Chapter 37: It Seems You Know Nothing
"Oh no! Get out of the way!"
Watching the [demon sealing stone]—which was emitting an eerie black light—hurtling toward the Demon Lord in the sky, Tayako only had time to raise his right hand and let out a cry of despair.
Everyone's heart was in their throat.
However.
Faced with this item capable of sealing any powerhouse, Asmodeus didn't even dodge; he didn't even knit his brows.
He simply raised his right hand lazily, as if catching a tossed pebble—
Clap.
He caught the demon sealing stone firmly in his palm.
"It's over..."
Seeing this, Tayako lost all hope and knelt on the ground, his face deathly pale.
The next second.
Boom—!
The demon sealing stone was instantly activated the moment it touched the Demon Lord's palm!
Countless phantom chains of pitch-black light, engraved with ancient runes, erupted from the stone, coiling around Asmodeus's arm like leeches clinging to bone and rapidly spreading across his entire body.
A massive sealing power howled in the air, forming a giant black cocoon that swallowed the Demon Lord whole in the blink of an eye!
"Hahahaha! It hit! It hit!"
Looking at the Demon Lord engulfed in black light, Renn burst into a fit of maniacal laughter:
"Asmodeus! You really are just as the Grand Duke of Greed said—arrogant to the extreme!"
"You're finished! This is a special demon sealing stone prepared specifically for you! It combines all the sealing laws of the seventh, eighth, and ninth layers! It can completely cut off the source of your magic and seal you away again for hundreds of years!"
Renn laughed, spreading his arms and roaring madly toward the sky:
"Everything of yours! Your glory! Your era! It's all over!"
"His Majesty, the great [King of Tyranny, Malfas], will continue to rule this world! He will lead a world-ending army to destroy all the kingdoms on the surface and slaughter all their subjects! Let blood dye the entire continent red! Hahahaha!"
The hideous, piercing laughter echoed through the streets of the City That Never Sleeps.
The clerks of the curiosity shop all showed expressions of despair, and Nia collapsed to the ground, the light in her eyes gradually fading.
Was it... really over?
Had the hope that had just been ignited been extinguished just like that?
And at the hands of the descendants of those who were once the Demon Lord's own subjects? It all seemed like a tragic joke.
However... just as Renn was laughing so hard he could barely breathe, and while everyone was in the depths of sorrow and despair... Crack!
A crisp sound of shattering rang out abruptly.
Immediately after, the black sealing power filling the sky was rapidly retracted and dissipated, as if being forcibly sucked away by some terrifying vacuum.
In the blink of an eye, the black light vanished, and Asmodeus's figure reappeared!
"Huh???"
Renn's smile froze on his face.
Asmodeus was still floating in mid-air, completely unharmed; there wasn't even a single wrinkle on his bathrobe.
As for that [demon sealing stone] that had been praised so highly, it was now lying quietly in his palm, and then... his five fingers gently closed around it.
Poof—
It turned into a handful of magicless stone dust and scattered with the wind.
"..."
The laughter came to a screeching halt.
Renn's mouth hung open and his eyes widened, unable to say a word for a long time, as if he had witnessed some world-shaking, eerie scene.
Tayako, Nia, and the others were also stunned where they stood. In response, Asmodeus simply brushed the dust off his hands, landed calmly on the ground, and looked at Renn with a gaze one might use for an idiot:
"You moron, what are you muttering to yourself about?"
"Wha... What?!"
Renn was completely dumbfounded.
His face was full of disbelief, and he could only scream incoherently:
"Wh... Why? Why weren't you sealed! This is the power of the 'Ragnarok' array! The Grand Duke of Greed gave it to me himself! How could it fail!"
"Ragnarok?"
Hearing the name, Asmodeus pursed his lips and shook his head helplessly, seemingly worried about his enemy's intelligence:
"It seems you know nothing."
With his hands behind his back, he paced slowly and began to patiently explain to the assassin leader:
"The reason I was sealed back then wasn't because this array was particularly strong. It was because the Lich King gave Malfas a terrible idea—that traitor Malfas used my millions of subjects as leverage, forcing me to voluntarily give up resistance and fall under the Lich King's 'Eternal Nightmare' sleep spell for the seal to take effect."
"And the reason Tayako and so many subjects loyal to me weren't killed was also because they feared that if these people died, they would lose the leverage they had over me. So, they sealed them all here to serve as hostages to keep me in check."
At this point, Asmodeus gave a mocking smile:
"Therefore, the so-called 'Ragnarok' has had no effect on me from the moment I woke up. No matter how much sealing power there is, it's useless—the only difficulty now is how to undo the seal according to the correct procedure so that this labyrinth doesn't collapse and harm my people or the Demon Realm's territory."
"Huh? Huh???"
Renn could hardly believe his ears!
[So the Demon Lord was never actually defeated?]
[So the current Demon Lord, Malfas, is just a traitor who betrayed Asmodeus for power back then?!]
"How is this possible!"
Learning the truth was like a heavy blow to Renn; his whole body became unsteady, and he could only stagger backward.
On the other side, Asmodeus had somehow already walked up to Renn and was stroking his chin, observing him curiously:
"In the end... I think the so-called Grand Duke of Greed just wanted to try his luck. He wanted to see if this stone worked, but he didn't dare come to his death himself, so he chose a fool like you as cannon fodder to test me."
"Argh! Shut up! Shut up!"
His faith shattered, his mission failed, and discovering he was just a disposable pawn! Renn could only use screaming to mask the shame and indignation in his heart.
But it wasn't over yet.
Because in Asmodeus's view, the humans who were loyal to him back then could not have betrayed him. Even after three hundred years, their descendants shouldn't have fallen to the level of being traitors who would assassinate him... unless someone was pulling the strings in the shadows.
[Didn't this Renn just say 'Great His Majesty Malfas'?]
Thinking this, Asmodeus narrowed his eyes and looked the human assassins lying on the ground up and down a few times;
Suddenly, as if he had discovered something interesting, he raised his right hand and pointed casually.
Whoosh!
A piercing red light instantly shot toward the group of humans; it was the highest-tier [True Sight].
"AAAAAAHHHHH—!!!"
Instantly, Renn and two other humans let out shrill, agonizing screams.
The other humans scrambled to get away in fear, but they weren't harmed in the slightest by the Demon Lord's spell.
However, Renn and the other two were rolling frantically on the ground as if they had been doused in acid—under everyone's horrified gaze, the human skin on Renn's body began to fester, peel, and melt!
Immediately after, his originally tall human frame began to shrink... After just a few seconds, who was the human captain lying on the ground? It was clearly a short, dark-green-skinned creature with a long, pointed nose and fangs... a Goblin!"
Stopped