The ‘crack’-like sound wasn’t the only sound produced from Richard’s body—it was followed by the crackling sounds of bones being rearranged and the fleshy sounds of tissue being added and removed. I was rather grateful that the light was obscuring my view of Richard.

I lowered my hand and returned the black book to my [Storage] before removing my gaze from the magic circle.

“Will he, uh, be okay?” Evyna asked, gingerly taking a step towards Richard and away from the corner she was in. “It sounds, uhm… painful.”

I shook my head, my eyes half-closed. “Worry not. He will be fine. He lost consciousness before it began, and will only regain it after it ends.”

“That’s, that’s a relief,” Evyna said. “And, is it okay for you to ju, just turn away like that…?”

I turned to her and closed an eye. “Do I look like I don’t know what I’m doing? From this point on, there is naught to do but leave the circle to do its job. I could not affect it if I wanted to.” I chuckled. “Incidentally, you lot are free to stop, as well.”

The moment the words left my mouth, all three of them stopped supplying the circle with mana. I couldn’t help but smirk.

“Aah~, I’m glad that’s over, that was tirin’,” Lilith said, yawning and stretching her body.

“Lilith,” Charlotte said, “please, at least, cover thy mouth when thou must yawn. ‘Tis unladylike.” Despite being smaller than Lilith in several ways, she sounded almost like an elder sister.

“Sure, sure, ya got it,” Lilith said before turning her attention to me. “Master, I’m goin’ to bed,” she said to me, and just like that, she left.

“Lilith…! Excuse me, M’lord. As thou canst see, a critical matter hast come up…” Charlotte said, looking at me with pleading eyes.

“Got it, got it,” I said, “you’re dismissed, Charlotte.”

She bowed in my direction and took off, chasing after Lilith. Truly, as if they were real siblings.

I turned my attention to Davna after she tugged on my sleeve. “Master,” she said, “I haven’t had enough yet!” She seemed to encounter difficulty holding her tail and wings still, and I’m not sure her eyes could’ve sparkled with more expectation if she tried.

Though Tempest said not a word and barely even moved, I got a rather similar impression from her.

I suppressed a sigh and briefly ruffled Davna’s hair before turning her to the door. “Then,” I said, “go train with the soldiers at the training grounds—remind them why they fear dragons. Tempest, continue your work on that artefact of yours. If there is any chance of an explosion, go to your tower and continue there.”

“Yay!” Davna said, raising both her arms in the air. “I love you, Master!” She hugged me for all of a second, and then sprinted out the door at what I assumed was the highest speed she could manage. For a moment, I felt pity for the soldiers, but the next, it was gone. Tempest nodded a few times, mumbled some thanks, and then ran off in a way not dissimilar to how Davna just had. Despite Tempest being the tallest out of the five, I couldn’t help but question her maturity.

“Master,” Navillus said, quivering with some emotion I couldn’t quite identify, “Navillus go out to eat!” Before I could get a word in, she’d already ‘crawled’ out the door.

I resisted the urge to bury my face in my palm and turned to Evyna. “You,” I said. “What will you do? These two will be out of commission for a while.” I folded my arms behind my back, closing an eye as I awaited an answer.

“Uhm, before that,” she said, “could I, uh, ask you something? Your relationship with, uh, Miss Philia, or such…”

I looked at her for a few moments, contemplating the uselessness of the question ‘could I ask you something’. Then I decided to answer. “At best, I would describe it as mutual distrust.”

She tilted her head. “And at worst?”

“Mutual hatred. Now, I do believe I asked you something.”

“Then, uh,” she said, “maybe, that guest room you were going to…?” She fiddled once again with the clasps on her grimoire and directed her gaze to the floor.

“Hmph. Very well, then.” I clapped my hands, in response to which a spectral young maid floated through the door—a Ghost Maid. “Guide her to a guest room,” I said, looking at the maid but gesturing at Evyna.

“As you have ordered, it shall be,” the maid said with a curtsy before turning her attention to Evyna. “Please, this way,” she said, leaving.

Evyna hurriedly chased after her.

Left in comfortable silence, I did nothing but stand around for a while, gazing into the light of the candles. It felt almost as though the darkness in the room wrapped itself around me, covering me in a protective shroud of sorts.

Though the silence was certainly comfortable, after a while, I still spoke up. “You can show yourself now,” I said, addressing the room devoid of conscious people. “I know you’re there, Lady Entropy, and there is no one else here.”

