After Ten Millennia in Hell

Belphegor\'s expression hardened.

He put his hand over Sloth, the destroyed Hell Armament. It changed form and was restored to its original appearance once he infused it with demonic energy.

Unlike other Hell Armaments, Sloth was not indestructible. However, it could be restored immediately even when it was destroyed, and it could also change form to exterminate the enemy.

\'Even so, there is no way Balrog should be able to destroy my Hell Armament.\'

If Balrog could destroy a Hell Armament, that meant he could rival a prince of Hell. Sloth wasn\'t an Armament that an average demon could destroy, but Balrog had destroyed it with raw strength, which only meant one thing.

\'He has truly gained power on par with a prince of Hell.\'

[You dare…]

Belphegor\'s eyes flared in anger—his pride as a prince, which had been consolidated over hundreds of thousands of years, had been stepped on.

Not even the demon king had made him feel that way.

Although the demon king was human, he had the overpowered Authority of Predation, so one could say he was born to be a ruler just like a prince.

But Balrog\'s case was different. He was rumored to be unmatched among regular demons, but that was all there was to it.

[How dare a remnant like you aim for the seat of a prince of Hell!!]

Balrog did not possess an Authority. Although he had the Demonic Armor, that was more like a characteristic—it wasn\'t an Authority.

Balrog had not been born a ruler; he was destined to forever be under the princes from birth.

It was unforgivable to Belphegor for a lowly being to bare their teeth at a prince of Hell.

[Die!!]

The power of the Authority of Stillness spread like a tent and pressured Balrog from all sides.

Sloth returned to its original state, and the eight arms rushed toward Balrog.

[Fuuu.]

Balrog took a deep breath. He could feel enormous power from the black armor wrapped around him. He had never felt such a power before.

\'It must be thanks to my king.\'

Balrog narrowed his eyes.

His soul was linked to Oh Kang-Woo\'s.

After Kang-Woo had attained power greater than when he was in Hell, Balrog had also become stronger.

\'I am sure it is more than that.\'

He smirked.

The only thing that Kang-Woo could give him was demonic energy.

Just because his demonic energy increased didn\'t mean he would be able to use a brand new power out of the blue.

One could say that the new power had been created by the addition of Balrog\'s resolve for his king to his rise in demonic energy.

\'Either way, it does not matter.\'

Balrog turned around.

He clenched his fists and felt the black armor\'s power surround him. It didn\'t matter why he\'d awakened such power. What mattered was that it enabled him to fight on par with Belphegor.

In addition…

\'My king.\'

He saw an image of Kang-Woo walking alone far above him. He had far too many things on his shoulders.

It was always like that.

Kang-Woo always walked down a lonely road that no one else could follow while carrying everything on his own.

\'From now on…\'

Balrog\'s eyes shone sharply.

Crunch!!

The Demonic Armor covering his body moved.

Tsssss!

Demonic energy flowed out of the armor\'s joints like steam.

\'… I will walk alongside you.\'

BOOM!!

The black steam fumed out explosively. Balrog, who was covered in black armor, shot forward at an incredible speed.

The Authority of Stillness spread like a tent and pressured him from all sides.

\'I\'ll go down.\'

There was only one way he\'d be able to dodge.

Balrog raised his right fist. Although his right arm had been torn apart by Sloth, the black armor was moving in its place.

\'Fascinating.\'

Although it was armor made of demonic energy, it moved as naturally as if it were his own arm.

Balrog smirked and smashed down with the fist he had raised.

The ground was upturned as if an explosion had occurred, and Balrog passed through the dirt and rubble, moving through the ground at an incredible speed. It was so fast that one wouldn\'t think he was traveling underground.

The earth rippled like waves.

Bash!

The soil scattered. As Balrog emerged, the eight arms of Sloth applied pressure on him. His eyes shone sharply.

\'If I destroyed them once…\'

He could do it a second time. He ignored the arms and rushed forward.

[U-Urgh!!]

Belphegor\'s face crumpled.

Balrog was charging as if he were a train. Belphegor created a barrier with the Authority of Stillness.

TSSSS!!!

An explosive amount of black steam fumed out of the armor, blocking Belphegor\'s vision.

The Authority of Stillness was dismissed.

[N—]

[Serious…]

Balrog twisted his body and pulled his arm back to the limit.

