The moment Arthur stepped through the shimmering threshold, he was greeted by the familiar, cramped interior of Room 15. A simple wooden table and chair sat in the corner, a half-burned wax candle resting on a metallic plate. Against the headboard of the small bed leaned a white mattress with two pillows, flanked by a wooden drawer. A matching wardrobe stood at the foot of the bed near the door, right beneath a narrow, rectangular window.
The old floorboards groaned under his shoes with every movement.
Creak… Creak… Creak…
“Arthur,” Alice’s voice called out from the glowing rift behind him.
He turned back to the open portal.
“Don’t take too long. I’ll give you exactly one hour to pack your belongings before I open the gateway again, alright?” she instructed.
Arthur offered a reassuring smile and nodded. “I won’t be long, Aunt Alice. Don’t worry.”
Alice gave a final nod, and the portal dissolved into thin air, leaving him alone in the dim room.
Moments later, just as Arthur finished folding his clothes onto the mattress, a jarring, distorted frequency echoed directly inside his head.
“Hello, Arthur. Nice job taking out my minions earlier. You’re pretty quick for your age.” The voice rasped, dissolving into a sickening, layered chuckle.
Arthur froze, his hand hovering over his bag. “Who’s there?”
“A friend,” the telepathic voice hissed.
Suddenly, a violent rush of freezing wind burst through the narrow window, extinguishing the candle flame and plunging the room into shadow.
“Can you see me now?”
The voice in his mind grew heavier, solidifying into a rough, grating buzz. Arthur snapped his gaze toward the wooden door. Standing in the darkness was a towering, humanoid silhouette slightly taller than an adult male. As the moonlight filtered through the glass, it revealed the grotesque, twitching head and segmented tail of a massive locust.
“You know, I was really impressed that you made Ba’al run away with his tail tucked between his legs,” the entity laughed, a grating clicking sound mimicking his amusement. “It was honestly hilarious watching him cry to our ruler.”
Arthur slowly stood up, completely unbothered by the demonic presence. “I take it you always skip the pleasantries?”
“Ah! Where are my manners?” The creature bowed with a mocking elegance. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Beelzebub, one of the Demon Lords of Hell. And what should I call you?”
“Oh, I’m sure you already know exactly who I am,” Arthur responded, a dangerous spark of sarcasm cutting through his calm voice. “Why else would you be in my room?”
“State your business, Beelzebub,” Arthur commanded, his tone hardening.
“My business? Hehe. My business is killing you,” Beelzebub said, tilting his grotesque locust head. “Though, you do have an attractive face. What a waste. I bet Asmodeus will scold my ears off once I return to Hell carrying your head.”
Arthur glanced subtly toward the walls. This isn’t good, he thought. If a fight breaks out here, too many innocent people will get caught in the crossfire. The guests in the rooms beside me, above me, below me... even the people walking on the streets outside.
“Mind if we take this somewhere else?” Arthur asked calmly.
“Why?” Beelzebub smirked, his compound eyes glinting in the dark. “Let’s settle it right here. The more people around, the better.”
I guess I can’t reason with a demon, Arthur noted internally.
He didn't give the creature another syllable. In the blink of an eye, Arthur vanished from his spot, rushing forward with terrifying acceleration.
Beelzebub froze, completely bewildered by the boy's sheer velocity. What the hell? This brat is faster than the reports claimed!
Before the Demon Lord could even raise a defensive posture, Arthur breached his guard, gripped his armored arm, and hurled him violently across the room. Beelzebub’s massive frame slammed into the narrow window, completely shattering the glass, the frame, and a massive chunk of the wooden tavern wall.
As the demon was propelled out into the midnight air, Arthur leapt through the freshly made crater without hesitation.
Mid-fall, Beelzebub’s insectoid wings snapped open, buzzing violently as he caught himself and soared high into the starlit sky.
“Good,” Arthur muttered.
Extending his leg, Arthur manifested a glowing geometric magic circle beneath his shoe, using it as a solid platform to launch himself upward. With a sequence of precise, rapid bursts, he materialized circle after circle, sprinting up the invisible staircase of light until he leveled out at the Demon Lord's height.
Down on the cobblestone streets, curious onlookers began to gather in the plazas, muttering to one another as they stared up at the sudden commotion in the night sky.
Beelzebub glided on his buzzing wings, glaring at Arthur. His massive insectoid body twitched violently as his voice dropped to a dangerously low rasp. “You dare hurl a Demon Lord like a sack of potatoes?”
