Chapter 112
After wiping out Baal’s retainers for quite some time.
[There are no longer any targets hostile to you.]
[Epic Saga Mission 69/70, ‘The End of Eternity,’ has been completed.]
[Epic Saga Mission 70/70, ‘A New Land,’ begins.]
[Meet Gremory.]
A message appeared.
...Is it over already?
When I returned to where Gremory had been,
I saw Agares and Baal sprawled on the ground, bleeding, and the surrounding area utterly devastated, as if a tremendous battle had taken place.
Could Gremory have...
“Savior.”
No, she was fine. Thank goodness.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere...?”
“You know my authority...”
Oh... right. Her healing authority.
“And my authority has grown even stronger as I continue to receive the Demon God’s power.”
“That’s good.”
As I chatted briefly with her...
Baal spoke from behind us, his voice barely above a dying whisper.
“Gre...mory... don’t... be fooled... he is a des...troyer...”
“Are you still saying that?”
“The... Hell Usurper... belongs... to whom...”
The Hell Usurper?
Was he talking about Greed?
What about Greed?
“He...”
Baal was trying to say something, mustering the last of his strength.
Gold gathered on the clothes Baal was wearing, and the gold scattered nearby melted into liquid and began flowing toward him.
Soon, the gold clumped together into a mass about the size of a person, then took the form of a man.
“Va...sa...go...”
A blond man with a golden tan and a muscular six-pack, his abs exposed...
Uh... a blond, tanned delinquent?
...That was the only way I could describe him.
I warily gathered Gluttony, and Vasago—the blond, tanned delinquent—raised both hands to show he was surrendering.
“Whoa, whoa. I’m not looking for a fight. I’ve already recalled the retainers I lent out.”
“He’s the Third Demon Lord, Vasago. He’s relatively mild-mannered and one of the few Demon Lords who are friendly toward humans.”
“Heh heh, not as friendly as you, Gremory. It’s been a while, beautiful.”
Gremory recoiled and furrowed her brow.
“He’s also the Demon Lord I dislike the most.”
“That’s a little harsh.”
“First, tell me what you’re really doing here.”
“What do you mean, what I’m really doing? That’s hurtful. I came to apologize, too...”
“Apologize?”
“I did lend out my retainers without giving it a second thought. It wouldn’t be strange if you thought I’d sided against the Creator’s successor.”
Right. He had.
The Third through Sixth Demon Lords had lent their retainers to the two of them.
So they could recall them, too.
“I thought you might be curious. I came to tell you a story from the old days. I doubt Gremory here knows it.”
“If you’re only here to tell a story, there’s no need for us to be enemies.”
“Exactly. Let’s just talk. Come, sit down.”
At his gesture, a golden chair and table appeared, along with a small house.
How much would all this be worth?
“He’s called the Golden Demon Lord.”
“...I think I could’ve guessed that without you telling me.”
“I was a prince, actually. Back when I was human. Though, it’s not like I’m not human now.”
The blond man—no, Vasago—cut into my conversation with Gremory and tossed that out.
A prince... That does fit the image.
“I was the first prince of a kingdom that made a fortune through maritime trade. In other words, I was the heir to the throne. Baal was the top student at the academy, and Agares was second. The rest were no slouches, either... But the most remarkable of us was Avicenna, without a doubt.”
Avicenna...
The mentor of my class.
I’d never met him, but he was a ‘Constellation’ who had supported me in every way he could.
A story about him from when he was human...
I couldn’t miss this.
“We stood out in our respective fields, so we naturally became friends. We had no one else we could get along with. We couldn’t communicate with the others. Then, one day... Avicenna disappeared, saying he’d realized something. He didn’t return until we were old and decrepit. But he looked exactly as he had when he left.”
As he spoke, he briefly ran a hand over his face.
The spirited, dashing prince vanished, replaced in an instant by a withered old man.
“Even in this state, our desire to live was unmistakable. Of course it was. There was still so much left to do in the world... We couldn’t just die. So we accepted Avicenna’s offer.”
I’d heard the story up to that point.
He’d given them eternal life.
“But neither Baal nor Agares knows what happened next... One day, he came to me alone, in secret.”
“...Don’t tell me the person who came to you was...”
“Who else could it have been but Avicenna?”
At his words, Baal, who’d been on the verge of death, opened his eyes wide.
“He... came... to you...”
“That’s right. He told me ‘eternity’ would soon come to an end. Then he asked me which rulers were most friendly toward humans. I picked a few and sent them his way. You were one of those chosen.”
