The Demon King is Unfathomable

A hell difficulty demon king domain, an antique, two notebooks, and a stack of reference materials would take him ages to browse through…

These were Roan’s loot from Principal Evan’s office.

The appointment letter hadn’t been issued yet, but Principal Evan’s resolute tone suggested that this matter was likely already settled.

In other words, trouble was about to knock on his door.

Roan thanked Principal Evan before lugging the huge pile of items out of the office with a troubled face.

He thought he had already depleted all his bad luck today, but an accident still happened after he reached the bottom of the tower.

He couldn’t see the path ahead of him due to the huge pile of reference books he was holding, which caused him to bump into Professor Lilith, who was walking out of the professors’ office.

A Diamond-tier succubus knocked to the ground by a Copper-tier necromancer—there was probably no greater joke than that in hell.

“Ow ow ow…”

Professor Lilith lay on the floor, her crossed legs adorned with black stockings concealing what was hidden in her skirt. She looked so frail that it was hard to imagine that she boasted strength and speed on par with Professor Enos.

Her silver bob hair cascaded to her slender shoulders, and her rimless glasses coincidentally fell into her half-opened shirt.

Every detail was so on point that it could have been a model example…

‘Hold on, when did her shirt get unbuttoned?!’

“I’m sorry…”

The stunned Roan quickly apologized as he fearfully picked up his books. He was so afraid of getting involved with this troublesome woman that he dared not even meet her eyes.

But Professor Lilith was obviously after him.

She shot to her feet and snatched his books with her right hand while cornering him to the wall with her left hand.

“Mr Roan, the phrase ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t exist in hell. Do you think an apology can make up for your mistake? The least you can do is to support your beloved Professor Lilith back to her room and massage her injured leg.”

That was a tempting suggestion, but Roan had just reached adulthood and didn’t want to be reduced from a protected species into a skeleton soldier yet.

“You don’t look like you need to be supported…” Roan tried to keep a straight face as he eyed the wall that had caved in under Professor Lilith’s palm strike.

“Ah…”

Professor Lilith’s expression nearly crumbled when she realized she had exerted too much strength. At the same time, she sensed a sharp gaze coming from the tower spire. This left her too embarrassed to continue bullying her student, so she returned the books to Roan.

‘Tsk tsk. I didn’t expect this fellow to earn the favor of the tower spire’s old monster,’ Professor Lilith thought. ‘Perhaps… I should up my investment.’

The Demon King Academy had sent many talents to the Demon God’s palace and hell’s administrative departments over the past few years… but those who were sent to the Demon God’s court were consumables who rarely lived more than a few years.

So, the students did everything they could to secure a spot as a civil servant.

Professor Lilith had plenty of connections in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but her influence waned when it came to demon kings. In fact, that was the greatest shortcoming of the Demon King Academy!

Some stuff could only be acquired from the surface, and only demon kings had territories there. That was why connections with demon kings were highly coveted.

On that topic, she had always wanted a sharp-eared maid as a pet too.

Professor Lilith licked her lips as she looked at Roan with deep eyes.

“All right, I shan’t tease you anymore. Your big sister has come to give you something.”

‘Big sister… This old monster sure knows how to flatter herself,’ Roan retorted.

Professor Lilith flicked her slender finger, ripping open a pink slit in mid-air. An ancient, copper ring fell out from the pink slit and landed on Roan’s pile of books.

The ring was embedded with a crimson gem that emitted a mesmerizing glow reminiscent of a succubus’ eyes.

Roan was startled. His breathing hastened.

“A Gold-tier magic ring?!”

His unfortunately low mana capacity meant that he, despite being a necromancer, could only use a small handful of spells. So, he considered alternative measures, such as using scrolls or magic tools as mediums to compensate for his lacking mana.

Regrettably, it took a Platinum-tier expert to create a Gold-tier scroll or magic tool.

He was only a Copper-tier necromancer. The Iron-tier magic scrolls he made weren’t exactly useless, but it would be a stretch to say that they were useful too.

As for magic tools that could be used multiple times or even serve as a wand substitute, those cost ten to twenty times more than magic scrolls to make!

Roan had to be thrifty just to survive with that bit of living expense he had. He had no money to squander on such luxuries.

Seeing Roan’s reddened, excited face, Professor Lilith felt gleeful yet annoyed. She flicked his nose and said, “That’s right, you little rascal! It’s called ‘Soul Siphoner’. It’ll help you keep your head up on the distant border. If anyone bullies you, use this Gold-tier magic tool to slurp up that fool’s soul.”

With that, Professor Lilith lazily returned to her office.

As Roan had thought, she had intentionally bumped into him. With his strength, he would never be able to knock her down even if he ran down the stairs, let alone injure her.

But looking at the Gold-tier ring, he still felt a tinge of respect for Professor Lilith.

‘She found out about Principal Evan’s recommendation letter so quickly. Her means are not to be underestimated…’

Roan intentionally walked over to Professor Enos’ office door and stopped outside. He waited for a while, but the door remained firmly closed.

In the end, he left in disappointment.

…

The Demon King Academy’s dormitory was a five-storeyed mansion not far from the West Tower.

By modern architectural standards, this old mansion was no different from the haunted mansions in movies.

There were gargoyle sculptures at the entrance, and the housekeepers were lower demons. Maneating flowers and vines grew in the garden and on the walls respectively, though they, fortunately, hadn’t grown to the extent where they could devour a human yet.

The paintings hanging in the corridors could move like the Demon Capital’s newspaper, but their range of movements wasn’t just limited to portraits but the washroom mirrors too.

