“What a strange dream. I dreamt that I became a girl for some reason. Haha, how weird is that?” I look around the dark room to see that no was there.

I’m talking to myself again, I need to stop doing that.

*Boom* suddenly the castle begin to shake violently from the deafening noise.

“Looks like I’m under attack again.” I nonchalantly get out of my throne and head towards a window.

It wasn’t a pretty sight. Just outside my castle was an entire army arm with torches and catapults, and the person leading them was a kid wielding Excalibur. It’s hard to tell from here, but it seems like the kid was saying something. Probably something like “Your tyranny here!” Or some something like that.

Letting out a sigh, I return to my throne. The sounds of explosions grew louder and more violent as time passed. At this point all my demons were probably defeated. How strange, even though my life in danger, I don’t really care. Heh, I guess that’s one of the downsides of being immortal. Soon, the sound of people bashing on my door echoed through my chamber. But even though an army was about to break into my throne room, I still didn’t move an inch.

Usually, I get hot-blooded when someone invaded my castle, but for some reason today I’m too tired to even try to stop them.

“Haha.” I let out a melancholic laugh. “I should at least try to fight back.”

“Aw, you look so sad.” Suddenly, two small pale hands wrap themselves around me.

“To be loathe simply because of the powers you were born with, such a tragic fate.” The voice said in a hushed tone. I tried to turn around to face the voice, but somehow the small hands were strong enough to stop me from moving.

“But you don’t have to worry, even if the entire world see you as there enemy, I’ll always love you, Demon King.~”

Chapter 18

Rumors

“Sis, sis!”

“Yea, what’s wrong?!” I quickly bolt up to see a kid with messy light brown hair and green eyes looking at me worryingly.

“You were talking in your sleep, it looked like you were having a nightmare.”

“A nightmare, me?” I let out a small laugh, But Aaron still had a worried look on his face. I guess I must’ve looked really pathetic when I was sleeping just a few second ago.

“Hey, what did I tell you?! Stop moving around or you’ll scare my horse again!” A dwarf with a dark red beard shouted at me.

“Shut up, your horse can’t see me back here anyway!” Currently Aaron and I are hitching a ride on a cart.

Our destinations is Athens. Hopefully there I can find some clues to the whereabouts of the hero’s last surviving member, “Alice.” With her “help,” I will finally be able to uncover the spell that somehow strip me of almost all my power, and then rightfully claim it back.  And there’s only one thing stopping me from doing all this, and that’s this horse!

Because animals are naturally afraid of me, it took forever for us to actually get on the horse. Even now, if the horse notice that I’m riding on it, it’ll freeze up. Making this very long and annoying trip. It also doesn’t help that there’s heaps of weapons spread out all over the cart, making it hard to get comfortable.

“Seriously kid, what did you do to my horse?

“I didn’t do nothing to it. What makes you think I did something?”

“My horse never behave this way until he met you. So I’m assuming you did something to him.”

“Or maybe he just afraid of me for some reason. Listen, can’t you speed your horse up or something? I would like if we could reach our destination sometime soon.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you this for a while, what makes you think were heading to the same place? I never did tell you where I was heading.

“Easy, there’s two cities in the direction we’re heading. And since you’re a merchant, I’m assuming you’re heading to the more populated one, which is Athens. Am I correct?”

“Athens huh?” The dwarf softly chuckle. “You two are really out the loop aren’t you?”

“Did I miss something?”

“Oh yea, you miss a huge detail. I’m sorry to tell you kids, but the road to Athens is closed.”

“What?! Why is it closed?”

“Because more and more people have been disappearing in this area lately.”

"Disappear, you mean murder?" Aaron said worriedly

“Who knows, so far no bodies have shown up. And people who go searching for them also disappear”

No bodies huh? I guess I can rule out monsters. Since none of them would be smart enough to cover their own track. But then again, I did fight a wolf that was cleverly trying to corner me without me noticing.  And I do remember James telling me monsters have been acting strange lately.  So I guess I shouldn’t rule them out yet, even though it does sound far-fetched.

“You guys have heard of the recent rise in monster attacks right?”

“Yea, what of it?”

