CH 348

As soon as he heard what she said, Chi-Woo came to a realization. He should’ve thought of this sooner. Everything had fallen into place too perfectly to be called a coincidence, but it all made sense if Shersha had been the one to arrange everything. After all, Shersha was a prophet who could see the future. The rest of the team didn’t know that and looked confused by the situation, while the demon started to look more baffled.

“Eh? Huh? This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Today was surely the day…ah! No way! Was it a mistake?” The demon’s eyes widened. Then she did a one-eighty and strode toward them threateningly, but it was already too late. “Damn, you humans! How dare you trespass into our territory—!”

“Ehem,” Yunael raised her spear, and the demon raised her hands back up in shock.

“…Sob.” The demon teared up nervously and saw Chi-Woo walking toward her. Then her eyes widened again when Chi-Woo pushed Yunael’s spear away with his hand. Yunael looked a bit taken aback, but she withdrew her spear.

“You said you have a message from Ms. Shersha, right?”

“Y-Yes!” The demon looked greatly relieved. “She said a guest from Shalyh would come today! That’s why she sent me here when I was about to go somewhere else! It’s true! I’m telling the truth!” The demon yelled desperately, unwilling to die at this spot.

Chi-Woo tended to show no mercy toward creatures with dark energy. It was a tendency he gained from his youth, and this tendency applied to not only spirits, but also demons. But it was different when Shersha was involved. He had received help from her in the future, and to let her go alive, he even fought his brother, who had run day and night to save him. If the message came from her, it was worth giving it a listen.

“Please get up,” Chi-Woo said, and the demon instantly got up.

The demon wiped her forehead in great relief a couple of times and regained her composure. Then she looked at Chi-Woo.

“Can you tell us now?”

“Of course,” she replied and continued, “Ah, but before that, would you allow me to guide you somewhere else? It’s not for some official reason, but because of Lady Shersha.”

“Is Ms. Shersha inside?” Chi-Woo asked.

“No. But she made me swear many times to be careful.”

“Careful in what way?”

“Uh…To treat you all as well as I could, and I should behave if I wanted to avoid getting extinguished…” Considering that many great demons had disappeared at Chi-Woo’s hands, it was understandable. Chi-Woo tilted his head.

“Can all of us go inside?”

“Yes, of course. I will take the lead, and if you follow me from behind, everyone will know that you are my guests—of course, as long as you don’t have your weapon pointing at me from behind.”

“I understand. Then we will follow you while doing our best to pretend we are your guests.”

“No…but you guys…really are guests…” The demon chuckled awkwardly and turned around. And the expedition team headed to the fortress following her. Yunael also calmly followed, but she still appeared a bit doubtful.

“Can we really trust her?” Yunael asked.

“We will have to see,” Chi-Woo answered.

“No, but what if it’s a trap?”

“It doesn’t matter. But this will allow us to go inside without having to go over the castle walls.”

Chi-Woo indicated that even if it was a trap, they could just overcome it with brute force, and Yunael nodded in understanding. She could definitely imagine that happening, and she went forward. On the other hand, the demon’s confidence faltered suddenly, and her legs shuddered at every step. Chi-Woo and Yunael thought they were whispering, but it seemed the demon had overheard their conversation.

“So scary…scary…to think each of them is strong as an army…I thought it was a lie or an exaggeration…what if everyone dies because of me… Ah, no. I can’t doubt Lady Shersha…I have to believe her,” the demon murmured. Yunael couldn’t hear what the demon was going on about, but she appeared very frightened. And seeing this, Yunael looked at Chi-Woo with a bit of astonishment. She wondered what Chi-Woo had been doing until now that a demon was acting like this.

‘Seems like he’s really planning to go all out if something goes wrong,’ Yunael thought when she saw that Chi-Woo hadn’t let down his guard and had been repeatedly clenching and unclenching the hand cladded in the white glove.

Chi-Woo had already made up his mind that he would use brute force if the worst came to worst. And he looked warily for any signs of trickery, but his heart calmed a bit after he passed the entrance and entered the fortress. Perhaps it would’ve been different if they went to a demon world, but they were still in the middle world. And what he saw was nothing beyond an ordinary fortress, but what surprised him wasn’t the interior of the structure.

The future he saw in Shalyh was beyond sickening and terrible. There were collared heroes crawling on all fours in cages. Above all, Chi-Woo couldn’t forget the way his brother’s headless corpse was hung on the wall like a chandelier. At that place, humans were seen as livestock or ornaments for demons to show off their status. Yet the inside of this fortress showed a completely different scene. It was just like Shalyh. Both humans and demonic creatures worked in union for construction work. There were humans talking with a smile on their faces with demons who appeared to be legionaries.

