Demon King of the Royal Class

Chapter 351

The Demon King’s Castle was so vast and enormous that it took quite some time to explore each floor.

All perishable food and valuable items had already been taken, so most rooms were either empty or covered in dust.

There were libraries with empty shelves, and empty storage rooms that were wide open. There was also a throne where it seemed the Demon King might have sat.

The audience chamber was larger than any I had seen before, likely because the demons who came to this place varied greatly in size.

After exploring the first floor, we moved to the upper levels. We passed by the scroll storage room where I had found the magic scroll. Naturally, the room was also empty.

And as we walked down the corridor, we inevitably arrived at the prison cells.

“...”

“This is...”

“Yes, this is where I was imprisoned,” Charlotte said with a nod.

A place filled only with horrific memories...

“It seems there’s nothing good to be gained from going in there...” she added.

Charlotte hesitated, then turned away, sensing that entering the prison would only destabilize her mental state. There were no remnants of the Demon King here, only trauma.

Charlotte suddenly stumbled.

“Your Highness!”

“Ah...”

Charlotte staggered, and Tana supported her.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

As I approached, I noticed beads of cold sweat on Charlotte’s forehead. Were the traumatic memories resurfacing and affecting her physically?

“It’s nothing... My legs just suddenly lost their strength...”

The memories ran deep, and returning to the scene must have been immeasurably difficult.

Tana entrusted Charlotte, who was leaning on her, to me.

“Please take care of Her Highness for a moment. I’ll find a place to rest.”

“Alright.”

Charlotte held onto my arm and leaned against me, while Tana ran down the corridor.

“Huff... Huff...”

Charlotte was breathing heavily, as if she had been exerting herself intensely.

“Is something seriously bad right now?”

“No... it’s not that... Just...”

She wasn’t having a seizure, just hyperventilating. Charlotte took a few deep breaths, and her breathing soon stabilized.

“I didn’t think I’d be completely okay, but... it’s still hard.”

Charlotte had only told one person—me—that she was the one who killed everyone in the prison. I let Charlotte lean against the wall and offered her my arm.

After some time, Sabioleen Tana returned.

“I’ve found a place where we can rest,” she said, having checked the upper floors. “Let’s go there.”

***

After walking down a few more corridors and climbing a few more floors, we arrived at a room that resembled a bedroom.

There were no valuables in sight, but the furniture was still there. After opening a window and dusting off the sofa, Sabioleen Tana laid Charlotte down on it.

“Dame Tana. I’m not sick or anything,” Charlotte said as she gave a faint smile.

“Still, you should rest a bit. We’ve walked quite a lot today.”

“Haha... That’s true.”

Charlotte lay on the sofa as she tried to regulate her breathing. It was strange. I didn’t know whether to worry about her having a trauma-induced seizure, or to be thankful it wasn’t a power-induced seizure.

Sabioleen Tana quietly surveyed the bedroom. “I decided on this place in a hurry, but it seems to be the bedroom of someone quite high-ranking in the Demon King’s Castle.”

“... Ah, it does seem that way.”

There were no valuables in sight, but the large pieces of furniture had been left alone. They all seemed to be of high-quality, which lent credibility to Sabioleen Tana’s suggestion that it might have been the bedroom of a high-ranking individual within the Demon King’s Castle.

‘No wonder I felt strange.’

“Tsk... Because of all the indiscriminate looting, we can’t identify whose bedroom this was. Then again, it might not be that important...”

Tana seemed to be considering the possibility that this could have been the Demon King’s bedroom. Given how it was laid out, it was entirely possible. It could also have belonged to one of the Four Demon Lords, or another member of demon nobility.

Creak.

Tana was opening wardrobes and rummaging through drawers to see if anything was left behind.

Charlotte struggled to sit up from the sofa as Sabioleen Tana continued to search through the drawers. Anything of value would have been taken, so there shouldn’t be anything significant left. Yet, somehow, a strange sense of unease was burning through my entire body.

Creak.

