Ellis slowly opened his eyes. The first thing to come into view was a decrepit ceiling. Cobwebs decorated the corners, while loose pieces of chipped limestone fell from above like gentle snowfall. One of those pieces landed in his eye, involuntarily making him wince.

He quickly sat up and surveyed the rest of his surroundings.

“This place is…”

He was inside a small cubic room. The walls, the ceiling, and the floor, all of it was of a uniform size. The walls were equally as dilapidated as the ceiling, and a giant crack ran down the entire length of the floor. There were no windows, only a rectangular opening on one of the walls.

It was a cold, dark, and decaying room.

Ellis stood up and made his way to the opening. After walking through a narrow hallway, he reached another room. This room was larger than the last, about three times as big. A giant curtain covered one of the walls.

After some slight hesitation, he pulled back the curtains.

Bright beams of light illuminated the room and bombarded his eyes. Ellis instinctively scowled. When he opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was blue. His entire field of view was enraptured by the color blue.

A vibrant blue sky. Specks of white gently glided across the air. Beneath all that was an even deeper shade of blue. It was a blue filled with the vitality of life. An ocean that stretched out beyond where his eyes could see.

Ellis approached the window. He pressed his face against the cold surface and looked down. To his surprise, he was actually standing several hundred feet above the ocean. Beneath him was a rocky shoreline where violent waves frequently battled against jagged stone. Rather than the pure blue of the open sea, the shore was tainted in ocean foam.

This room was built on the side of a cliff.

He was slightly amazed, although not by much. After all, while it was indeed quite an impressive architectural feat, something like this could also be found on Earth. Seaside villas were a dime in a dozen.

“As expected, I really am by the ocean. Then that also means…” Ellis mumbled to himself as his thoughts slowly came to focus.

He began to paint a picture of his current situation.

The Demon King Alma left behind ‘memories’ within this new body of his.

One of the most important things to note was the fact that Ellis now deviated from the normal mold of human. Right now, he was what the people of this world called a homunculus.

Homunculus. The exact definition was slightly different from the one on Earth, but basically, they were artificially constructed life. Normally, homunculi were considered to be weak monsters. They possessed low strength and even lower intelligence. They were failures that knew only how to follow basic instructions. On top of the fact that most homunculi were modeled after humans, members of his new race were often called artificial servants.

Of course, Ellis wasn’t like that.

He was different. For one, his intelligence was still very much intact. While he did not dare boast himself as being overtly smart, he was at least above the level of a wild animal, which was more than what you could say for the rest of his race.

What’s more, this body of his was constructed out of precious materials.

In his head, there was a list of ingredients that Alma had used during the manufacturing process of his body.

Reading through it all, Ellis could hardly pronounce even half of the items on there. Since the list consisted entirely of items native to Lull, it was only natural for Ellis to not know any of them.

For example, there was this thing that acted as his heart and power source. It was an item called a labyrinth core, and according to Alma, it was the world’s most precious and most powerful type of mana stone. Since he did not have a point of reference, he could only take what Alma said at face value.

Whether he was lying or not, he would never know.

According to the information in his head, the most important ingredient of all was him. Or rather, it was his soul.

Normal homunculi were created using a vestige of a soul. This vestige gave them the breath of life, but in the end, they did not really count as real life. A homunculus lacked something fundamental.

They lacked desire

They had no desire to have sex or reproduce. Heck, unless explicitly told to do so, they wouldn’t even eat or drink water.

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Ellis was clearly different. He felt no significant changes to his desires or emotions. If it wasn’t for the slight feeling of discomfort from being within a new body, he would have thought that nothing had changed from the him of Earth.

This was the result of a complete soul.

It was said to be an impossible feat, but that damned old man, he had crafted a homunculus capable of housing a soul as good as any normal living body.

He let out a wry chuckle.

But whether it was creating such a precious body or being able to retain his complete soul, none of that qualified Ellis to be Alma’s son.

No, the reason why that Great Demon King considered him his son was…

He suddenly looked up. A name popped up to his head.

This place, this structure located within a cliff by the seaside… it should be the Great Demon King’s mausoleum. It may look decrepit and barren, but this was Alma’s final resting place. Somewhere inside was the body of a being that once terrorized the entire world.

Ellis looked around the room before he began walking towards one of the rectangular openings on the wall. He wandered around the mausoleum for a while. He traveled through long winding hallways and passed several cubic rooms. At one point, he entered what looked to be a treasury, except there was nothing there except a partially destroyed cobweb.