After the sound of a muffled gasp, the darkness that had wrapped itself around me quickly receded. It was followed by a feminine voice, without the slightest hint of intonation or emotion: “Are you… sure?”

I chuckled and waved my hand in front of Philia’s face. “Most certain, Lady Entropy.”

A cracking sound, like a glass falling to the floor, resounded in the room, and a network of cracks, like those in a broken mirror, spread in the air, above the magic circle. A few seconds later, the illusion of an empty sky below a ceiling so high you couldn’t see it fell to pieces, a beautiful girl in its place.

Though, I still couldn’t see the ceiling.

The girl’s presence itself dimmed the candles on the walls, making the room a little darker than it already was. With the grace of a literal goddess, she floated motionlessly in the air, as if her rightful place was above all else. Her emotionless, rainbow-coloured eyes were staring straight at me, slightly accented by the few purple lines on her face, skin flawless like porcelain and white like snow. Her dress, longer than she was, looked as if it were made of darkness itself, and thus made a stark contrast with both her skin and her similarly-coloured white hair—which was just as long as her dress. As she floated down until her bare feet made contact with the ground and her dress pooled up around them, she didn’t break eye contact with me even once. Her pointy ears, like one might imagine an elf’s or a fairy’s and rather similar to mine, flicked occasionally, as if to make clear she was a living being, and not just an elaborate doll.

This was the Goddess of Darkness, Lady Entropy.

We looked at each other for a few seconds in complete silence, but after a while, she spoke up. “So you knew I was… watching,” she said. Despite her voice lacking the least hint of intonation and not an expression being on her face, I could tell she would otherwise be pouting.

I chuckled, more to myself than to her. “Of course, Lady Entropy,” I said, “I could never forgive myself if I did not know where you were.” A sly smile took over my mouth. “Now, forgive me for asking a question immediately, but… What do you think of this one’s potential?” I gestured to Richard—well, the light covering him—inside the magic circle.

Lady Entropy looked at Richard for a few seconds, then let her gaze wander between Richard and Philia. “Not suitable for darkness,” she said after a pause, “too independent. Perfect for water, since he seems fickle.” She turned back to me.

I raised my hand to my mouth, closing one eye. “And your true feelings are…?” I asked, entirely aware what her answer would be.

“I,” she said, “don’t want you to have someone like him. Someone so perverted and rebellious.” Though she spoke in a full, elaborate sentence, she turned her head away as if to avoid my gaze. Had she been human, surely she would have been blushing—though, her skin remained as paper-white as it was.

“I am honoured you would hold me in such high regard, Lady Entropy,” I said, placing my hand in front of my chest and making a light bow. “Ah, in addition, thank you for the good work. Forging an alliance with another goddess, especially the fickle Lady Undine, must be tough. And yet, for my sake, you would…”

“If you appreciate it,” she said, interrupting me as she turned back to me, “then praise me.” She continued in a mumble I didn’t quite catch, even with my hearing, but which was certainly something about ‘other goddesses’.

Yet again, I chuckled. “If that is your wish, then,” I said, reaching out to her. I placed my hand on her head and stroked her hair, smooth as silk and soft as cotton, with a wry smirk on my face. Though certainly, she wasn’t short, I still stood a fair bit taller than she was.

Although her expression was unchanging as ever, after a few seconds, she did close her eyes, which I interpreted as a signal not to stop—thus, I kept stroking her in this manner until I was interrupted by a knock on the door.

Both our gazes snapped to the door. I focused my mana on the other side of the heavy Black Silver for a second or two in rather a probing manner. “One of the maids,” I said after I identified the knocker.

I gave Lady Entropy a little time to reconstruct her illusion before I answered the maid with a simple “Come in.” I nodded in her direction once she did, to signal her to speak.

The young girl’s predictable first action was a bow, followed by the words “Master Astaroth, I am afraid to report an issue has occurred.”

“An issue? Elaborate.”

“That is… A group of Heroes has appeared.”

“What does ‘a group’ mean? What are their numbers?”

“That is, uhm… There are about twenty of them, Master.” She awkwardly averted her gaze in what was most likely an attempt to subtly avoid my eyes. She failed on the ‘subtlety’ part.

“Hmph. And the call-and-response?”

“All… positive. As such, several Living Armours have already been dispatched, but I am afraid they cannot hold the Heroes off forever…”

“Then I shall do it myself. Guide me.”

“As you wish, Master Astaroth.”

Only a few minutes later—probably due to the Ghost Maids’ ‘secret’ passages—we found ourselves at the castle’s main gates. Again made out of Black Silver, at least twenty metres tall and about half that width, the gates were truly suitable for a castle belonging to Lady Entropy. The moment I dismissed the maid, she left as fast as she could to return to her duties.