He let out a sharp, erratic cackle that quickly turned into a furious roar. “YOU THINK YOU CAN HUMILIATE ME AND GET AWAY WITH IT?!”
“What’s there to humiliate?” Arthur retorted, his expression entirely unbothered. “Your appearance is already humiliating enough.”
Beelzebub laughed like a total maniac, his mandibles clicking. “I was warned that you possessed a sharp tongue. Good, good… Let’s dance!”
With a violent wave of his armored arm, Beelzebub conjured a massive, dark cloud above the streets. Instantly, thousands of jagged metallic spikes rained down from the sky, hurtling directly toward the terrified crowd of civilians below.
This coward… Arthur thought, his eyes flashing dangerous gold.
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Abandoning his position in the sky, Arthur dove downward like a falling star. The moment his shoes slammed onto the street pavement, he thrust his hands forward. A torrent of brilliant golden phoenix fire erupted from his palms, expanding into a massive, sweeping shield of roaring flames. The blinding inferno intercepted every single projectile, vaporizing the metallic spikes into harmless ash before they could touch a single soul.
Hovering high above the blazing glare, Beelzebub smiled grotesquely. “There it is. The legendary golden phoenix fire.”
Below him, the capital streets were in utter chaos. While some onlookers screamed and cowered in terror from the demonic assault, many stood completely petrified, staring in absolute awe at the mysterious teenage boy bathing the city in divine, golden light.
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Once the last spike was melted, Arthur cut off his golden inferno. By the time the blinding smoke cleared, the terrified crowd had completely scattered, leaving the grand plaza dead silent.
Arthur let out a quiet breath of relief before extending his hands behind him, unleashing a steady stream of golden fire to propel himself back into the night sky until he was standing eye-to-eye with Beelzebub once more.
Beelzebub chuckled, his thorax twitching with amusement. “Took you long enough.”
Down below, even though the main plaza had cleared out, the citizens who had scattered into the alleyways and doorways kept their eyes locked onto the sky, transfixed by the terrifying Demon Lord and the mysterious boy blazing with heavenly fire.
There are still too many people out here, Arthur thought, his eyes scanning the streets. I need to force him to a higher altitude.
Without a second thought, he rushed forward, cutting through the air like a golden missile.
Sensing the charge, Beelzebub didn't try to clash. Instead, he abruptly folded his wings and dove straight toward the ground, aiming like a spear toward a terrified little child who was frozen on the pavement, clutching a teddy bear.
“No!” Arthur roared.
He flipped his posture mid-air and dove after him, blasting a violent burst of golden fire behind him as a booster to shatter his own acceleration limits.
He caught up to the demon just in time. Closing the distance right above the cobblestones, Arthur didn't hesitate. He swung his leg with shattering force, delivering a brutal kick straight into Beelzebub’s torso. The impact redirected the demon's trajectory entirely, launching him violently across the plaza.
Beelzebub’s massive frame slammed into the center of the grand stone fountain. The structure shattered instantly into a spray of flying rubble, sending a massive geyser of water spouting into the air.
“YOU—!” Beelzebub hissed, bursting from the wreckage drenched and humiliated. He opened his grotesque jaws, casting a dark spell that unleashed a black, suffocating cloud of millions of flesh-eating locusts.
Arthur intercepted the plague before it could spread. With a sweeping gesture, he unleashed another raging torrent of golden phoenix fire, incinerating the entire swarm of bugs into microscopic ash in a single instant.
Before the overlapping heatwave could engulf Beelzebub, the demon's wings flapped violently, creating a shockwave that launched him back into the safety of the upper atmosphere.
Arthur looked down at the shivering child, offering a reassuring gaze. “You okay?”
“Y-Yeah… Thank you,” the child stammered, clutching the toy tighter.
Arthur smiled warmly. “Nice teddy bear, by the way.”
Without missing a beat, he extended his palms behind him, unleashing a steady stream of golden fire to propel himself straight back into the night sky until he was standing eye-to-eye with Beelzebub once more.
As soon as they met in the upper atmosphere, Beelzebub sneered, his compound eyes twitching with malice. “Aren’t you getting tired of running back and forth just to save these pathetic beings?”
Arthur smirked, entirely unfazed. “Aren’t you getting tired of targeting them instead of fighting me head-on?”
Beelzebub roared in frustration. With a sickening tear of flesh, a cluster of massive, dark, smoking tentacles sprouted from his back, tearing through the air as they lashed out toward Arthur.
