Demon King of the Royal Class-Chapter 666

In a forest on the outskirts of the imperial capital, Cristina stood facing Anna and Louis Ankton as they slowly regained consciousness.

She chose her words carefully, revealing only part of the truth.

She told them that Sabioleen Tana had attacked the underground lab, forcing her to flee with them, which led to the lab’s destruction. However, she withheld certain details—like the strategic withdrawal of the Immortals and how they had been redeployed to eliminate the Demon King. She believed those details would only complicate matters for Anna and Louis.

The news that the Immortals had not even been able to stop a single being, Sabioleen Tana, left Anna and Louis in disbelief.

The Empire had ensured the Immortals could never again be revived, but it was the predicament in Diane that weighed heaviest on Cristina’s mind.

Cristina had witnessed the entire battle as it unfolded. The Immortals had focused on killing the Demon King, but he had deftly avoided them, using monsters as his shield. Harriet and Riana also remained unharmed, thanks to Cliffman, who had unexpectedly transformed into a formidable monster himself.

The whole ordeal had been nerve-wracking. The Immortals were being decimated, their losses beyond recovery. It seemed as if the Demon King had foreseen this, and had used the Immortals as a means to escape.

Then, Cristina saw it—a colossal, unfamiliar monster, radiating an overwhelming and unfathomable power. But before she could fully process the terror of its potential for destruction, she saw Ellen Artorius decapitate it, causing it to vanish.

At that moment, Cristina instinctively understood that the Gate Incident had come to an end, yet she had noticed something even more startling before that. Though she remained silent, her wide eyes and the way she bit her lip until it bled spoke volumes.

Louis Ankton, noticing her distress, cautiously asked, “Cristina... what’s wrong?”

“Scarlett...” she whispered.

At that name, both Louis’s and Anna’s expressions turned grim.

“Scarlett and Connor Lint... they’re wiping out the Immortals.”

Scarlett, who was supposed to have been safely hidden away somewhere in the city, had suddenly appeared on the battlefield alongside the teleporter, Connor Lint. Together, they were decimating the Immortals with their abilities.

There was no real fight. Scarlett’s abilities were devastatingly effective against them. Wherever she unleashed her power, the Immortals would crumble to dust and vanish. What Ellen or Sabioleen Tana couldn’t achieve, Scarlett could.

It was clear now—Scarlett had allied herself with the Demon King.

But since when?

“Scarlett...?” Louis Ankton asked, his face a mask of confusion.

“Yes,” Cristina replied, nodding slowly. “Scarlett had betrayed us,” she said, her voice low and grim, her expression twisted with anger.

No one knew exactly why Scarlett was there or what had driven her to such an extreme. Ludwig’s insistence that Scarlett could be trusted had always been the naive ramblings of a fool. It would have been right to eliminate her.

But even the Immortals couldn’t kill Scarlett. No, not even they or anyone else could touch her now. And Connor Lint... His supernatural ability to manipulate space was so powerful that stopping him was nearly impossible. Even the barriers mages used to prevent magical escapes via spatial magic were useless against Connor Lint. Capturing them was out of the question; even touching them seemed impossible.

When Sabioleen Tana launched her attack on the underground lab, Cristina assumed her goal was to delay the Immortals’ return. Confident that Sabioleen Tana couldn’t harm her, she had sent all the Immortals back to the battlefield.

But then, Sabioleen Tana destroyed the lab without harming her. The Emperor had anticipated everything.

The Immortals, back on the battlefield, set their sights on hunting the Demon King. Yet the Demon King cleverly used their pursuit to his advantage in Diane, as if he were leading them on a chase. When the monster hordes were thinned out and the Immortals finally caught up, Scarlett had appeared, as if on cue, and began to dismantle the Immortals in retaliation, right after the Demon King had pushed the Immortals to their limits.

They had been outmaneuvered by the Emperor and manipulated by the Demon King.

Scarlett and Connor Lint were charging across the battlefield, determined to neutralize every last Immortal, while the lab capable of regenerating these Immortals lay in ruins. At this pace, the Immortals would soon vanish entirely.

“We need to get the Immortals off the battlefield,” one of them urged.

Thanks to Scarlett and Connor’s efforts, the number of Immortals was dwindling fast. They were being neutralized with alarming ease. If all the Immortals disappeared, there would be nothing left to fight for.

Preserving their forces was crucial. A new strategy was desperately needed.

More than half of the Immortals still remained, but at this rate, the Immortals faced annihilation. The surviving Immortals needed to regroup, and a new strategy had to be devised. They had to come up with a plan to deal with Scarlett somehow. Only then could the Immortals be used for other purposes.

“How about the Gate Incident? Is it over?” Anna asked.

