[Just a little bit more]

That human was about to die—the human who had sealed Him here at the cost of his own life was finally at the end of his journey.

He had waited for this moment for over three hundred years.

Under the erosion of His power, the human’s limbs were shriveled and deformed, and his body was covered in black festering sores. His flesh had been devoured by old age, leaving only bones and thin skin. Now, just to stand, the man gasped for breath as if on his last leg. Yet, his dark blue eyes were locked on Him, his gaze unwavering, just as it was the first time they met.

So despicable, even at death’s door.

He turned to look at the seal. As the spellcaster neared death, the seal began to crumble. Three more heartbeats, and He would be free.

Three.

He counted down with pleasure.

Two.

The man’s body moved slightly, as if he sensed the chill of death.

One.

This moment felt long, so long that He had time for idle thoughts. He was even a little regretful that He would never hear the man’s clamoring again… just a little, of course.

‘Hmm?’

A tremendous sense of compression suddenly assaulted Him. Something was invading His body, sucking at His consciousness. He instinctively tried to crush it with His power but hit nothing. The strange magic power had no discernible source and was so tangled with His own magic power that He couldn’t attack it. Everything shattered like a bubble. Pain and emptiness rushed in, instantly engulfing Him.

He felt… cold.

He quickly realized that He had been stuffed into a weak tube of flesh. In other words, a human body. One moment, He was embracing freedom, and the next, He had lost all His power and was trapped in an even more terrifying prison. His joy vanished, leaving only rage and resentment.

‘Why?’

He struggled to open His eyes, only to find that the situation could be even worse. Someone was sitting on His waist, fiercely strangling His neck.

It was that human. He could tell by his aura. The killing intent was so vibrant and familiar. The man was stuck to Him, clinging on and refusing to let go.

The lack of air made His vision go black. He tried to fight back with human claws but only left shallow scratches. Just as He was about to lose consciousness, the man’s body trembled, and his grip inexplicably went limp.

In a fit of rage, He decisively flipped over and bit down. ‘Kill him’, He thought wildly. ‘As long as I kill this cursed human, this nightmare will surely end…’ But the moment He bit down on the other person’s throat, His own body went limp, unable to muster any strength.

The two bodies, entangled, fought in an indescribable manner. Before, they fought with tentacles against longswords, and magic against magic. Wherever they went, rocks flew, and the impacts created terrifying craters. Now, they were scratching at each other with their fingernails, teeth, and weak fists, rolling around on the dirty floor and clattering into miscellaneous objects.

Two hours passed. They both tragically realized that for some unknown reason, they couldn’t kill each other. The two of them, panting for breath, stopped fighting. As their stamina ran out, their combat style increasingly resembled two puppies nipping at each other. Neither had the will to continue.

After calming down, He was confident that He had a slight victory. After all, He was using that hateful human as a cushion, so He didn’t have to lie on the cold stone floor.

Now, He finally had the presence of mind to sort out the current situation.

According to the new body’s memories, it once belonged to a slave.

The slave was unbelievably stupid, with only basic common sense and language in his head. In his nineteen years of life, the slave never even had a name. The first and last gift he received was a ceremonial dagger plunged into his heart. The day after he was sold to a certain noble, he died on an altar.

The fatal wound was still on His chest, deep enough to expose bone, with no sign of healing.

He raised His head and looked around at “His” burial place. It was a very cramped secret chamber with only a few pathetic candles for light. The flames flickered gently, and the outlines of skeletons and a blood-painted magic circle occasionally emerged from the shadows. He sniffed the musty air and sneezed on the person beneath Him.

The human-turned-cushion beneath Him squirmed and protested with a groan.

Speaking of which, this guy’s reputation in the human world was not small; even the enslaved knew of him. This man was called “Saint Salar,” a household name and a great hero whose greatest achievement was to perish with the Chaos Demon God.

Never mind the ridiculous name “Chaos Demon God.” Perish with Him? Laughable.

For three hundred years, Salar came to challenge Him every day. The man always held back, running away at the first sign of danger. His shamelessness was unparalleled. Clearly, for Salar, maintaining the seal was the most important thing. The problem was that besides physical challenges, Salar was also passionate about mental torture. He would often come to Him, throwing out nonsense, abrupt shouts, or self-composed songs of provocation.

He was convinced that Salar was far from being a “hero” and much closer to being a “scourge,” at least closer than He was.

He couldn’t help but look down at the scourge.

Salar had also changed bodies. He was now the young noble who performed the sacrifice on the slave, someone named “Carnes.” The young noble was as thin as a dried corpse, with matted, dirty black hair. His eyes had dark circles, his chin was covered in stubble, and his breath smelled of pungent medicine.

The Salar in His memory had a head of brilliant golden hair and a strong body—very strong before his old age—and bore no resemblance to this pile of kindling.

