Hell's Handbook

Chapter 81: The Demon Lord Reappears

The prince was stunned for a moment, then he stared puzzledly at Su Jin as he asked in a hostile voice, “Who are you?”

“Who am I? Heh heh…well, well, you are indeed a demigod, even though you barely got to this stage by using a special treasure. You’re not very powerful, but at least your power is real!” Su Jin smiled wickedly as he looked around somewhat curiously at the palace and walked about nonchalantly as if the demigod prince meant nothing to him.

“You pseudo demigod! How dare you be so rude to a true god?” Su Jin suddenly bellowed at the prince and glared fiercely at the prince, as if his gaze alone could incinerate the demigod prince on the spot.

The prince shuddered as he stared in terror at Su Jin and murmured, “You…you’re a real god! But that’s…but that’s impossible! After that era ended, all the gods disappeared, so how…how could someone at the god level possibly appear here?”

“Just like what you said, you’re a fool! The gods have never disappeared. They have merely gone into hibernation. This body is an extremely important tool to me, so if you dare to destroy him, I will slaughter you!” Su Jin narrowed his eyes slightly as they flashed murderously.

The prince was initially terrified, but he soon regained his composure. He stared straight at Su Jin and said, “You’re trying to pull the wool over my eyes. This is not your world. Even if you used to be a god, you’re no match for me here. And you think you could really slaughter me? Ha! If you were capable of doing that, you wouldn’t have to take possession of this human and try to save him.”

The prince was fairly confident of this. Once upon a time, the World of Fairytales had many people who had reached god level. Some of his own ancestors had reached that realm too. But as time passed, these gods died. Time had been cruel to them, but their legends continued to be passed down from generation to generation. As the main character of the World of Fairytales, Prince Charming was very familiar with the concept of gods.

And now, he had attained demigod status and this was his world, so even though the Demon Lord was at god level, the Demon Lord might not be able to do anything about him even if the Demon Lord appeared in his true form.

But the Demon Lord wasn’t here. Only a fraction of his consciousness had possessed Su Jin, so that didn’t pose a threat to the prince.

“Do you really think so?” Su Jin, or rather, the Demon Lord scoffed. It was true that he had possessed Su Jin in order to keep him alive, because he needed Su Jin to continue working for him.

The Demon Lord had initially hoped to use his Demon Lord Spirit Power to gradually overtake Su Jin’s will and eventually take control of Su Jin’s body, but of all the things to happen, Su Jin activated the one Spirit Power that could fight his Demon Lord Spirit Power.

Absolutely any other type of Spirit Power would have worked out just fine, but Su Jin had Psychokinetic Spirit Power.

Psychokinetic Spirit Power was considered a high level Spirit Power and one of its special characteristics was its resilience. When Su Jin used Demon Lord Spirit Power for the first time after he had activated his Psychokinetic Spirit Power, the effect of the Demon Lord Spirit Power had been suppressed by a very small amount of Psychokinetic Spirit Power. Not only had the Demon Lord Spirit Power failed to take over Su Jin, but it had also become a way for Su Jin to increase his Psychokinetic Spirit Power’s upper limit.

The Demon Lord had almost despaired when he realized what was happening, but things suddenly took a turn for the worse. A demigod actually appeared within the fairytales, which was something that not even the Demon Lord’s two allies could have predicted.

In order to fight this demigod, Su Jin had no choice but to use the Attack of the Demon Lord and the Roar of the Demon Lord several times. He had barely any Psychokinetic Spirit Power left and was unable to fend off the effects of the Demon Lord Spirit Power, which gave the Demon Lord a chance to possess Su Jin’s body.

Under normal circumstances, the Demon Lord wouldn’t have cared about saving a mere mortal like Su Jin. But he needed Su Jin’s help to find a way to free him, so even though he was reluctant to do so, he had no choice but to try and save Su Jin from this sticky situation.

But this was also thanks to the agreement he had reached with his two allies from the World of Fairytales. Otherwise, there was no way the Demon Lord could have possessed Su Jin’s body, since Su Jin was not within the Demon Lord’s world.

Just like what the prince pointed out, it was indeed almost impossible for the Demon Lord to even appear in this world, much less fight a demigod who belonged to this world. This fact really infuriated the Demon Lord. After all, when the Demon Lord was at the peak of his power, he could kill a demigod with a flick of his fingers, never mind a pseudo demigod like Prince Charming, who had forcibly used a special item to increase his powers to become equal with a demigod.

“No? I’m going to kill him now! If you’re really that capable, you can try stopping me!” The prince was extremely confident. He held his sword in one hand, then grabbed the air with the other, and a black spear appeared in his hand.

The Demon Lord frowned, then suddenly said, “You foolish demigod! If you kill this body of mine, then you will lose the one and only chance you get to find out how to become a god!”

“What did you just say?!” The prince trembled in shock.

The Demon Lord cackled. “Isn’t that something you’ve always wanted to know? After all the gods in the World of Fairytales died, you had no way of finding out how they became gods, right? If you’re willing to leave this place right now, I can tell you how.”

The prince trembled even more violently. Becoming a god was something he had pursued all his life. Both his search for mermaid flesh and this insane ritual of feeding the glass slipper with the flesh and blood of women was part of his quest to become a god.

“You…if you really tell me how one can become a god, I will leave this place!” The prince started wavering. Just like what the Demon Lord said, after the gods in this world died, his dream of becoming a god became an impossible dream because he didn’t know where to start and what direction to take at all.

