The demon emperor's news of being the one that defeated the demon king began to spread wider and wider, it started as a mere rumor at the closest village, then it continued to spread in all directions to the point of reaching to the outskirts .
The demon emperor was hailed as the hero who saved the day and he settled together was the human woman in the village and showed a humble attitude to everyone that came to seek him, earning more and more popularity and influence under his name .
But he hadn't forgotten his initial target in coming here, no far from it, he was already implementing a plan that if done correctly, it should be able to allow the demon race to freely roam this land .
But the premise was that if it was indeed done correctly, the demon emperor married the woman after he confessed his love to her, she was aware that there was something different to him, so she openly asked what it was ?.
The demon emperor confessed again that he was indeed not from around here and not even a human a quite risky gamble, but luckily he was able to win it, the woman didn't seem to be that much repelled by the fact he was a demon, she didn't understand what a demon was, all that she wanted to confirm was that he didn't have any connection with the demon king, which he did, then a few days later, they got married .
The monster named Devo came to attend the grand ceremony and was able to finally make contact with the demon emperor and ask him about what happened, wanting to keep the information about his plan and actions to himself, he told him that he indeed have fallen in love with her .
The monster didn't believe it one bit, but seeing that he have no intention of explaining anything else, he took his leave and confirmed whether the agreed upon time to leave was still the same and the demon emperor confirmed that they will leave 3 years from now and that he was free to roam alone as he liked, but advised him not to go around causing ruckus .
He reminded him of how weird the place had become and again reminded him of what had happened before in the mine, that time when he lost his sanity, wanting the monster to be cautious and not cause much damage to his ongoing plan at least not yet, the monster being reminded of that incident, his expression become a bit unsightly but he still nodded his head in understanding and he directly left .
The ceremony ended and he thanked all the people who cut some time of their busy schedule to come and celebrate with them, his polite words resonated with all the nobles that were present, boosting his reputation among the the Elite even more, it also didn't diminish his reputation with the Common people, thanks to the wise choice he made by marrying a woman of common birth, the following days of their merry life consisted of visiting different noble houses and attending not quite the few of the said Elite people parties .
The demon emperor fame continued to rise to the point of getting invited to join the ranks of officials under the current king of Belon, the young king who was also ruling a young and recently declared kingdom, he accepted as it was after all a step in his plans all along, he was assigned a corps and acted as its commander .
Then in just a year, he joined the private council of the king and got to know more of the layout of the kingdom and how it kept the Interests of the Nobles on top of the interests of the crown, the demon emperor in that first year didn't try to stand out much, due to still being a bit guarded at the possible sudden appearance of the black dragon, but the dragon apperantly had no interest in seeking revenge as he never appeared and no one heard of him ever since .
In the followed year, the demon emperor loosened his guard completely due to the fact that he finally was able to found his path forward and become a Ruler, so now even if the said dragon was to come knocking on the door, he will be able to kill him directly .
The path that the demon emperor said to have chosen for himself, was none other than the path related to his talent in space, the moment a Ruler level powerhouse was sensed by the Shard, it tried to eliminate him directly but by using his newfound mastery over the space rules, he was able to escape being killed and he got back to the safe zone, trying to recuperate from the injuries he sustained during the shard restless pursuit of him .
The moment he returned to the safe zone this time, he was able to see and understand the rapture more clearly, he noted that there was still some kind of green energy flowing inside the grey fog of space inside the rapture, he tried to collect the green energy, but even though he had increased his mastery over space and took enough precautions, his hand still got injured the moment he tried to interact with those energy, he then pulled out the blood medal he had on him and noted that it had quite an abundant amount of that same green energy .
If his guess was correct, maybe his plan will need to change again, his main objective is to acquire the method of invoking the summoning ritual of the heroes and that was why he decided to become known as the hero who defeated the demon king, using that title to his advantage might allow him to reach that method or at least reach those who knew of it .
Maybe even reach to anyone who survived the assault of the demon king, anyone who survived that massacre, remembering that fight he had with that Bloodlord from before after a long time, the demon emperor couldn't help but wonder about why did the Bloodlord decided to kill those heroes in the first place, was the Bloodlord objective the same as him, was the Bloodlord race involved as well but how, was there a rapture that appeared in their domain as well, does that mean he recklessly discarded the fact that another Bloodlord maybe lurking somewhere .
