29 – The Strongest Among the Four Kings, Onyx.
Onyx.
A dragon with glossy, jet-black scales, and the undisputed strongest among the Four Kings. In the form of a dragon, he crouched in his nest.
The days were terribly dull. Everything felt meaningless.
For someone born as the strongest, the world was just a mundane and boring space. The creatures walking around in that world were nothing but toys to alleviate his boredom.
“Chan.”
“Yes, Lord Onyx.”
“Would you mind killing yourself right now?”
“Understood.”
Onyx’s attendant, Chan, activated a spell. Sharp energy emanated from Chan’s fingertips, as he directed the magic towards his own neck.
Onyx absorbed the magic woven by Chan. The magic dispersed into the air, and Chan’s hand simply passed through thin air.
“Just kidding! hahahaha, Chan, you’re quite serious.”
“I only follow your orders.”
So boring.
Manipulating countless demons with a flick of his fingers, amassing wealth in his nest, even the act of killing or sparing, everything was just so dull.
This demon realm was truly a place of utter boredom.
Occasionally, he would take on the form of a dragon and engage in battles with those called “heroes” in the human realm, but even that wasn’t particularly interesting.
There was a time when he mistook shedding blood and raising hell as pleasure. It was a time of vigorous vitality. Not much different from a child playing with fire.
As he grew older, he found joy in indulging his desires. He filled his nest with endless riches and artifacts, calling them treasures. Not much different from a child collecting pretty seashells.
Like a child fighting over ants, he created arenas, and like a child playing make-believe, he built a massive kingdom.
That was the life of a dragon.
For a dragon, the only thing that mattered was enjoying boundless freedom.
Entering the ranks of the Four Kings was not about bowing to the Demon King. He had no reason to refuse, so he accepted.
Still, he thought there might be some interesting fellows among the Four Kings.
But for a dragon, the world was truly narrow.
After becoming one of the Four Heavenly Kings, I had already encountered those I saw before.
The vile skeletons from the earth, the foul-tempered witches from the forests – all foes I had skirmished with in my younger years.
Ah, there was one I had not seen before.
A half-demon by the name of Laine.
A feeble demonkin, inexplicably chosen by the Demon King to be one of the Four Heavenly Kings.
Perhaps he would have been on par if paired with the butler named Chan.
That was the extent of it. Although he had some tricks up his sleeve, slipping through challenges with agility which piqued my interest – that was all.
Nothing remarkable.
That’s what I thought.
One day, I sicced a three-headed demon hound on Laine. It was a ferocious and noisy beast that guarded the entrance to its lair.
Even though it was strong, Laine was not so weak as to be defeated by such a creature.
I assumed he would struggle a bit before finally killing the hound.
Yet when the hound suddenly pounced, Laine was bitten on the arm. So preoccupied with wolfing down bread as he walked, it seemed he had neglected to watch his surroundings closely enough.
What followed…frankly, Laine seemed mad.
“Ah, that hurts. Are you hungry? … If there are three mouths, does that mean three stomachs?”
Instead of retaliating, the bitten Laine shared his bread with the hound.
Precisely split into three pieces, one for each head.
And the hound, to my surprise, seemed to gobble it down as if it were a treat. It occurred to me that I had never once fed the beast.
With sufficient magic energy, it wouldn’t die, so there was never a reason to consider feeding it.
“You really savor it, don’t you? I wonder who lost this… I should ask around the demonkin working at the Demon King’s castle. Hey, hey, stop growling. Perhaps we need to introduce dog muzzles in the Demon Realm?”
To see Laine care more about the hound not getting hurt than defending himself was…
Not the behavior of a sound-minded individual.
I had seen many crazies in my time, but never a madness of this kind.
And so, I was intrigued.
Laine began to do the most unusual things with my demon hound.
He dressed it in a bizarre outfit called a harness, leashed it, and even played fetch with bones that a creature named Chunshik had crafted from a skeleton.
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Once, the bone slipped from his hand and hit one of the hound’s heads. One head enraged, the other head eager to fetch the bone, it was quite the ludicrous sight.
“In the end, we couldn’t find the owner… Could it possibly have been a stray?”
Before long, the demon hound was following Laine as if he were its master.
Rain had also grown fond of the demon beast.