The Demon Lord gave the prince a pleased nod and said, “Excellent. Gods cannot tell lies, I’m sure you already know that. Come over here and I will tell you how to become a god.”

The prince nodded. He had heard about that in the legends. He walked over to where the Demon Lord and the Demon Lord whispered into his ear.

After hearing what the Demon Lord said, the prince looked utterly shocked. “That’s…that’s how one becomes a god?!” The prince was in disbelief.

“How else did you think one became a god? Gods are heartless creatures! In any case, that’s how I became a god. Whether you want to do it or not is up to you!” snapped the Demon Lord as he waved his hand to shoo the prince away. “It’s time you left this place! That’s what you promised me!”

The prince left in shock, and once he had left, the Demon Lord suddenly started smiling gleefully to himself. “Gods don’t tell lies, but…I’m a Demon Lord, so I’m not subject to that. But I can’t blame him for falling for it: the World of Fairytales doesn’t have a Demon Lord!”

The Demon Lord looked around at the mess around him, then touched his forehead with a finger. One of Su Jin’s eyes immediately went back to normal, but he looked even scarier now. His left eye was normal, but his right eye was completely black, as if he was a soul-sucking demon.

“Get out of my body!” yelled Su Jin. He had gotten his consciousness back but he didn’t have any control over his own body. The Demon Lord was too powerful, so even though the Demon Lord had only sent out some of his consciousness to this world but it was enough to completely suppress Su Jin’s consciousness. If the Demon Lord did not allow Su Jin to wake up, Su Jin could very well sleep forever.

“Why are you so angry? If I hadn’t saved you, you’d have become like one of these bodies here,” Su Jin spoke in the Demon Lord’s voice. His body was now possessed by two different souls.

Su Jin fell silent. It was true that if the Demon Lord hadn’t intervened in time, all of them were dead meat. But Su Jin still had a bad feeling about this.

“What do you want to do now? Are you going to take possession of my body?” asked Su Jin.

“Excuse me, I’m a god, you know? How could you think so poorly of a god? We had an agreement before and all I wanted was for you to help me regain my freedom. I don’t care about the rest,” said the Demon Lord in righteous sounding voice.

Su Jin felt like the Demon Lord was insulting his intelligence and went straight to the point, “Is that so? You’ve been using your Spirit Power to eat into me! That’s clearly an attempt to take control of my body! If I hadn’t activated Psychokinetic Spirit Power, you would have already become the owner of this body, wouldn’t you?”

“Aww…don’t be so sensitive, I just happen to have a very infectious sort of Spirit Power. Besides, I think you’ve completely forgotten about helping regain my freedom, haven’t you? We’re no better than each other,” said the Demon Lord with a smile.

Su Jin couldn’t deny this. Both of them had been scheming against each other right from the beginning. Su Jin had been hoping to use the Demon Lord’s power to survive the Handbook Challenges and he had indeed managed to get out of several life threatening situations with this power. On the other hand, the Demon Lord wanted to take control of his body, but unfortunately for the Demon Lord, Su Jin had activated Psychokinetic Spirit Power.

“Fine. What do you want now?” asked Su Jin quietly.

“I just want you to find a way for me to get out! That’s all I’ve wanted right from the start…” said the Demon Lord in a pitiful sounding voice, as if he had suffered tremendously.

Su Jin wasn’t buying it. “Even if I wanted to do that, I’m not powerful enough now. You need to give me time!”

“Of course, of course. I’m not an unreasonable client. I’ll give you time and I’ll even give you some other benefits,” replied the Demon Lord.

“Other benefits?”

“Don’t you need my Spirit Power to train your own up? I can modify the Demon Lord’s Eye such that it can regenerate Demon Lord Spirit Power. That way, you don’t have to be afraid that you’d run out of Demon Lord Spirit Power to train up your Psychokinetic Spirit Power.”

Su Jin paused for a moment. The Demon Lord was offering him something that sounded too good to be true.

“So…what do you need from me in return?” Su Jin cut to the chase.

“Haha! Like I said before, you’re a very intelligent one! Of course, in order to make sure you never forget your promise to me, I…want your heart!” said the Demon Lord.

Su Jin was stunned and asked puzzledly, “Do you mean this…literally? Or figuratively?”

“Literally. I’m going to take your actual heart away to make sure you work hard and honestly for me!” said the Demon Lord.

“But without a heart, I’d die! How am I supposed to work that way?” Su Jin was still confused.

“Don’t worry about that! Of course I’m not going to let you die. This thing will replace your heart temporarily and keep you alive.” The Demon Lord took out a round ball, which was actually a Demon Lord’s Eye.

The Demon Lord stabbed a hand right through Su Jin’s chest to yank his red beating heart, then used his other hand to implant the Demon Lord’s Eye back where Su Jin’s heart should have been.

Su Jin felt like his very soul was about to shatter during this process. Having his heart dug out caused him unbearable pain, but once the Demon Lord’s Eye had replaced his heart, everything went back to normal again.

“That’s settled then, I’m off now. I hope you’ll be able to continue on your journey through the world of Hell’s Handbook this way. But I’d like to remind you that I’m not in a very good state right now. If you take too long to find a way out for me, I’ll turn into dust. Your heart will also turn into dust along with me and the Demon Lord’s Eye will also lose its source of power, so you will die too!” said the Demon Lord just before leaving. “So…work hard! You don’t have a lot of time left!”