CHAPTER 301: CHAPTER 300 - TWO PROBLEMS SOLVED.

Back in the capital city of Velmoria.

The royal palace now stood half-collapsed, its marble pillars cracked, and its once-gilded throne room reduced to smoking ruins.

Amber flames still licked at the shattered walls, but the afternoon outside was deathly still.

On the palace steps, Velric stood with his crown crooked, his trembling hands gripping the armrests of a hastily prepared chair.

His ministers and nobles—those Nibbles had deemed "clean"—clustered around him, pale and wide-eyed, whispering like frightened birds.

None dared to move toward the ruins, not while the air still shook with the echoes of violence.

Nibbles sat on Selena’s shoulder, calmly cleaning his whiskers, unbothered by the destruction.

Selena herself stood at the edge of the stairs, her black gown unmoving, her devourer shadows restless around her feet. Her gaze remained fixed on the haze of dust rising from the wrecked palace.

However, they weren’t the only ones there, as a big crowd was right behind them, filling the entire area with people.

They were the residents of the capital who had come to see what would happen.

After all, Raven had announced that humanity’s traitors would be killed.

Still, none of them said anything.

Everyone stared at the dust-filled ruins that stood in place of the royal palace because in this silence, the only thing one could hear was the distant crash of stone, the searing blaze of violet fire flaring against the smoke, and above it all—Graye’s laughter.

It was a wild, victorious sound that carried like a drumbeat of war. Interwoven with it were the screams of demons, guttural and savage, cut short one by one until only the echoes remained.

Then, after a while, everything went quiet.

The nobles and the crowd clutched each other alike, holding their breath as heavy footsteps drew closer.

Out of the haze, Graye emerged.

Her armor glowed faintly with violet trim, unmarred and gleaming despite the carnage she had walked through.

Not a scratch, not a dent.

She stretched lazily, rolling her shoulders as her great sword rested on her back, her grin still bright as fire.

"That..." She said, her voice carrying over the courtyard, "...was fun."

A collective shudder rippled through the nobles, while Velric swallowed hard, trying not to collapse into his chair.

Selena’s eyes, however, narrowed to slits. Her tone was low, sharp, and edged with steel.

"I hadn’t expected them to send a warlord-ranked demon and five knight-ranked demons. Summoning even one warlord takes a lot of effort from what I know, so why did they send them to their death?"

She couldn’t understand why.

What could they achieve by sacrificing so much, especially at a time like this, when they could be used later on for a much better cause?

Graye, on the other hand, shrugged as though Selena had just commented on the weather. "Didn’t really matter. They went down easily. Honestly..."—her grin sharpened as she looked back at the ruined palace—"...I was hoping one of them would actually make me break a sweat."

Velric leaned forward in his seat, voice weak and desperate. "S-So... Is it over now? They’re all gone, yes?"

He only wanted it all to end, as he felt that the longer all of this went on, the harder his life as a king would get.

The question, however, earned him a long silence.

Selena’s gaze swept across the assembled nobles, her eyes sharp as blades. Some of them trembled under the weight of her stare, while others dared not even breathe.

Finally, she spoke, her voice soft but cutting, a whisper that carried like thunder.

"No. It’s far from over."

Her hand brushed the shadows curling at her side.

"They’ve exposed themselves. Now we know they’re here, hiding among us. Now we know who they are. Which means..." Her eyes gleamed cold as ice. "...they have nowhere left to run."

The nobles stiffened, their gaze serious now. Even Velric sat frozen, his lips parted as though the words had stolen the air from his lungs.

Selena turned her gaze back to the ruined palace, Graye’s violet fire still glowing in the distance.

Then, as she spoke again, her words sealed the surroundings in silence.

"This was not the end. It was the beginning. And the beginning always means one thing—"

She let the word linger like a curse, her voice a sentence.

"War."

The next second, murmurs broke out.

The first to worry was the common populace.

"War? Like the real war?"

"Can we even survive? I feel like the majority of the nobles are on the demons’ side!"

"Yeah! There are fewer than half of the nobles present right now!"

"Does that mean we’ll have to fight as well? Can we even survive?"

"Don’t forget, we have the Vaise!"

The last comment silenced the crowd at once, everyone exchanging glances before hope appeared in their hearts.

