The Hero Becomes the Duke's Eldest Son

Translator: Marctempest

Editor: Rynfinity

Chapter 203

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‘The gates of Hell have opened.’

It happened so quickly that there was no time to do anything about it.

To think that the entire imperial capital, practically the heart of the empire, would be used as a sacrifice.

The scale of it was so absurd that no one could have anticipated it.

Aden quickly worked through the situation in his mind.

The situation was dire.

‘In the original history, Tartarus opened at the far western edge of the land.’

Because of that, the Piern Mountains, one of the Four Great Desolate Lands, along with its native monsters and the Kingdom of Drathia, played the role of a buffer, buying time.

The Dragon Knights of the Piern Mountains were a formidable force, resisting the waves of Talos troops that poured out from the Hellgate.

In the meantime, the Empire and the surface-world alliance managed to gather the minimum amount of time needed.

‘But now, the imperial capital has been devastated.’

The Emperor was dead.

The capital was annihilated.

Most of the people in the central continent had lived lives far removed from battle, so they would be helpless against the Talos that surged out of the Hellgate.

The Talos would spread out from the capital, ravaging the continent in an instant.

The dead would rise as undead, wandering and claiming the lives of the living. The dark clouds would block the sunlight, causing the plants on the ground to wither and die.

- The Lord of the Sacred Fire remains in firm silence.

- The God of Justice and Law sighs in lamentation.

- The God of Slaughter and Death cackles, declaring that everything is ruined.

Even the gods felt helpless in the face of the situation that had already unfolded, unable to offer any real solutions.

“The Lord of Gluttony… Or should I call him the Demon God now? What a persistent and tiresome foe.”

At the sudden voice, Aden turned around.

“Hermit.”

It was the Mad Dragon, Hermit.

Somehow, she had come outside through the door of the workshop that Aden had opened earlier.

She looked at Aden and smiled.

“You don’t look well.”

“……How could I in this situation?”

“Kikik, of course not.”

Hermit chuckled as if she found it amusing.

Aden was about to retort at her seemingly relaxed attitude.

“There’s still a chance.”

But her next words made him pause.

She spoke to Aden.

“A long time ago, the Lord of Gluttony devoured the World Tree and made it his own. The World Tree is the foundation that supports the world. Since the Lord of Gluttony became the World Tree, he became the world itself.”

And so, the Lord of Gluttony became the Demon God, and the world tainted by the Demon God’s will is the current underground world.

The world created by the Demon God’s will, a place that was practically his body.

But the Demon God had long since died.

All that remained were fragments that continued his will.

She was a dragon.

A being said to be the wisest among all creatures on the surface, she had pieced together the entire situation with just the fragmented information she had gleaned through her thoughts.

“Though the Demon God possesses a human body to maintain his existence, it will take quite some time for him to fully accept the vast power of the underground world and awaken as the Demon God.”

“How long will it take?”

“Hmm, about three days?”

“……Three days? That’s ‘quite some time’?”

Aden frowned in disbelief.

Even at that moment, the Hellgate would be growing larger, and Talos would be pouring out like bamboo shoots after the rain.

To break through such chaos and face Kalsis, they would need to gather the entire continent’s forces.

But three days were too short to muster such a force.

No, the Talos would annihilate them before the army could even assemble.

“Haha, yes. The time is indeed tight.”

Hermit nodded as if she had read Aden’s thoughts.

“So, I’ll buy you that time.”

“Hermit?”

“Though it was partially forced, I am still known as the ‘Mediator’ of the surface world.”

She grinned.

“And now, the balance of the world has been disrupted. So it’s time for me to step in.”

A bright light enveloped Aden and Hermit.

When he opened his eyes, they had been transported to a completely different place.

Hermit had used teleportation, a power that only a 9-star mage could wield.

Aden didn’t immediately recognize where they had arrived, but a moment later, he realized.

“This is… Immortalityum?”

They had arrived at a mountain overlooking the entire imperial capital, Immortalityum.

The reason he didn’t recognize it at first was simple.

The scene before him was different from the imperial capital he knew.

*Crack! Crack! Crack!*

The sky above the capital was tearing apart in real time.

Like a curtain being ripped open, a rift appeared in the sky, opening its maw.

Beyond that rift lay a darkness so deep it was almost tangible.

It was the Hellgate to the underground world, Tartarus, a world tainted by the foul dark magic of Chaos.

*Shudder!*

Black thorny vines, writhing like thousands of tentacles, surged out from the abyssal darkness and engulfed the imperial palace and the capital.

