Chapter 44.5: The Legend of the demon king of Salvation (side story) [Part 1]

The King of a Kingless World

Somewhere else in the multiverse, in a kingdom stripped of its purpose, where rot festered in the marrow of its land, there existed He'Lyn. It was once a prosperous kingdom, a place of great reverence, of whispered prayers and hopeful eyes turned toward the heavens. But hope had long since decayed into despair, and those same eyes were now hollow and sunken, dulled by suffering, emptied of faith.

The people were dying. The land itself was perishing.

The plague of Ush'Uh did not discriminate. It gnawed indiscriminately, taking the young and the old, the rich and the poor. It clung to the very air, curled into the flesh of livestock, soaked into the rivers like ink staining parchment. The proud farmers of He'Lyn now watched their once-thriving crops wither before their eyes. Their sheep collapsed in their fields, bloated and rotting under the scorching sun. Mothers wept over fevered children, watching helplessly as they withered away in their arms.

And yet, atop the throne, he remained unmoved.

A man—weak, trembling—stood before the throne, his arms wrapped around a barely breathing infant. His face was gaunt, cheeks hollow from hunger, eyes brimming with something between grief and rage.

"You promised us salvation!" he cried.

The words were echoed by the crowd behind him. Once-proud citizens, now nothing more than emaciated husks of their former selves, clung to their weapons—not swords, not steel, but rusted pitchforks, wooden clubs, jagged shards of glass wrapped in cloth. It was not an army, but a mob—wild, desperate, furious.

But the one upon the throne did not flinch.

He was The Demon King of Salvation. And yet, he ruled a kingdom without a king. A throne without a purpose. A land without salvation.

The king's voice was calm, measured, untouched by the storm of fury crashing against him.

"And I delivered you from ignorance," he said, gazing down at them like a god addressing insects. "Salvation was never part of the deal."

Silence stretched across the court.

And then the first scream rang out.

It was not one of anger, nor one of rebellion. It was the sound of despair reaching its breaking point.

The mob surged forward.

Fire. Blood. Rot. Death.

The kingdom of He'Lyn burned.

But to the king, none of it mattered.

A Plague Upon the Ants

As the people rioted, as they howled in desperation, the King of a Kingless World merely sat upon his throne and watched.

Some rulers would have acted in arrogance. Some would have sneered, mocked their suffering, called them weak for begging before him. Others might have taken pleasure in it—reveling in the power they held over the helpless, savoring the sweet nectar of dominance.

But this king did neither.

He did not hate them.

He did not mock them.

He did not even pity them.

He simply felt nothing.

What they saw as cruelty was simply indifference.

The difference between gods and mortals was vast. The difference between kings and peasants was immeasurable.

But this—this was something else entirely.

To The Demon King of Salvation, the people of He'Lyn were not his enemies. They were not his subjects. They were not even an inconvenience.

They were merely ants.

When a human steps upon an anthill, they do not revel in its destruction. They do not stand in sadistic glee as tiny creatures are trampled beneath their feet.

They simply do not think of the ants at all.

And so it was with the king and his people.

Their pain, their hunger, their desperate pleas for mercy—they were distant, insignificant, as weightless as dust in the wind.

Even now, as their hands grasped for whatever weapons they could find, as their voices rang with fury, as they set their own homes ablaze in an act of final, frenzied rebellion, he did nothing.

Because why would he?

Would a man negotiate with ants? Would he save them when they wept at his feet? Would he pause to spare a handful when millions more could simply be crushed beneath his boot?

Would a god look down at the suffering of mortals and feel anything at all?

Perhaps he still had not freed them from ignorance.

Perhaps they still did not understand.

Perhaps, even in their final moments, they still thought they mattered.

And as He'Lyn burned, as the cries of its people faded into the howling wind, the King of a Kingless World remained upon his throne.

Unmoved. Unshaken.

Uncaring.

The Legend of the Demon King of Salvation

The legend of The Demon King of Salvation was hidden, buried beneath layers of history that no mortal could uncover. It was not a tale whispered among men, nor was it a story passed down through the ages. It existed only in the cracks of reality, in the forgotten spaces where history was not written but erased.

Unless someone possessed the power to unveil what was meant to remain obscured, they would never know who—or what—the Demon King truly was.

But legends, as ephemeral as they seemed, were never truly forgotten.

The First Writer: Izu'Mi

In the earliest days of creation, when the universe was young and the cosmos had yet to define itself, there existed a singular being.

She was known only to those who had glimpsed beyond the veil of mortality—angels who dwelled in the highest heavens, and lost souls who had wandered too close to the truth. To some, she was called Izu'Mi. To others, she was Iz'R'lyeh, a name spoken in awe, in reverence, in fear.

She was not a god, nor was she a demon.

She was The First Writer.

Some called her beautiful and kind, a mother of stories who weaved worlds from nothingness. Others, however, spoke of her in hushed tones, their voices trembling with dread.

To them, she was terrifying.

For she did not merely write stories. She made them real.

The Mythmakers: A Power Beyond Reality

There was an ability—spoken of in myths, feared in forgotten scriptures.

The power to turn stories into reality.

Those who possessed this gift could breathe life into fiction, could pull legends from the depths of imagination and make them walk. A single stroke of ink, a single brush against canvas, and what had never existed became.

But this power could only be wielded by those who had entered The Painting World.

It was not a place in the physical sense. It was a realm where creation itself bled into existence, where words, paintings, and thoughts shaped reality.

Those who found their way into this world could write life into being. They could paint weapons into existence. They could sculpt entire civilizations with a mere thought.

