked to the side, a sense of loss, a sense of disappointment, a sense of guilt.

"It's not you..." he whispered. "But her..."

"Eh?"

Riel's eyes widened, her dark skin covered in icy snow, and the fury, rage, and powerful emotions in her eyes vanished. Faded into nothing. Yet the frozen tears streaming down her cheeks remained like a frozen river sculpted in winter.

Asmodeus said nothing.

He walked toward her slowly, the storm parting before him.

He knelt, placing one hand over her chest.

"Riel... I am sorry for being so late."

He spoke not to the icy and bitter queen, the monstrous beast that devoured lives, but the succubus he promised to save.

The woman whom he loved.

The woman who guided him for nothing.

The woman who saved him when everything was dark.

Her eyes wavered, flickering, dilating as she looked back at Asmodeus in silence.

Her breath no longer steamed the air.

But it hadn't stopped.

It was shallow. Fragile.

Alive.

Snow dusted her cheeks, sticking to the tears that had frozen halfway down, a necklace of grief draped beneath her chin.

The crackled armour across her chest fell away in fragments, no longer held together by magic or rage. Beneath it, skin—soft again, dark again, no longer shining with the pale mask of a queen.

Only Riel remained.

He kept his hand over her chest for a moment longer.

Not to heal.

Not to harm.

Just to feel the heartbeat.

The real one.

Weak.

Steady.

Unbroken.

Her fingers twitched, brushing the rim of the shattered halberd beside her.

She didn't try to reach it.

Didn't try to speak again.

Instead, she exhaled with a faint, bitter smile.

"I always hated the cold," she whispered.

Asmodeus looked down at her with no cruelty. No triumph.

Only silence.

He slowly reached toward her face and wiped away one frozen tear with his thumb.

The wind shifted.

Not sharp like before — gentler now. Still cold, but no longer biting.

Behind him, soft footsteps crunched the snow.

Levia emerged first, leaning heavily on her cracked tower shield. Her armour was scorched. Her breath was shallow. But she stood tall.

"She's alive?" she asked.

Asmodeus nodded.

"Barely."

Vinea limped forward next, the glow of her molten blade now dull, its flame guttering like a dying star.

"Was that really her?" she asked.

"It was always her," he said. "But now, I don't think she knows who is who."

Lumina approached last, the soft tapping of her broken spider legs trailing like skeletal instruments. Her red eyes lingered on the fallen woman.

"She looks peaceful," she murmured.

"That's the first time," Asmodea said, stepping beside them with arms crossed, voice quiet.

"The first time she stopped trying to be something else."

They stood like that for a moment — the four women beside the king, looking down not at a monster, but a ghost still breathing.

Snow gathered.

Not like a storm, but like a curtain drawing closed.

A strange hush fell over them, not silent, just distant.

Something had ended.

But it wasn't a victory.

Not yet.

"We'll carry her," Asmodeus said, standing.

"When she wakes… she'll answer for what she's done."

"And if she never wakes?" Levia asked.

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He didn't look back.

"Then she already has."

Asmodeus said it quietly, but the weight of it rolled over them like thunder muffled beneath snowfall.

He wasn't looking at any of them now — only the horizon, where the sky met the dead stretch of ice, where the wind carried no scent, where nothing waited except war.

Yet the small mark on his chest no longer looked unsightly. It fused with the other markings on his chest... it became a beautiful ice blue rose.

The fire in his chest had dimmed, but not died. Not yet.

Rather, it felt more like something smouldering for the next battle. The truth battle.

Behind him, the women stood in silence.

Riel didn't move. But the soft rise and fall of her chest continued. The snow clung gently to her skin now, not as punishment, but as a shroud.

A slow, almost reverent hush settled over them again.

Vinea turned toward the looming north.

"Zar'Kaleth still waits."

Levia stood fully now, despite the pain in her legs.

"So does our true enemy..."

Asmodea twirled a bloody strand of hair around her finger and cracked a smile.

"Tch. And we're already short one mad queen."

Lumina glanced at Asmodeus again. Her voice came softly.

"Do you still plan to go alone?"

Asmodeus turned.

His voice was firm now, the fire rekindled behind his golden eyes.

"No."

"I go with all of you."

"Not because I need to…"

"But because you chose to follow me. Not as soldiers. Not as concubines. Not as tools."

"But as women I love."

The silence that followed wasn't solemn. It was sacred.

They stepped toward him together.

Vinea raised her sword again.

Levia tightened the straps on her shield.

Lumina adjusted the broken arch of one leg.

Asmodea cracked her fingers.

In his arms, Riel remained silent, the snow weaving around her like soft silk.

Not dead.

Not forgiven.

But no longer lost.

"Let's go." Asmodeus said as he turned toward the castle.

"It's only just begun."

Because what awaited them was nothing else... but the cold chill of death.