The Knight King Who Returned With a God
chapter-42

Chapter 42: The Demon Lord of Wisdom is Scared of the Lion King

In the plains in front of Spero castle, a cacophony of depravity and pleasure raged.

Men with grotesque snouts whip and beat, tear flesh into pieces and roast it, and bathe captives in water made from molten gold.

It’s a grotesque scene of excess, of luxury, pleasure, and depravity turned malevolent, and it’s here that Reynald Shelman enters, clutching a Wisdom Orb.

-Human.

-Heh, humans, humans.

-Ah, humans, humans, humans!

The demons guessed his identity by the aura emanating from the Orb of Wisdom, and their fierce, feral gazes pierced Reynald.

“Hmph…Is everything all right, great one?”

[Don’t stare at those lowly whores for long, mortals are quickly corrupted]

“Yes!”

Reynald turned away from the scene of pleasure, unfurling the shields of his antimagic, as he had been told to do by the Wisdom Gem. But no demon would allow a follower of another demon to roam in the realm of pleasure and corruption.

-Thump! Thump! Thump!

Something rushed toward Reynald with a frenzied noise, but apart from the noise, a huge presence pressed down on him.

“How dare you bastards trespass on my pleasure grounds, have you lost your mind!?”

It was a grotesque giant, clutching a flesh-encrusted halberd in each of his eight arms, with tarnished golden chains at each of his six nipples that spoke.

The crown of moonlight on his head contains a malevolence that shakes the very soul of even Reynald, an S-class mage.

[Do not stare at the crown]

“Yes, yes…….”

The only thing keeping him alive is the magical energy flowing from the Wisdom Orb. The Orb of Wisdom stared at the eight-armed giant that filled the void beyond.

[Androzin, the Archdemon of Pleasure and Corruption]

As the Orb of Wisdom spoke to him he twisted the corners of his hideously torn mouth and said.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! A cunning goblin.”

Archdemon Androzin’s scornful gaze and voice were not lost on the Wisdom Gem.

[I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse!]

“An offer? An offer, hahahahahaha!”

Androzin laughed a despicable laugh, a broad laugh that caused demons everywhere to giggle and join in.

“Know thy place, beast! Do you still think you’re our equal, that you, with your Lord and most of the Archdemons slain, can stand before this pleasure and depravity!”

Androzin remembered the ugliness of the demons of wisdom and inquiry, hunted down over two hundred years. Barely a few survived, while the rest were destroyed.

[You’ve been hunted down, too, and you’ve been smug about it…….]

“What?!”

Androzin was outraged by the words from the Wisdom Gem, but it was true.

[180 years ago, during the Great Advent, our lord was not the only one who was destroyed! The Lord of Pleasure was also destroyed!]

“You bastard!”

Androzin monstrous roar terrified the demons. He was so enraged that even the demons around him were targets of his anger.

One hundred and eighty years ago, the demons suffered a terrible loss and the five evils united in an unprecedented event.

Ruthless destruction, cruel indifference, disordered exploration, ugly lust, and devouring compulsion, these five vices invaded a world.

The result: terrible devastation. It was a catastrophe, with three Lord-level demons killed and ten million demons wiped out.

Many demons do not know what happened to the Demon Gate, as it was destroyed and there are no survivors.

Androzin knows only that the Lord of Pleasure died there, but not who killed him or how.

What Androzin has been doing here for a hundred years is the aftermath.

[I know what happened there, I’m a survivor of it!]

“Do you… know?”

[Your ignorance will not allow you to understand what happened there. You are beasts of desire, driven by animal instincts. I told you I would make you an offer you could not refuse!]

Androzin thought he’d been lured in by the unruly desk-bug but there are so few demons that left that world…the world of the Holy Law Users. Even those that knew were hiding it and using it to their advantage.

Just like the Demon Lord beyond the purgatory.

“Speak. I, Androzin, will cast him into the bottomless pit of depravity!”

[Kikit! Did you know I’m doing what the Supreme Archdemon told me to do?]

Androzin’s voice twisted sullenly at those words.

“It will soon be over. Eventually, mortal, the end is near.”

[Good! Then let me tell you, the commander of those who murdered the Lord of Pleasure is in this world!]

The Orb of Wisdom gave Androzin the information he needed and left the barracks with Reynald.

“Is that… all?”

[This is the most powerful move I can make here!]

Wisdom’s Gem was not sure of victory. Even though he was weakened, his opponent was a champion of reversals and a mistake could easily result in Androzin being killed.

[Seven to three. Androzin’s seven, he’s three]

“Well, if that’s the case… if I, an S-class mage, and the Great One intervene, isn’t it a must-win?”

[I’m not going?]

“…….”

Bastard. Reynald was fed up with the Wisdom Gem behavior.

[Don’t you dare try to intervene either, his holy law will annihilate any spirit body connected to you, even if it shatters the Holy Grail!]

“……I understand.”

Bystander, unconditionally hiding and cowering. Though it’s obvious that it’s thoroughly self-serving,

[Androzin may be a dumb beast compared to me, but he’s not stupid, and I’m sure he’ll summon his elite to deal with the Lionheart King!]

The Demons of Pleasure and Corruption are the most bizarre of the malignant, but they are not the most powerful in combat.

However, they are almost as numerous as the Demons of Lust and a large number means a large pool.

[He will soon summon the higher demons!]

This is the Halls of Corruption. It’s where the demons of pleasure and decadence have been working for a hundred years, ever since they lost their lord.