The thorny vines intertwined, forming a massive fortress.

Aden’s face twisted in anger as he saw the fortress.

“The Black Thorn Fortress….”

The Underlord’s castle had manifested in the surface world. Kalsis had summoned the Underlord into the surface world.

- I see what he’s after.

Curse spoke, his voice dripping with disgust.

- He intends to fuse with my true body and become the master of the Black Thorn Fortress, the Lord of the Underground.

“……Fusion? Is that even possible?”

- Dragon Slayer, you of all people should know, having fought me. How was that battle?

“How was it? It was a damn nightmare. No matter how much I attacked, you wouldn’t die, kept regenerating, and those thorny vines attacked from all directions.”

He grimaced just thinking about it.

In the ‘dungeon’ that was the Black Thorn Fortress, the Underlord, the ‘dungeon boss,’ was almost an absolute being.

The only reason Aden had managed to kill him was…

‘I just smashed everything.’

He had destroyed everything he could see with the Dragon Slayer Sword, Wailing Slash.

When the Black Thorn Fortress crumbled, the Underlord could no longer heal, and Aden had been able to kill him.

Of course, that also resulted in him being cursed by the Underlord’s parasitic curse.

Curse continued.

- The reason you could defeat me was that the Black Thorn Fortress itself was my true body.

“…That was your true body?”

- The humanoid form was merely a puppet, a vessel that reflected the personality of Florence, who had fully accepted the dark magic of the underground world.

With the soul of the progenitor of Florence, Curse, inside, it could barely maintain its own identity.

But the Underlord inside that Black Thorn Fortress now is just a mindless monster, a mere empty shell created by the fortress.

- In the previous life, Kalsis must have realized that he couldn’t be recognized as the master of the Black Thorn Fortress because of me. That’s why he used you to get rid of me.

With the underground world’s proxy, the soul of Florence’s progenitor, gone, the underground world would accept Kalsis, a fragment of the Demon God, as its new proxy.

And that meant he would be reborn as the true Demon God.

As the two conversed, the situation continued to escalate.

The fortress, made of thorny vines, connected the Hellgate in the sky with the ground, serving as a bridge between them.

*Roar!*

*Caw!*

*Snarl!*

Grotesque birds, unlike any creatures seen in this world, spread their malformed wings and descended.

Monsters, unlike any known beasts, climbed down the thorny vines as if they were bridges.

The forces of Chaos were descending upon the land.

- A land full of life…

- We shall claim it all…!

Even the higher Talos, who possessed some level of intelligence, descended in hordes.

Their numbers were in the hundreds of thousands.

It was a truly overwhelming amount, pouring out endlessly.

It was a hellish sight.

Hermit stood on the ground, gazing at the scene.

“So many of them, crawling out.”

With those words, she extended her hand towards the horde of monsters and the capital.

“Watch closely. This is a rare opportunity.”

*Boom!*

The horde of Talos surged towards her like a wave, ready to engulf her.

She spoke in the language of dragons.

- Time, I command you with my mana. Freeze your flow.

The power of a dragon, the founder of all magic, was the miracle of dragons: Dragon Speech.

*Flash!*

Following her words, the mana she held, which transcended time and space, spread out instantly.

Her magic engulfed Immortalityum and its surroundings.

Then she spoke the final words of Dragon Speech.

- Time Freezing.

*Snap.*

In that instant, the world stopped.

A silence fell.

The creatures that had been descending from the sky, the ones charging across the ground, all froze in an instant. No, they didn’t just stop—they were frozen in place.

Aden’s eyes widened in shock.

The entire imperial capital and its surroundings had come to a frozen standstill.

She spoke.

“It’s nothing much, just stopped time for a bit.”

“…Stopping time is ‘nothing much’?”

“If a human mercenary can return to the past, why can’t a dragon do something similar?”

With that, Aden was left speechless.

But he couldn’t help feeling chills running down his spine.

Manipulating time?

This was an ability that could rightfully be called the power of a living god.

What she had just done was truly transcendent, something that could only be described as divine.

Of course, there was a price to pay.

“Cough!”

The dragon who had just displayed such a godlike feat suddenly coughed up blood.

Aden was startled.

“Hermit!”

“Kugh, my body wasn’t in good shape to begin with, and now it’s screaming in pain from interfering with time….”

Aden supported Hermit as she staggered and asked her.

“Didn’t Elise heal all your internal injuries?”