It was unknown whether The Demon King of Salvation possessed such a power.

But it did not matter.

He was already strong enough.

If he were to become any stronger…

It would not be a good thing.

A King Without Retaliation

The streets of He'Lyn were filled with screams.

Flames crackled against the sky. The smell of burning wood and rotting flesh thickened the air.

Among the chaos, an old man stood at the front of the mob. His hair was grey, his face lined with the deep creases of age, his body trembling—but not with fear.

With rage.

He clutched a pitchfork, its rusted edges shaking in his frail hands. With all the strength left in his dying body, he hurled it forward.

The weapon spun through the air, a final act of defiance, a desperate attack against an enemy that could not be defeated.

It struck the Demon King.

And it did nothing.

The pitchfork fell uselessly to the ground, its impact no stronger than a raindrop against steel.

The Demon King did not move.

He did not react.

He simply watched.

"Demon!"

"Monster!"

"You filthy ape!"

Their voices reached the sky, but they did not reach him.

It was almost amusing, in a way.

He had saved this forsaken kingdom. He had freed it from its chains, shattered the shackles of enslavement that once bound it.

And in return, they turned against him.

How ironic.

If Sylas were to ever hear of it…

Would he laugh?

The King Without a Kingdom

Children cried. Men shouted.

The women? They stayed silent, clutching their children close, their voices swallowed by the suffocating air of He'Lyn.

This land had long been cursed—not only by disease, but by its own twisted customs. Misogyny and sexism ran through its bones, an ingrained sickness that festered like the plague itself.

The Demon King of Salvation had tried to change that.

A Demon King with values—how laughable.

Yet even he had his principles.

Even he wished to rewrite certain cycles of suffering.

But it seemed that some tragedies could not be undone.

The Accusations

Their resentment was understandable.

He had the power to save them, but he chose not to.

From their perspective, it was a betrayal.

A "hero" had appeared, a force of power beyond comprehension, and had freed them from their shackles. He had shattered the chains that bound them, had lifted the veil of ignorance from their eyes.

But when a true calamity arrived—when the plague of Ush'Uh came to devour them—he simply watched.

They could not understand.

"You ruled this land, but you can't even save us from this godforsaken plague?!"

A man's voice roared through the decaying air, the wails of the dying echoing around him.

But the Demon King did not look at him.

His thoughts were elsewhere.

"I do not rule—I shepherd. And if the flock resents me, so be it."

"People are dying! The land is withering! The children are suffering! Why won't you save us from this cruel fate? For a god, you're useless!!"

The voice belonged to a middle-aged man, his beard unkempt, his clothes tattered with despair. He pointed at the king, as if condemning him before a court of the forsaken.

And yet, the Demon King remained still.

His expression unreadable. His posture, unshaken.

Then, in a voice as calm as a frozen sea, he spoke:

"Death is not an end; it is the punctuation in the sentence of existence."

The People's Fury

"What nonsense are you spewing now?!"

The man's voice cracked with rage.

The people—starving, sick, and desperate—roared their agreement.

Their suffering had broken them.

They wanted a savior.

Instead, they got a bystander.

But the Demon King was unfazed.

His brow furrowed slightly—a rare flicker of emotion.

"Nonsense?" he repeated. "I only speak the truth. I never lie."

And it was true.

For all his crimes, for all his sins, for all the atrocities that could be etched into the walls of history, he had never lied.

The Hierarchy of Reality

This universe was infinite.

A cosmic hierarchy where lower beings were nothing but fiction to those above them.

To a third-dimensional human, a two-dimensional drawing was not real.

To a fourth-dimensional being, humans were nothing more than characters in a book.

The people of He'Lyn whispered among themselves, their voices quivering with realization.

Did the Demon King view them the same way?

Did he see them as fiction?

As meaningless scribbles in a divine story?

The Plague of Ush'Uh

The plague had not been born from the filth of the streets.

It was not a mere disease of the body.

No, the Plague of Ush'Uh was something else entirely—something ancient, something unnatural.

It had been crafted.

Forged by The Crawling Chaos, an Outer God who lurked in the darkest corners of existence. A being of intellect and madness, one of the most terrifying minds among the eldritch horrors that slumbered beyond reality.

The Demon King knew this.

And yet, he did nothing.

For even as the people screamed, even as their pleas would have broken any weaker-willed ruler, the Demon King of Salvation remained unmoved.

He was not here to coddle them.

He was here to test them.

The Test of Mortals

If they could not overcome this, if they could not adapt, then they were not worthy.

For in his mind, they needed to be more than mere humans.

They needed to become something greater.

They needed to become a species that could one day stand against divinity itself.

Could they kill a god?

Could they slay the Outer Ones?

That was his true test.

And so—he waited.

Until he grew bored.

Until he had seen enough.

The air grew cold.

The wind stopped.

Even time itself seemed to hold its breath.

Then, he snapped his fingers.

And the world moved forward.

One hundred years into the future.

A Kingdom of the Dead

Silence.

Not the silence of peace.

But the silence of a world that had been abandoned.

The kingdom of He'Lyn was gone.

The plague of Ush'Uh had not been defeated.

The people had perished.

They had not adapted.

They had not evolved.

They had simply died.

The Demon King of Salvation stood among the ruins, his expression blank.

But within the depths of his mind, there was only one thought.

"Disappointing."

And so, without hesitation—

Without mourning, without sorrow, without a single glance back—

He turned.

And vanished.

For if this world could not fight back—

Then he would simply find another.

Somewhere, out there, among the stars—

There had to be a mortal capable of killing a god.