“Where do we go from here?”

They don’t plan to stop here. The Demons of Wisdom and Exploration are intelligent demons who specialize in magic.

They can strengthen other demons and grant them magical powers.

While the Demons of Pleasure and Corruption are weaker in combat, with the Wisdom Gem himself buffing them, they could easily defeat the Lionheart King along with the kingdom.

[First, check out the corpse harvesters who are having an orgy in the forests near the royal castle – those fresh corpse eaters are sure to be a force to be reckoned with!]

The corpse harvesters are vile demons who play with the corpses of their victims.

They are foul-smelling demons who wear their corpse parts as decorations whenever they collect them, but they are highly effective in combat as they scour the battlefield for fresh flesh.

If they were to be magically enhanced, they would be a formidable force, capable of taking on even the most elite of Lionheart Second Army Named Elites.

[Cough, wait, Lionheart, this gate will be your grave]

That’s when he found the barracks that housed the Corpse Harvesters. Reynald saw a Corpse Harvester, a mid-level demon, walking toward them.

“Is that a Corpse Harvester…….?”

It was a horrifying creature with a tentacle as a hand while the other held a club.

The subject was naked from head to toe but, dutifully concealing its nudity with a piece of a corpse.

They were psychopathic berserkers of the worst kind so Reynald tried to speak to him cautiously.

[Breathe!]

At the same time as the whispered words, something snaps around the Corpse Harvester’s neck and it cries out.

“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”

With a piercing scream, the corpse harvester rises and Reynald follows the direction he’s being dragged and sees a sight he can’t believe.

“Ugh…!”

There were spider webs everywhere in the forest.

-Agh…….

-Kill me…….

And the victims hanging from them, the corpse harvesters, caught in the webs, moaning in pain.

“Lord Spinner, did you take care of that?”

-Yes!

Reynald and the Wisdom Gem instinctively recognized the voices of the Holy Knights.

[Hey! Did you hide properly? Did you turn on your stealth?]

“Of course, it’s a top-notch stealth spell, completely invisible to the naked eye!”

[Anxious! Anxious! Anxious!]

The Wisdom Gem utilized its own magicka. At most, it used the magical energy it had accumulated from sacrifices to perform a perfect stealth magic.

-It is believed that there are still surviving individuals. The last one you captured was looking at something.

“After all that cleaning, it’s still here.”

What the hell is going on here? Reynald hadn’t heard any sounds until he came to this forest.

Surely a sweep of that many troops in a place like this would make some noise?

[The Holy Knight’s Holy Law of Silence, what nonsense, blocking even the sound of a warhorse’s galloping! He used the Holy Law of Silence to hunt down all the demons in the forest!]

‘That, is that possible?’

[I don’t know, but these bastards did it!]

The Holy Knight’s Holy Law was a treasure trove of absurdity.

Even among the demons of wisdom and exploration, who gathered all kinds of knowledge and magic, the Holy Knight’s code could not be interpreted as anything more than ‘absurd’.

“Hmm… That’s strange, I can sense an unpleasant aura…….”

It can’t be. Wisdom Gem wanted to cry out.

The magic it had just cast was a perfect stealth spell, complete with subspace dimensional separation. Even with the disadvantage of being immobilized in one place, there was no way this could be detected!

“I think it’s around here…….”

Leon’s face flashes past Reynald’s and Reynald stares at him through bloodshot pupils, unable to swallow his saliva.

‘Please just go, just go, just go!’

“Hmph…….”

As suspicion deepens, suspicion turns to certainty and Reynald knew instinctively that if Leon turned his head and looked in their direction, he would definitely notice their presence.

As he watched Leon head slowly spin around, a cold sweat ran down his spine──

-Bam!

“What’s going on, Lord Spinner.”

-Target observed. Dealt with at point 4-B17.

“Looks like we have some more hunting to do today.”

Hearing Yappy’s report, Leon turned away.

The sound of the superhuman walking through the forest faded into the distance. It was five minutes after their disappearance that Reynald and the Wisdom Gem spoke up.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa…….”

[Dee, I almost lost it…….]

* * * *

Overnight, Leon had slaughtered more than 300 demons and all of them were elites.

He may have been running on fumes, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t strong.

“Demons of pleasure and depravity.”

Hypersexual perverts who sought not proper sexuality, but horribly twisted lusts.

Leon was disgusted when he realized that they were the demons at this gate.

All demons were unpleasant, bugs to be burned, but the ugly lust demons were especially unpleasant.

They corrupt humans and plunge them into a morass of pleasure and lust by any means necessary.

Some humans could not even resist the temptations of lesser demons.

They are responsible for the widespread corruption of the Empire and its neighboring kingdoms.

They are the weakest in combat, but the most dangerous. Leon knew all too well how the Fallen betrayed their own families.

‘Strange,’ he thought, ‘how come so many lustful demons have taken up residence at this gate?’

There were quite a few high ranking demons, and several that were considered elite among the Lust Demons. Naturally, there should also be Archdemons.

‘If a being of that caliber is in this gate, there must be a reason…….’

Leon wasn’t going to be patient with the question, he was going to look in the most suspicious places.

“You must be tired, but you’re not resting.”

A sweet voice rang in his ears and Leon’s eyes snapped open.

Demon Ranks:

-Lesser Demons/ Low-level demons

-Mid-level demons

-Greater Demons/ High-level demons

-Archdemons

-Demon Lord (Lord of Chaos is the title of a lord)