When Chi-Woo turned to the streets, he saw human children playing with demonic creatures. They were chuckling cheerfully while running around with a ball. Humans and demons were coexisting peacefully. The unexpected scene shocked and dazed Chi-Woo and the entire expedition team. It was then the ball a group of kids had been kicking around rolled to the demon who was guiding them from the front. The whole group ran after the ball and stopped when they saw the demon.

She said, “You can’t do this here because there’s an ongoing construction. What will you do if the ball ends up near the work zones? Hm?”

The children soon picked up the ball and looked at Chi-Woo’s team with curiosity. Then they bowed their heads toward her and turned around. Though they weren’t completely at ease with the demon, they didn’t fear her either. The demon smiled happily seeing the children chatter away as they moved further. Then, when she noticed Chi-Woo intently looking at her, she coughed and cleared her throat. ‘Ehem,’ she said and schooled her expression back into one of solemn seriousness.

After guiding the expedition team to a sitting room, the great demon began, “I will officially introduce myself. I am the 34th-ranking great demon, Purupuru.”

Purupuru looked up expectantly after saying her name, but was taken aback by how calm her audience appeared. No one was surprised by her identity because of the great demonic energy she exuded, but seeing how disappointed she appeared, some wondered if they should’ve shown a bit of a reaction.

“There are many things I want to tell you, but I’m sure you all are wondering about many things too, so I will get to the point.” Purupuru cleared her throat again and began, “Lady Shersha told me to help you all as much as possible, so you all can do what needs to be done.”

“…Can you do that?” Though this was a pleasant surprise, Yunael said doubtfully, “But you and I…we are enemies.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Purupuru immediately responded. “I own this territory, and it is up to me to do whatever I want here.” That was how the culture in the Demon Empire was. Chi-Woo nodded.

“Then could you provide us access to a place?”

“Access to a place?”

“We don’t need any other help, and we don’t intend to cause any harm to this fortress either. Please just lend us a place for us to set up an altar.”

“That’s not a difficult request to fulfill. It’s possible anytime,” Purupuru said, and Chi-Woo hoped that meant they could get on with their work as soon as possible. If this great demon Purupuru was telling the truth, they could save energy and time.

“This is a request Lady Shersha made to me in private. If you wish, I can help you in more ways—as long as the requests are within our powers, of course.”

“That reminds me, is Ms. Shersha doing well?”

“No, she is in confinement,” Purupuru said nonchalantly, and Chi-Woo exclaimed in shock. Shersha was locked up?

“It’s not really surprising. She usually receives special treatment.”

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That was in line with what his brother had told him. He said they could let Astarte live, but they needed to kill Shersha at all costs because such an opportunity would never come by again. As specially as she was treated, the Demon Empire hid her thoroughly and tried to protect her at all costs. Thus, it was difficult for Shersha to even leave the Demon Empire’s central base.

But there was a reason why Purupuru mentioned Shersha’s confinement as a negative. “But…it’s true that she isn’t able to wield as much influence as before. This is evident by how the few great demons who follow her, including me, are forced to move to different locations. I was chased away to this place recently and wasn’t summoned to the recent grand meeting, so I don’t have the exact details of what is going on.”

This was important news. As expected, the Demon Empire was suffering from internal conflict. Chi-Woo leaned forward and asked, “Could you tell us about the situation in more detail?”

“I have no reason not to, but the story might get a bit long…”

“It’s fine.” Chi-Woo was already curious about what was going on inside the Demon Empire, and with Purupuru’s collaboration, he might be able to find out the truth with much less time than he expected. The time he would spend listening to her was nothing in comparison.

“Then, let me see…I should tell you what happened after the great invasion of Shalyh ended up a huge failure.”

After their ambitious attempt to invade Shalyh, the Demon Empire had to come to terms with their shocking defeat. Not only had they lost when the Cassiubia League members were gone from the city, but many great demons from first-digit ranks had also participated in the invasion. It was a result that the Demon Empire, which valued strength and power foremost, found hard to swallow, and all sorts of criticisms poured in. Numerous questions and complaints were made against the commanding forces, and some came forth to take advantage of the chaos. All this naturally led to a civil war and put the Demon Empire into a terrible bind.

