[Congratulations! You have defeated all the Heroes!]
[Your current total Villainy Points is: 1207809]
[Warning: You are dying]
[You have enough points to start a new life]
[Do you wish to reincarnate as a new Demon King while retaining all your Villainy Points? Y/N]
The dying Demon King coughed up blood.
“What?” he rasped, utterly confused.
The horned monster stared uncomprehendingly at the blue screen that popped in front of his face.
He had never seen it before. It had come without warning or explanation, displaying words that made no sense to him.
No, he corrected himself. Not everything was nonsense.
One line stood out.
“I am dying, huh?” the Demon King chuckled ruefully. “I see. Yes, you are not wrong.”
The King leaned heavily back against his shattered throne. All around him was destruction. His castle was in ruins.
“I may be dying, but I won.”
Before the King were the dead bodies of the Heroes who came to kill him.
It had been a tough fight. That heroic party of Chosens was the strongest he had faced in the last three hundred years.
He was the Demon King. He ruled a nation of monsters and devils. He was supposed to be the undisputed strongest in the entire world.
But now, he was dying — stabbed through the heart with the Holy Sword, the only weapon in the world that could halt his demonic regeneration and kill him.
And the one who had wielded that Holy Sword… the one who had pulled that immovable blade from the Stone and finally ended his reign after one thousand years of rule… was a peasant.
Not a ruler, a noble, or even a warrior from a legendary bloodline. No, she was a simple village girl — a mere countryside bumpkin who somehow grew strong enough to lead a Crusade and become the Chosen who saved the world.
But as absurd as her origin or strength were, it was not those things which disturbed him.
It was because of how she had smiled at him as she died.
“At long last… I have reached you,” she had murmured. “May you finally find peace.”
Her wounds were so severe that the Heroine had died almost immediately after she had impaled his heart with the Divine blade, having enough breath only to whisper those final words to him.
[No response detected]
[Warning: You have about 60 seconds left before you die from your wounds.]
[Do you wish to reincarnate as a new Demon King while retaining all your Villainy Points? Y/N]
Why? Why had she smiled as she died? What did her words mean?
How could someone who was dying look so fulfilled?
To the Demon King, who had painfully struggled to stay alive for the last one thousand years, he truly believed a person’s own life was the most precious thing in the world.
To him, her smile was absurd.
I don’t understand.
[No response detected]
[Warning: You have about 30 seconds left before you die from your wounds.]
[Please answer the query]
[Do you wish to reincarnate as a new Demon King while retaining all your Villainy Points? Y/N]
The purpose of living was to stay alive for as long as possible. To live was to protect one’s own life. It was just common sense.
So how can anyone be brave enough to sacrifice their own life?
Not just her. All those heroes who tried to kill him over the centuries… Even when he gave them the chance to escape, they still fought to the bitter end with everything they had.
Was living not precious to you?
I don’t understand.
The Demon King knew he was not brave. He was strong, but he was not brave. He stayed in his castle because he knew Heroes would try to kill him.
He believed keeping himself alive was more important than anything else, even though he could not explain why.
It was the only purpose he ever knew.
But now, at the end of his life, he was not scared. He was a little sad, but he was not scared.
The Demon King could not even bother to muster an attempt to save himself.
He only had one question.
Why did that Heroine smile as she died?
I don’t understand.
But… I want to understand.
[No response detected]
[Warning: You have about 10 seconds left before you die from your wounds.]
[Please answer the query, or we will restart the cycle without your consent.]
[Do you wish to reincarnate as a new Demon King while retaining all your Villainy Points? Y/N]
I want a purpose beyond just being alive.
I want to know what it's like to be like her.
If I were a Hero, a strong one like her…
If I knew what true Heroism is like, what human strength is like…
Can I one day smile like her?
[Demon King Erizen]
[Fulfil your purpose/debt/promise]
[Answer the query, or we will restart the cycle without your consent.]
[Do you wish to reincarnate—]
“I… wish…” he painfully rasped.
[System intervention]
[Dying halted]
[Say you wish to live]
“I wish… to become the strongest Hero in the world.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
[...]
[...]
[... Accepted]
[Alignment Change Activated]
[New Main Quest updated]
[Accelerating time… New Game Plus Loading…]
[Please Standby…]
~~~
Five hundred years later…
Matron Elen, matriarch of Footfall’s largest orphanage, sighed as she welcomed yet another batch of downtrodden children from the newly arrived refugees to her building.
The young woman had not had the luxury of leaving the town of Footfall in a year, yet she wagered that she had a more acute understanding of the state of the Aurelian Empire than most living Chosens.