Clack.

Balrog\'s black armor widened at the elbow, and black steam fumed out of it as if to give his punch a boost. He stepped forward with his left foot and released the punch that had been pulled back to its limit.

[Punch.]

CRACK!!

He punched Belphegor\'s head with all his might.

* * *

Riiing.

[Retainer \'Balrog\' has learned \'Overlord Armor.\']

"Hm?"

A blue message window appeared in front of Kang-Woo. He tilted his head.

"The hell is this out of the blue?"

Balrog had obtained a new technique. It was certainly good news, of course, but the timing was a bit weird.

\'Son of a bitch, don\'t tell me…\'

Kang-Woo narrowed his eyes. He\'d commanded Balrog to figure out Belphegor\'s location and report to him.

\'Did he fight Belphegor?\'

If he hadn\'t, receiving such a message made no sense.

"Damn, muscle pig."

He frowned and felt anxious.

Balrog was strong.

\'But…\'

That was all. If he faced Belphegor one-on-one, he would most definitely lose.

"Damn," Kang-Woo cursed and anxiously bit his lips.

Balrog was his retainer; he was not Kang-Woo\'s Familiar bound to him by the Authority of Subordination, so he could not share vision with him.

\'Authority of the Beholder.\'

The spectrum of what he could see expanded—it was as if he had a bird\'s eye view.

He looked at where Balrog and Belphegor were fighting.

"Fuuu."

He was finally able to sigh in relief.

\'You idiot.\'

He had clearly told Balrog to report to him as soon as he discovered Belphegor. Kang-Woo clicked his tongue and turned his head.

"U-Urghh. Arghh."

The man covered in bloodstained bandages was staggering while holding a rusted saber that had broken in half.

"Just… how?"

Crimson Fiend looked at Kang-Woo in confusion. He\'d heard a lot about the demon king, and he knew how much of an incredibly strong and abnormal being he was. However…

"Cough! Cough!"

Crimson Fiend vomited blood.

\'To think that he\'d be… this overwhelming.\'

He had not even been able to put up a decent fight. His demonic art, which he\'d trained for a thousand years, had not been able to reach the demon king.

Step, step.

The demon king walked toward Crimson Fiend, who raised his head to look up at him. Other than the sharpness in Kang-Woo\'s eyes, he didn\'t have any other particularly unique features… but right now, his face looked more terrifying than any other.

"A-Aaaaaaaahh!!"

Crimson Fiend screamed like a madman.

He leaped forward, his rusty, broken saber gripped in his hands.

The blood-red demonic energy that he had trained for a thousand years wrapped around the rusty saber.

Blood Demon Art; it was a demonic art that allowed one to turn one\'s grudge dyed within their blood into demonic energy.

He\'d gone through much suffering to be able to control that grudge, and he had resisted the voices of the dead and withstood horrible nightmares for a thousand years.

Even Satan had acknowledged his power and given him the seat of \'Aspect.\'

\'But…\'

How could he have lost so powerlessly?

"Dieeeeeee!!"

He targeted Kang-Woo\'s head with the rusty, broken saber, aiming to cut him in half.

Kang-Woo smirked and raised his arm, grabbing the rusty saber with his bare hand.

Tap.

"Gasp!!"

"Mm…"

Kang-Woo narrowed his eyes while touching the blood-red demonic energy.

\'This must be how demonic energy is accumulated in Huan.\'

It piqued his curiosity, so he infused his own demonic energy into Crimson Fiend to analyze the blood-red demonic energy\'s structure.

Kang-Woo nodded his head in amazement.

"Turning negative emotions into demonic energy, huh? I didn\'t know there was a method like this."

The ability to turn one\'s grudge into demonic energy by dying it with blood was certainly interesting.

Kang-Woo clicked his tongue as he checked the demonic energy\'s structure.

"It\'s so goddamn inefficient."

The process itself of extracting one\'s grudge from the blood and then turning it into demonic energy was very shabby. There was no way that converting an intangible emotion like a grudge into physical power would be easy.

It was trifling and crude.

\'The Heavenly Dragon Cultivation Technique is way better.\'

The cultivation technique allowed one to gather the energy spread out in the atmosphere extremely efficiently and accumulate it into one\'s dantian.

Compared to that, the Blood Demon Art was severely limited and inefficient.

