Heroic Chronicle of the Reincarnated Demon General

Chapter 2

Lucas wasn’t surprised the Hero’s party was still standing. He didn’t think a mere shockwave would knock down the Level 900+ Transcendent Hero and her Level 850+ companions.

“Shit!” one of them cried out.

“It’s the Bloody General!” another exclaimed.

‘Don’t call me that cringe title,’ Lucas retorted internally, rousing his magic power.

Their words aside, the Hero’s party understood that his showing up before them meant that their disguise had been seen through, so they tossed away the generic armour and revealed their real equipment underneath.

Magic spell circles spun to life around Lucas’s arms, and without hesitation, he charged towards the Hero, kickstarting the battle of the millennium.

Lucas was planning to hold them off until the other Demon Generals arrived to deal with the Hero’s companions, but that plan was doomed to fail because of something he was completely unaware of.

In an effort to prevent the tens of thousands of ordinary soldiers around them from being massacred as collateral damage during their battle, the Hero had acquired a new technique that created a subspace capable of completely sealing them off from the outside world.

Lucas was trapped inside this subspace with the Hero and her party, and consequently, the reinforcements he’d summoned in the form of the other Demon Generals couldn’t reach him.

This forced Lucas to fight the Hero’s party alone, and despite the overwhelming odds against him, he managed to fight them to a stalemate.

Even though he was outnumbered by the Hero’s veteran companions who were all Level 805+, and debuffed by her subspace ability, as well as her power as the World’s defence mechanism that made her deal greater damage to invaders, he still managed to force a draw.

He’d nearly killed the Hero twice when she let her guard down, forcing two of her party members to sacrifice themselves to protect her.

As he fell to one knee, weakened and bleeding all over, Lucas couldn’t help cursing the Demon King, whose fault it was that the Hero had grown so powerful in such a short time.

‘Hometowns are things that hold tremendous sentimental value to humans, and they’d fight tooth and nail to protect them. Sending three divisions of the army there was the dumbest thing he could have ever done!’

Just as that thought crossed his mind, something pierced the barrier of the subspace behind him, moving faster than he could react in his weakened state and stabbing into his back.

The projectile pierced through his body and burst out of his chest, scattering blood and bone fragments around him.

““!””

Both Lucas’s and the Hero’s eyes widened, their shock and horror? visible on their faces at the sudden occurrence.

Lucas clutched his chest and hurriedly tried to use his magic power to seal the wound, and with an agonised expression, he turned his gaze behind him, meeting the eyes of the person who’d torn a hole into the Hero’s subspace and casually walked inside.

“Your…Majesty?”

The Demon King, dressed in his royal regalia, glanced at Lucas with a cold gaze.

“Tsk…you’re still alive,” he muttered.

Lucas was flabbergasted, his brain struggling to comprehend what he’d just heard from the person he’d devoted decades of his life to.

“W-what?” he managed to utter, his voice filled with shock as he desperately attempted to heal the gaping wound in his chest using his magic power.

However, he soon discovered that he could barely circulate his magic power properly, as some sort of poison had already seeped into his bloodstream and was interfering with his body’s functions.

“Still, you managed to weaken them enough and even take out some of them, so I suppose it wasn’t entirely a waste.”

The Demon King spoke as he turned his attention toward the Hero’s party, noting their diminished numbers and the condition of their leader, who could barely maintain her grip on her sword anymore.

His expression suggested that he’d found the outcome satisfactory, as if the deaths of his soldiers and the near-death of his strongest general were nothing more than acceptable costs for achieving his objective.

The Demon King walked past the dumbfounded Lucas and towards the exhausted Hero, summoning his sword into his hand with the intention to finish her off.

But before he could take another step forward, Lucas forced himself back onto his feet, reached out with his bloodied hand and grabbed the Demon King.

“What the hell is this supposed to mean… Your Majesty?” he demanded, his voice filled with barely restrained anger.

The Demon King paused and turned away from the wary Hero, looking at Lucas with a mildly exasperated expression.

“You still don’t get it? Even now?”

