~ Chapter 2: Is this another world? ~
[Alseus’ point of view]
By the time I reached the age of three, I understood what was happening to this world, why there were so many weird magics around.
In a few words: this was a different world from the one in which I was a Demon King.
Initially, I concluded that mankind managed to evolve their spells and technology way beyond what my scouts had discovered in my past life as a direct result of demonkind getting weaker without me. If it was not this, then one of the gods intervened directly and elevated their technology because they had nothing better to do or wished to change the playground on which demonkind was butchered.
Two months after I was attacked by that maid, there was a weird event that took place in my house. The maids described it as a short circuit in the power grid. Two peculiar terms that offered me not even a semblance of an idea of what was happening. That night, the maids used light spells to provide light and fire spells to heat up the rooms. The following day, a stranger arrived with a box of tools, a repairman.
While he was fixing the problem, I took the liberty of casting a [Deyases], a spell that was mostly used for spying. It projected the mind’s eye at a distance in the ethereal plane, making it completely undetectable to almost everyone. Those with an affinity for spirits and ghosts could still detect it, but for this human, it was more than enough.
What I saw through the spell was interesting and weird at the same time. After unscrewing a panel in the wall, the repairman began to fiddle with some cables there. Some of them were colored while others were not. Each had weird markings, but he apparently understood them. He was not bothered by the maid behind him who was watching him like a hawk, maybe he was expecting her to. Was this normal?
It did not take long before the house came back to life. It was a simple job, apparently. While everyone was relieved, I found myself intrigued by the strange wires in the walls, so that night, I used [Deyases] and followed the wires around to see where they connected. They were like vines that made their way systematically throughout the entire building. One end was connected to a central box, while the other end to a switch, a light, or a socket in the wall. Alongside the wires, there were also pipes. The yellow one was connected to the stove and the oven in the kitchen, while the others were connected to the faucets and the baths. There were even some in the floor, but they were of different kind and were connected to a boiler in basement.
This sort of construction was far more complex than anything I had seen in the human fortresses or palaces. Not even demonkind had such a complex maze of pipes and wires. Then again, the walls were so thin that a single punch could pierce through.
Just to be safe, I took the liberty one night to enchant the outer walls with the spell [Drusika], which was a form of enchantment. When cast on an item, it increased its durability against impact. When cast on a living being, it could stun or immobilize it temporarily.
Then, on my second birthday, my mother gave me an interesting gift. It was an item called a MagiBrace, which was quite an interesting gizmo. It measured your heartbeat, told you what time it was and even had a small window pop-up on which you could see the face of the one who called you. Of course, being a child who was born into a noble family with a questionable backing to say the least, this device also acted as a silent tracking device in case I got kidnapped or got lost.
It was foolish to believe that a Demon King such as myself would have the ineptitude of finding my own way to the potty!
I would end up becoming quite familiar with this device; however, upon receiving it, I had no idea what everyone was talking about. Calls? Apps? Maginet? Fitbracer? What sort of unfathomable trickery was this that made my beloved mother speak in weird tongues?!
For a moment, I believed this MagiBrace was some sort of enchanted item, but the more I got to study it and play around with it, the less certain I was that this device was an enchanted item. Besides two components: a projector crystal and a receiver crystal, I did not detect anything else. The device itself required to be charged every two to three days depending on how much I used it, but they did not use a magic crystal for that. They used a wire which they plugged into a socket in the wall.
Using the MagiBrace, I accessed the Maginet and stumbled upon a map of this world. It was far too different from the one in my memory. Instead of a single giant continent cut in half by the sword of the Eternal Gods to form the Everlasting Crevasse, there were seven continents, some bigger than the others. There was a single global ocean that surrounded them, but it was separated into smaller portions that were given individual names.
Thus, I came to the conclusion that this world was far too different and weird when compared to the one from which I came. Let alone the technology, the monsters, the continents, the overall dimensions of the world and even the moons in the sky were all different.