Eventually, he arrived at a spacious courtroom. It had high ceilings and a black chandelier that dangled in the center of the room. It was far larger than any of the rooms that he had visited before.

Six stone columns decorated each side of the room.

Ellis compared the room with the information inside his head before he nodded. Right now, he was in a throne room. This was Alma’s final resting place.

The Demon King was not buried nor did his remains rest within a casket. No, he died as he had lived, sitting on an all-black throne.

Near the farthest wall of the throne room, there existed a single throne and, on that throne, sat a withered skeleton. The skeleton wore full body armor. A black crown adorned his skull, a tattered cape draped over his shoulders, while a single greatsword rested on his lap.

The Great Demon King. The old god banished to a life of mortality. Alma.

Ellis approached the throne.

He instantly felt it. His cheeks flushed, his body grew hotter. His blood began to boil.

This was it.

The proof of lineage. A bloodline resonance.

His artificially constructed body contained the old Demon King’s bloodline. Homunculi were created through a mixture of various ingredients. It wasn’t uncommon for a person’s blood to be mixed in.

Ellis was no different. Within the unique mixture that created his body, Alma had added in his own blood.

When it comes to homunculi, bloodlines were somewhat unique. They were not exactly the same as a real child, but Ellis could now be considered the son of the Great Demon King.

He stared at the corpse for a long time.

Eventually, he spoke. “I don’t know you all that well, so I won’t say stuff like how you were a good person or about how the world misunderstood you. I’m a naturally cautious person, so forgive me for being a bit suspicious. For all I know, you might just very well be as bad as all the rumors say. I can’t even say whether you taking me away from the other god was a good thing or not, but…

“I don’t know if it’s the bloodline that’s talking, but a part of me wants to believe.” He paused for a moment. “You spoke of freedom. You took me away from the other god and gave me freedom. Was that… were you telling the truth?”

“…”

The room was silent. No one responded to Ellis’s question. Still, he continued.

“Regardless, it’s a fact that you brought me back to life. That I can consent to. I won’t say anything too superfluous. Emotional stuff isn’t my strong suit, so I’ll say this only once. Thank you… Father.”

Ellis bowed in front of the skeleton.

Those words of his were not spoken lightly. In his old life, Ellis was an orphan. The concept of a parent was completely foreign to him. Even when taking into consideration the caretakers that operated the orphanage, there still existed a wall that he never could quite get over.

If the Demon King was someone that longed for a son, then Ellis was someone that harbored a secret desire for a parent.

In a sense, it was his first time acting like this.

A somewhat peculiar emotion filled his chest.

It might have been just a trick of the light, but the skull’s jaw seemed to twist into a smile. Ellis stared absentmindedly for a few seconds before a sharp crack echoed through the chamber.

A hairline fracture ran down the entire length of the skull. More fractures quickly appeared all over the skeleton. Soon, the entire thing collapsed in on itself. It practically disintegrated before his very eyes.

The greatsword fell to the ground with a resounding thud before it shattered into tiny fragments. Even the crown that once rested on the skeleton’s head broke in a similar fashion.

After a while, the only thing left within this room was an empty jet-black throne.

“…”

He did not know how long the old demon’s corpse had been here, but judging from the memories within his head, he harbored a guess. Alma had died a long, long, long time ago. Several hundred thousand, maybe even a million years. It was a time frame far outside his understanding, but it was the truth.

After the skeleton’s collapse, there was nothing else of value left within this mausoleum.

Ellis moved on. He traveled through several more hallways before he eventually opened a hatch that led up to the outside world.

He stood on top of a cliff that overlooked a vast sea. With the exception of the forest behind him, the entire area was barren.

Just as he was about to take a step forward, the ground beneath his feet suddenly shook. Ellis hurriedly ran to the forest as cracks slowly formed on the ground.

After a few seconds, the entire cliffside collapsed. Along with the old mausoleum, several thousand tons of rock and dirt fell into the churning tides below.

“…”

He watched as chunks of earth and large slabs of stone were quickly swallowed up by the sea. When the last fragment disappeared and the waves returned to their normal chaotic selves, Ellis finally turned away.

“Now, what should I do?” He mumbled to himself as he looked up at the sky.

Alma had been a God and a Demon King. He was an existence that naturally garnered ambition and reverence, but he did not enforce such a life onto his son. No, his only will, if you could really call it that, was for Ellis to bear descendants. Aside from that, everything else was up to his own discretion.

He slowly clenched his fingers.

In a new world with a new body… he was still unsure of a lot of things, but one thing was for certain: he was going to do whatever the hell he wanted.

Also, he was naked.