‘No, that’s not right.’ They had the same dark, murky blue eyes. Then He knew how to describe that blue: the color of lapis lazuli. But He still couldn’t read the emotions in them—whether it was obsession, fanaticism, or hatred, these feelings were too similar.

He only knew that in the shadows, those eyes seemed to burn.

‘…Burn you, then.’ Now He has a hand. He moves His arm and slaps it over the human’s eyes. Out of sight, out of mind.

“Sa…larr.”

He awkwardly twists His tongue, squeezing out the first word of His existence.

Salar’s body went rigid.

—-

“Salar. Always Salar.”

Old Aiken let out a giant burp. A few feet away, a bard sang a stale song about “Saint Salar.”

Ever since the world began, the Night of Calamity had been a constant shadow. Legend said the ‘Calamity’ was a curse from the Chaos Demon. Every so often, the world would plunge into darkness. During the long nights without moonlight, all that had remained was cold and desolation.

Over three hundred years ago, Saint Salar perished while fighting the demon, and the Calamity ended. Compassionate and pure Salar, the embodiment of human virtue… He’d heard this kind of garbage since he was a child, and only kids liked such boring stories. The Calamity was three centuries ago; whether the Chaos Demon even existed was debatable. Those songs sounded like lullabies for children.

Old Aiken burped again. The lady next to him glanced at him and moved farther away.

The old man didn’t mind. After all, he wasn’t here to be liked.  

The weekend gathering was a tradition in Ringtown. The only reason he attended was to prove that his master—young Master Carnes—hadn’t been driven out yet.

In their fourth year of living in Ringtown, they had become the town’s most unpopular residents. This wasn’t some sort of xenophobic prejudice; it was simply because Young Master Carnes was a lunatic.

Young Master Carnes had inherited the family’s symbolic lapis lazuli blue eyes and had been quite likable as a child. Unfortunately, he had an extremely rare disability: he had been born unable to use magic. The Carnes family was powerful and wealthy enough to support him for life. However, the young master had become obsessed with magic, trying all sorts of bizarre methods.

Finally, he resorted to live sacrifice.

The Carnes family couldn’t tolerate it any longer and banished him to the godforsaken town of Ringtown, telling him to live a quiet, difficult life under an assumed name. Poor Old Aiken had been sent along as his butler, and then he had to count every coin, only able to afford the worst wine.

Old Aiken patted his coin purse, his gaze drifting to an old couple. Their picnic basket had been filled with a bottle of table wine, sausages mixed with fennel seeds, and freshly baked white bread. Their meals had been much worse since the Carnes family had cut their allowance.

Yet the young master didn’t stop. He ordered Old Aiken to regularly buy slaves for his research into live sacrifices. Live sacrifices require beautiful, young virgins, who are expensive regardless of gender. To save money, they cut all their social expenses. The townsfolk had never seen the young master, but they knew that slaves constantly entered the mansion and were never seen again.

Rumors spread like wildfire. Some said the foreigner was a perverted lecher who abused both men and women and had a penchant for torture. Others claimed he was a monster in human skin who bathed in the blood of the young.

Every time he heard these rumors, Old Aiken felt a malicious sense of satisfaction. The Carnes family called themselves descendants of Saint Salar and took pride in their lapis lazuli eyes. These country bumpkins constantly praised Salar, but they didn’t know how cruel Salar’s descendants truly were.

As dusk fell, Old Aiken had had enough of the free wine and had stolen a jam tart and a few sausages. The young master should have been finished by then, he thought nonchalantly.

‘Come to think of it, the new slave was truly beautiful.’ He hadn’t seen such a beauty even when he was in the capital. The slave had long, ashen-white hair and eyes redder than garnets. His features were a clever mix of delicate and gentle, with slightly downturned eyes that made him look docile and innocent, like a lamb on an altar.

“It’s a shame the boy isn’t too bright and has a limp,” the slave trader had said regretfully after Old Aiken paid. “If he didn’t have so many flaws, I could have sold him to the royal palace.”

The phrase “not too bright” was a polite understatement. Old Aiken would have called him “dim-witted.”

The slave’s demeanor was timid, his reactions terribly slow, and his deformed right leg was quite frightening. Moreover, he was nineteen, and his frame and voice were no longer delicate; noblemen didn’t like such obvious masculine features.

As a nobleman’s plaything, these were fatal flaws. But as a live sacrifice, they were minor details. That face alone was worth a bag of gold.

‘…By now, the slave’s blood must be cold.’

‘What a waste.’

Old Aiken returned to the mansion, tipsy, and tossed the cold sausages and pie onto a greasy silver platter still smeared with lunch leftovers. ‘Fortunately, the young master never cares about such details.’

“Dinner, Young Master Carnes.”

Old Aiken rapped hard on the young master’s bedroom door, making sure the young master could hear it from his inner chamber. Then he set the platter down by the door and was about to leave—he had secretly kept the best sausage for himself and was in a hurry to cook a pot of cream stew.

Before Old Aiken could even turn around, the door creaked open.