The Labyrinth of Light seemed pitch dark from the outside…but the moment I stepped inside, it felt like time had changed in an instant.
The scorching hot sun which burnt my skin, suddenly turned into a cool but warm heat that calmed my senses. Beelzebub walked in front of me leading the way while Mia stuck to me clutching my coat surprised by the sudden change in scenery.
“You alright, Mia?”
“Oh…uh-yes, Acedia-sama.”
I always tend to forget the fact that this girl is just 5 years old and she's just a little child. I gotta be careful not to end up being a puppet Demon Lord who ends up being controlled by the bunny girl.
We went deeper into the Labyrinth and found ourselves in a cavern of about 15 meters in width. Since Beelzebub has been emitting her tremendous aura, the weaker monsters have been avoiding us since the time we entered the Labyrinth.
I set up a magic barrier around Mia since she’d also be affected by Beelzebub’s aura if it came in contact with her. For the past 8 months, I’ve been practicing my magic, and researching different ways to use my magic and I've been able to develop various forms of magic from attack and defense to barrier magic.
I've also been making sure to control my magic power and death aura as much as I can. Like I said, the death aura I emitted on the soldiers earlier was just me having fun-...I mean t-testing them on their military strength.
I was NOT having fun watching the wither in despair as they stared at me with pure fear in their eyes...
In the middle of this large cavern was a rock bed. Normally it's unimaginable for a spot like this to exist, but dungeons are different, there are times when the aspects of a dungeon may look man-made, but in reality, they are all naturally formed. The structure of a dungeon cannot be changed in any way unless the dungeon core is destroyed. So if you were to destroy a wall or make a massive hole in it, it'd revert to its initial form at the end of the day. Dungeons have a cycle of restoration.
The Labyrinth of Light is a pretty tough dungeon to conquer for normal people, but for the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Capital Virtues, it's a piece of cake. The dungeon is also used as a training ground for the soldiers and warriors under Mammon and Beelzebub. They are forced to-...I mean trained to defeat various monsters and get as strong as they can, thanks to BB(Beelzebub) and her flies watching over them, they won't die at the least.
Since the Labyrinth prevents humans from entering the demon realm, we’ve left it as it is. It gives us an advantage over the humans. For that reason, the core of the dungeon is heavily protected.
As we got closer to the rock bed, I could see a small baby placed on it. And the moment I placed my eyes on her I could feel a tremendous amount of power emitting from her little body.
It wasn’t a powerful aura like the rest of us, but a power akin to purification. It was as if the whole area was being purified by her magic power. It wasn't enough to affect the demons, but it was enough to keep the monsters away from her.
“No wonder you found this weird…”
“…A-cedi-sama?”
I walked closer to her while the two next to me stopped in their tracks. I stood next to the child and looked at her closely. The child had such beautiful porcelain-like skin. Unlike my pale skin, she had such a lively color to her. Her light blue hair stood out among the rest and the moment I looked at her hair, I knew that this was it. I knew that this was destiny and I had a duty to make this child live a happy life.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
…sigh…I can’t take this anymore…isn’t this attack way more dangerous than anything I’ve ever faced?! She’s way too cute damn it!!!
How can such a creature exist in this world? I want to hug her and take her home with me!
“Yosh! I’ve decided!”
"Yes?"
"I'm gonna make this child the happiest in existence!"
The two were just weirdly staring at me.
"I dunno what you guys are thinking about, but that's not it."
"Then what do you mean by that?"
"Do you know that I've been having a dream for a while now?"
"Yes. You've been talking about it the whole time."
"This little girl is probably the one from my dream. And I don't wish to see the state she was in in my dream."
“How do you even know that she’s a girl?”
“I can tell that from the smell of her blood.”
“Blood? You can tell from the smell?”
“Hm? Yah. It has a fragrant smell. I dunno how but I can just tell.”
“Wait…Acedia-Sama’s a vampire?!”
“Yeah. You didn’t know?”
"Of course, I didn't!!!"
“See I have sharp teeth, right?”
I showed Beelzebub my canines as proof of being a half-fledged vampire. They looked like normal teeth, but instantly grew into a pair of sharp canine fangs. I usually hide them using magic since the other nobles like Lazarus might try to take advantage of me being part vampire race.
“Then why didn’t you tell us about it, Acedia-sama? Are we that unreliable in your eyes?”
“Hm? I thought you knew about it since both Freya and Lucifer seemed to know about it.”
“They do?”
“Mm! And Mia too.”
Beelzebub looked at Mia who was standing silently next to her. And Mia just gave her a smirk which clearly said ‘Hmph! I know Acedia-sama better than anyone.'
Let's just ignore the fact that the all-so-calm and graceful lady Beelzebub is currently punching walls like she's breaking down a gingerbread house. I try my best to brainwash myself to believe that she's the most graceful person in the whole wide world.
Well, getting back to the point at hand… I've fallen for this blue-haired girl, it's love at first sight. but there seems to be a fundamental problem here. A massive problem that could change our destiny if handled incorrectly, there's a rule this world follows and both of us stand at either end of this path. It'd take a miracle for us to be together.
The child sleeping so soundly in front of me is none other than the one and only Hero of this world…
Mm. Crazy, isn’t it? Why in the world would the hero end up in the demon realm when she’s only an infant? It’s like they're telling me to kill this child and cause a massive uproar in the human realm.
Did they find out that I wanted to get peace with the human realm and purposely send this child here to taunt me or something? Or is it merely the fact that they haven't found the child's worth yet?
…well, nonetheless, it's not like I’m gonna kill a defenseless child for no reason…and it wouldn’t be that bad to be killed by a beauty, right? At the end of the cuteness and beauty is justice itself. If they're right, they're right and if they're wrong they're wrong.
Well. Let’s just take her home and decide on everything else later. Hehehe...I feel like I'm doing something wrong but a demon lord is meant to do wrong right? It can't be helped right?
I lifted the child carefully with both my hands and placed her comfortably in my arms.
“Um…Acedia-sama? Are you going to bring her along with you?”
“Hm? We can’t just leave her here, can we?”
“Mia, can you feed the child while I’m holding her? I'm sure she's hungry.”
Mia opened her bag and took out a bottle of milk, a jar with something inside, and a spoon. She slowly came closer to the child and held the bottle to her mouth, since there didn’t seem to be a teat.
I quickly created one using my threads. Thanks to how my threads function I can easily produce stuff with any texture. I told Mia to fix the teat to the bottle of milk and hold it to the baby’s mouth.
Mia seemed awfully surprised at my new invention and looked at the child sucking on her bottle happily and smiled warmly.