Why was there a yellow moon accompanied by another pink one instead of a dark red one and a jade green one? It felt so unusual, so unnatural. They were also worshipping gods and goddesses I had never heard of before. The only common connection that I found with my previous world was the somewhat similar human language. All those tech names surpassed and confused the back spikes out of me, but this did not stop me from trying to understand them!
As a matter of fact, all of this tech was quite intriguing to me, as a former Demon King. The way things worked with a combination of magic and a deep understanding of mechanical contraptions was amazing! If I had even a third of these things in my previous life, I could have created a Demon Empire truly unbeatable by the human species!
Still, this world, Alterrania, was amazing through the simple fact that it did not have just humans and demons as sapient species spread across its lands but also dwarfs, elves, relliars, morphlings, kreziers, alkadarians, mermedians, sallarians, and godlings. Or so the books in the library told me.
It would end up taking me a long while to figure out that I could access the Maginet for more information. Do not judge me, in my previous world, as a Demon King, I used to write on parchments and sometimes on granite because those idiotic dragonoids ended up burning everything with the slightest touch. There were also no babyproofed MagiBraces there!
Speaking of books, in order to get access to them, I first had to prove to my parents that I was far from the idiot little snot eater that I appeared to be and that I knew how to talk. Thus, about eight months or so after I was born, I called out to mother with a cute ‘mama’, while I called father ‘peepee’. That expression on his face was well worth the trouble.
What? I was a Demon King; messing around with mortals was sort of in the job description.
Anyway, I learned to talk normally by the time I was one and a half years old and then I immediately showed interest and curiosity in my father’s books. He took great joy in reading me all sorts of stories, while mother took the trouble of teaching me the letters. The maids found it weird, but we, as a family, did not care. By the time I was two, I was able to read most of the easy sentences by myself, but... for some reason, I found it fun to read together with my parents.
Such a weird feeling that was. It was almost as if I was... bonding with them? Nah, it couldn’t be! But… what if? Technically, I was not a Demon King, I was a human, maybe the same gifts that the Eternal Gods granted to them could be received by me as well? Time would have to tell, for now, I was enjoying my childhood.
Since that incident with the maid, I continued to strengthen my magic core, but I noticed something strange after a while. Instead of gathering shards in the same core, the shards were moving towards another point of focus. It was as if another core wanted to form. Looking more closely, I noticed that there were seven such cores, all with unusual structures and in unusual locations, for example in my throat, between my eyes, and at the top of my head. And they were all controlling different types of energy from the looks of things.
The more I sent shards towards those seven cores, the more I realized that the normal energy found in my former Magic Core as a demon had been separated into seven, then refined and fine-tuned to work with specific magic systems. Creating combinations out of them was not an impossibility either, but it was only after the completion of my second core, which was located below my navel, that I was beginning to believe that the first core was the original Demon core I brought with me from my previous life.
The more I looked at its energy, the more it reminded me of the primitive nature and savageness of my previous species. Was it possible that the reason why the gods preferred the humans over the demons was because they focused on these seven cores instead of the one we demons had?
Such a question shook me to the core, but I couldn’t accept it as the truth! No, it was far too early, and I had yet to meet the demonkind of this world! For one, they weren’t in a constant war against the humans like we were. If this world revolved around war and strife, then it would have been impossible for it to evolve so much and in such a little time. Once I had the chance to meet the demonkind of Alterrania, a single glance at them would reveal the truth. Would they have seven cores or a single one like I did?
When I turned three, all of my seven cores had begun to form, although they were minuscule in comparison to my original one. I could use maybe a third of my previous power as a Demon King, but this was only in terms of casting spells. With the physical body of a mere child, no claws, fangs, or tail, I couldn’t use my full strength or fighting power. I had to learn how to fight like a human. This, however, was not the kind of subject I could just go ahead and ask my parents about. At the age of six, however, I would have the opportunity to gain more insight into my true nature.
On Alterrania, all humans who managed to survive until they were six years old went through various tests to see if they had a talent for magic or anything else. At that time, I would have only two options: reveal my true nature and lay waste to the mortal city I was in or try to hide my power as best as I could and wait to see who I could count on as an ally in this world. Then again, I had no idea just how these humans were going to react to the discovery of someone like me.
