Bedroom of the 71st Demon Lord- Valefor

“Salutation, seventy-first demon lord, Andromalius.”

The moment his voice traveled through his bedroom, the room’s chandeliers were instantly destroyed, purging the room into pitch darkness.

“Wh-who is there?” He said, looking around worriedly.

“It seems like I had it on time,” I said, hiding within the shadow.

“Show yourself,” the demon lord ordered, “or I will have your head!”

His eyes were focused in front where he had heard the sound of the doors closing.

Just as his eyes adapted to the darkness, a few bodies fell onto the ground with a loud thump.

When he turned toward that direction, he noticed that the bodies belonged to his family and his priestess.

A single, fatal cut had ended their life. From the expression on their face, they had died without suffering.

“You…!” Just as he was about to speak, he felt a cold, sharp blade resting against his neck.

“For someone like you, I thought you would have put up a better resistance,” I replied, holding his head back with my hand over the upper half of his face, while my other hand held him down with my dagger against his neck, “this is a bit anticlimactic isn’t it? I had expected you to put up a fight, but this is just embarrassing.”

Even though he was shaking from the humiliation, he could not let himself die in a place like this.

He was a demon lord, the greatest existence within the demon race, and possibly all races belonging to the Goddess of Darkness.

“Release me, and I shall grant you all the riches you would possibly want!” The demon lord offered, knowing that temptation was the downfall for many heroes.

“I do not need your wealth,” I responded, holding back the taste of disgust in my mouth.

I could see that the life of luxury had dampened his senses, and complacency and laziness has dulled his fangs.

Seeing that I had refused his offer so blatantly, he felt threatened for the first in a while, “then women, land, power, ranks, I will give them all to you as long as you release me.”

“Sorry, but I want something else.”

His voice grew angrier and angrier as if boiling inside, “what is it that you possibly want?”

“Of course it would be your life,” I answered, brimming with joy and happiness.

“You… wait, th-that voice…”

“Oh, do you recognize me?” I asked, genuinely surprised that he would recognize my voice since it was heavily altered.

“I see,” I muttered, “so you can perceive through my magic. While it is a basic spell, I must admit, I had looked down on you.”

His body was trembling in rage, “Valefar, you… you, you have betrayed us?”

I couldn’t help but laugh hysterically at his response, “betrayal would imply that I was on your side in the first place.”

Trembling with anger, he muttered, “wh-why are you doing this to me?!”

“Do you really need to ask me that?” I responded, quite bemused by the situation, “have the wine washed away your memories?”

With his life in my hand, I could torment him however much I wanted to.

“You bastard!” He cursed furiously, “I should have killed you when I had the chance! And, I should have killed your whore mother in front of you.”

“Ah, but you didn’t, and now I have come to reap your life. Isn’t it funny how it all comes full circle?”

Realizing what I had said and the situation he was in, he began to backtrack, “wa-wait, please forgive me Valefor!”

“…”

“Listen to me Valefor, if you help me repel the enemies, I… I will forget everything that happened. In fact, we can still be allies. I can help you kill the others, do not make the wrong choice-”

Before he could finish, I slit his throat with a single, fluid motion.

I sighed, how pathetic.

If he was going to plead for his life, he should have at least offered something worthwhile. His loyalty was brittle and his life meant little for me. But, even if he was useful, it would not change my decision, I was simply curious in what he would offer.

Everything he did offer I could easily take from his cold, dead hands.

As he bled, I released him and watched silently.

He began struggling, grasping his neck with his hands and hoping to stop the bleeding. No matter what he did, the wound that I had inflicted would continue to bleed, even though his hands.

He would not have the luxury of dying peacefully.

I had thought that a part of me would feel disgusted, that I was a part of this pathetic race, and that another part of me would be screaming in joy that I was one step closer to fulfilling my revenge.

Yet, I felt no emotion. No remorse, no anger, no sympathy, no joy, nothing…

He brought out his wings, and as he was about to fly, I reached out and grabbed him by his wings.