Gremory flinched when Vasago singled her out.
Whoever Avicenna was, he was the Creator of the Demon Realm.
He was practically the Demon God.
She couldn’t help being surprised that the Demon God had chosen her.
“Next, I unleashed the Hell Usurper in your territory.”
“W-what did you say?!”
How much trouble had she gone through because of that insane monster?
Her rank had plunged from the middle of the pack to near the bottom, and her retainers had suffered, too.
And the one responsible had been the Demon God.
“If you hadn’t worked with a human to deal with it, that Hell Usurper would eventually have grown powerful enough to destroy the entire Demon Realm over the course of tens of thousands of years.”
The Hell Usurper—Greed—had already grown too powerful for Gremory’s territory to handle.
It was no exaggeration to say that, given tens of thousands of years, he would have destroyed the entire Demon Realm.
“But it seems even that mysterious fellow never expected you to show up.”
Vasago looked at me and smiled.
“The Hell Usurper was originally meant to be destroyed, but you ‘tamed’ him... No wonder the Demon Realm’s eternity mistook you for its master.”
...That suddenly reminded me of when that ‘Storm of Space-Time’ or whatever came blowing in.
So that was what Greed had been talking about. It all made sense now.
He’d said he shouldn’t have been here, but had appeared because he himself had disappeared, or something like that.
Listening to Vasago’s story, I suddenly grew curious.
“Why aren’t you trying to fight me?”
“What, are you upset that I’m not fighting you? You don’t look like the combative type.”
“...What’s wrong with my looks?”
“A scaredy-cat?”
This guy’s good.
“Tsk. Eternity is gone, and now we’re mortal. When would we have time to fight? We’ll gradually grow old and start dying, so fighting before we die would be foolish. Especially since we don’t have much time left. Yet these fellows are still dreaming foolish dreams.”
He let out a quiet sigh as he looked at Baal, who had lost consciousness entirely, and Agares, who was already collapsed.
“The demons of later generations have had time frozen at their youngest—in their early twenties. Even if time starts moving again, they’ll still have plenty of it. The Demon Lord-level ones will live another thousand years or so, at least... and that pretty lady there will live ten thousand. But not us.”
They were already unimaginably old when time stopped.
But now that time was moving again...
Like an arrow already loosed, the primordial Demon Lords were bound to suffer far more from the loss of their immortality.
“We’ve lived through an immeasurably long time. That means there’s an immeasurable amount to put in order—more than our few remaining years can handle. Gamigin, Marbas, and Valefor all feel the same way.”
The names of the primordial Demon Lords ranked fourth, fifth, and sixth.
After mentioning them, he said,
“Gremory.”
Vasago called out to Gremory.
“Why are you calling me?”
“The reason we became the Demon Realm’s supreme rulers was our experience. We had accumulated experience that you all had never known. Now you must take on that role. Your part in restoring order to the Demon Realm, which will be in turmoil for a while, will be enormous.”
“...I suppose I’ll have to accept that.”
“I’ll help you.”
“You?”
“My experience should be more than enough to help.”
“W-well, that’s true, of course.”
Didn’t you just say it yourself?
That you had little time left and plenty to put in order.
“My retainers are all independent, so I don’t need to establish a line of succession like Gamigin, or worry about dividing up my vast inheritance like Marbas. I’ll help her become the new pillar of order in the Demon Realm.”
“...If you’re willing to help, then.”
Looks like we’ve got things more or less sorted out.
As if to prove my thought right,
[Epic Saga Mission 70/70, ‘A New Land,’ has been completed.]
Oh, finally.
But then...
[You can now undertake side missions in the Demon Realm.]
[Number of missions currently available: 323,971]
...What? How many?
Could I even finish those in a lifetime?
As I let out a hollow laugh,
[Having completed all Epic Saga Missions, you are granted full authority over the Gate, ‘Demon Realm.’]
[You have become the first person to own a Gate.]
[The owner of a Gate can set its entry requirements.]
[You may allow or deny entry to the Gate for any target you choose.]
[Even while inside the Gate, you can eject people immediately at your discretion.]
...The Demon Realm itself belongs to me?
More precisely, the connection to the Demon Realm—the ‘Gate’—belonged to me...
Still, that was incredible.
The Demon Realm wasn’t just some little dungeon.
It was a whole continent... No, it was no exaggeration to call it an entire world.
The Demon Realm seemed to be about the size of Eurasia, at a rough estimate.