The situation didn’t continue forever, but they couldn’t avoid powers shifting from great demons in the single-digit ranks to the creatures in the lowest ranks. And after this situation settled, there were now only a total of 36 great demons. Purupuru laughed that instead of the 66 great demons, they would have to call themselves the 36 great demons now.

“Given the circumstances, it seems the great demons are trying to overturn the situation somehow. Single-digit ranking demons gathered and held meetings every day. It’s really not common to have so many meetings one after the other, so I guessed that they must be talking about something very important.” Perhaps they were talking about something that could change the entire Demon Empire’s fate. “And the fact that the meetings went on for such long periods meant that the great demons didn’t reach a common ground. And as that went on, I suddenly lost all contact with Lady Shersha. Then I was given the order to move territories because of a shift in my rank.”

What happened sounded very suspicious. The only explanation was that Shersha disagreed with someone’s opinion and was pushed away. However, Shersha’s rank was all the way up to 7, and considering that she was a prophet, it was no exaggeration to say that her words held as much weight as Bael in the great demons’ meetings. How could Shersha, who was called the princess of the Demon Empire and their treasure, be confined for opposing someone else in a meeting?

“Who did she go against?”

“Rather than pinpointing an individual, I would say the cause was an incident.”

“What’s the incident?”

“Not long ago, we confirmed Sir Samigina’s extinguishment.”

Chi-Woo and Yunael flinched at the sudden mention of Samigina’s name.

“Given he was the fourth-ranking great demon in the Demon Empire, we can say that we lost a truly great force. So…”

Samigina was a great demon who wasn’t interested in wars and held neutral ground in the Demon Empire. After hearing that such an influential figure was extinguished, the Demon Empire was awakened to the reality that they couldn’t let things progress as they were.

“With Sir Samigina’s extinguishment, all the great demons who had been neutral chose a side. Before, Lady Shersha had been barely maintaining her position, but as all these great demons took the other side, the balance was tilted in an instant.” And because of that, Shersha lost her authority within the Demon Empire and had to retreat in defeat. Chi-Woo closed his eyes. This was the butterfly effect of his actions. Who knew his decision at that time would come back to bite him like this? Yunael lowered her eyes like she was at a loss for words.

“…But what did you think?” sensing that the atmosphere had become heavier, Purupuru suddenly asked.

“Sorry?”

“What do you think about our place? I’m curious about your opinions.”

“…I was surprised.” Chi-Woo’s solemn expression was replaced by a faint smile. “I thought you brought the humans to use as slaves.”

“Yes, they are officially slaves.” That was what they were considered on paper, but not what they really were. Here, humans and demons coexisted in peace. What Chi-Woo had seen on his way to this room couldn’t be realized overnight. And it was too natural to be considered a facade.

“Are other places the same?” Chi-Woo asked.

“Of course not,” Purupuru made a bitter smile. “It’s not like there’s none, but…it’s probably very rare.” This meant that the Demon Empire usually treated humans like how Chi-Woo expected them to. Purupuru’s territory was an exception.

“Then, why are you…”

Purupuru’s eyes turned dark then. “It’s…really funny.” After a slight pause, she continued, “You might think it’s strange. We fight and then stop. It’s really a mess.” She lowered her head and sighed. “It’s probably fair to say the world of demons is usually what you imagine it to be, but…that doesn’t mean everyone is like that.” Then Purupuru looked at them with a smile. “Even in the Demon Empire, there’s an oddball like me.” True to her words, there was always an exception in every group.

“I know you might not believe it because of what I said before, but…this is where I grew up. I can’t help but feel an attachment toward it, and I believe that it can always improve,” Purupuru said while resting her chin on the back of her crossed hands. “That’s why I empathize with Lady Shersha’s cause and support her. She’s someone who can make a dream others would call foolish into reality, and she actually made a small part of it true.” Purupuru beamed with pride as she spoke these words.

“That’s why I want to thank you all again.” Purupuru faced the expedition team and bowed. She bowed deeper this time. “Like how you all have difficulty understanding me, I also find it hard to understand you all,” she said with a joking smile, “I don’t know what you all were thinking when you let Lady Shersha go without a scratch last time, but…” Like how humans thought of Purupuru as an oddball, the Demon Empire probably thought Chi-Woo was odd too. They had wondered why he let Shersha go alive.

“I can tell you one thing for sure. You didn’t just save Lady Shersha’s life that time, but also our dreams,” Purupuru said. Her eyes shone brighter than ever before while looking at Chi-Woo.