“Well there’s been a lot of weird rumors going around. Like monsters are attacking humans because they becoming a threat to nature, or they attacking humans because they want to eat their brains so they can gain intelligence. Stupid stuff like that. But you know what I think? I think the Demon King has return.”

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

“…” Aaron turns to me and worriedly stares at me.

I hope he won’t stare at me every time someone mentions me, because I feel like my identity is going to be quickly reveal if he keeps doing that.

“Want makes you think the Demon King return?”

“Who else can cause an uproar like this? I even heard that the hero is coming here to investigate this incident.”

Great, we just left home and I already have to worry about the hero. Yea, we’re off to a great start.

“Whoa!” The horse abruptly stops, nearly throwing me and Aaron off the cart.

“What’s going?!”

“…” The Dwarf remain silent.

I crawl towards the front of the cart to see a dead body was on the side of the road. I hop out the cart so I could investigate the dead body.

The body was scratch to hell. His face was completely claw apart making it impossible to identify the body. The only thing I could make out was that he was an adventurer, since he wore lather amour.

“Wha- What did this?” Aaron had a horrify look on his face. Right, this is his first time seeing a human dead body and a disfigure one at that.

“Well it was obviously a monster. What type, I have no idea, but it seems were going to find out soon.”

“What does that mean?”

“This body still look fresh which means whoever did this is probably not that far away.”

“Wait, you’re not serious right?” The dwarf came rushing to us with a pale look.

“Unfortunately, I am.”

“So um, I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. But if the monster do attack you guys will protect me right?”

“Sure, if you can keep up with us, but your horse…” The dwarf turns around to see horse was shaking badly.

“Crap, one second.” The dwarf ran back to the horse to calm it down.

“Sis…” Aaron still looked like he was in shock. I guess I shouldn’t expect him to get over seeing a dead body so fast.

“Calm down, I need you to take a deep breath and relax. If it makes you feel better, just think of the corpse as a dead animal.”

“R-Right” Aaron begin to take deep breaths.

“…” Maybe it was a bad idea to have him tag along.

“Ok, I’m ready.” The dwarf slowly guided the horse forward by pulling on the rope on its neck.

“So I don’t want to sound insecure, but I have to ask. Are you guys really capable of fighting? I mean you guys saw that corpse, he didn’t look like a pushover, but he still ended up dead. And you guys, well I’m sorry to say don’t really look like adventurer material. Especially you miss, you look like your cosplaying as one. So I feel really assure if you guys tell me your stronger than that guy back there.”

Seeing the dwarf nervously put his life in my hands nearly made me laugh. This is the first time someone actually entrusted there life to me.

“Well I don’t know if were stronger than that guy, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

“You’re not filling me with confidants miss.”

“Everyone get behind me!!” The sudden loud voice stop us in our tracks.

“You heard that sis?”

“Yea, couldn’t help but to hear it.”

“I think it came from over here.” Without another word Aaron rush off towards the direction of the voice.

“Hey, wait.” What hell, just a moment ago he was scared out of his mind, and now he’s rushing into danger.

“Stay right here, I’ll back.”

“Hey wait, you guys are supposed to be protecting me!” The dwarf shouted.

Sorry, but I got something else to worry about. I finally catch up to Aaron who was crouching behind a bush.

“Look.”

Crouching down, I peek through the bush to see a group of people fighting a bunch of pale humanoids creature with unnaturally long fingers.

Ghouls, that interesting. Ghouls are cowardly creatures that only hunt at night. And yet theses ones are attacking a group of humans and broad daylight. And strangely, even though there fighting out of there element there somehow overwhelm the humans. There’s currently only one person holding the ghouls off, everyone else seem to be too injury to fight.

“What do we do?” Aaron turn to face me. It look like he really wants to help them. Me, I rather not get involve with other humans. But this may be the perfect chance to test Aaron and see if he’s really fit to follow me. Not only that but I really want to test this sword out.

“Come on.” I lightly pat Aaron on the back. “Let’s go introduce ourselves.”

A/N: Well this is weird. I was planning on taking a little break from writing. But after reading your guys comments, i couldn't wait to start on my next arc. Well anyway i hope you guys enjoy and thanks for reading!