"What… did you say?" Crimson Fiend asked.

"I said, your martial art is trash, dude."

"W-Wait. How did you know that I convert grudges into demonic energy…?"

Crimson Fiend\'s eyes trembled.

Converting grudges into demonic energy was an arcanum exclusive to the Blood Demon Art, but the demon king had somehow found out about it.

"W-Were you able to figure that out just from touching my demonic energy?" Crimson Fiend asked in confusion.

Kang-Woo smirked.

"It isn\'t as hard as you think. It\'s of a different kind, but they\'re both demonic energy."

"…"

"You can easily figure it out once you check the arrangement of demonic energy."

"What…?"

What was he talking about?

"I\'m saying that I can figure out the structure and principle of your demonic energy just by checking how your demonic energy moves within your body."

"Wh-What are you talking about? There is no way that is possible…"

The Blood Demon Art used blood as a medium to circulate demonic energy. To actualize what Kang-Woo had mentioned, one would need to figure out the flow of demonic energy moving through hundreds of thousands of blood vessels.

The entire human circulatory system would be 120,000 km long if laid out in a single line. That was more than enough to go around Earth twice.

How had he been able to analyze the demonic energy moving over such a distance in an instant?

"It\'s possible if you try hard enough, man."

Kang-Woo smirked.

"Nonsense!! There is no way something like that is possible just by working on it!!" Crimson Fiend shouted like a madman.

"I\'m telling you, it is. People who have never made the effort always say shit like that."

Tsk tsk.

Kang-Woo clicked his tongue.

\'Sheesh, kids these days don\'t know what effort is.\'

He shook his head.

Crimson Fiend said, "How dare you lie to m—"

"Have you ever contained a sea within your body?"

"What?"

"You know, a sea that you will never know when it will overflow."

An endless sea of demonic energy.

"The sea only has three embankments too. Not just that, they don\'t even work properly, so there is risk of flooding at any time. If you don\'t pour your entire being into keeping it under control, you get flooded by the sea and die instantly."

"…"

"So, every single moment of your life, when you eat, take a shit, sleep, laugh in joy, cry in sadness, rampage in anger…"

Even while breathing…

He had to keep the rampaging demonic energy under control at all times if he wanted to survive. Once one got used to doing such a thing…

"Something of that level becomes a piece of cake."

"…"

Crimson Fiend couldn\'t understand what he was talking about. It was far too out there for him to understand. However, if his comparison was true… If he truly had a sea within him that would run rampant at a moment\'s notice if he let up…

"Just… why?"

Why hadn\'t he given up?

Why do something so insane for all of eternity?

It was a crazy thing to do; it wasn\'t something that someone right in his mind would do. It was like suffering from Qi deviation every single second. There was no way for a human to endure such pain.

"Why ask the obvious?"

Kang-Woo laughed in disbelief. There was no need to answer something so obvious.

"Because I don\'t wanna die."

"A-Aaaahh."

Crimson Fiend trembled.

He looked into the demon king\'s eyes and saw the powerful desires within.

\'This is…\'

He was aware of this desire. No, there was no living organism that wouldn\'t recognize this desire.

The desire to live. The desire to not die. The desire to survive even while painstakingly enduring every single breath.

Crimson Fiend read the desire in Kang-Woo\'s eyes.

"…"

Crimson Fiend remained silent.

It was not a matter of a millennium versus ten millennia; they were just in completely different leagues.

The voices of the dead were nothing compared to the demon king, who cheated death at every single moment of his living days.

"You are…"

He remembered Belphegor\'s words.

Crimson Fiend trembled.

"… Crazy."

"I told you." Kang-Woo laughed. "You\'re not ready yet."

Crack.

Crimson Fiend\'s head exploded.

Kang-Woo looked up into the sky.

The battle between Satan and Raphael was still going on.

"Satan, that son of a bitch, collapsed out of the blue earlier, but he\'s fighting just fine."

Satan had collapsed on the ground as if he had suffered from severe hypertension. Raphael had been destroying him initially due to that, but Satan seemed to have come back to his senses and was battling on par with Raphael again.

He\'d definitely become stronger than how he used to be back in Hell.

"Well, then."

The tips of Kang-Woo\'s mouth went up, and he looked up at the battle between the two.

"I wonder who\'s gonna win."

The result would soon make itself known.