He sighed, sounding almost disappointed by Lucas’s inability to understand something that he considered painfully obvious.

Pushing Lucas’s bloodied hand away from his body and shoving him backwards, he said, “Absolute power doesn’t tolerate the existence of anything that might challenge it. Your power has grown far too close to my own for me to ignore any longer.”

Objectively speaking, the Demon King’s assessment wasn’t entirely incorrect.

Lucas had never openly admitted it, but the Demon King had always known that Lucas was a Transcendent over Level 900.

Their power was so close that the outcome of a battle between them wouldn’t be determined by their levels or the amount of magic power they possessed. Instead, the victor would depend on the environment, the conditions of their confrontation, and the circumstances surrounding their battle.

Their strength was so closely matched that neither of them could confidently guarantee victory, and the Demon King had evidently found that possibility intolerable.

It was because of that he’d orchestrated everything that led up to this moment.

Sending Lucas away during Operation Rootcutter, sacrificing the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Divisions to grow the Hero’s power, and forcing a scenario where Lucas was weakened after confronting the strengthened Hero and her companions—all was for this.

The added bonus was that after fighting Lucas, the Hero would also be weakened. In their weakened states, the Demon King could eliminate them both and not have to worry about either of them becoming a problem for him again.

Understanding all of this, Lucas was stunned into silence, unable to immediately process the sheer absurdity of it all.

But beneath that silence, his disbelief gradually gave way to an anger so profound that he could barely contain it.

He’d faithfully followed every order the Demon King had given him throughout decades of military service, never questioning his authority or refusing to carry out the duties assigned to him, and this was the reward he received for doing his job properly as a soldier.

He was being eliminated simply because the Demon King felt threatened by his strength, even though it should’ve been obvious to anyone, including a blind man, that Lucas had absolutely no intention of claiming the Demon King’s throne.

Lucas had devoted himself to maintaining the Demon King’s authority and had spearheaded purges to eliminate those who threatened his sovereignty, only to discover that his loyalty meant absolutely nothing when his own strength became inconvenient.

He was fuming, unable to accept that such a pathetic end awaited him after everything he’d accomplished throughout his life, and he refused to die quietly at the hands of the person he’d served with unwavering loyalty for decades.

Lucas silently stopped the flow of magic power he’d forcefully been circulating through his body to counteract the poison, abandoning his attempts to heal himself, and he redirected that remaining power toward the blood coating his hand.

His eyes began to glow as a circular pattern appeared around his irises and another formed around his pupils, signalling the activation of his Mystic Eyes of Truth.

Extending his bloodied hand toward the Demon King, who’d already turned away from him and resumed his approach toward the exhausted Hero, Lucas conjured a magic spell circle.

“Chains of Resentment.”

Lucas invoked blood magic, using the blood he’d left on the Demon King’s body when he’d grabbed him moments earlier as the medium for the spell.

The magic power within that blood resonated with his command, and before the Demon King could react, bloody chains burst out of it and wrapped around his body, binding his arms, legs, and even his neck in place.

“You damned!!” the Demon King cursed, immediately rousing his powerful demonic energy in an attempt to break free from the restraints that had suddenly ensnared him.

However, the binding power produced by a Transcendent who was quite literally burning through the final remnants of his life wasn’t something that could be broken so easily.

Lucas approached the Demon King and grabbed him by the neck with his bloodied hands, smearing even more blood across him to strengthen the bindings faster than the Demon King could destroy them.

With the Demon King’s movements restricted, Lucas looked him directly in the eyes.

“You want to get rid of me because you feel threatened by my strength?” Lucas asked, his voice trembling with barely restrained fury.

“Well, I’ve been fed up with you for years. I’ve spent decades cleaning up your messes, carrying out your orders, and protecting your authority, all while putting up with your pathetic arrogance!”

Lucas burned even more of his life for momentary power, condensing all that power within his damaged heart, his grip on the Demon King’s neck tightening.

“If you’re so afraid of me that you can’t even allow me to exist, then I’ll make sure you don’t get to enjoy your precious throne either. I’m taking you down with me, Your Majesty.”