With each drawer Sabioleen Tana opened, I felt a strange dissonance within me, as if something was about to be discovered. The warning from my Qi Sense felt like needles piercing my heart.

Creak.

“...?”

Sabioleen Tana opened a drawer in the cabinet and tilted her head in curiosity.

“Indeed, it seems like anything not deemed valuable has been left behind.”

She took something out of the drawer. It was an opulent wooden case, its lid open to reveal its contents. It seemed like someone had intended to take it, but left it upon seeing what was inside.

“Biscuits... it seems.”

Charlotte stared at the biscuits with wide eyes. I clenched my teeth so hard to avoid showing any expression, it felt like my molars might crack.

“Could you let me see that?” Charlotte asked quietly. She seemed eerily calm.

“Your Highness, they must be spoiled.”

“I’m not planning to eat them.”

“Ah, yes. Here you go.”

Charlotte took a biscuit, still wrapped, from Tana and quietly gazed at it.

Charlotte stared intently at the individually-wrapped biscuit. They were exactly like the one she had been offered in the prison.

—“You must be hungry, eat this at least.”

—“W-What about you...?”

—“I’m fine. You eat first.”

—“You, you... you eat too.”

Biscuits... Found in the bedroom of someone thought to be a high-ranking demon, wrapped the same way as the one from back then...

Charlotte unwrapped the biscuit and snapped it in half.

“Your Highness!”

Crunch!

Despite Tana’s attempt to stop her, Charlotte bit into the biscuit.

What did she feel?

Charlotte would never have forgotten. Even if she forgot everything else, she would never forget the shape or the taste of that biscuit. Whether it tasted the same as it did then, I couldn’t know.

Tears rolled down from Charlotte’s eyes as she took a bite of the biscuit.

“Hah,” Charlotte said as if she’d realized something. “Haha.”

“... Your Highness? W-Why are you acting like this?”

There had been suspicious circumstances surrounding the incident, but she had refused to see them, desperately trying to deny what they pointed to.

However, there was a limit to how much an unpleasant truth could be denied.

This biscuit wasn’t in itself definitive proof, but too much evidence had accumulated over time. Evidence and suspicion had piled up, one piece on top of another.

Biscuits individually wrapped in such an opulent case... She probably thought such things wouldn’t just be lying around anywhere. Her thoughts must have continued, one after another, leading her to an inevitable conclusion.

“Heh, heh... heh heh. Ha. Heh.”

“Your Highness! What’s wrong?”

Her doubts had coalesced into an undeniable certainty.

“Heh, heh heh! Heh, heh heh!” Charlotte bent over, laughing like a madwoman.

All this while, she had fought against the knowledge that she knew to be true, and in that moment, the faint hope that it might not be true had been completely erased.

‘What is Charlotte thinking? Does she think that the next Demon King merely used her as a way to escape?’

I couldn’t know.

“Heh heh heh! Heh heh heh heh heh! Ugh! Ugh!” Charlotte’s laughter ultimately turned into sobbing.

***

“... There’s a larger bedroom further inside, which I presume to be the Demon King’s bedroom,” said Sabioleen Tana hesitantly after going through all the other nearby rooms. Charlotte had asked her to check if there was a larger bedroom nearby.

There was only one room further inside that was larger in scale, which she believed had been the Demon King’s bedroom. I didn’t fully understand the architectural philosophy of the Demon King’s Castle, but what else could the second most luxurious bedroom in the wing, located right next to the Demon King’s chamber, signify?

Charlotte sat in a daze, the box of biscuits in front of her. While it was a small piece of evidence on its own, it seemed to be the final piece that completed the puzzle Charlotte held in her mind.

Charlotte had known for a long time that Baalier had to be related to the Demon King somehow. However, the Demon King’s successor had only recently begun to act. Charlotte hadn’t said anything, but Tana seemed to understand what Charlotte was thinking.

I remained silent. There were no words that could comfort Charlotte in that moment, and even if they could, it didn’t seem like it was my place to do so.

“Your Highness, I don’t know why... but in the end, it’s just a biscuit. Whatever you’re thinking, this isn’t enough evidence to be certain of anything...”