Each month saw yet more kids shuffled into her care, evacuated from war-torn borders all over the Empire’s north. Hollowed cheeks and gaunt faces, their hopeless gaze told the truth of the conflict, beyond the censored news spread by the Church.
The Heroes were losing the war.
Five hundred years of fragile peace since the last Demon King’s death. Now, a new King was rising, and darkness gathered in demonic lands once more. The orphans were but the first symptoms of the inevitable end to come, though their presence would be seen as a boon by the Church — a steady influx of fresh bodies to be trained into Chosens.
The children themselves were of resilient stock — a trait to be expected from folks of the northern colonies. Like trampled seed, they were worn and bruised, but with the proper care and nourishment, they would get back on their feet, no matter how much life had stomped them into the dirt.
That peculiar young boy within the crowd was a prime example.
No more than six years old, with purple eyes, white hair, and a tiny horn stub peaking from the left side of his head — typical signs of lesser demonic taint, frequently seen among those tribes that live too close to the corrupted northern steppes. Such mutations were harmless, but they set him apart from the other children, as did his behaviour.
A quiet child, but strong in will. Never one to give trouble, and always helping others. He did not mourn or waste time adjusting to his new surroundings. He never needed any beyond the bare minimum attention from the other matrons to stay clean and fed.
It didn’t take long for the orphanage to notice his strange predilection to aid others. Whether it was helping the new arrivals to settle, aiding the cooks in meal preparations, or assisting in laundry duties, the boy was constantly on the move, quietly disappearing after the task was done without asking for praise or reward, only to be seen elsewhere performing yet another menial chore with surprising efficiency.
It was odd, but hardly unwelcome. His helping hands endeared him to many of the orphanage staff, despite his mutations.
Still, Elen was not alone in wondering just what precisely went on in the boy’s head that drove him to act the way he did.
/-/
[Side Quest Complete! ‘Help the Cleaning Ladies do Laundry’]
[+10 XP]
[+3 Heroism Points]
[+1 Attribute Point]
[+1 Reputation with Footfall]
[Side Quest Complete! ‘Help prepare dinner for the orphanage’]
[+10 XP]
[+3 Heroism Points]
[+1 Attribute Point]
[+1 Reputation with Footfall]
[New Side Quest! ‘Help distribute the church supplies to the refugees’]
[Rewards: +10 XP, +3 Heroism Points, +1 Attribute Point, +1 Reputation with Footfall]
[Y/N?]
[Y/N]
/-/
Regardless, Matron Elen kept careful track of the boy’s peculiarities.
Days later — when the stream of duties finally took a lull — she found the mutant child sitting atop the orphanage, perched dangerously high on a shaded recess of the slant roof, reading a book too thick for a child his age.
The Matron didn’t question how he managed to climb up to such an out-of-reach place, nor why he was reading what seemed to be an advanced copy of archaic Church Scriptures.
The Matron simply summoned the mana in her Core — a war-weary strength that nonetheless carried great power — and leapt high onto the orphanage’s roof.
When she landed heavily beside the boy — roof tiles shattering beneath her feet — the child did not even flinch. He did, however, glance at her from the side.
“Can you teach me how to do that?” he asked, unfazed.
It was the first time they had ever spoken to each other. The Matron paused, then huffed. “Maybe when you are older. You could at least look a little surprised that I could jump that high.”
“You are a Heroic Level 88 [Shield Maiden] — a Gold Core Chosen. The magic technique you used was a [Greater Leap] Arte,” the boy said quietly. “The average level of the non-Chosen civilian population here is below Heroic Level 10; the militia barely beyond Level 30. Given your combat class and higher level, it is not surprising to see that you had an enhanced mobility Arte.”
Class? Levels? The Matron frowned. The boy talked strangely sometimes. The people around the orphanage had heard him use those terms before, but no one had any idea what he was referring to.
Still, he had an uncanny insight at times.
“You knew I was a Shield Maiden? Who told you?” Elen asked curiously.
“The System told me,” he said simply.
System? As usual, his words made no sense. Elen waited for an elaboration, but none came.
The Matron shook her head. The child probably overheard her old Chosen title from one of the orphanage staff gossiping about her war career again. “Why did you climb up here? If you wanted to read, it’s safer in the yard.”
The boy tilted his head. “Too many children. Too noisy. There’s a learning debuff if I try to grind my Reading Skill there. It’s quiet here on the roof. Also, the climbing helps level my Athletics Skill.”