The nobles, on the other hand, stood tense, not so sure if the Vaise could do much. After all, they had all heard about the coup in the Vaise family.

Right now, the Vaise didn’t seem as reliable as they were supposed to be.

What everyone failed to notice, however, was that among the ministers stood a lean man with dark eyes. He was staring at Nibbles, Selena, and Graye, but none of them seemed to notice him.

He was someone who had avoided Nibbles’s verification by using other demons as a distraction, as they were always supposed to be that.

The demons’ real goal was to infiltrate the verified group and get cleared of any demonic allegations.

With this, he had completed his mission.

’War, you say?’ His eyes gleamed dangerously as his gaze remained on them, especially on Nibbles. ’This would be a trap, and all of you would be falling into it.’

Then, he turned towards the palace ruins and muttered. "How long is it going to take?"

For a moment, silence ruled the ruins.

The nobles whispered about war, the crowd quivered with fear and hope alike, and Selena’s words lingered in the air like a blade at their throats.

The half-collapsed palace groaned in the distance, black smoke curling toward the sky.

Then—

"Khkhhhahhhahahaa—"

A guttural laugh rolled from within the rubble, deep and ragged, shaking dust loose from the broken arches.

The crowd gasped as every head turned toward the ruins.

The laugh grew louder and heavier until it erupted into a bellow that rattled the cracked steps beneath their feet.

Velric nearly fell from his chair. "N-No... No, it can’t be—!"

Out of the haze, a figure staggered forward.

It was one of the demons Graye had torn apart, his body broken, ribs visible beneath shredded flesh—yet his crimson eyes still burned. His veins bulged black, skin glowing faintly like molten rock.

Selena’s eyes sharpened instantly. "He’s—"

But the demon was already sprinting.

His movements were wild but terrifyingly fast, his ruined body pumping with desperate power. His chest blazed with unstable light, his skin splitting to reveal cracks of searing fire.

"He’s going to explode!" One minister shrieked instinctively.

The crowd screamed and scrambled back, people nearly trampling one another as the demon thundered toward the stairs, his gaze locked not on the king, not on the nobles—but on Nibbles.

For the first time, even the squirrel’s whiskers stiffened, his paw twitching mid-clean.

Among the nobles, the lean man with dark eyes shifted subtly, his mana pulsing as if ready to shield himself.

His disguise was perfect and his act impeccable, but inside his mind a curse ripped through him. ’Fuck. Why did he take so long to come? Can’t he be on time at least once?!’

The air thickened, the light from the demon’s body now blinding.

It was then—

A deafening roar split the chaos.

From beneath Selena’s gown, her shadows surged upward like an ocean wave.

Out of her shadow burst a creature of nightmare—a vast, winged dinosaur wrought in smoke and fangs. Its form was skeletal yet solid, its eyes burning with void light.

The ground shook as it unfurled jagged wings, tail lashing like a whip.

In an instant, it swooped forward.

The demon had no time to react before its shadowy jaws clamped around him, teeth sinking into glowing flesh. With a single powerful beat of its wings, the beast launched skyward, dragging the howling demon higher and higher until the figure was a speck against the clouds.

The explosion came a second later.

BOOOOOOM!

The sky split open with fire and smoke, a blossom of flame scattering embers like shooting stars.

The shockwave thundered across the capital, windows shattering, and the crowd ducking and covering their heads.

Yet Graye, looking at all that, just tilted her head, her lips curling into a grin as violet light danced along her armor.

"Well..." She drawled, her eyes still fixed on the fiery sky. "...guess the demons gave us a firecracker to celebrate the start of the war."

The crowd didn’t know whether to cheer or to cry. Velric slumped deeper into his chair, his face white as chalk.

Selena only exhaled slowly, her hand brushing the still-writhing shadows at her side.

Among the ministers, the lean man stood utterly still, his face a mask of fear like the rest—but his dark eyes flickered with something else. Calculation. Resolve.

He had not been caught. His mission wasn’t over.

’It doesn’t matter if he failed,’ he thought, staring at Nibbles with unblinking eyes. ’I can kill you later.’

With that, the man decided to stay low for now.

In a few days, however, everyone would know how two problems—the coup in the Vaise family and humanity’s traitors—were solved within a single day, and how it was done by the same group of heroes everyone was worshiping.