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HELHEIM SCANS
[Translator - Peptobismol]
[Proofreader - Demon God]
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Chapter 165 - Human Warmth (1)
They were demons.
Among the demons who came to me, one introduced himself as the Demon King.
He was a rather young man, his eyes gleaming with a sharp intelligence.
The aura he exuded was so vastly different from my own wretched existence that I instinctively recoiled.
The Demon King said he could no longer bear to watch his people suffer. He claimed to be secretly gathering forces.
The demons were weak when scattered, he said, but when united, they could become stronger than anything in the world—strong enough to overturn it.
I couldn’t believe him.
Demons were a minority species, scattered across the continent.
They lived hard lives, discriminated against and persecuted because of their strange, devil-like, and alien appearance.
How could such people overturn the world? And why would they need my help to do so?
It didn’t make sense.
A weak and oppressed people trying to accomplish something monumental? Needing the help of someone cursed with dark magic?
It defied all logic.
If you were different from the majority, the only thing you could do was hide away, like me, retreating to the mountains to escape.
A minority cannot defeat a majority. It’s impossible.
So I didn’t believe them.
Once, when I snuck into a village to gather supplies, I overheard something.
The Empire was purging dark mages and other "subversive elements."
Maybe these demons had been hired by the Empire to kill me.
As a discriminated-against race, they might have had no choice but to take on such filthy work to survive.
It was a ridiculous thought.
If they knew my location, they could’ve killed me with magic from afar.
But at the time, I was so consumed by hatred and rage from years of isolation that I wasn’t thinking clearly.
So I decided I would kill them first.
There were four demons who came to me. I could curse them to death instantly.
“It’s not our fault.”
Just as I was summoning dark magic behind my back, the Demon King spoke.
“It’s not our fault we were born with horns on our heads. It’s not our fault our horns resemble those of devils.”
In that moment, I saw myself in the Demon King.
‘It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault I was born a dark mage.’
To be born different from others and live a life of persecution.
To be blamed for things I didn’t do, to face death and live as a fugitive.
They were like me.
But there was one difference: while I was here in the mountains, wasting away and eating away at myself, the Demon King was acting on his convictions, steadily growing stronger.
I wanted that, too.
I wanted to die, but deep down, I didn’t want to die.
I didn’t want to keep going mad, resenting my cursed nature.
I wanted to overcome it all and rise, like him.
“So please, dark mage, help us. Let’s overturn the world together.”
Even as his nose bled from exposure to my potent dark magic, the Demon King’s eyes gleamed with conviction.
The moment I saw those eyes—
For the first time in my life, my heart trembled.
It was an emotion I thought I’d never experience, not even until the day I died.
How… how could this happen to me?
This… this is a miracle.
# # # # #
From that day on, I cooperated with the Demon King.
The Demon King asked me to create a biological weapon or something similar to strengthen his forces.
I thought I would fight alongside him on the front lines… but of course, that wasn’t feasible.
If I joined him on the battlefield, my dark magic would harm our allies more than our enemies. I understood that.
It didn’t matter. As long as it was for the Demon King, I was willing to do anything.
Following his request, I began researching biological weapons.
At first, I conceived of a bomb that could hold dark magic within itself and explode at a specific time.
But no matter what method I tried, I couldn’t transfer my dark magic into another object.
Dark magic was a unique force, circulating within my body like blood.
This cursed power could not be moved from my body to another, no matter what I did.
So I decided to change my approach.
If I couldn’t imbue something with dark magic, I’d create a golem capable of displaying immense strength or casting magic on its own.
I’d heard that high-level mages often created advanced golems to assist in research or to use in battle.
If they could do it, why couldn’t I?
There was no point in confining myself to the limitations of being a dark mage.
Like the Demon King, the one I loved, I needed to break out of my shell and face the world.
But this, too, was no easy task.
Without formal training from a magic academy, imitating pure magic was incredibly difficult.
“You’ve made no progress.”
When the Demon King visited after a long absence, his disappointment was evident.