The moment they reached his position, Arthur didn't dodge. He grabbed the smoking appendages with his bare hands and spun his entire body around like a localized hurricane. Channeling the momentum, he released his grip with shattering force, launching Beelzebub like a cannonball across the sky, completely throwing him away from the Royal Capital and toward a massive, unoccupied stretch of barren wasteland miles away.
Beelzebub’s body collided with the distant earth with meteoric force. The impact violently shook the bedrock, kicking a colossal, mushrooming cloud of suffocating dust and pulverized soil into the night air.
Arthur used his golden fire to glide downward, landing a short distance away from the impact crater. He stood completely still in his pristine uniform, waiting for the debris to settle.
But before the smoke could disperse, a dozen even larger, blacker tentacles erupted from the dust cloud, hurtling directly toward his chest with blinding speed.
Arthur didn't flinch. Thrusting his hands forward, he unleashed a roaring torrent of golden phoenix fire, incinerating the dark appendages into pure vapor the exact microsecond they made contact with his flames.
Once the gale-force heat cleared the air, Beelzebub emerged from the settling dust. He was no longer towering slightly above a normal human—his entire body had ballooned to the size of a two-story house. While still slightly smaller than the colossal form Ba’al had assumed, the insectoid mass was staggering. His compound eyes blazed a malicious, bloody red, his mandibles snarling and dripping with acidic venom as he loomed over the landscape.
“DO YOU FEAR ME NOW?!” Beelzebub roared, the sound vibrating the barren earth beneath Arthur’s shoes.
“Fear what, exactly?” Arthur asked. He calmly slid his left hand into his uniform pocket, standing completely relaxed.
“I GOT BIGGER! AND STRONGER! IS THAT NOT OBVIOUS, YOU FOOL?!” Beelzebub demanded furiously, his segmented legs tearing into the dirt.
Arthur shrugged his shoulders carelessly. “Well, at least you can’t run past me this time.”
“HAHAHA! YOU TRULY ARE THE MOST ARROGANT ENEMY I HAVE EVER FACED!” the Demon Lord snarled, a wave of dark, suffocating mana erupting from his massive frame.
Arthur sneered, tilting his head slightly. “Wow. You sure are loud.”
Blinded by pure rage, Beelzebub let out a guttural, earth-shaking growl and lunged forward, the colossal weight of his massive body charging straight toward Arthur with terrifying fury.
But before Beelzebub’s house-sized mass could make contact, the temperature in the wasteland plummeted to sub-zero levels. Out of nowhere, several colossal ice dragon heads with glowing red eyes materialized, hurtling through the air directly toward him.
Arthur reacted instantly, leaping backward to dodge the freezing projectiles. The dragon heads collided violently with the earth right where he had been standing, shattering into a localized blizzard that kicked up a massive cloud of dust, frost, and pulverized soil.
Through the swirling mist, Arthur snapped his gaze back toward Beelzebub. The massive insectoid demon was no longer charging—instead, he was being forcefully dragged backward toward a swirling dark portal by an even more gargantuan entity. This newcomer possessed a crystalline body made entirely of jagged, unyielding ice, topped with the head and segmented tail of a monstrous serpent. Its sharp, crimson eyes pierced through the dark.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING, LEVIATHAN?! I WAS THIS CLOSE TO KILLING HIM!” Beelzebub shrieked, flailing wildly as he was hauled toward the spatial rift.
Another Demon Lord? Arthur noted internally, standing entirely composed as he watched the frozen leviathan drag the locust commander away.
The moment the two demonic entities disappeared into the portal, the rift snapped shut, leaving the wasteland dead silent once more. Arthur let out a quiet breath, relaxing his posture as he pulled his hand from his pocket. “Leviathan, huh? I’ll have to ask Aunt Alice about that later.”
Before he could take a single step toward the capital, the space directly in front of him ripped open into a brilliant, familiar gateway.
“Arthur!”
Alice practically leapt out of the rift. Before he could say a word, she threw her arms around him, pulling him into a tight embrace before grabbing his face with both hands, frantically checking him for injuries. “What on earth happened?! When I opened a portal to your tavern, all I found was a shattered wall, a ruined fountain, and a crowd of terrified citizens!”
“Ah... about that...” Arthur let out a sheepish chuckle, raising a hand to rub the back of his neck. “I’ll explain the whole story in a bit.”
Alice sighed, running a hand through her hair as she finally let him go. “Well, you don’t have to worry about a cover-up. I’ve already dealt with the people in the plaza who witnessed you using your golden flames. I executed a mass memory wipe—they won’t remember a single thing about tonight. And Flora has already taken care of the damages.”
To Be Continued…