The Heavenly Demon Can’t Live a Normal Life

Cort gritted his teeth. He wanted to scream out, but he held it back because his opponent was the Kronos Empire.

“… You used us as bait?”

[Bait. Those are upsetting words. There is no such thing. You people confirmed that you would assassinate Roman Dmitry at our request for the huge reward you will get. If you had performed the mission perfectly, we would have paid the same reward which we had promised since the start.]

It was a fair trade. However, Baron Charlton needed things to be done in the right manner.

[Think again. The assassination of Roman Dmitry is something that was announced by His Majesty, the Emperor of Kronos. Everyone on the continent knows that we want Roman Dmitry’s life, and what will be the face of the empire if the assassination failed? For us, this is just a rational choice. I sincerely hoped that your guild would succeed with the mission, but the problem is that this is more important to us than placing our trust in you.]

Roman Dmitry was not an easy person to deal with. In the process of killing Count Fabio and Gustavo, he showed how strong he was, and the empire didn’t rule out the fact that he could be a lot stronger than what he was showing.

Therefore, it was necessary to devise a plan thoroughly. The first part was left to the assassin guild, but the real weapon came next.

[I hope you understand the situation we are in. We cannot leave the matter of Kronos in the hands of an assassination guild.]

“… This.”

He wanted to curse. The claim of the opponent—he knew what it meant. However, if they had prepared a weapon for that person in the first place, then joining forces with the assassination guild would have brought more success.

They just used the guild as a shield. In order to save the empire, everyone went past their limits.

At the moment he was about to say something, blood poured out of him.

“Cough.”

He collapsed onto his knees. His face was turning pale, and his body was trembling. The liquid that Lucas fed him—it was poison. And the fact that it only took effect now meant one thing.

‘Did they calculate the amount of time it will take me to report on what happened in Dmitry?’

He was sure of it. He gave up on running and chose to use a magic communicator, but Dmitry calculated that he would do that too.

If he thought about it, there had been hints from Lucas all along. They wanted the world to know what would happen to anyone who touched Dmitry, and the Dante Guild would watch him die and become witnesses.

He felt like he was breaking down. At Baron Charlton’s words and the situation that confronted him, Cort looked at Baron Charlton with red eyes, as if they would pop out at any moment.

Perhaps Dmitry, whom he had faced, might have predicted this move from Kronos. He was more dangerous than they thought, but when he saw Baron Charlton here, he didn’t want to tell him the truth. He also wanted them to try.

His eyes widened in pain as he fell to the ground.

[This.]

Baron Charlton looked at the man with a pitiful expression.

Cort—it was the shabby end of an assassin who dominated an era.

Roman Dmitry was out of town. It was now time to head back to Cairo, but Roman Dmitry, who was walking, stopped.

“Come out.”

At his words, mysterious beings appeared in the darkness that leaked out.

“Since when did you notice our presence?”

It was a muffled and unpleasant voice. All of the dozens of people had black cloth wrapped around their faces. The eyes visible through them were so black that the whites could not be seen, and it was impossible to tell where they were looking.

They were in the back, in the front, and even in the trees. They had completely surrounded him. They lowered their stance while holding daggers in order to attack him at any moment.

Their behavior—in the Kronos Empire, there were forces that met the same conditions as them.

‘The beings that feed on the darkness of Kronos. If the Ten Swords represent the glory of Kronos, then the Three Shadows represent the ugly reality it holds. As expected, the Kronos Emperor mobilized his most dangerous power to kill me.’

The shadows. They had no names, yet no one denied their existence. The forces against the Kronos Empire were always attacked by the shadows, and the people who died brutally proved the existence of the shadows.

Actually, the existence of the Three Shadows was not that certain. In the past, there was an incident in which the shadows appeared simultaneously all over the continent, but it wasn’t exactly known how many and how strong they were.

And the situation ahead of him was the picture that he had expected.

Kronos—they were beings who wanted to be unique. The moment the emperor they worshipped like a God announced the assassination, there was no way they would fully entrust the assassination to just one organization.

And this wouldn’t be difficult to understand from a strong man’s point of view. If it was something that had to be successful, then he would surely send the shadows.

Despite that, Roman Dmitry still crossed the border. Even though he knew that they wanted him out of Dmitry’s land and that getting revenge on Ecorche wasn’t a priority, all Roman thought about was setting an example.

He set fire to the stronghold of the assassination guild. Bracan’s head was hung on the streets, and everyone would know what Dmitry did from the recent rumors spread by Dante. It would send a clear message.

If there were another assassination guild that would go against Dmitry in the future, then he wanted them to remember what would happen.

And now, against the Kronos Empire, it was his turn to prove what a war with him would mean. The question of when he knew about them arose, and Roman Dmitry laughed.

“From the start.”

At that moment, all the shadows rushed to him at once.

He swiftly pulled out his sword. As his shining sword slashed through the shadow, which rushed ahead, his body scattered like smoke.

