Do Heroes Need Welfare Too? - Chapter 77

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 77

His action of quickly dispatching the enemy even before the Demon King could advance looked skillfully practiced to the experienced hunter’s eyes, as if he had done it many times before.

After all, prey you’ve hunted before can be caught more easily, quickly, and killed in one stroke without wasting time.

He had been feeling reassured about that…

The moment he saw him entering the village with a smile, the afterimage he had barely forgotten came back clearly to memory.

Though his appearance was younger than when he had seen him before, age changes weren’t a big problem for the Demon King.

Rather, it was a trivial amusement.

The Demon King, who could freely adjust his age and change his appearance, had disguised himself as an innocent child and acted like a harmless creature.

And he had cruelly killed his family who had been deceived by the child’s bright smile and brought him home.

So he was certain.

There was no way he could forget that cursed face!

“That’s the Demon King… It’s definitely the Demon King… Why is it the previous Demon King? No, is there actually only one Demon King? The Hero clearly said he killed the Demon King. Then the Hero too… the Hero must be in league with him! The Demon King is alive!”

He wasn’t aware of what he was saying or what he was doing.

He just didn’t want to see people die again like his already dead family.

So it would be better to dirty his own hands.

“I have to kill the Demon King…!”

He had to kill the Demon King before he could take more lives!

The torch dropped from his hand with a thud.

The fire spread instantly.

To the village’s only inn.

And to the place where the wicked Demon King had entered.

* * *

The Demon King’s Castle was desolate after Iberis left.

Only silence lingered within the Demon King’s Castle, as if nothing alive existed there.

‘This is right.’

He had driven Iberis away with harsh words.

‘I’ll surely regret this.’

Even now he was regretting it, but Adam was trying his best to deny his feelings.

Only one person had left, that’s all.

He had returned to his original life, so he thought that was the end of it.

However, Adam strangely felt an ache somewhere in his chest, as if a hole had been punched through it.

When Iberis wasn’t there, he didn’t even know he was hungry for human warmth.

As long as there was one god who occasionally spoke to him, it didn’t matter if he made sacrifices that no one would acknowledge.

But now he couldn’t go back to how things were before.

He didn’t want to acknowledge that if someone gave him a push, he could run to Iberis right away.

After Iberis left, Adam stared blankly at that spot for a long time.

If she who had promised never to give up came back to him, he had really planned to confess everything.

But this time she had truly given up on Adam, as she didn’t come back.

However, for Iberis, the village with small but kind people would be safe.

Adam thought of someone who resembled him, someone he terribly despised.

‘The Emperor…’

The bad relationship with the Emperor was probably predetermined even before he was born.

Adam looked up at the sky he always gazed at when feeling frustrated, then closed his eyes.

“…!”

Then suddenly he opened his eyes wide and clenched his fists tightly at a scene he had tried to forget.

‘Right, knowing that I had provoked the Emperor’s mood, it would have been stupid not to expect something like this.’

What the Emperor had sent as a birthday gift was none other than a doll.

Sending a doll to a grown adult could have been meant as mockery, but this time was a little different.

It was Iberis.

The doll with a face that precisely resembled Iberis was covered in blood.

As if warning that this would happen.

‘I thought he would come at me recklessly again this time.’

Still, if Adam stayed quiet, everything would be peaceful.

Since the Demon King had disappeared, the world’s view of the Hero would become indifferent.

Just like now, his efforts would be ignored and dismissed as nothing special.

By then, he thought the Emperor’s actions to keep him in check would also subside.

‘I thought it was God’s arrangement telling me to live quietly…’

Adam quietly went to sit on the rock where he had always sat before Iberis came.

Potato glanced around nervously and plopped down near him.

“Get lost.”

“…”

Even though he could talk, he had disgustingly acted like an innocent pet beside Iberis. Now was it his turn?

Potato covered his ears with his two paws as if he couldn’t hear.

Adam let out a hollow laugh and moved to leave himself.

When he entered the Demon King’s Castle, now the only one who could really talk was getting on his nerves.

“If you’re that worried, why don’t you go see her?”

Abracxas said something right for the first time.

However, Adam smirked.

“Who am I supposed to be worried about?”

“Who else? That human who comes to both our minds simultaneously.”

Abracxas spoke nonchalantly. Adam clenched his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms.

It wasn’t a name to be carelessly mentioned by a filthy demon’s mouth.

“…Even the thought of Eve in your head makes me feel disgusted.”

“…This is ridiculous. If you’re that bad off, just go and beg desperately. Say I went crazy and misspoke- Ack!”

Abracxas, who got hit while being cheeky, rubbed the back of his head and muttered.

“These two are a pair… If you have complaints with each other, go to each other! Stop coming to me to vent your anger!”

Abracxas only timidly got angry after Adam had completely left.

His voice echoed in the wide hall.

Abracxas, feeling guilty, looked around, but Adam didn’t come back.

Hmph, acting so arrogant, but is he going to see her again?

However, Abracxas cursed internally at Adam who came back as if he had never left, kicked his shin, and leisurely returned to his room.

“Damn bastard. Just go completely crazy and die…”

This time he muttered so quietly that not even an echo could form.

Since it was a soliloquy, no one would have heard it.

But the monster that Iberis used to call Potato, who had entered at some point, seemed to sneer at him.

Then, Potato’s ears drooped down.

“Grrrowl…”

Abracxas also sensed something strange and checked beyond the window.

“Huh, what?”

Abracxas looked outside and immediately ran up to the second floor.

Unlike usual when he refused to run to maintain his demonic dignity, he rushed up in one breath.

When he had climbed all the stairs, he was panting and gripping the railing.

However, Abracxas who found the Hero’s room knocked hard on the door.

No matter how much he was in a position of extending his life through a covenant, the bizarre act of opening the Hero’s room door was probably something only that human brat could do.

“Hero! Wake up.”

No matter how much he knocked, there was no response.

There was definitely a presence, but he was deliberately ignoring him.

Nevertheless, Abracxas kicked and punched the door as if to break it down.

Only then did the tightly closed door open.

“What are you doing? I told you to stay put if you don’t want to die.”

“Shut up and look outside right now!”

At Abracxas’s urging, Adam rose from his seat.

Had the Demon King’s Castle always been this quiet?

Adam felt the strange change and opened the window.

“What is this….”

Black smoke was rising high in the distance.

Large smoke that could be seen from far away came into Adam’s view.

Even though it was time to be trapped in pitch-black darkness, only one place was particularly bright and red.

“No way….”

Adam’s distorted face turned toward Abracxas.

It wasn’t anger directed at him.

Rather, it was toward demons like him.

Those who use the power of fire….

Abracxas, who must have considered that possibility first, quickly denied it.

“No. If it were a fire started artificially, I should be able to sense it as a fellow demon. This isn’t the work of demons.”

At those words, Adam gritted his teeth and moved his body.

If it wasn’t demons, was it an accidental fire?

Whether it was intentional or accidental didn’t matter to him right now.

‘There’s a fire.’

His body moved first.

After Iberis left, no matter how hard he tried, if he let his guard down even a little, his gaze would continuously drift to that place.

Surely killing time alone should be what he was best at, yet his gaze was always fixed on the place where the village with Iberis would be.

And now smoke was rising from that place.

His body moved before his reason could.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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