No that can't be right, the demon emperor thought that he maybe overthinking it, if there were some other Bloodlords lurking around, with their vengeful spirit , they would have already began searching the land up and down to find the culprit behind the death of one of their own, the other questions weren't important if no other Bloodlord made an appearance, the answers to these questions weren't of any importance .
Currently, what was his utmost priority was carrying on with his current plan, but now everything may have changed and a lot things in his plans may become quite different, his new conclusion could make everything different, but he will have to go back to the kingdom to make sure that his guess was indeed correct .
After the demon emperor stayed for two days in the safe zone near the rapture location, he cautiously went out, the reason for his caution at that time, was him being wary of the Shard still lingering around, but luck was in his favor and there was no trace of the Shard or that weird eyeball in his vicinity, he began heading straight to the kingdom on land, once he reached the kingdom, just by checking the people who were passing by him, he confirmed that the guess of his might indeed be correct .
It wasn't the blood of the hero that was special, no it was that the hero blood was imbued with a great amount of that green energy, most of the citizens of this kingdom also have a percentage of that green energy in them, those who don't have any are those who were most likely kids or old people, but he calculated that even if he went into a rampage and slaughtered everyone here, he would only be able to get so much to allow one ticket back to the Real World .
Wait, the demon emperor finally realized something, maybe that was the target of that Bloodlord all along, he too noticed the existence of that green energy, he killed the two heroes thinking that by killing them, something will appear and send him home or something like that, he when seeing that even after killing two summoned heroes who should have been imbued with a huge amount of that green energy, i thought he went berserk and massacred all the population of the kingdom, but he might have made that choice consciously, thinking that if he killed all those people, he might be able to finally leave this place .
This was nothing but a mere speculation at that time, thanks to his advancement of strength he was able to notice this more clearly, he also began to organize his thoughts about that green energy .
He knew that the energy was found in the blood of the hero and the blood of normal people but with different percentage of concentration, the link between all of those was probably the Shard, he thought back to the first Hero that got summoned, the great strength he had could also be attributed to the amount of green energy he was given, once he arrived to this world .
The demon emperor before wasn't able to make any sense of it until he got the hang of how the summoning ritual work, but now things were beginning to become clear .
The green energy could be what we should really go after, not the blood of the heroes, he believed that the green energy had three main resources for now, they could be given willingly by the Shard in the summoning ritual, giving the heroes a great amount of strength, but how was it created is still a mystery, it may have come out of the Shard, but he believed that the amount produced over time should be a quite meager amount .
The second source would be after the heroes are summoned, they will get as much powerful as the amount of green energy they were given, it was right to presume that with the increase of the amount of heroes summoned the greater the consume of that green energy, but without the heroes being summoned then the consumed energy will be regained over time once again .
The third source are those normal people under the influence of the Shard and who benefit from the said connection, all of them had a small amount that should allow them to gain a certain amount of strength, but they will never reach the level of the summoned heroes, but why would the Shard burdened itself with distributing those green energy in the first place .
Another realization hit the demon emperor, thanks to this realization he was able to understand the Shard way of thinking and confirmed one of the earliest suspicions of the first Demon to come to this land, that Shard was indeed conscious and it might even have a will of its own .
His speculation was that the Shard was using the distributed green energy to summon heroes by having the normal people get eradicated by the hands of the demon king, in doing so it will regain the amount of the green energy it first consumed and if he was right, summoning the heroes themselves seemed to be able to yield even more of that green energy as he noticed that in the rapture .
But to what extent was that green energy vital to the shard was still unknown, all that he was a bit certain about was that the Shard was the instigator of the demon king appearing and the disasters he caused through the land and using these circumstances he made the summoning ritual and even provided the energy needed for it, that energy was the same it harnessed through the eradicating of the normal people, but then by the same logic it was also responsible for the killing of heroes at some point .
The reason was to start all the process once more, the heroes were given enough strength to differ them from the norm, but at one point whether they defeated the demon king or got defeated by him, they might rebel on the Shard and remove themselves from under its influence, destroying the cycle and causing great losses to the Shard, to prevent that, it must have set some countermeasures to keep the cycle going .