Cristina looked at her silently. Ultimately, everything needed to be addressed, beginning with the Gate Incident.

“It seems so. We still have to eliminate the remaining monsters, and Diane will fall. But if we don’t take time to reorganize the Immortals, we’ll be in danger—”

Shunk!

Cristina could only manage a bewildered gasp. “Huh?”

“Anna!” Louis Ankton’s face drained of color as he cried out in horror.

Anna’s hand, ominously shrouded in darkness, was buried in Cristina’s chest.

Cristina felt no pain, only a surreal detachment as she tried to comprehend the reality unfolding before her.

It felt like a dream. It felt surreal.

Anna de Gerna spoke with a calm resolve.

“This is where your third-rate villain act ends.”

“What...?”

Thud!

Anna pulled her hand away from Cristina’s chest.

Bright red blood poured from the gaping wound.

Anna’s eyes were shadowed as she looked at Cristina.

“Let the Immortals vanish.”

“Anna... Anna. Anna, is that really you? What are you... Why... Why...?” Cristina was too stunned to form a coherent sentence, while Louis Ankton stood there, white as a sheet, unable to grasp what was happening. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

“Uh... uh... Ugh.... why...” Cristina stammered.

Anna remained calm, her eyes fixed on Cristina, who could only move her lips in silent disbelief.

Cristina understood magic. But people? They were a mystery to her.

Anna’s eyes were icy as she gazed at her dying friend. “You are no longer useful. Vertus wanted me to tell you that.”

Her farewell was as cold as her stare.

***

Cristina passed away.

It was only in those final moments, as her breath faded, that she grasped what had truly happened to her. She died while shedding tears of blood, her eyes wide open, biting her lips until they bled.

Louis Ankton stood there, unable to grasp the reality before him.

“Anna... Anna, what have you done?! If Cristina dies—!”

“The Immortals will start killing indiscriminately,” Anna interjected. She knew that the Immortals would lose all control and begin their rampage.

“But if Cristina somehow manages to extract the Immortals and starts planning her next move, no one will be able to stop her,” she added.

If that formidable army launched a guerrilla war against the entire continent, no one would be able to respond. They could be used to wreak havoc or commit assassinations, then vanish without a trace before anyone even realized they were there.

Even if they could not be reconstructed now, the Immortals could endlessly disrupt and potentially destroy the Demon King’s realm by sparking local conflicts.

Even though the Demon King had the power to obliterate the human world but had chosen not to, Cristina would undoubtedly resort to such tactics if she couldn’t defeat the Demon King at present, and she was more than capable of doing so.

Right now, though, the Immortals were all gathered in one place, and Scarlett, who could definitely neutralize them, was there. There was no better chance to eliminate the Immortals for good.

“So I killed her.”

Asking Cristina if the Gate Incident was over had been a necessary form of confirmation. If the Gate Incident had truly ended, it was time for the Immortals to vanish.

Timing was everything. If Cristina had been killed too soon, the Immortals would have crushed the Allied Forces. But if she were killed too late, no one would be able to stand against the rampaging Immortals.

Therefore, Anna had bided her time, waiting for the safest and most certain moment to end Cristina’s life. She had been following Vertus’s orders, though it was unclear when he had first approached her. She had waited patiently for the right moment, the moment when it was finally okay to kill Cristina.

A friend of theirs had died. Cristina, in her efforts to revive that friend, had only to put others in danger. And another friend, with a heavy heart, had ended her very life with their own hands.

Sometimes, it takes friends turning on each other to bring certain things to an end.

Absurdly, Cristina had met her end at the hands of a friend. This meant Cristina was not even a third-rate villain. She had never been able to suspect a friend until it was too late. She was a truly inferior and naive villain.

Anna draped Cristina’s lifeless body over her back and looked over at Louis. Cristina’s bright red blood flowed down her back, staining her clothes.

Anna had carried out Vertus’s command.

There had been no promise exchanged for this task. Vertus had no intention of rewarding Anna, and Anna had no expectation of receiving anything. It had felt like something she’d have to do, and so she did it. Just as Cristina had done what had felt necessary to her.

Anna had not desired anything specific, and Vertus was not anticipating anything more from her. The Empire was destined to crumble, so any promises Vertus made were pointless.

“Let’s go,” she said.

But there was nowhere left to go.

Louis Ankton, who had been a silent but willing pair of hands, murmured absently, “Where to...?”

‘Is there anywhere we should go? Is there anywhere we can go?’

The three of them were criminals, destined to be remembered for their deeds, with no place left to call home.

“Well...”

Anna hesitated, glancing back at the lifeless body of a friend she had killed with her own hands.

“There... must be somewhere we should go,” she murmured, a hollow laugh escaping her lips.

There was madness creeping into those eyes, which were devoid of life.