His expression and tone terrified me.
What if he abandoned me because I couldn’t produce results?
Clinging to his cloak, I pleaded with him.
I promised to have something to show him the next time he visited, begging him to wait.
After he left, I stopped eating and sleeping, focusing solely on my research.
But the golems I created continued to crumble, so I began abducting children from nearby villages.
Perhaps I needed to mix actual flesh and bone into the golems for them to succeed.
The bodies piled up in the underground space of my stone house, and I grew more desolate with each passing day.
The stench of rotting corpses was unbearable, and the repeated failures of my experiments only heightened my fear of being abandoned by the Demon King.
That couldn’t happen.
I couldn’t let that happen.
No matter what… I had to please him.
# # # # #
After countless failures, I finally succeeded.
I created a golem that wouldn’t crumble and even possessed intelligence.
The key was slime.
Grinding children’s bodies had been the wrong method.
When I saw slimes inhabiting the nearby mountains, I decided to use them as a base material.
By combining the slime’s viscosity with my other materials, the golem retained its form and stood upright.
Not only that, but it retained the slime’s flexibility, allowing it to freely change its appearance.
I also added my blood and hair, along with a precious strand of the Demon King’s hair that I’d collected when he last visited.
When all the procedures were complete, I shaped the golem’s appearance.
A small, pale-skinned girl with short black hair.
A face that resembled both me and the Demon King equally.
Finally, I infused it with dark magic. The golem slowly opened its eyes and looked up at me.
“Mother…?”
That was the first word the golem spoke.
# # # # #
The crow’s decoding of the notebook continued.
Linus and I forgot to breathe, listening to the very end.
Shock after shock hit us, an unending tsunami of horror.
“This is the enddddd!”
The crow closed its beak, having finished the final entry.
At some point, the Archmage had dozed off again, snoring softly.
A cold silence descended over the room.
Neither of us could bring ourselves to speak.
After a long while, Linus finally broke the silence.
“Dian… I think we need to head to the Academy.”
“Yeah, we do.”
We stood, bowing to the sleeping Archmage before stepping outside.
# # # # #
Meanwhile, at the dark mage’s hideout.
“Chief Officer! How did it go?”
The Special Operations leader called out to Lormane, who was rushing out of the stone house.
“To the Academy! Bring a carriage! Hurry!”
“A carriage? There’s one down below, but—”
Lormane hesitated.
A carriage would take too long in this mountainous terrain.
Looking around, she spotted a horse standing idly nearby.
“What about that horse?”
“Oh, well, it’s a warhorse, so it might not be—whoa!”
The officers exclaimed as Lormane leapt onto the horse in one swift motion.
“Until I return, no one is to approach that stone house! Entering it means instant death from dark magic contamination!”
“Understood! But can’t you at least tell us what’s in there—?”
Before the officer could finish, Lormane urged the horse into a gallop.
As the steep slope flew past, Lormane recalled the horrific scene inside the stone house.
A pile of shattered child-sized bones.
A blood-soaked butcher’s block and a massive, rusted cleaver.
A large millstone and hooks, tools she didn’t even want to imagine the purpose of.
And—
The grotesque body parts strewn about.
They weren’t alive.
They were things crafted from stone, mud, and other materials.
And amidst them, severed heads, all bearing the face of… Kaiden.
# # # # #
A breeze blew through an open window, carrying a single leaf into the room.
Seated in a chair, Kaiden extended a hand, catching the leaf.
“I see. So that’s how it is.”
Bringing the leaf to his ear, Kaiden smiled faintly.
“Dian went to see the Archmage.”
Releasing the leaf back into the wind, Kaiden leaned back in his chair, resting his head.
Of course, Dian would figure something out about me.
And now, he’s riding back in a hurry?
The righteous Dian wouldn’t be coming to forgive me, would he?
I suppose I should prepare to meet him.
As Kaiden closed his eyes, an illusion spell spread from him, filling the room.
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HELHEIM SCANS
[Translator - Peptobismol]
[Proofreader - Demon God]
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