That black dragon and the danger zones that we were warned not to go near are probably one of those countermeasures that should have kept everything under check, but then when the cycle had barely began, the first demon arrived he unknowingly did his part in the cycle by killing probably the strongest hero that the Shard have summoned, after he triumphed and killed the demon king of that era .
But the said Hero then become much stronger than what the Shard initially thought, resulting in being unable to gain much from the cycle, the hero could have also found a way to absorb the green energy of the demon king, making that cycle a complete loss to the shard and unintentionally empowering the Hero even more making him an entity that the Shard had no way to deal with and if things were to have continued like that, it would have no other option, but to massacre the people of this land to compensate for its losses .
And it might have resorted to use the gained energy from doing that to create a more powerful challenge for the hero, one that should be able to defeat the hero and allow the cycle to start over .
But due to the Hero being crowned as the new king of the land, its plan of restoring the cycle came to halt, it probably understood that the loss won't outweigh the gain, it was too much of a risk for the Shard to take, it probably decided to wait and accumulate enough green energy on its own, while also devising a plan on how to make the best use of that accumulated energy to deal with the Hero .
That's when we demons made our first appearance in this land, the first demon was cautiously roaming the land but he finally come to play his role in this conflict, he was roaming the land trying to figure out a way back to his homeland, at that time the Shard was able to finally accumulate enough of the green energy to create another challenge for the Hero, it created another Demon King .
But even though that newly created demon king was much more stronger than the previous one, he was still a lot weaker than the Hero, but that's where the countermeasures came to play, the demon king was supposed to lead the creatures in those red zones and try to compete with the Hero, but from the journal of The First Demon, it appeared that some kind of conflict arose and the demon king resulting in the demon king challenging the Hero alone and he was completely wiped out together with most of his forces .
Making the situation even more severe for the said Shard, then the first demon began to make his move against the hero assuming that he was the one helping the Shard in keeping everything under control and that by killing the hero, he really might be able to return back home .
The Shard seeing a new species, it had no knowledge of its existence appearing and that should have been something impossible, decided to eradicate the danger in the cradle, learning from its mistakes with the Hero .
At this the demon emperor felt not to know whether to laugh or cry, if either the first demon or the Shard approached each other a bit more wisely, they might have been able to deal with the said Hero with quite ease, but instead the Shard wanted to obliterate the demon, thinking that he might be a dangerous entity similar to the Hero and could even joined hands with him .
And the demon thought that the Shard was what was empowering the Hero and by getting rid of the Hero, he will be able to kill two birds with one stone, the two parties weren't aware that they had a common enemy and that they could succeed in dealing with the said enemies, if they have joined hands, after all both wanted to achieve the same goal for different reasons, but they weren't aware of that .
Continuing with this train of thoughts, the incident where the first demon succeeded in plotting against the Hero after he confirmed that he was indeed the key from all the samples he gathered previously, his success ended in the favor of the Shard, since it allowed it to regain and gain a bit more green energy after it became hopeless of ever doing that .
That event marked the beginning of the cycle once more, with the Hero dead and the son of his which may have posed some threat to the cycle went missing, the first demon also died a bit short after that affected by his injuries, telling us all that we needed to know about this land and the way to reach it from the other side, while also giving us the key to do that .
On the other side the Shard began to implement another sort of plan which should allow it to make the best use of how things have turned out, the first demon massacring all the people around the safe zone, the kingdom of the late Hero also included, ended up benefitting the Shard a bit more .
Allowing it to implement its plans more quickly and more efficiently, wanting to gain as much as it could from that green energy by opening the gate connection the heroes world to this one by again summoning more heroes, but first once more creating a need for the said heroes by creating another demon king, the one that the demon emperor happened to serve the first time he arrived to this land .
Yet even though a lot of weird things happened that should have once again wrecked havoc in the cycle, especially the appearance of that Bloodlord and him killing the two summoned heroes, the cycle like the previous one was able to succeed once more, but the only question that still remained unclear to this day was .
What was the use of the green energy to the Shard and why was it so determined to acquire it .