As ht now, there was a lot happening all at ohe great assembly, the demon lord problem, the whole Inkia thing, and, of course, those pesky outsiders. Burn and Man didn’t ge much, except for one particurly hy detail—about the demon lord.

  “After I pried into this guy’s mind, I’m pretty sure he felt me probing around in there. The abyss stares back,” Man remarked dryly, as she and the great assembly circled the unfortunate sve sprawled on a gurney beside the ever-watchful world tree.

  “Which is precisely why I insisted we clear everyo of Princess Shorof’s room,” Man tinued. “We should lock off that er of the Elven Pace to quarahe corrupted tris.”

  They didn’t fully uand what this demon lord was capable of, but Man had a rather vivid idea. He could fio a mind prison, all thanks to some corrupted artifacts festering in Soulnaught’s treasury.

  The thought of him wielding the same power using Shorof’s tris left a sour taste in her mouth. Taking any ces felt like pying poker with a magi—utterly foolish.

  After all, i loop, the demon lord had presumably been plotting against her the very moment Shorof slipped from his clutches. It was as if he was sitting back, pop in hand, fully aware of her growing awareness. The sed those tris were lifted from Shorof, it was game on.

  Now, stepping into the treasury—the sacred vault of a king long since fallen—was Man’s opening. Too bad for her, the demon lord was ruthless enough not to let this opportunity vanish into the ether.

  It was a cssic case of “you snooze, you lose,” except in this case, the loser would find themselves locked away in their own mind, courtesy of the demon lord’s insidious curse. Quite the poetiale, wouldn’t you say?

  And Burn would be forced to take her life agaiarting the loop.

  “This is a rather stark departure from the demon lord we used to know, Miss Momo,” Vd grimly said. “A mind prison? Cursing you through some long-dormant corrupted artifact from afar? Just how powerful is this demon lord?”

  “Let’s not fet that the sands of time don’t just creep on us; they froli the abyss, too. If they were never really vanquished, five hundred years is ample time to build a veritable empire of corruption,” Man said.

  “Just like how I’ve accumuted my soul energy to se this world, it seems they’ve been biding their time, sharpening their cws for the perfeent to pounce,” Man gritted her teeth, the weight of her past bearing down.

  If Merlin hadn’t stripped her of her power—

  “Fair Miss Momo, let us not tarry overmu self-reproach,” Isaiah intoned with gentle gravitas. “It doth seem our newly risen demon lord is a master of ing, ensced in shadows as he doth orchestrate a grand game of chess, whilst we merely fil about in the simplicities of checkers. He presents a far more intricate mehan any we have entered heretofore.”

  “This is my inadequacy,” Man said. “I am not fit for sainthood.”

  Burn’s eyebrows immediately twitched. He narrowed his eyes, not even hiding his displeasure at her statement. “Ah yes, let’s chalk this all up to negligen your part again,” he said, his frown deepening. “Just what we needed—extra guilt on top of our ever-growing list of ominous problems.”

  “Caliburn,” Man helplessly sighed.

  The man turned his face away in irritation.

  “Whoever this demon lord is,” Burn said with a resigned sigh, “he’s mao poison my father with that corrupted mana and py puppet master with the minds of the elven youths.”

  He tinued, “Other than that, I also list a few suspicious deaths of important folks scattered around the globe a few years baot ting my father.”

  “The pope of Luminus, for instance, vely expired from ‘old age’—he was the same age as my father, not young, but not old. Inkia’s former prime minister, who had an act, because, you know, those just happen. Wintersin’s prince was killed in a civil war...” Burn frowned, his nont expression fading into gravity as he tinued, “Yvain’s father.”

  A heavy silence desded, the kind usually reserved for funerals—

  “And my husband,” Tashr suddenly added, her voice trembling like a wavering dle fme. She began to sway from the weight of the revetions and specutions. Isaiah, qui his feet, caught her before she became a human rug, saving her from a rather unceremonious fall.

  “At this point, we’re clueless about what method he used to execute them—whether it was the same teique or with various dark usages of corrupted mana,” Man muttered dryly.

  “But the demon lord res to such tactics means he realized he couldn’t just bully his way through this world like the first demon lord,” Burn replied. “Even after you’ve lost all your soul energy, Man.”

  “No,” Maed, shaking her head. “Yes, perhaps it was I who kept him in check before. But then we had those outsiders—and especially you.”

  Burn’s march of quest across the ti had given the demon lord more than enough reason to py hide-and-seek in the shadows. Why charge out with swords bzing when you have a very real ce of tripping over Burn or rubbing elbows with those unlimitedly resourceful outsiders?

  And given how things have unfolded, it ainfully clear why the demon lord opted for the quiet life while Burn was out there, bravely (or brashly) trying to rewrite the rules. The darkends to take a low profile when the spotlight is on a show-off.

  “Your presence forced him to stay hidden. Until...” Man g the unfortunate soul on the gurney. “Until we iently stumbled upon the beast.”

  The butterfly had fpped its wings.

  Man had specuted about the demon lord’s emergen the previous loop—a’s not fet her delightful little soiree in his curse—but only now was the firmatioling in like a particurly bitter tea.

  “Today,” she decred, her voice deepening, “I, Man Le Fay, hereby procim the e of the sed Holy War.”

  “Let’s begin the Crusades.”