Swish.

This wasn’t magic. It was an unknown, strange ability. The body of the shadow merged back to its original form, and an aura stained with darkness rose from the dagger and attacked Roman Dmitry.

A violent feeling rose. The shadows took turns charging at him, and while blocking the attacks from all sides, Roman Dmitry looked for an opening.

‘Lightning.’

Flash.

The throat of the enemy was cut. It was an absolutely unstoppable speed. If their technique of turning into smoke could be done according to their will, then they couldn’t avoid death all the time.

Still, the result was the same. The bodies scattered with smoke around their necks, and the black eyes of the shadows didn’t leave Roman Dmitry.

Their priority was not their own safety. Even in the attacks where ordinary people would lose their lives, they moved forward and swung their weapons at Roman Dmitry.

Kwang!

Kwakang!

Auras clashed. Roman Dmitry violently pushed ahead to a one-on-one fight, and the shadows fell back. Suddenly…..

Papat!

Darkness rose. It wrapped around Roman Dmitry’s body like the tentacles of a monster, but he created mana and instantly removed the darkness.

It was such an eerie force. It was different from the normal aura, and it had the ability to absorb power at contact.

Once, there were people like this in Murim. Beings that used odd abilities that were not known to many and sucked away the power of humans to make them stronger. Roman didn’t know where these shadows got their power from, but he knew that this wasn’t a normal power in this world.

‘The Kronos Empire. They made a compromise with evil.’

The Emperor. He hoped to conquer the continent. As a man who had risen to the pinnacle of power a man could have, Dmitry had no intention of criticizing the desires of that man. But the Kronos Empire crossed a line that a human being shouldn’t have crossed.

Their work in the Hector Kingdom. They spoiled the earth with the intention of killing their land. As a result, people began to starve to death, and the Hector Kingdom ended up choosing war to live.

Black magic. It was the power used at the time. If they thought that the identities of the shadows were unrelated to them, they must have had black magicians on their side.

History had always said that black magicians, who manifested evil powers, were beings who had given up on living like humans and that their existence itself had a bad influence on the world.

In the first place, wasn’t the basis of black magic based on blood and death?

It was clearly evil. There was evil within Kronos. However, Roman Dmitry accepted the reality in front of him. Whatever the power these shadows used and whatever the origins they had, they didn’t matter to Roman.

To him, who had lived a previous life, he was accustomed to evil, and he called himself the Heavenly Demon who trampled on evil.

Papat!

The shadows ran again. Their attacks disregarded their own lives. Believing that they would not die, they attacked Roman, and he raised his mana. And….

Puak!

There was an intense, bursting sound, and the bodies of the shadows were broken.

The shadows were torn. They turned into lumps of meat and were scattered on the ground. The black energies swayed, trying to connect to each other again.

It was a tenacious life force. Roman Dmitry stomped on them and jumped forward.

Kwakang!

During the battle, it took him some time to figure out the enemies. The shadows attacked Roman Dmitry from both sides, and after several clashes, a gleaming sword slashed their chests.

Smoke spread like blood. The moment the unknown forces were about to connect, his sword cut through the smoke once again, and this time it wasn’t smoke but blood.

The shadows were not immortal. They also couldn’t escape death, and in their successive deaths, they had to move away from Roman Dmitry.

“How did this happen?”

Their expressions couldn’t be seen, but their voices were those of shock. It was impossible to cut their bodies in a normal way. Even though they weren’t physically present in the first place, Roman Dmitry’s slashes were tearing their bodies apart.

It was a situation that they couldn’t understand despite the experiences that the shadows had had until now. They knew they couldn’t defeat Roman Dmitry at this rate.

Roman Dmitry—he was more than they had calculated. Even though the shadows didn’t send or receive signals, a strong aura of darkness rose at the same time.

Wheik.

Their presence felt so strong compared to what they were showing before. It was similar to using innate qi. With a force stronger than before, Roman Dmitry faced them head on.

‘Each of their strengths is weaker than that of Gustavo, but in a one-on-one fight, the shadows have enough power to easily deal with Gustavo.’

They were strong. In his current life, he hasn’t met anyone stronger than them.

In this plan, crossing the border itself was risky. At the time of Roman’s plan, figures such as Chris expressed their will to follow and help him, but he refused them. Apart from his intention to prevent the guild from escaping, he wanted to face any weapon of Kronos alone.

The Dmitry Duchy—the area that covered the fight with Kronos was growing. Since he didn’t know Kronos’s limits, this was his chance to figure out their level of power.

The shadows were the best in the empire. They announced the assassination and thought the shadows would be the best solution to the problem. So he went to them, faced the enemies, and raised his sword.

In the past year, Roman made immense progress, and while he experienced major events, he never showed his power, nor did he need to.

Wheik!

He heightened his senses.

The Heavenly Demon Divine Art—in the stages of Heaven, Land, and Humans, Roman Dmitry broke down the wall and entered the stage of Land.