To have exclusive control over the passage to this new world...
This is going to cause a huge commotion, isn’t it?
And the ruler of the Demon Realm... was practically my business partner(?).
I owned 49% of Gremory’s stake, after all.
What kind of business could I do in the Demon Realm?
...There were so many possibilities, my brain short-circuited.
Honestly, just making use of the vast land of the Demon Realm didn’t sound like a bad idea.
...Wait a minute.
Now that I thought about it, the Demon Realm was a completely open-world dungeon.
And an unbelievably huge one, at that.
Which meant...
I might be able to find everything I needed in the Demon Realm without having to search for dungeons elsewhere.
“Gremory.”
“Yes, Savior.”
“...Do you happen to need any hired help?”
“Hired help...?”
There was no way I could clear all those side quests by myself, was there?
Fortunately...
On the other side of that world, there were tens of millions of people who’d drool in their sleep at the mere mention of ‘quests’ or ‘rewards.’
**
“...Nothing seriously wrong could’ve happened to him, right?”
A deep sigh escaped Zephyros Ryu Hyeonsu.
The guy had been perfectly fine at the NIS, then suddenly went off to Aoji, North Korea, and entered a Gate. Now, it had been a whole month without any word from him.
He couldn’t even reach him through the Ansible Earring.
[Kim Segyun Hunter has been out of contact for a month inside the Aoji Gate in North Korea.]
[Where exactly is the Gate, ‘Hell Mine’?]
[North Korean hunters: ‘It was like hell.’ Can Kim Segyun Hunter clear it?]
The newspapers were filled with headlines like these again today.
The Gate was still active.
That meant he wasn’t dead.
“...This is driving me crazy.”
He already had more than enough headaches as the director of the NIS.
Chinese and American spies and hunters were trying to take advantage of Kim Segyun’s absence, and the bigger problem had erupted from somewhere he hadn’t expected.
“Lee Seonghyeok... That obsessed fanboy...”
A flood of reports had come in that Lee Seonghyeok, who had taken power in North Korea, was idolizing Kim Segyun using the very same tactics he’d used to idolize North Korea’s Kim family.
So far, it wasn’t anything coercive, just publicity, but...
The South Korean government, having experienced the Kim family’s dictatorship and grown sick of it, was suspicious of Lee Seonghyeok’s sincere(?) fandom.
The rumors ranged from claims that the publicity was at Kim Segyun’s direction to wild speculation that he was investing in the Aoji Gate because he intended to shift his power base to North Korea and become its dictator.
President Kang Minkook dismissed the claims, and Ryu Hyeonsu actively denied them, but...
‘Honestly, it doesn’t seem suspicious at all!’
Ryu Hyeonsu knew perfectly well that it was nonsense, considering Kim Segyun’s usual personality.
Even so...
“He should come here and explain himself...”
The whole thing could’ve been resolved with a single explanation from him, but he was stuck inside a Gate in North Korea, and the situation kept getting more tangled.
And Ryu Hyeonsu was the one who had to untangle it, so he’d been under a tremendous amount of stress lately.
On top of that, the bigger problem was...
North Korea’s completely ruined economy.
It was as if thirty million people without a penny to their name had suddenly appeared in South Korea...
No matter how well South Korea was doing, supporting a country the size of North Korea, one of the poorest in the world, would break its back in no time.
That was why the government was making such a fuss about Lee Seonghyeok’s activities.
Assuming reunification, over a hundred trillion won in aid was being sent each year.
Including the funds provided by the private sector at the government’s urging—nearly compulsion—the total exceeded a hundred trillion won.
If they poured in all that money, only for Lee Seonghyeok to suddenly become the new North Korean leader...
Even worse would be Kim Segyun becoming North Korea’s new dictator.
They’d lose both South Korea’s strongest Hunter and their money.
It was understandable.
A sum amounting to a sizable fraction of the government’s annual budget had suddenly vanished. Politicians and public officials were bound to get hysterical.
It all came down to money...
To solve it,
“We need funds that will let North Korea become self-sufficient...”
They needed foreign currency—money that would circulate within North Korea instead of simply being funneled in from South Korea.
It had to be dollars.
The problem was, there was no way a source of dollars could appear overnight.
Just as he brought his vape to his lips, feeling frustrated and gloomy,
A message appeared before his eyes.
[Kim Segyun has become the owner of the Gate, ‘Demon Realm’!]
[This Gate is now under the management of ‘Kim Segyun.’]
[The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s North Hamgyong Province has been pacified!]