CHAPTER 66

Hezhna sat in front of the girl and then began to speak."You are a champion..."

Afried shook her head upon hearing this, as she realized Hezhna somehow knew about her class.

"Do you know, Afried... who we work for?"

"The Hero Association, right? You guys kill Demon Kings, don't you?"

At that, Hezhna massaged her temples with both hands.

"...No!"

"Then... you're a group of royal mages ensuring the people's safety?"

Hezhna allowed Afried to keep guessing, lowering her expectations with each incorrect answer. Only after Afried's twentieth guess and yet another "No" did she stand up.

"You need to see it with your own eyes..."

She then led Afried out of the Demon King's dungeon and spoke to the other witches, summoning their sisters.

"This is the biggest gamble of my life..."

A month had passed since an alliance was formed with twelve Demon Kings within a thousand-kilometer radius. Hazard now had his eyes on the hundred-million-strong army of the Plenor Kingdom stationed at his borders. Meanwhile, the Demon Kings allied with him—comprised of three level sixes and nine level fives—attempted to send him caravans of gifts as a token of appreciation. This was because reaching level six imposed a twenty percent tax on system trade transactions. However, every single caravan was intercepted by the empire before reaching its destination, causing Hazard to suffer significant losses.

Frustrated with the empire, Hazard declared war on both the empire and the Plenor Kingdom. The empire's repeated attacks on weapon caravans made by Laurin, as well as the Fire Jewel—which was now being traded with greedy humans through Hezhna's connections in an attempt to obtain the Death Jewel—had pushed him over the edge. The Death Jewel, which had once been widely traded like any other spirit, had recently disappeared from all servers.

With his war declaration, Hazard deployed his Grand Undead General, Artemis, alongside forty Abyss Giants of epic rank and the Immortal Armored Army, awaiting results. Meanwhile, he summoned another Death's Heaven mercenary, bolstering his forces with the Death King's army in the south and the scattered Hellcats in the north, whose population was mysteriously booming. The number of his champion spirits was rising exponentially.

After imprisoning his latest summon and enduring the nonsense of the old madmen, he focused on upgrading his territory's buildings. By leveling all the Vengeful Spirit Towers to level four, he increased their spirits to three hundred and elevated their power to lord rank. However, this extravagant expenditure caused his total gold to plummet to two billion.

Despite this, Hazard had more pressing matters at hand—news had spread across the server that nearly twenty thousand Demon Kings were still alive and scattered across six continents. The continent he resided in was the largest, known to others as the Central Continent. However, the real issue was the outbreak of the first-ever faction war between Demon Kings.

The Green Plains Continent, led by the Succubus Queen Kaya, had gone to war with the Endless Sands Continent, led by the Abyssal Queen Scarlet, a level seven Demon King. The war was of such an enormous scale that even merchant ships five hundred kilometers away swore the color of the sea had changed near the orc fleet's anchorage.

The massive battle had begun ten days ago, and with two thousand Demon Kings under her command, Kaya was expected to crush Scarlet's army of five hundred insect Demon Kings. However, things did not go as expected. A third faction, composed of exiled sea-dwelling Demon Kings, began systematically raiding Kaya's supply fleets.

Hazard could never forget the day this happened—server chat was in complete chaos. Kaya, revealing her true nature, declared war on all the continents. This prompted Caine, the Epic-Rank Abyss Giant King of the Frozen Lands in the South, to rally ten thousand Demon Kings behind him and declare war against Kaya in server chat. The mere mention of his name sent a wave of terror through the Succubus Queen's faction.

Yet, Hazard felt no fear. His prison held an army of epic-ranked battle maniacs waiting to be unleashed. The only thing he knew about them was their insane combat prowess—he himself had been unable to defeat even a single one of them without summoning his three Death Twins.

He decided to leave his castle, but upon reaching the gates, he found all the witches gathered outside. None of them carried weapons or wore magical items—they stood clad only in simple cloth garments. Before them stood Hezhna, accompanied by an elven girl, who was also unarmed.

The sight surprised Hazard. He attempted to assess the situation, while numerous liches curiously observed from the sidelines.

"What is the meaning of this, Hezhna?"

Hazard was lost in thought. Food? Clothing? Shelter? Entertainment? Wages? The witches received a fixed amount of each, and according to Hezhna, they were satisfied. So what did they want now?

"I have a request for you!"

The tone of her voice brought back memories of their first meeting. Hazard's expression grew serious—this was no trivial matter.

"If you want to leave, tell me what's lacking. I truly need your abilities for my army and territory development."

Hazard was worried. Losing the witches would cripple both his military power and his territory's progress. He would be willing to pay a heavy price to keep them—from trading with humans to obtaining books written by them, which served as both his source of entertainment and a way to expand his knowledge of this world. In contrast, books from the Gate Cities were so complexly written that even with his epic-ranked mind, he had to reread them multiple times to grasp their meaning, as if the authors were competing in a contest of obscurity.

"We found this elf in the dungeon of a rogue Demon King."

Hearing this, Hazard nearly sighed in relief. But his focus quickly shifted to why this particular girl was important enough to cause such a reaction among the witches.

Then he checked her status.

"A Warlord-level...???"

Hazard was stunned. How had the witches, who didn't have a single Warlord-rank fighter among them, managed to bring him an elf of that caliber?

"Which one did you find her in? If I remember correctly, there were seven rogue Demon Kings, right?"

Hezhna answered.

"The first one..."

Hearing that shocked Hazard even more—the first rogue Demon King who refused to submit to him had been dealt with a month ago.

"Why are you telling me this only now?"

Hazard carefully examined the elf. She shivered under the gaze of the five-meter-tall Demon King, whose epic-rank aura weighed down on her. But before he could continue, Hezhna stepped forward, shielding Afried behind her.

"She's a champion?!"

Hazard voiced his first suspicion, unable to think of any other possibility. The moment he spoke those words, everything over the past month suddenly made sense—the witches' negligence in their duties, their attacks on nearby rogue Demon Kings, who, unlike the twelve who quickly swore loyalty, had remained hidden near his territory.

"Yes, she's a champion, but please, listen—"

That was all Hazard needed to hear.

In an instant, his aura of death exploded like a time bomb, and his voice, echoing from the depths of an abyss, rang out:

"So you witches... sacrificed the Demon Kings I needed in this crisis... just to nurture this champion?!"