Player who Returned 10,000 years Later

[Ugh…!]

Satan frowned and stomped on the ground, still gripping his pitch-black sword.

The darkness trembled and began spreading in a circular shape.

He raised his sword and targeted the Demon King's head.

'I have to kill him as soon as possible.'

He began feeling anxious—something had gone wrong.

He didn't have time to think about sweet revenge or whatever.

'Just why?'

He couldn't help but question what had happened.

He still didn't know him after suffering so much at his hand? He should've made it 0?

'Nonsense.'

He had been very careful with his plans.

In the past, he had lost due to his carelessness while fighting against the Demon King.

He'd stood back and relaxed not because he’d relaxed but because he’d won.

[Damn it!]

He'd made sure he couldn't use the Ten Thousand Demon Core, and he’d also blocked his hundreds of Authorities.

Due to the thin line that was connected to his body, there was a tiny amount of demonic energy left, but did that really matter?

'What else should he have done?'

After all that, the Demon King wasn't too different from a lion that had lost its teeth.

If he'd done that much, wasn't it okay to take some time to get the sweet revenge?

Considering all the suffering he’d gone through at KangWoo’s hand, wasn't it okay to take some time to enjoy his revenge?

'Can I not even do that…?'

Satan swung his sword while clenching his teeth.

Crack-!

The Demon King’s body was split in half…

But only for a short while.

Crunch-

The black liquid leaking from the Demon King began devouring the surrounding darkness, and his body was restored.

Satan kept cutting away.

His arms, his head, his legs, and then his head again…

He cut through the Demon King’s body again and again, but it kept restoring itself.

[Extinction.]

The Authority of Extinction could make everything it touched crumble. In terms of power, it was one of the strongest Authorities.

The Authority that could even endanger an archduke spread through his blade, ‘Anger’, and sword energy poured down like rain.

Crack-!!

The Demon King was cut to pieces and his parts scattered away.

Black blood poured in all directions, and his inner organs and muscles littered the ground.

'He’s dead.'

It was an amount of damage not even the Demon King should be able to survive.

The Authority of Extinction had reduced the Demon King’s body to particles.

[…]

Satan remained silent—he'd won.

The Demon King had been hit with the Authority of Extinction, an attack he wouldn’t have even been able to survive at his peak.

He didn't even have the Ten Thousand Demon Core at the moment, so there was no need to think about it.

'Still…'

Satan trembled.

He felt an ominous sensation, a strange sense of incongruity as if he was looking at a play gone wrong.

“Did all of your suffering make you develop PTSD?”

[…!!]

The voice came from right next to him. Satan’s eyes widened and he swung his sword again.

Crack-!!

The Demon King’s body was cut into pieces again while it was in the middle of restoring itself.

[Haa, haa…] Satan's breathing became heavier.

His ominous sensation was spot-on—the Demon King hadn't died yet.

'How?'

He was confused.

He couldn't understand how the Demon King was able to devour the Root of Evil without the Ten Thousand Demon Core.

He couldn't understand how he’d survived the Authority of Extinction.

'It doesn't make sense.'

Satan felt like he was about to lose his mind.

Even if the Demon King was a monster-like being, it made no sense—it went beyond logic.

Satan gulped and gripped his sword.

[How…?]

"You see…"

He heard that voice again and subconsciously swung 'Anger.'

The Demon King's head was cut in half, white cerebral fluid scattered away in all directions, and…

"Your choice of location was bad."

Only the Demon King’s split mouth moved on his split head.

Satan's expression paled.

Someone being able to talk when their head was split in half caused a fear that was hard to handle, even for an archduke.

[Mons… ster,] he cried out as he saw the Demon King still regenerating.

His regeneration continued despite his head being split open and his body being torn to pieces.

If that didn't make him a monster, then what else could he be called?

"If you wanted to kill me, you should've trapped me in a place without any demonic energy whatsoever."

KangWoo spread his hands and smiled.

A liquid filled with sharp teeth flowed out of his hands and devoured the darkness surrounding them, and his torn-apart body continued to quickly regenerate.

It was Satan's mistake.

* * *

Leading him to the Root of Evil, to the corpse of a demon god, had been a dumb decision.

Regulating his stats? Sealing the Ten Thousand Demon Core?

It made no sense.

'This place…'

KangWoo licked his lip.

His heart was beating fast, and an intense craving was burning through his body.

'It's full of things for me to eat.'

It was a place full of demonic energy.

No… It was a place that was made of demonic energy.

The place was so perfect that it was almost as if Satan had prepared a banquet for him.

'Thanks for your support.'

On top of helping him grow through the Demon Cult, Satan was also serving him such an amazing banquet.

At that point, he couldn't help but wonder if Satan wasn't, in reality, his ally.

"As expected, you’re the only one I can rely on!"

KangWoo lightly approached Satan and patted his shoulder.

Satan quickly swung his sword, and KangWoo's body scattered away again.

[Y-you… son of a…]

Satan trembled and looked at KangWoo.

The trap he'd set up for the Demon King had ended up helping him?

'There's no way…'

The Root of Evil wasn't made of normal demonic energy.

Rather than that, the Root of Evil was a demon god’s scattered corpse.

It was demonic energy that contained Divinity.

It had taken him a thousand years to absorb that special demonic energy.

