Chapter 90 - Chapter 87: Episode 85 - Succession Ceremony
With preparations for the long-awaited succession ceremony finally complete, the First Elder walked toward their destination with a fluttering heart.
They listened to the rhythmic clacking of their own feet against the stone stairs, lost in thought.
The moment they had waited for so long had finally arrived.
When the Demon King passed away from natural causes thirty years ago, they never dreamed it would take this long to resurrect them.
Even looking back through the history of the Demon World, the throne had never remained vacant for such an extended period.
Because of this, various rebels had been running rampant, lusting after the power of the empty throne.
Now, once the Demon King returned, they could purge every rebel and reclaim the power and honor that the Council and the nobles were meant to enjoy.
The Demon King, who had existed since the dawn of the Demon World's civilization, had established the Council, appointed the nobles to serve as their limbs, and left behind the royals as their descendants.
The Council, the nobles, and the royals—these three had each made an oath to the Demon King.
The Council swore to perform the ritual to resurrect the Demon King.
The nobles swore to remain loyal to the awakened Demon King and forever provide the military forces to serve as their limbs, and the royals swore to provide the vessel for the resurrected Demon King.
Each faction had served the Demon King for thousands of years, but eventually, a problem arose.
The nobles and the royals, excluding the Council, either tried to break those oaths or became unable to keep them.
As time passed since the Demon King's death, many nobles rebelled, turning the military forces meant to be the Demon King's limbs against them to ensure the Demon King would never return.
Since the nobles didn't need to keep their oaths if the Demon King didn't wake up, they had staged a rebellion during the interregnum.
The problem with the royals was that they could no longer provide a vessel with high-purity magic power to resurrect the Demon King.
Over time, they had invaded many dimensions and mixed their blood with the races they plundered, causing those with pure magic power to become increasingly scarce.
That was the price paid for the Demon King having turned most demons female to increase their military forces.
While it was easy for the mostly female demon population to replenish their ranks by extracting seed from males stolen from other dimensions, the problem arose because fewer and fewer males were being born.
As reproduction between demons became increasingly difficult, they resorted to plundering males from other dimensions, and eventually, the repercussions reached even the royals.
The nobles and royals tried to preserve their lineage by taking in the occasional male demon born, but since even those males were mixed-bloods from other dimensions, the lineage grew thinner and thinner.
As a result, unlike in the old days when the purity of magic power proved one's lineage, more and more demons began trying to prove their status through the sheer size of their magic power.
This was possible because the nobles and royals possessed an amount of magic power that was on a different level from ordinary demons.
However, the vessel of the Demon King could only be someone with pure magic power.
In this generation, there wasn't a single person with the pure magic power capable of resurrecting the Demon King.
With the rebel forces growing, the First Elder had thought it wouldn't be long before the absolute monarchy of the Demon World, which had lasted for thousands of years, vanished.
However, they had discovered someone who met the conditions, even though she was not a demon.
A woman with pure magic power.
Even though they had fitted her with a restraint suit, a terrifying amount of magic power was surging within her.
They still remembered it clearly because she was a woman whose amount of magic power, not just its purity, was comparable to the Demon King's.
The succession ceremony, which they had spent a week preparing, was all because of that human woman.
It was clear that if they threatened her using her child as leverage, she would willingly accept the succession ceremony.
Being someone who knew quite a bit about humans, they could guarantee it.
They were certain because they had heard the interrogator's report on how a mother acts to protect her fragile young.
Even the human male possessed pure magic power within his body—faint, but equal to that of his mother.
That lineage must surely be special.
If given the chance, they wanted to use him as a seed-sower for their own family to create descendants capable of possessing high-purity magic power.
The First Elder thought that if they had that male, their family might be able to become the next royals.
If the Demon King were to be resurrected, it was clear that they would first purge the royals.
Royals who could not prove their own purity.
Since they were useless beings who could no longer create a vessel for the Demon King, it was natural for them to be targets for disposal.
Once they obtained that male and descendants with high-purity magic power were born, they could satisfy the condition of being the Demon King's vessel.
Then, it was certain that the Demon King would make their family the royals.
The royals were the ones who could directly exercise the power of the Demon King, the eternal ruler of the Demon World.
The nobles who would offer eternal military forces and the Council that would perform the Demon King's resurrection ritual actually had plenty of room for replacement even if they disappeared.
They could be erased right away, and other demons could be seated in their places.
Since the Demon King also remembered how to perform the succession ceremony, if they were alive, they could just use others instead of the Council.
