I Don’t Want to Be a Heroic Spirit [326]

Staring at the demon curled in a ball, clutching its head in the corner, Aldarp barked in frustration.

"Not only did you fail to swap bodies with the First Prince, but you also couldn't bring Lalatina to me as I wished! My Lalatina—do you have any idea how much I want her? Why couldn't you even accomplish such a simple task?!"

"Huff… huff… huff…"

The demon in the corner, constantly kicked and punched by Aldarp, didn't retaliate. It merely responded with unsettling, ragged breathing.

"Wishes… fulfilling wishes… Aldarp's wish… must fulfill Aldarp's wish…"

Max's voice wavered as it ignored Aldarp's blows, muttering feverishly, "Huff—huff! Yes, Aldarp! Let me fulfill your wishes, Aldarp! I adore how cruel and true to your desires you are, Aldarp. I can't wait to make your wish come true and claim my reward!"

"You really are a hopeless fool, a complete imbecile! Haven't I already paid the price for my wishes?"

"Huh? You… you have?"

Max's murky eyes were filled with confusion. No matter how hard it tried to think, it couldn't recall the answer.

After venting on Max for a while, Aldarp was the one left gasping for breath, sweat forming on his forehead.

"Damn it… I should've started by swapping bodies with my son Balter! Why did I get so ambitious and aim for the Prince's body…? What am I supposed to do if I can't get the artifact back?"

Aldarp growled, his frustration growing.

"If Balter's arranged marriage with Lalatina had succeeded, I wouldn't have needed to take such risks! Damn it! Why can't anything go my way?"

Seething, Aldarp's face twisted into an ugly snarl. His bloodshot eyes glinted with malice as he glared at Max.

"Listen up, you pathetic low-tier demon. I've already paid the price, so fulfill my wish already! My only desire is to have Lalatina!"

With Max's ability to twist reality, Aldarp believed it should be a simple matter. Perhaps Max could alter reality so that the Dustiness family owed Aldarp a massive debt, forcing Darkness to marry him to settle it. Even if the story had glaring holes, Max's power would ensure that no one noticed.

But Aldarp's wish was doomed to remain unfulfilled.

"Umu! This is truly a sight to behold."

A voice broke through the dark basement, where only two people were supposed to be. Suddenly, there was a third.

Aldarp, who always strutted around with arrogance but was, in fact, a coward at heart, froze in terror at the ghostly voice. He fell backward onto the floor with a loud thud.

"Y-you… you're…!"

Standing in the doorway, clad in a vibrant scarlet gown, Nero radiated an otherworldly brilliance that seemed unaffected by the dim and grimy surroundings of the basement.

Surveying the scene, Nero's elegant brow furrowed slightly before her emerald eyes landed on Aldarp and Max.

"I've always understood the saying, 'In a big forest, you'll find all kinds of birds.' But… hmph! To encounter stupidity of this magnitude is truly eye-opening. This isn't mere foolishness—it transcends the word entirely."

"N-Nero! Why are you here?!" Aldarp stammered, panic spreading across his face as his schemes unraveled before his eyes.

Desperation overtook him as he turned to Max, the demon he had dismissed as worthless.

"Max! I—"

"Sorry, but I can't let you have your way," Nero interjected.

Aldarp barely registered what happened next. In a single moment, his consciousness faded into darkness.

"The power to twist reality… I can't help but be wary of it," Nero muttered, her tone unusually serious. "Even if I don't know if it would affect me, I'd rather not take any chances. Umu!"

Nero nodded to herself, then suddenly winced, clutching her head in discomfort.

"Ugh… Just a little spell to make him unconscious, and it gives me a headache. Tsk…"

Aldarp, who relied on a demon capable of altering reality itself, was utterly incompetent. A weakling with a combat strength of zero. Normally, someone like him wouldn't even register on Nero's radar.

Massaging her temple, Nero glanced at Aldarp's unconscious form on the floor, her gaze full of disdain.

"To have a demon with such terrifying abilities and still treat it as a mere lower-tier demon… There are limits to stupidity."

It made her wonder how someone so incompetent had survived this long.

To Nero, Aldarp was nothing more than a pathetic clown—one whose efforts at scheming weren't even amusing. Just watching him felt like a waste of time.

Turning her gaze to the demon cowering in the corner, Nero's expression grew serious.

"Max… No."

Her emerald eyes narrowed as she spoke in a low, measured tone.

"Maxwell. Maxwell, the demon duke who twists reality—one of the Seven Dukes of Hell."

"Huff… huff…"

Maxwell tilted its head, its rasping breaths filling the air. It gave no indication that it had heard Nero's words.

The name "Maxwell" was one Nero knew well.

In her original world, Maxwell was a famous scientist who created one of the "Four Beasts of Physics," the Maxwell's Demon paradox, named after him. Though the theory was later disproved, Maxwell remained a significant figure in scientific history.

In the Little Garden, Maxwell was once a demon created from a scientific paradox, denied by conventional science. Somehow, he had acquired a fragment of the "Third Perpetual Motion Machine" and ascended to the status of a scientific angel.

However, this demon appeared unrelated to either of those Maxwells. It seemed the name was merely a coincidence.

If not for Maxwell's existence, someone like Aldarp would never have posed a threat or caught Nero's attention. Yet Aldarp, foolish as he was, still believed his success was entirely his own doing.

Thanks to Maxwell's power, any clues or evidence implicating Aldarp in wrongdoing had been erased. This made Nero's investigation into the thief who gave the enchanted necklace to Alice far more difficult.

In the end, it was Aldarp himself who exposed his own schemes.

After all, a pig like Aldarp couldn't keep a secret to save his life.

"You claimed the necklace was for the Prince from the beginning, which revealed that your intended target for the body-swap was the Prince. At the banquet, you blatantly tried to push Darkness and the Prince together, and your gaze was filled with an obvious, obsessive desire to possess her… I might not be Sherlock Holmes, with the ability to see through all lies and uncover the truth, but I'm not blind."

Why was it that only Nero had pieced everything together?

No doubt it was Maxwell's power at work, subtly twisting reality to ensure no one thought ill of Aldarp.