‘For thirty seconds, his heart stopped but then it resumed working. Same is true for the hearts of everyone else around me. Something fishy is definitely going on’ Knight of Wind, Yusa Nirai remarked.

Her former subordinate, Meros Solros was currently sitting on the opposite side of the table, with the two of them being in a pub.

But neither one wanted to touch the alcohol.

After talking about some meaningless topics, Yusa noticed the heartbeats of everyone in her vicinity stay still for half a minute before resuming.

‘I don’t know what is going on, but that is not important’ she decided to just cut to the chase.

“Meros, I want you to return to the Holy Order”

“Huh?”

“I want you to return to the Holy Order. Become a Holy Knight again and get back to the path of a hero”

“Yusa-san. The way you put it sounds like as though I quit” Meros’s tone was ice cold.

“Meros…”

“As soon as I lost my hand, they threw me out like garbage. And you are telling me to go BACK to THAT?” if she was not blind, she would have seen his murderous expression.

“I agree that the Holy Order has treated you unfairly, but that is no reason to abandon the humanity. Just look at your colleague, Cereb Belius. He already reached the level of a hero!”

Both Meros Solros and Cereb Belius were once Holy Knights under Knight of Wind, in a sense, her disciples/kouhai.

One managed to become a hero while the other one was maimed and left to rot away.

“What is the real reason for asking me that?”

“As you might already know, the barrier protecting the Holy City is gone. And what I am about to tell you is a top secret information, but…The Demon Lord the Knight of Light captured had escaped.”

Meros was not surprised about that. He already knew who was responsible for that.

“Everything has been going downhill since then. Less than a month ago, three of the five heroes sent to retrieve the Holy Maidens came back maimed, rendering them inactive. As for the Holy Maidens, they can no longer cast the spell of barrier over the Holy City.”

“Just today we had a funeral for three heroes murdered be a Demon Lord….Currently we have only twenty two or so active heroes left, and with the way things are going now, that number is likely to plummet even lower”

She continued.

“Right now, our kingdom needs it champions more than ever. And you have the potential to rise to be a hero. We need you… I need you…”

“You are just afraid that the Demon Lords might show up, are you not? Speaking of which, how is your search for Mirafulosa? Not successful, I presume?” Meros uttered.

Within an instant, the atmosphere within the room became filled with gloom.

“No…I have yet to find his whereabouts.”

Mirafulosa, the Demon Lord who tortured, raped, and blinded her. Simply talking about that monster was a very sensitive topic for Knight of Wind.

He was the one who snatched everything away from her, her confidence, her dreams, her future…all taken away just like that.

“I should have never told you…”

“And yet you did…What else are you not telling me?”

Meros intentionally shook Yusa up emotionally so that she would end up revealing sensitive information. It was a manipulation tactic he learned from his master, the Dark Lord.

Since her blessing allowed her to tell if Meros was lying, he chose a different approach, make her rather than him talk more.

“I heard the rumors that a certain hero had gone rogue…is that true?”

“Yes. Due to the recent events, the fifth princess attempted to cast a spell to summon a hero from another world, the Knight of Eon. But not long after, he rejected his role as the protector of the kingdom and refused to swear loyalty to the princess, and proceeded to flee. Rumors say that he has been conspiring with demons, but I don’t know how accurate they are.”

‘Interesting. That might be a promising lead. Maybe Shadow Lords could scout this defector hero…’

Meros smiled a little before standing up.

“Well, this has been a rather cordial reunion…As for your offer, I refuse. I will not fight on behalf of Holy Order ever again!”

“Meros, wait!”

Before he could leave, Yusa grabbed his hand.

Due to being blind, she did not notice at first, but now that she was grasping his left hand, she knew.

“Your hand…the one you had lost back then…It has been restored?”

Not saying a word, Meros pulled his hand back before walking away.

“I see. Farewell, my kouhai” she sadly uttered.

As far as she knew, Meros now had everything needed to become a hero, but due to the foolishness of the Holy Order, a man with a potential to become a hero had abandoned that path forever.

In many ways, it was a tragedy.

To witness someone walk away from the path of a hero.

She could not have known that after quitting one path, Meros had begun another one…not as a hero, but as a Shadow Lord.

* * *

“This is the Curse of Present, no doubt about it. But why do I have it? Navek was supposed to be the only one who wields it, other than him and me, there is a third person with a curse, but he has the Curse of Future….Too complicated to think right now!”

As the assassins kept cutting Runfar into pieces, but he kept coming back together in one piece. The power of the curse of the Present, it truly was something else.

Dark Lord’s hand was trembling, but it was not due to fear, but the sense of control slipping out of his grasp…and what he felt at that moment was a sense of fury not unlike the first time he took over the body.

As the assassin tried to strike Runfar once again, this time Runfar grabbed the assassin by the face with his right hand.

When used to the maximum capacity, the undead ability to drain the life force of living beings was a very frightening sight to behold.

It would not work on someone of hero level, but against these assassins, it was a perfect choice.

Within seconds the body of the assassin was reduced to a lifeless shell.

Tightening the grip on his right hand, the dead assassin’s head was crushed to a pulp.

Fueled by his fury, Dark Lord threw the corpse at the other assassins. It ended up striking and knocking out one of them.

“Come at me, you brainless buffoons!”

At that moment, it was safe to say, Dark Lord completely lost it.

With so many bad things happening to him so often, it was not exactly surprising that Dark Lord had pent up rage.

But the sheer volume of his rage was simply astounding.

The assassins did not stand a chance.

“Take this! And this! And a little bit of this!”

Punching one so hard that his hand ended up piercing through his body, tearing off the head of another one and crushing it underneath his feet…these unfortunate souls were truly unlucky to meet Dark Lord in his current state of mind.

Dark Lord tore through them as though he was a mad wolf among a herd of sheep.

In the simplest sense…He butchered them.

Every assassin that came at him, he slaughtered with the assassin’s own weapon.

And because of the curse of Present, the assassin really could do nothing to stop him.

It was a one sided battle from any angle.

The last assassin was literally reduced to mincemeat at Dark Lord’s hands, and now Dark Lord was using the severed arm as a whacking stick, pounding the lifeless bodies of the assassins, just to add insult to their deaths.

Dark Lord may be a calm and calculating type, but when he loses it…it is not pretty.

“Wooh-hoo! Such a relief! Oh-yeah baby!”

After absorbing so much mana and killing so many people, Dark Lord felt adrenaline rush into the flesh and blood half of his body.

“I wonder what is behind this door!”

Using some of the stolen mana, Dark Lord slammed his hand upon the enforced steel door.

The concentrated mana caused the door to explode off its hinges, and Dark Lord easily threw the door aside.

Apparently there were a couple of assassins on the inside as well, but Dark Lord proceeded to punch one of them so hard that his neck broke, while the other one tried to flee, only for Dark Lord to knee him in the stomach before snapping his neck with a twist of his right hand.

As Dark Lord looked up, he saw that there was someone else in the room.

A young woman, sapphire blue eyes with golden centers, and hair that was pinkish-purple in color. She was wearing clothing that was supposed to look like that of a commoner, but it was obvious the material was of much higher quality.

Since they took so much effort to hide her, her identity was obvious for Dark Lord to guess. The Second Princess.

She was tied up and as soon as she saw Dark Lord, she asked.

“Who are you?”

‘Crap, she saw me. Can’t loop back….Improvise!’

“My name is Runfar Sevilles. I have come save you, milady”

At this point, Dark Lord gave up trying to make rational sense of everything and went with the flow.

Needless to say, not even he knew what he was doing.