He desperately tried to resist, but with fear drowning out his reasoning, he struggled helplessly.

I forced my foot onto the center of his back, and pulled his wings backward.

The sound of bones cracking and flesh tearing could be heard throughout the entire room.

His bone and flesh began to tear as blood poured out like a fountain, spraying the entire area full of his blood. With a forceful push, I pulled his wings off.

He screamed horrendously as he began to crawl toward the door, hoping to make it before I could reach him.

With how weak he had become, I casted aside his dismembered wings and simply walked up towards him.

I grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him down onto the ground.

Drowning in blood and fear, completely swept away by the concept of death, he was unable to struggle.

I quickly mounted his body and looked down at him.

“When you are the one who watches others die, the concept of death must have felt so far away, so foreign; yet, now here you are, experiencing it for yourself,” I said, staring down at him like one would look down at a lesser being, “I wonder, is it all that you thought it would be?”

While he was sure to die, it would take some time. A demon lord’s body was far stronger and more durable than that of a human, and even though he was dealt an otherwise fatal blow, it would take time until the flame of his life is extinguish. No matter how much of a piece of garbage he has become, he was still a demon lord.

I lifted up my daggers into the air. Light mana began to gather around the simple, dulled steel dagger.

In order to hasten the process, I began stabbing his chest over and over with my dagger making sure to avoid any fatal locations.

With light mana infused into the dagger, causing it to resonate with a brilliant glow, the pain that he experience would be a hundred times worse than if it was a plain dagger.

Horrified by my sudden action, he began screaming but all that could be heard was the muffled cries of a dying man.

As he tried to push me away in a futile attempt to save himself, his hands were sliced into pieces.

I wanted him to show me more of his terrified face.

I wanted him to experience enough pain that he wishes he was dead.

I wanted him to cry and beg for mercy.

I wanted him to suffer everything that I had suffered.

I continued to stab him until my hands stopped moving.

Looking down at him, I found that his entire chest was torn to shred.

There was nothing left intact.

He could no longer resist. His eyes were empty of life and his body laid limp against the floor. Around him was a pool of his own blood.

While I wanted to wipe the blood off my face, I was unable to. My body was drenched in his filthy blood.

I stood up, and drawing my sword, I held it firm over my head and brought the sword down, piercing through his heart.

I wanted to feed him to the dogs, but Helen would probably need his corpse in order to verify that he was the demon lord.

Though, I glanced at the corpses that I had used in order to distract him.

It was rude of me to use the corpses of others in order to accomplish my goals, but it was necessary.

Their soul no longer resided within their body.

The corpses in front of me were mere containers.

Still, I didn’t feel good about it.

With a snap of my finger, a magic circle appeared underneath them and their body were lite up with a majestic, white flame.

Clapping my hands together, I prayed that their next life would be a successful and joyous one.

Once I did that, the doors opened.

A swarm of guards appeared.

When they saw the scene in front of them, they raised their weapons.

Their eyes were filled with rage.

“You bastard, how dare you kill our demon lord!” One of the guards shouted.

“I have finished what I came here for,” I told them, holding Andromalius’s corpse by his hair, “your lord is dead, if you want to sacrifice your life for nothing, then come attack me. But, if you wish to leave to your family, then I will not stop you.”

“…” The guards glanced at each other.

They knew that their strongest general had died, and with their lord’s death, there was no one that could possibly match me. When before a person who could defeat a demon lord, their sheer number would mean nothing.

They would be throwing their life away for nothing.

If they were loyal towards him, not for the sake of filling their pockets with coins, or having the prestige of being a servant of a demon lord, then they would have done everything in order to retrieve his corpse from my grasp.

But, seeing that they were slowly moving backward, I saw that there would be no more conflict.

“Before you leave,” I said, looking at the bravest of them all, “I have a message for you to deliver to the remaining demon lords- tell the other demon lords that one day, their end will come too, and that I shall be the sharp blade that pierces their heart.”

“…”