Matron Elen said nothing. Instead, she looked at the book he held.
‘The Detailed Chronicles of Chosens: Saint Ariane’. An exciting-sounding title, perhaps, but Elen remembered the contents being exceedingly dry — A painfully factual account of Saint Ariane's legendary deeds, from the Heroine’s humble beginnings as a peasant farm girl to her eventual leadership of the 18th Chosen Crusade.
“That’s a very complicated book you are holding,” Elen kindly said. “I can read the book aloud for you, if you like.”
The boy blinked, his purple eyes startlingly in hue and colour. “It’s alright. I power-levelled my Reading Skill a few days ago. A merchant I helped gave me academic books as quest rewards. I finally managed to pass the Skill Check on this tome a few hours ago.”
“You can understand it?” Any adult would have sounded sceptical at hearing such a proclamation from a six-year-old, but Matron Elen’s tone only held a guarded curiosity. “Can you read a passage aloud for me?”
/-/
[New Quest! ‘Prove yourself to Matron Elen’]
[Reward: +100 XP, +30 Heroism Points, +10 Attribute Points, +30 Reputation with Footfall, Prologue Completion]
[Y/N?]
/-/
The question gave the boy pause. Matron Elen observed carefully. The child’s eyes were contemplative, entirely unlike the shy or saddened gaze of orphans his age.
Finally, the boy gave a slight nod, his expression blank as he closed the book and recited with perfect clarity:
“Saint Ariane led the 18th Chosen Crusade under the united continent of Thalmyra and ended the tyranny of the Fourth Demon King, Erizen, five hundred years ago. She died in the final battle, and her body was entombed in the Aurelian Capital of Goldwyn, alongside the Holy Sword, Calabrum. The Prophecy says that when a new Demon King rises for the fifth and final time in the next cycle, Saint Ariane will be resurrected once more as a humble village girl, and she will lead the final battle for the world’s salvation…”
The boy's voice was clear and bright, never stuttering nor breaking as he fluently recited text after text. Under the clouded sun, his purple eyes felt inhumanly bright, their colours the same damning hue as the Hell Gate that claimed dominion in the north.
It was a colour Matron Elen knew all too well.
But this was not the first time a child with mutant eyes had gone through her orphanage. And though the average person might scorn or fear such a child, Matron Elen knew to trust the sincere gaze in the boy’s curious eyes.
Children like these… They needed more than care and nourishment to grow.
The world called for saviours, and such paragons could only be tempered through steel and fire.
When the boy finally finished, his hands putting aside the book in a solemn but proud finality, Matron Elen gave a tired smile.
“What’s your name, child?” she asked.
Elen already knew, of course, but it was customary to question the Aspirant’s name before she handed them the choice.
The boy’s finger traced the spine of the book. “Eri.”
“Well, Eri,” Matron Elen offered him a hand. “How would you like to be a hero?”
[Prologue Complete!]
[Main Quest Advanced: ‘The Greatest’]
[Pass your Trial and become a Chosen!]
[Map region expanded]
[Quest Rewards raised]
[Max Level raised to 20]
[Now Loading the Tutorial Zone…]
~~~~~~
Power makes Heroes go crazy.
You have seen it before.
Maybe the Hero gets elected as Emperor and becomes a tyrant. Or maybe they find a corrupted ancient artefact and get seduced to the dark side. Or maybe they inexplicably gain superpowers one day and start blasting anyone who disagrees with their irritatingly vague moral compass.
Most people’s minds simply aren’t designed to handle the enormous responsibility that comes with extraordinary abilities. Heck, half the time, they could barely handle keeping people as sane, functional human beings.
Those who hold onto power often cannot keep up and eventually fall.
But those that could… Well, they paid to keep that power by giving up their sanity marbles.
Behold the ‘Heroic’ truth, ye mighty Chosen Ones: your mental stability and superhuman magical talents are mutually exclusive long-term investments. You cannot hold one without giving up the other.
Now, as to why this ‘Heroic’ truth might be important…
It’s because our protagonist — a certain reincarnated ex-Demon King who has inherited an unhealthy fixation with Heroism — was fated to become a lot stronger than most Heroes.
And so it unfortunately followed that he was fated to become a lot crazier as well.
Thank you so much for giving this story a chance. That you have clicked on the title and read its first chapter all the way to its end means a great deal.
I will be posting 20 chapters upfront over the next 24 hours. That’s 50k+ words of content right from the start. After that, daily chapters will continue for a few weeks, possibly longer if the story performs well.
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I hope you’ll enjoy the rest of the chapters!