A question, which… was answered one day.
One day, when I was watching some cartoons on TV, I switched to another channel where another cartoon was showing, this one an anime, or so my mom called it. What was important, however, was not this art form’s name but the message it was delivering.
“The Demon King’s fate has been sealed, for I, the HERO, shall rip your heart out and paint the city with your blood!”
Wait, what?! was the first thing I asked myself when I heard this.
I continued to watch this show, but the more I saw the more terrified I became. The Demon King looked terrifyingly powerful. I could not see myself defeating him, but the hero was just attacking him head-on like a savage beast, ripping off his arms, cutting him down with his sword, and no matter how many times the Demon King regenerated, the Hero was relentless.
Without even realizing it, I became so frightened that I wet myself.
When mother found me, I was already in a state of shock, and all I could say was “The hero... the hero will kill me.,..”
I have no idea what happened afterwards, but father was furious, mother cried, the maids were scolded, and I never saw that anime again. The shock was completely unexpected, and everyone did their best to comfort me.
Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. I now knew what happened to the Demon Kings of this world and death was just a sweet dream for us. We weren’t even allowed to remain dead. We were resurrected, killed again, ripped apart, skinned alive, burned alive, pummeled to death, exploded, disintegrated! We suffered through more heinous torture than the humans did at the hands of my demonic torturers!
A week after this event, an elf woman came to our house. She was quite beautiful with her small chest, long pointed ears, cat-like eyes, a pair of glasses on the tip of her delicate nose, and long, lush, glistening silver hair.
“Good day, young Alseus Ardemant. My name is Zisteria Francesca. It’s a delightful pleasure to meet you!” she said, introducing herself with a charming smile and then pulled out a tablet.
I wanted one too, but my parents thought it was far too early to introduce me to such gadgets.
“Good day. It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Miss Francesca.” I said in reply.
“Please call me Zisteria. Now, do you know why I am here and what my job is?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“I’m here because of your little accident with the anime called Anti-Hero Isekai.”.
“Anti-what?” I furrowed my brow.
The name was unfamiliar to me; besides, what in the world did it even mean? These were a bunch of words I had no idea how to translate.
“I see. Well, I’m here to help you out and make sure that you can grow up strong and healthy. Now, shall we begin?” she asked with a smile.
I had no idea what was going to happen, so I just nodded like a fool and hoped this would be over soon.
That was my very first meeting with the well-known psychologist and psychotherapist Zisteria Francesca.
From that little talk we had that day, she concluded that I had taken on the persona of a Demon King, and I was deeply afraid of those with the title of Hero. More so, she insisted that I should go through more therapy sessions with her, while she tried to get me to give up on what she called ‘a simple phase’.
To be honest, I had no idea how else I could lie to her or spin the truth. She was good at picking up the inconsistencies in my words and eyed me like a hawk when I tried to lie but telling her the truth was something I could not do.
Through these therapy sessions that she did with me, she confirmed for me that the Demon King and the Hero portrayed in the anime were overpowered imaginary characters of a fictional world, and that none of it was an accurate representation of reality. She actually showed me a picture of the current Demon King and Hero, and they both looked friendly with one another... and were wearing suits. Plus, they were both fat.
Oi! Lose those extra pounds! Your titles are crying out of embarrassment! Oh well, that was what I wanted to scream at that time, but I didn’t have the courage to let it out.
Later that year, when I was four, mother came to me and, as a birthday gift, offered me a ticket.
“What’s this?” I asked her.
“We have been invited as one big happy family on the Royal Yacht Monumonu, which is set to depart in one week from Port Neptune. We’ll sail across the Plassaris Ocean for about two weeks before we return to the same port. It’s a vacation for all of us, plus your big chance to see the ocean and maybe some marine monsters like horned dolphins!” she squealed with excitement.
I honestly could not tell who was happier about this upcoming trip, her or... well, anyone but me? Why would anyone wish to travel at sea for two weeks? It was so annoying to eat dried food and lemons for dessert.