While Roan was washing his face, he spotted a lady in a white dress who had her both eyes gouged out.

“Good evening to you, Madam Susanna.”

She was said to be a human seer who prophesied a king’s death, only for a loyal fief lord to dig out her eyes and hang her to death for lese majesty.

She was later reanimated as a banshee during a war between hell and the surface and killed the fief lord who hung her to death and the king he was loyal to, thus fulfilling the prophecy she had made.

Later, she was nearly vanquished during a battle when a Saint Sisto Church’s priest blasted her with Holy Light.

She was now weaker than ordinary specters, with only a sliver of her soul left, and that confined her to the ‘wheelchair’ that the principal had constructed for her—the oil paintings and mirrors of the Demon King Academy’s dormitory.

Initially, Roan would be startled each time these ghosts appeared, but he slowly grew accustomed to them over time. He even started greeting them.

Madam Susanna paused for a while before letting out a long sigh. “Evenings should be when the sun sets and the moon rises…”

“But isn’t there no sun in hell?” Roan wiped off the water on his face as he casually replied.

The woman in the mirror fell silent. Crimson blood streaks slowly flowed from her gouged eyes.

She looked terrifying, but it paled in comparison to Professor Enos’ intimidating glare. Roan could only give her 50 points at most.

However, Madam Susanna didn’t mean to scare him. She was reminiscing the past.

“Ah… How I wish to see it once more.”

She sighed sorrowfully before drifting away from the male washroom’s mirror.

…

The solar cycle didn’t exist in hell.

Most demons didn’t observe the same sleeping pattern as humans. Some slept for consecutive days, whereas some chose not to sleep altogether.

As for the undead, they didn’t need rest at all.

It was at the insistence of Principal Evan Krueger and other obstinate old fools who came from the surface that the first Demon God installed a humongous purple crystal chandelier above the Demon Capital and used the lava’s heat to power the mana formation. Its purple light imitated the surface’s solar cycle.

The chandelier was rumored to be stolen from the dwarves’ castle. The dwarves were still holding a grudge over this to this day.

Day and night were inversed here. The purple moonlight outside the window had gone out, marking night for the demons.

Sitting by the window, Roan pondered hard before deciding to write a letter to his priest and foster father, Jeffrey. He wrote down everything that happened, emphasizing that he would soon be heading to an extremely dangerous demon king domain that had lost its core.

He didn’t jot down his encounter with the succubus.

While he was thankful to Professor Lilith for her gift, Father Jeffrey Marte hated succubus. It was a wonder what he had been through in his younger years.

“…Esteemed Father Jeffrey, I’m grateful you took the time to read my letter. On the side note, I have used up my living expenses…”

Part-time work part-time study was not a concept that existed in hell, and there were also no jobs here to give out flyers, deliver food, or send mail. He could work for the professors, but that was rarely a good idea for humans.

The law was the law, but staying together with Diamond-tier demons for a prolonged period was just an accident waiting to happen.

Roan also didn’t want to be a wastrel who demanded money from his foster father, but there was nothing he could do. He wasn’t planning to lower himself to Professor Lilith, and Professor Enos wasn’t an option too.

After writing his letter, he folded it and placed it in a thumb-sized copper tube. He reached for the bell on his windowsill and pressed it.

Ding dong!

A bat as big as a poodle landed on the windowsill. It eyed Roan with black beady eyes as it coolly stretched out its right leg.

Roan placed the copper tube into the leather bag on its right leg. “Send this to Father Jeffrey Marte of Demon Capital West District’s Ferocious Ghost Street 104’s church.”

The bat squeaked in response before swooping off toward the dull sky like a released arrow.

Roan watched the bat disappear in the darkness before returning to the oakwood table placed beside his bed. He looked at the huge stack of books there and remarked with a sigh, “I didn’t expect my three years of study to come to an end so soon…”

‘A Copper-tier demon king. I hope the heroes who come after me don’t burst into laughter.’

To avoid dying in vain, Roan pepped himself up and picked up Isaac the Fourth’s diary together with Principal Evan’s journal filled with his insights from many years of research.

It was unlikely that he could decipher the secrets that had stumbled Principal Evan for decades any time soon, but understanding the history of the world could help him better integrate into the surface world.

So, he simultaneously flipped open the two books to study them side by side, only to freeze up when he saw the first page of Isaac the Fourth’s diary.

【Ors Year 77 Month 12 Day 12, my two older brothers were killed by the assassins they dispatched to each other. My father was on the frontlines when he learned about it. He was so infuriated that he spurted blood and died shortly after. It was while lying on the duchess’ bed that I learned that I am the only successor to the Lyon Kingdom… My servant lamented that the kingdom was doomed. Coincidentally, I thought the same too.】

【It has been 24 years since I came to this world. I never thought something this ridiculous would happen to me. Rather than managing a massive empire, I’d rather do what transmigrators do, such as having a lover’s squabble with my ravishing duchess wife or experimenting with different fragrances and soaps to conceal my body odor…】

【Haa, there’s no point grumbling about it now. The least I can do is to make sure that the people know that the Lyon Kingdom’s downfall is not just because it has a playboy king, and that everyone here has a problem… So, I decided to start writing this diary.】

【Hmm… It’ll be troublesome if the indigenous population sees this diary, so I’ll write in my mother tongue for now. This way, I can revise the details as I deem fit if I ever decide to publish this diary. Hehehe!】

“…Aren’t these Han characters?”

‘Wait… the so-called cryptography is Han characters?!’

Roan shot to his feet so fast that his chair plopped to the ground.

“Holy shit—!”

‘Isaac the Fourth is a fellow transmigrator?!’

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