Sabioleen Tana trailed off. She didn’t know what significance this biscuit held for Charlotte.

Charlotte nodded slowly. “Perhaps you’re right,” Charlotte said calmly. “I’ve just... given up now.”

In her heart, Charlotte had stopped trying to Baalier.

“The child who saved me was indeed the Demon King’s son or successor. I wanted to believe otherwise, but I won’t anymore.”

This piece of physical evidence was not strong, but Charlotte had collected enough bits of evidence to build a wall in her heart. The child who had saved her back then was the Demon King’s successor and the main culprit behind the demon attacks in the capital.

Charlotte was certain.

“There was always a question in my mind. If it was true, then why did he save me...? Why... when he could have escaped alone, did he go out of his way to save me...? So I thought maybe he wasn’t what I thought he was, because there was no reason to save me. I wanted to believe he wasn’t.”

Once I’d retrieved the Teleport scroll from the Demon King’s Castle, I could have just escaped alone., but I risked danger with Dyrus to return and save Charlotte. That was why Charlotte had tried to believe in me until the very end.

If Baalier had been the Demon King’s successor, there would have been no reason for him to risk his life to save Charlotte. If anything, he would have left her to die. There was no reason for someone who should have hated the empire as much as he did Artorius to save Charlotte.

That was the final obstacle that was preventing Charlotte from believing that Baalier was not the Demon King’s son. With this last piece of evidence, that barrier had crumbled.

“Now... I think I know why that child saved me.”

Charlotte had to determine the reason why the Demon King’s son had been compelled to save her. The rational reason that warranted risking his life.

Charlotte looked at me this time. “The power within me is either the Demon King’s power or the Demon King’s soul. Something like that...”

Seeing Charlotte muttering like that sent chills down my spine.

I could sense what conclusion Charlotte was reaching.

“It wasn’t about saving me... It wasn’t about saving me at all,” Charlotte said slowly, her voice filled with betrayal as she stared blankly at the biscuit. “It was about saving... the Demon King’s soul within me...”

Once Charlotte had convinced herself that Baalier was the Demon King’s son, this was the only rational conclusion she could reach. It was impossible to believe that it was simply out of goodwill, or a pure desire to save her. There was no reason for the Demon King’s son to save the princess of the empire.

The war had been lost, and the Demon King was dead. The Demon King’s son couldn’t possibly be unaware that the princess was being imprisoned within the castle, and that the Demon King’s soul resided within her.

So, it wasn’t about saving the princess, but about saving the Demon King’s soul within her. To ensure the Demon King’s resurrection in the heart of the empire one day, he had risked his life to save her.

“Heh, heheheh. When you think about it... it’s obvious... it’s so obvious...” Charlotte’s laughter had an emptiness to it, as if she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t reached this conclusion sooner.

I wanted desperately to tell her that it wasn’t like that, that she was seeing things wrongly. At that time, I just hadn’t wanted her to die. I hadn’t even known who she was, nor did I know that there was something dormant within her.

It felt like someone was squeezing my heart. Her misunderstanding was growing uncontrollably, but it was so rational that I couldn’t deny it.

I wanted to say that I had been watching over her all this time, trying to protect her, and that I was still trying. But revealing my identity meant death. Even if I revealed that I was Baalier, all Charlotte would feel was betrayal.

The many lies I had told Charlotte would be a problem, and the way her thoughts were unfolding was another. She might even believe that I was controlling her symptoms so that I could bring about the Demon King’s complete resurrection.

Indeed, if I hadn’t stopped Charlotte the day she went berserk, lives would have been lost, but ultimately, Charlotte would have died. The fact that no one had seen how desperately I’d fought that day helped in concealing my identity, but it also meant Charlotte had no idea how sincerely I’d fought to keep her alive.

Now that she was suspicious of Baalier, revealing that I was Baalier would only make her believe that everything I did as Reinhart had also been for the sole purpose of bringing back the Demon King.

“Ha, haha... haha...”

In the face of Charlotte’s hollow laughter, I was speechless.