It was unbelievable even to him when he fearlessly bathed the demon beast, or brought it to his bedroom to sleep together.
The beast was a demon beast for good reason.
Even if it was tamed, if it showed any signs of weakness, the demon’s instinct was to tear his neck apart.
The moment Rain fell asleep, one of the heads that had bumped against Rain’s bones revealed its teeth.
The other two heads started to whine to awaken Rain.
The demon beast leaped at the defenseless Rain.
Automatically, he used magic to burn the demon beast. His breathed out a fear-filled fire that left no trace of the beast.
That moment.
He felt a sensation he had never experienced since his birth.
It was fear. For some reason, he was feeling fear. He didn’t know why.
Just, the only fear that controlled him was that he could not let Rain know that he killed the demon beast.
After a short time had passed.
When Rain woke up rolling over because of the smell of ashes.
-“Hana. Duri. Sejji. What are you doing there?”
He had unknowingly polymorphed into the form of the demon beast.
Rain stretched out his hand toward him.
He reflexively bit Rain’s hand. Rain was surprised and was angry at him.
Being angry was no more than intimidating him by not giving him delicious snacks as if pampering a child.
Ever since….
He pretended to be the demon beast and spent time with Rain.
When Rain told him to sit, he sat, and when he said to turn around, he did. When a bone was thrown, he fetched it, and when Rain reached out his hand he lifted his paw.
The rewards given were just a word of praise and a small snack.
It was a humiliation he experienced for the first time. Him being a free and noble demon dragon…
Literally obeying others like a dog!
If someone recognized him, they would doubt their own eyes with unbelievable reality.
Surely it was a humiliation… but it felt surprisingly good. Because it was a first-time experience, it was rather interesting to some extent.
The moment he found himself feeling ‘happy’ being patted on the belly by Rain.
He felt something was seriously wrong.
He was clearly becoming strange. It was certainly due to the influence of the species of ‘demon beast’ he polymorphed into.
At this rate, I felt as though I was on the verge of losing something… something precious.
In the end, I fled.
The first day after my disappearance, Rain searched for me all day without even drinking water.
On the second day, he asked various demons if they had seen me.
A week passed before Rain finally gave up the search. I felt both relieved and regretful at the same time.
Couldn’t he have tried searching for at least a few more days?
And then.
“Could I receive a flower that can be grown in a garden of this size? I thought Magenta would know the most beautiful one.”
Rain began to cultivate flowers.
He had received seedlings from a witch and created a garden at the Demon King’s castle. I presumed he probably chose flowers over animals due to a fear of the latter.
As Rain tended to the flowers, his expression gradually brightened. At times, he would hum a tune while watering them.
One day, a storm nearly destroyed the garden.
Rain braved the rain to protect his garden, moving pots out of the rain’s reach, erecting canopies to shelter the beds, and re-leveling the earth washed from the pots.
“Because they are flowers Magenta found for me.”
Once again, an unfamiliar emotion surged within me.
It was an emotion I couldn’t even begin to guess, one I never thought I could feel.
Although I couldn’t name the feeling.
It was clear what I wanted to do.
One day, I impulsively set Rain’s garden ablaze with my breath.
Rain was so sad he cried.
But not as sad as when I fled from him. That fact filled me with a strange sense of satisfaction. A smile involuntarily curled up the corners of my mouth.
It was incredibly, immensely pleasurable!
I had not even felt this elated when burning down an entire human kingdom.
It was truly astonishing.
Rain indeed had the ability to make me happy. If he weren’t one of the Four Heavenly Kings, I would have considered taking him as my underling.
‘He had been killed by a hero in the end, though.’
Such is the fate of the powerless demon race. An all too predictable ending.
“Onyx…?”
“What is it, Chan?”
“…Your expression right now…”
“My expression?”
“…I will wait outside.”
“Huh…?”
Chan went outside the nest without waiting for an answer. This had never happened before.
The reason was unknown.
The reason was unknown, yet—
Today, of all days, I found myself missing the touch of Rain’s hand, as it stroked me.
Unconsciously, I had polymorphed into a imagine.
“Squeak…”
The other two heads were crying.
It was truly a strange occurrence.
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You know their down bad when Mr. Dragon gets jealous of flowers and genuinely likes just being a dog.