“Most of my power was sealed within the sword. But it seems the destruction of the sword has caused cracks in my Dragon Heart. Damage to a Dragon Heart is difficult to heal, and now I’ve poured all my mana into using Time Freezing, so this is the result….”

Hermit’s complexion was pale, and she trembled slightly.

It was similar to the symptoms of mana exhaustion often seen in mages.

Kalsis’s use of the 72nd Sword, Balak, as a sacrifice to create the Philosopher’s Stone and open the Hellgate had also been a calculated move to incapacitate the Mediator of the surface world.

“This Time Freezing, created by pouring almost all of my power into it, will last for 30 days at most. Maybe even less.”

Thirty days.

It was still far too little time to prepare for the battle against Talos, but it was hundreds of times better than having the Hellgate burst open immediately.

Curse spoke to Aden.

- A dragon’s life is directly linked to their Dragon Heart. This event will have drastically shortened her lifespan.

“Kikik, I’ve lived long enough, so losing a thousand or two thousand years of my lifespan is no big deal.”

Though she said it lightly, Aden knew that it must have been a difficult choice for her.

“Still, I hope you make good use of the time I’ve sacrificed, even if it means losing precious time to drink and sleep in the future.”

“This is an extension of the job, so of course, I’ll see it through.”

The extermination of Chaos. Aden had not yet fully completed the massive commission from Hermit, a client who had paid him an advance of 200 tons of gold.

It would hurt his pride to leave things as they were.

Determined to make the most of the opportunity Hermit had bought him, Aden immediately took action.

“Summon Merchant Rabbits.”

With a ‘bang!’ sound, Rabbits was summoned into the air.

-Ah, hello there! Aden, my dear customer! It’s been so long! *Chomp chomp.*

It seemed Rabbits had been eating, as he was holding a carrot in one hand.

However, Aden’s expression grew strange upon seeing the rabbit.

“…Rabbits? Is that really you?”

-Ah, how hurtful! How could you forget my face just because it’s been a while? *Nom nom.*

“Look at your appearance and tell me that.”

The reason Aden didn’t immediately recognize Rabbits was simple.

He had clearly summoned a rabbit, but what appeared was a white, furry pig.

That’s right.

Rabbits, who had once had a sleek and agile rabbit body, had now turned into a morbidly obese rabbit that looked like it could roll around like a ball.

“…You’ve gained a lot of weight.”

-Becoming a mid-level merchant means I have many subordinates to delegate tasks to, so life has become much easier. Hehehe.

In other words, he had left all the work to his underlings and spent his time lazing around, which resulted in his current state.

Aden was momentarily taken aback by the astonishing realization that even spirits could gain weight, but he quickly pulled himself together.

There was no time to waste on such trivial matters.

“First, let’s confirm something. Your Spirit Merchant Guild can indeed arrange for the proxy purchase and delivery of goods anywhere, right?”

-Of course! It’s a service often used by those who want to send a bouquet and a letter to their lovers but lack the courage to deliver them in person! The items are delivered in an instant!

Bouquet delivery? What a trivial use for such a service.

But that wasn’t what mattered right now.

Aden spoke to Rabbits.

“Rabbits, I want to purchase reservation and entrance tickets to the ‘Eternal Sunset Tea Party.’”

-Gasp! Are you serious? You’re really going to buy that?

Rabbits was shocked.

The Eternal Sunset Tea Party.

It was a special space hosted by the Hat Merchant, the head of the Spirit Merchant Guild.

While in that space, time barely flowed outside, and one could meet anyone from anywhere as long as they had an entrance ticket.

However, almost no one actually purchased it.

Not only was it not well-known, but the reservation and entrance tickets were absurdly expensive.

Each entrance ticket cost 100,000 gold, comparable to the price of a large mansion!

“Yes, I’ll buy them. Now, deliver the entrance tickets to all the people I’m about to name.”

But thanks to the Frozen Mana Stone mine and the advance payment from Hermit’s commission, Aden was currently swimming in money.

Rabbits gulped.

-Who, who would you like them delivered to…?

Because of this, Aden was able to answer Rabbits’ question with confidence.

“To everyone.”

-…Excuse me?

The Three Great Orders, the kings of the small kingdoms, the high-ranking nobles of the Empire, and the Great Forest…

Aden grinned and declared.

“Send them all to every power player in the Western Continent.”

*Plop.*

Upon hearing those words, Rabbits dropped his carrot to the ground.

The lack of time could be compensated for with money.