I grandly swung the door open with the chantless [Non-Attribute Magic], and the first sight that greeted me was a startled Hero, at least a head smaller than I was.

“D-Demon!” he shouted, reflexively plunging a sword into my stomach.

I looked between the sword and the Hero a few times—it seemed he’d let go, for whatever reason—before taking the sword’s hilt in my hand. Without a care in the world, I pulled it out and handed it back to the Hero.

Again acting on reflex, he took the sword. Several of the nearby Living Armours struggled to contain their giggles in response.

“That hurts, you know?” I lied. Of course it was a lie—I possessed the same divine protection they did, which granted me immunity to pain. “If I were a regular human, it wouldn’t have been weird for me to die from that.” I felt around my stomach with my hand, in the most part in order to confirm the wound had healed—and it had.

I spent a few seconds considering the fearsome healing capabilities of Demon Lords, but then I decided to address the Heroes, so I spread my arms to the side and cleared my throat with a confident sneer.

“Pitiful puppets!” I said, “It would be fine for you to rejoice! Today, you shall be liberated from the shackles placed upon you by Lady Luciel! I promise this to you in my name as Demon Lord Astaroth!”

I looked over the group of Heroes—it was a fairly well-balanced party, though they appeared to lack any kind of Thief or related. Most of all, there were many of them.

“It’s the boss right away?!” the Hero who had stabbed me said, rather visible shock on his face.

“You got him right in the gut, didn’t you?!” another Hero responded.

“Hmph,” I responded, “as if I could fall to a little wound like that.” I shook my head and decided to make sure that what the maid said had been true. “One last thing, Heroes,” I said, smirking. “Who do you serve?”

As I had expected, the answer was an exact replica of the behaviour of the unsalvageable Heroes earlier that day.

“Hmph. How disappointing.” I shook my head and extended my hand forward, and activated a certain skill, though I targeted only my arm—[True Demon Form].

A swirl of darkness enveloped my arm, though it did not last long. When it was done, it left as quickly as it had arrived, leaving my arm behind in a distinctly non-human state.

Not physically there and completely black, as if made out of darkness, and yet with an undeniable presence. Despite wavering and waving as though it were made out of dust, there was no word for the ends of the fingers other than ‘sharp’.

I raised this demonic arm, which seemed to have temporarily paralysed the Heroes, in the direction of the nearest mage I saw, and began chanting a spell. Not half a second later, I was done.

“[Darkness-Attribute Magic: Dark Bullet].”

A small magic circle appeared at the palm of my hand, and from it emerged a single projectile, completely black and thus rather hard to see, dark as it was outside. It reached the mage in not another half a second, punched its way through his barrier and then his chest with barely any resistance.

His body crumpling down onto the floor snapped the Heroes out of their daze, and in a moment, I was being besieged by attacks physical and magical from all sides. Yet, this kind of battle was when the Living Armours could show their true worth—as literal living armour. Without hesitation, they took on every attack aimed at me long enough for me to cast my next spell—which took about a second.

“[Darkness-Attribute Magic: Purple Magic Guard].”

A purple shroud wrapped itself around my body. Out of all the elements, the darkness attribute’s Magic Guard possessed the least resistance to physical attacks—but in exchange, it made me as good as invulnerable to regular elemental magic, and light magic, too, was rather hampered by it.

In summary, it was perfect for this situation, since physical attacks weren’t going to hit me much anyway, what with the living shields surrounding me.

“If you do not wish to rejoice at my liberation,” I said, “then know despair, Heroes!”

[Darkness-Attribute Magic: Dark Bolt] robbed another four Heroes of their lives, [Darkness-Attribute Magic: Zone of Terror] threw their coordination to the wind, [Darkness-Attribute Magic: Dark Rain] slew most of them, and a few Dark Bullets took out the stragglers.

The moment I released my [True Demon Form] skill, my right arm was once again enveloped a swirl of darkness, swiftly returning it to its normal state of being. “You lot,” I said, addressing the Living Armours, “you’ve done well. Once you’re done cleaning up the mess, go to the forge for your repairs. As a reward, you’re allowed repairs from Rhud itself, this time.”

“As you wish, Lord Astaroth!”

“As you command, so it shall be, Lord Astaroth!”

“We thank you for your consideration, Lord Astaroth!”

I left the shouting, noisy Living Armours behind and headed back into the castle, about ready to call it a night.