Even the nobles were merely raising armies to be loyal to the Demon King; it would be no different if they gave titles to others and had them grow their power.
Only the royals were an essential commodity to the Demon King that could not be replaced, so the power they could exercise was immense.
However, the royals who had held that immense power had exhausted their value.
Having become worthless, they would disappear at the hands of the Demon King.
If they only got their hands on that male, their family could occupy that position, the pinnacle of power.
The First Elder could not hide the smile that formed on their face.
Because they firmly believed that everything would happen as they wished, they could not stop the laughter that kept bubbling up.
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The First Elder removed the handcuffs and restraint suit that had been placed on Min-ah's body.
She might have suddenly attacked, but the First Elder believed that the human woman would not do such a foolish thing.
Since the soldiers brought behind them were holding weapons aimed at the human male's neck, they thought she would not be able to move recklessly in a situation where her child could die.
In the end, the human woman followed them obediently.
Now, the thought that their family could become royals after finishing the Demon King's succession ceremony filled the First Elder's mind.
After arriving at the place where the succession ceremony would be held, the First Elder left the human male outside the space where the ritual would be performed.
Now, they just had to send the human woman into the circle and perform the ritual.
Because the ritual they had worked so hard to prepare could fail if the magic power in her body was suppressed, if she fainted, or if the subject of the ritual left the circle, the First Elder looked at the human woman and said:
"Now, go inside the circle and stay still. If you act carelessly, your child's head will be separated from his body, so don't have any foolish thoughts."
"Keu-euk..."
Min-ah could not hide her indignation as she looked at Seon-ah, who was being held hostage.
"Start now."
As several demons began the ritual, the ritual circle, lined with dozens of circles and geometric shapes, began to glow blue.
Seon-ah, witnessing with his own eyes what was happening to his mother, felt something ominous and kept calling out to her.
"Omma! Omma!.... No!"
Feeling as if his mother would disappear once this ritual ended, Seon-ah tried to jump into the ritual circle with tears in his eyes.
As he tried to move forward, ignoring the blade touching his neck, he was pinned to the ground by the soldiers' hands.
Min-ah, who was in the very center of the ritual, began to tremble, and her posture gradually lowered as if she had no strength left in her body.
Seon-ah, who had been watching Min-ah continuously, called out to her even more fiercely, but in the end, the ritual could not be stopped.
When the ritual circle glowed the brightest blue,
Min-ah eventually fainted.
And Seon-ah would never be able to forget the look on Min-ah's face when she woke up shortly after.
It was not the expression that the mother he knew would make.
What he felt from her as she scanned her surroundings with cold eyes was not warmth or reassurance, but only fear and despair.
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They hadn't been able to obtain a body for thirty years.
The descendants they had raised until now to perform the ritual had lost the purity of their magic power.
They thought to themselves about what had gone wrong.
First, they thought the problem was that they had manipulated the demons' genes to increase the ratio of females being born to replenish soldiers due to their own greed.
Second, they should have prevented the royals from mixing their blood with other nobles or demons so they wouldn't lose their purity.
The first was an unavoidable choice to conquer numerous dimensions, but...
If they had stopped the second with their own orders, this would not have happened.
They thought that if they had protected the purity of the lineage to protect the purity of the magic power, it wouldn't have taken this long to resurrect.
Finishing that thought, they contemplated their newly acquired body.
It possessed the overwhelmingly purest magic power among all the bodies they had obtained so far.
Even the amount of magic power was comparable to their prime.
On top of that, the body was overflowing with unknown power.
Power that enhanced the senses and power that possessed the ability to adapt.
Curious about what the spirit of the person who possessed this truly amazing body would be like, they looked at the original owner's spirit, which had been pushed to the corner of the consciousness.
This woman's spirit was too intense.
They felt like it was a burning flame.
They had seen many spirits while switching between numerous bodies, but they had never seen a spirit that burned so fiercely.
Most of these intensely burning spirits were those who wanted revenge.
That was a poison that even they, the Demon King, should never swallow.
As long as this woman's desire for revenge did not subside, they could not fully swallow her spirit.
Because their own spirit could burn and be swallowed by that woman.
The Demon King, having examined the surroundings once, turned their gaze toward one place as if they had witnessed an amazing sight.
It was the one with the highest-purity magic power in here, other than Min-ah.
Seeing Seon-ah slumped on the ground, the Demon King read the memories from the original owner's body and extracted information about him.
And then, they looked at Seon-ah with a sadistic smile.