Demon's Virtue

Chapter 715: Whale Fall

Eiro spread his wings and built up a distance between himself and the Devil. Of course, he was immediately being pursued, but Eiro had already prepared accordingly. The Devil was a mastermind; a mage, extremely skilled in the use of numerous spells and magical techniques that allowed him to build up his arsenal over the time that he had been in power.

But Eiro wasn't just a mage himself, even if he would call it his specialty.

This demon's body was particularly powerful as well, so he was able to build up some distance before the Devil was even really able to properly react. And a mile wasn't a hard distance to traverse either with the wings on his back, so Eiro was able to get far enough away without issues.

He looked back, seeing the Devil's confused and furious expression, and couldn't help but let a big grin form on his lips as the Devil stopped moving forward, the distance limit of a mile having been reached.

Now, Eiro just had to meet the Demon King and make it official. But that in itself was already easier said than done. After all, hell was a realm as vast, if not more so, than the central elemental plane. It was a world that he wouldn't be able to traverse in the little amount of time he had. Of course, there wasn't anything that Eiro could do against it.

If that was the condition to become a Demon Lord, then so be it. Fact was... the Devil wasn't an easy opponent to beat even with those restrictions placed on him. The Devil was a Master, after all. He wasn't someone that Eiro could hold out against yet, even if he did possess holy magic.

The issue was that this was hell, even if the part of it they found themselves in didn't seem to be in any Lord's possession, that would mean that it belonged to the King himself, by default. And using holy magic in the domain of the King... that wasn't something Eiro was stupid enough to do. He didn't have a death-wish, after all.

The Demon King was an entity that was just as powerful, if not more so, than the Monster King. An ancient being that existed as long as this realm to begin with, growing in power the more sin spread throughout the world. Why the Demon King didn't choose to make use of that power to take revenge or simply rule over the other realms was something Eiro didn't know, but that wasn't important either.

It was a fact that nobody knew the exact extents of the Demon King's power. But in the long past, a hero of an early generation chose to rid the world of hell after beating the Monster King. He was hailed as the most powerful hero that had existed by that point, and even now, some of his feats were extraordinary.

But once he stepped into hell, even equipped with the most holy equipment the world had to offer... the Hero was slaughtered by the Demon King. It wasn't even a contest.

A few moments after, one of the King's servants had appeared in the central material plane, in the capital of the country the hero belonged to, and threw that cocky man's head onto the ground in front of the leaders of the world, mere hours after it had been reported that the hero descended into hell for the battle.

The fear that was engraved deep into the hero's face was something that established the Demon King as an entity that couldn't ever be grasped. Something that was more a disaster of unknown heights, rather than a 'living creature'.

And that was the being that Eiro was supposed to meet with right now. At least it wasn't hard for him to find his way. The unholy, demonic energies that flowed throughout this hell, disgusting not only in the magic that existed in every crevice, but also its actual physical landscape, seemed to originate in a single place.

The Demon flew over the rivers of blood, the pulsating mountains of flesh and bone and eyes that traced Eiro's line of sight, never looking away for even an instant.

There was a sky in this world as well, but it was a deep, dark abyss of a starless night sky, but the world was illuminated as if it were midday. As that light landed on Eiro's skin, he could feel an unnatural cold come over him, not one that he felt physically, but instead felt more like the cold emptiness of death that was creeping on from every corner of the world, wanting to rip Eiro apart.

Of course, in its own ways... this world was surprisingly beautiful as well. When discarding how different this realm was from his mind, ridding himself of the expectations of what the world should be like, Eiro could see a transcendent natural aesthetic in this world that was unlike anything he had ever seen. Not greater or lesser than the beauty if nature in other realms, just... different.

Like the inherent beauty of whale fall; the ecosystem that grew around the corpse of a dead whale that fell to the depths of the ocean. A beauty created by death, that in itself led to life. For the first time in his life, the idea that being a demon could be something to be proud of crossed Eiro's mind. However, for now, he couldn't dwell on those sorts of emotions.

Once he became a Lord of hell, and especially once he learned all the secrets hidden away being the Devil's disgusting visage, he may be able to come back here whenever he wanted.

And then, something came into view. In the distance, beyond the twisted horizon that beat like a dying man's heart, bones began to emerge. Of course, that in itself wasn't anything weird; bones were just a part of this world, as stone was where Eiro was from.

But that weren't just bones; it was a pair of enormous boney hands, each with dozens of fingers growing off and across each other like the branches of an ancient tree, clasping onto the other, almost like in prayer.

In the hollow arch that these hands created, there was nothing but an unnatural darkness that seemed to swallow darkness, but Eiro could her the call of a false ancestor within that darkness.

Without a moment's hesitation, Eiro flew into the black world, feeling the natural, ever-present pull of gravity disappear from his body as he floated through a place devoid of anything and everything at all. No light, no air, nothing. Even behind him, the portal that he took to come here had simply disappeared without Eiro even noticing it.

He wanted to sigh, or even stop himself from moving for a moment to gather his rambling thoughts, but for a few moments, it was like even his body had disappeared into nothingness. Like he was a man made of non-existence.

But then, out of the nothingness, something came to be. It was a large, ornate hall, like a realm of the giants while he was nothing but the tiniest ant in the world. As he stood there, a body suddenly having returned to him, even if one that didn't seem to really belong to himself, Eiro saw the Demon King, sitting on a throne befitting him.

Just from what Eiro was seeing, he didn't seem particularly unique. He barely looked like a Demon at all, really. Just a simple human man with white... no, black skin. An elderly child with three, or dozens, or maybe just a single tooth-filled abyss that took the place of its mouth. Perfectly ordinary, really.

As the Demon King stretched out its many mile-long arms, her single hand touched Eiro's cheek with a violent tenderness.

The King opened his mouth, as Eiro beheld the voice of a god born from the tragedy of sin and defiance after being thrown from the heavens, fated to rot as her children feed on the flesh and blood of its carcass.

Eiro came to after witnessing the presence of hell itself, which had disguised her nature as that of a King that never existed to trick the fools of every world into a peace that they had never earned. A gift of mercy they didn't even know had been bestowed upon them.

And a single message appeared in front of Eiro's eyes, its blue shine nearly burning itself into his retinas.

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[The Demon King warmly welcomes a new Lord of Hell]