Even if the Demon King had the Authority of Predation…

'So easily?'

There was no way he'd be able to eat it so easily.

[Just how…?]

No, he shouldn't have been able to eat it.

[How are you able to eat the Root of Evil?!] he angrily shouted.

Black sword energy swept away the surroundings like a vortex, and the darkness fluctuated.

KangWoo's regenerating body scattered away again.

[Haa, haa, haa…]

He kept swinging his sword.

He didn't want to accept it. He wanted to think it was just a nightmare.

"I just could."

The pieces of the Demon King began moving and gathering together.

He could see that he was laughing.

[You just… could?]

It was nonsense.

KangWoo shrugged.

"No, I'm telling the truth. I was just able to eat it."

One reason was that he was very good at controlling and regulating demonic energy; another reason was probably because of the scam-like power of Authority of Predation.

More than that…

"I also don't understand it very well."

Although it had a grandiose name like Root of Evil, he was able to eat it too easily.

It was as if…

It was his from the beginning.

[…]

"You did a better job with preparation than expected. Well, I knew it was a trap… but I never imagined you could pull off something like this."

A place where reality was mixed with illusion…

To think that he'd take out his soul and then seal his strength—it was a method he'd never even thought of.

It was true that he was quite flustered after finding out that his stats had gone down to one and that he couldn't even use the Ten Thousand Demon Core.

"But…"

KangWoo laughed and raised his hand.

Crunch, crunch.

The black liquid that had scattered away to the surroundings kept getting bigger.

As the place itself started to be devoured by the Authority of Predation, a huge amount of demonic energy began entering his body.

It was different from normal demonic energy.

It wasn't like the demonic energy located in the depths of the Ten Thousand Demon Core, either.

'This…'

The deepest part of the Ten Thousand Demon Core was a place that KangWoo's hands hadn't been able to reach yet.

'Abyss…'

It was similar to the demonic energy around that giant eye—the quality that demonic energy had was completely different from normal demonic energy.

"You were just unlucky."

Unlucky…

Was there a better way to describe the situation?

It wasn't perfect, but Satan had put off a lot of effort into making his plan work.

If it had worked, KangWoo’s deceased subordinates would have devoured him there.

BOOM-!!

The space started to shake.

Ting-

[The nightmare of the 'First Darkness' is crumbling!]

A message appeared.

To be precise, it wasn't crumbling.

It was being thoroughly eaten.

[Aah.]

A desperate exclamation left Satan's mouth.

He felt that the nightmare was crumbling and that everything was returning to normal.

From a place where reality and illusion were mixed to the real world…

Satan wasn't dumb enough to not realize what that meant.

[The Divinity's interference in the system has disappeared.]

[Your level and stats have returned to normal.]

"It seems like they came back."

KangWoo got up and smirked.

He saw a black sphere that was about 30 meters in diameter in the middle of a giant space surrounded by ice.

"So this is your real body?"

KangWoo placed his hand on the black sphere, sent his demonic energy into it, and checked what it was.

'It fused with the corpse of the demon god.'

He saw Satan inside the Root of Evil and could finally understand why Satan was so confident within the nightmare.

Unlike other archdukes, Satan had given up on restoring his body. Instead, he'd fused his soul into the Root of Evil.

That meant…

'That was his home ground.'

Satan was stronger than any other demon within that nightmare because he'd mixed his soul with it.

[Ugh, aah.]

The huge black sphere let out an exclamation.

[How, why, whhhyyy?!!!]

A desperate and agonizing scream spread through the cave.

He'd fused his soul into the Root of Evil more than a thousand years prior to being able to absorb its strength and had given up his body for it, but…

Everything he'd built up until that point had too easily crumbled in the Demon King’s hands.

[I was just unlucky?!]

He had put a lot of thought into the plan, but to think that the reason why it failed was that he was 'unlucky'…

[Ugh… sniff.]

His sadness overflowed.

After losing to the Demon King and falling to Earth, he'd dreamt of his reincarnation for almost a thousand years, but the Demon King had suddenly appeared, and while claiming to be him, had blamed him for crimes he hadn't committed.

He had held back his anger and thought he'd barely been able to succeed in his revenge, but instead of revenge, he ended up helping him.

[Why… why are you doing this to me…?]

If there was a God, he wanted to ask him that.

[Sniff. What… what did I do so wrong…?]

If, at least, he'd suffered a loss worthy of an archduke…

He wouldn't be so sad about it.

[Fuck. I'm… Satan… Not any other random demon… but… Satan…]

He was the Archduke of Anger—the strongest archduke after Baal.

[Sniff]

He couldn't help but cry at the sorrow he felt.

Tap, tap-

KangWoo slowly walked toward him and looked back at the black sphere.

"So… if I eat this, I can devour the Root of Evil and Satan's soul at the same time," he mumbled.

He made a satisfied smile and nodded as he spread his hand toward the black sphere.

The Ten Thousand Demon Core had returned, so a huge amount of demonic energy surged out of his body.

As that black liquid gathered together, a mouth big enough to devour the black sphere appeared.

[N-no…! S-stop!! Please, stop!!]

"Mr. Satan, thanks for preparing more delicious food for me."

Crunch-!

The giant mouth bit into the black sphere.

'Should I call this a ‘buy one get one free’ event?'

‘Beep, it's a special offer.’