Ah, what a glorious, pounding, soul-crushing headache.

Humiliation didn’t even begin to cover it. This was beyond shame—it was a full-body desecration. A cosmic insult. An apocalypse of dignity.

How dare they? How dare those smug, glitter-drenched pests of the so-called "mythical world" trample all over the Demon Lord’s beautiful, meticulously prepared plans like toddlers kicking over a temple made of bones?

His master—His Master, damn it!—had spent centuries weaving that plan like a masterpiece of malevolence. It was a grand tapestry of corruption, despair, and slow-burn world domination, carefully stitched with the blood of heroes and the tears of martyrs.

And now? Now it lay in tatters because some sword-waving, title-huffing, divinity-stained golden prince couldn’t keep his nose out of hell’s business.

Lancelot—the glorious Second Demon Lord, may his dismembered spirit haunt a thousand dreams—had fallen. Crumbled. Collapsed like a badly built cathedral made of cursed glass and self-esteem.

And what was left of his once-proud servant now? A blob. A squirming, putrid blob of corrupted mana, oozing through the dirt like some forbidden oil slick with delusions of grandeur.

Yes. That was him now.

He had to crawl—oh, the indignity!—slithering like a blasphemous slug from the shattered ruins of Inkia, dragging his slimy remains all the way to the Demon Lord’s final fallback: the Navan Continent.

Navan. Gods rot it. The grand garbage heap of the world. It was the most thoroughly infected continent, absolutely reeking of corrupted mana, a landscape of nightmares sculpted by more than five hundred years of industrial-grade malevolence.

Not that it was all bad—it was the second-largest continent, after all. Just a bit smaller than Seres, the last bastion of human and mythical resistance. So close. So tantalizingly conquerable.

And yet… still standing. After five whole centuries.

Not because of incompetence, mind you. No, no—far from it! The Demon Lord Lancelot had been a merciful monster. A generous tyrant! He had the decency to not raze Nethermere into molten glass because, as he once so eloquently put it:

“If we kill everyone, what would then be made into our slaves?”

Ah, such poetry! Such wisdom!

Because why annihilate a population when you could break them, reshape them, mold them into obedient little pets? Five hundred years of slow conquest wasn’t a failure—it was a long con. A masterstroke! The Saint’s continued existence was just a minor, saintly annoyance. They’d almost rooted her out. Almost.

But then—then—Caliburn bloody Pendragon had to shove his golden-plated face into the abyss.

That sanctimonious, sword-wielding thunderstorm of arrogance just had to show up and ruin everything. And what did the master say about him again? That glorious, prophetic brain always had something sharp to offer.

“Trying to kill him openly would just exhaust our resources. Now that the Outsiders are here, let’s just pit them together. Whoever wins, we will finish them while they’re exhausted.”

Genius. Absolute genius.

Of course it was. He was the Prophet, the abyss’ blessed tactician, savior of the tainted, shepherd of the damned. His plans were flawless, his vision divine. If a thousand schemes burned for one to succeed, then let the world burn.

And he? The little blob of putrid faith crawling through rot and ruin?

He believed.

He worshipped.

He adored.

His master would make this right.

And when the Outsiders were bleeding, gasping, falling like the brittle pawns they were, and that shining golden boy’s crown lay in ruins—split, cracked, trodden underfoot by rot and vengeance—then the true victory would begin.

Just wait. Just wait!

JUST.

FUCKING.

WAIT.

Because they hadn’t lost. Not really. Not entirely. Not permanently. His master’s presence still clung to the world like the stench of old blood and unholy incense. It lingered, thick in the air, pulsing through the corruption that soaked the four other continents—Millim, Ronnor, Quzuq, and their beloved Navan. Those lands weren’t dead. No—they were ripening.

Lancelot, the glorious Demon Lord, wasn't gone. No. Not him. Not that masterpiece of damnation. He was almost certainly alive—somewhere deeper, darker, quieter. Most certaintly sealed, but waiting. Coiled like a blade, smiling with all his perfect teeth.

Because you see, this was no failure. No defeat. It was intermission.

As long as even one scrap of corrupted mana slithered through the cracks of this wretched world—as long as even one of them still survived, still slurped the black ichor of the abyss—then the Demon Lord’s will would never die. They would rise again. And again. And again.

He—yes, him, this sad, twitching blob of mana-mucus—finally dragged his semi-conscious body across the ocean and landed at the festering jewel of their empire: Navan. Home. Nest of nightmares. The very bowel of the world where their most decadent rot fermented.

And like a loyal, festering tool, he knew what he had to do.

Stick to the plan.

Of course, he had to leak the right information to the Outsiders. Oh, not everything—just enough. Just the truth, really. Nothing but the inconvenient, well-polished, tactical truth about the walking apocalypse that was Caliburn Pendragon.

Because if they wanted to win, if they wanted revenge, then they needed that man dead. Absolutely, utterly, no-takesies-backsies dead.

Let the Outsiders use their armies, their Overlords, their desperate resources to break him. To wear him down. And when he finally fell, when his stupidly stubborn villainous heart gave out under the weight of battle—then Lancelot would rise. Reborn. Unopposed.

Because that—that—was why Lancelot was the best.

He was the genius. The visionary. The grand puppeteer behind every atrocity that mattered. This was just a stumble. A misstep. A single ugly note in an otherwise perfect, blood-soaked symphony.

And he? He was the messenger. The remnant. The believer.

Right. He just needed to find their agents and pass on the intel. That was it. That was his—

THWACK.

Suddenly, the air shattered. He was no longer crawling.

No, now he was being held. Pinched between two fingers like a piece of spoiled meat someone had the misfortune of stepping on barefoot.

“Ahlgrath, huh?”

The voice dripped with disdain. The kind of voice that didn’t need to shout to command a massacre.

A man stood above him. Sneering. Not impressed. Not amused.