"He is trying to kill you, my lord," the maid spoke to Geisha, her knee planted on the ground and one hand resting on her lap as she spoke. Her voice oozed with fear and respect for him. She dared not lift her head to even look at him.

Geisha sat on his stone throne, leaned to the side, his fingers pressed on the side of his head and elbow on the armrest.

He looked unbothered by what she had said. After a while, he finally spoke.

"That much is expected. The only factor is that he will fail. The kid is ambitious, and I have seen him battle, but it is safe to say he doesn’t have what it takes to actually kill someone like me." He pushed himself up and then pressed his fingers together.

"That being said, the kid is a threat." His eyes glowed with a sinister light, his tone turned heavy, and everything about him returned to his normal dark and gritty state. "The more he learns, the harder this becomes, and the risk rises.

He is special, and not to me alone, to humanity and even to the gods. Someone like that is not just simple."

"What will you have me do now? I’ll get it done for sure," she spoke.

"We need to implement a distraction. If the kid’s eyes remain on me, things will get hard for me. I could have taken him while he slept, but my plan isn’t complete yet. I sold him the lie that I’m waiting for him to get strong enough.

That alone should buy me enough time to remove his mind from me for the moment, especially with the distraction." He leaned back down onto the chair and crossed his legs. His eyes glowed more and his sharp teeth showed as he smiled.

"When everything is done, I’ll destroy all humanity first and use them to grow my strength, and then I’ll take every other race that lives in this domain one after the other. Every powerful being, every god-like entity, I’ll have them all, and at the end I’ll become the strongest, and then finally, I’ll change my body into the new and perfect one that Aren holds." He licked his lips as though he could taste the victory already.

He got on his feet and walked toward her.

"Learn to trust my process. Before I was killed, I told you that the same race that killed me will bring me back.

Show a weak man your strength and he will call you a god. He will worship you in desperation, and one day he’ll lay down his life for you.

I set everything in play before my death because I knew that there was no way I could ever take down that Wargod and his brother, the architect. Those two were something else, so I had to plant the seeds, especially in his brother. He was the support that was never seen and the one that I could use for what I wanted, and it all worked out.

Now here I am. The Wargod is no longer around, and so is his brother. Are they dead? Probably not, but the gods have whisked them away to their bloody war.

Now humanity is free for the taking, and all other races too, and no one is strong enough to stop me. If I had given Aren a few more years, then he would have probably been an issue, but sadly he is not, and will die before he can be."

He placed his hand on her shoulder and looked down at her.

"The distraction is simple. It seems my old friend is itching to come back from the abyss. She sent a demon. All we have to do is send Aren on a goose chase to make him try to stop the demon from opening it while we go from behind and do it ourselves. We will trigger the apocalypse humans did not expect, and it will serve as the right time.

So when you leave here, release that demon and make sure that fallen angel isn’t there to stop you. She is another pain in the ass, but for the sake of my deal with Aren, I’ll not kill her yet."

When he finished what he was saying, he returned back to his throne and sat down. He looked at her for a bit and then spoke again.

"Also, find my brother, and tell him I’ll be coming home soon. It’s been a while we have been there."

She was stunned when she heard that. She looked up as if to confirm, but then realized what she had done and immediately looked down.

"The journey to your home is extremely long, my lord," she pointed out.

"I know. I’ll find a way to make time for all of it. Just connect with my brother and tell him. You can still do that, right?" he asked.

"Yes, as long as your brother is inside the domain, I can still find him," she replied.

"Alright, you may leave now, and take care of our guests, please."

The maid rose to her feet and gave a bow before she walked away, leaving the throne room. The guards opened the door for her and she walked out.

The moment she stepped outside, she saw Lucy standing there, looking right at her.

"Why are you here?" she asked immediately. If looks could kill, it would have killed Lucy already.

"You half demon, where is your master?" Lucy demanded.

"If you have a death wish, then ask for my lord again," the maid threatened.

Lucy frowned. "I don’t trust you or your master, and the fact that the demon is still alive tells me all I need to know. The gates to the abyss cannot and will not be opened. That will be the end of all humanity and many, many other races," Lucy warned.

"I’d kill every human myself from every world if I had the chance," the maid replied.