Demon King: Hero, don't run away!

"You’ve misunderstood something.

I know exactly what the diary is really saying, and I also know what kind of consequences this will bring.

Precisely because of that, I came out early from the kingdom of the Nine-Life Cat Demons, stood in front of you, and stopped you.

Don’t slap a bunch of labels on me just because I made a choice that’s different from what you had in mind.

Whether I’m standing on their side or not—that’s up to everyone’s own interpretation.

If everything has to be about picking sides, then that kind of world really is a mess."

Yang Yu smiled at Lux, without the slightest sense of urgency one should feel in front of a powerful enemy.

Lux’s face clearly showed displeasure: "Don’t try to switch concepts on me.

You talk like this.

And now you come to stop me—what exactly for?"

"I just... thought of some other possibilities, and there are a few questions I want to ask the goddess."

Yang Yu said seriously,

"Hero Lox—let me, for now, call you Hero Lox!

You should know that different Sub-human Species can have offspring together.

All Subhumans are a type of Human.

The same species, after ten thousand years of geographic isolation, will form reproductive isolation and eventually turn into different species. The sperm and eggs they each carry can no longer form viable gametes, and thus they can’t give birth to offspring with reproductive ability.

You know this bit of knowledge, right?"

Lux didn’t know what Yang Yu was up to, but he still replied calmly:

"That’s right, the Subhumans and Humans living in this world are all Humans.

Even though their forms are as different as Tibetan Mastiffs and Chihuahuas, they still belong to the same species.

It really is laughable.

Judging by how different they look, that’s one thing.

But even Humans who look almost the same, as long as they live in different countries, different regions, will, for all kinds of reasons, slaughter each other.

Humans in the past had such a history too.

But they finally overcame all sorts of difficulties, united as one, and reached unprecedented prosperity.

If the goddess hadn’t appeared, they surely would have spread the Flame of civilization from this land to the rest of existence.

Yet all of that crumbled into dust because of the goddess’s appearance.

I’d like to see what unique insight you could possibly have."

After pondering for a moment, Yang Yu slowly spoke:

"So this is where the divergence begins, after all.

Lux, what I want to say is: perhaps the goddess never intended to destroy our civilization and turn us into their Favored Clan.

If she really wanted to destroy our civilization, there are countless ways to do it. She wouldn’t foolishly fall into the trap of the Ancient Humans.

The ones who destroyed Humans might well have been Humans themselves.

Lux, in the party you assembled to defeat the Demon King, there was a mixed-blood child of an Angel and a Human.

Why can an Angel and a Human have a child?

If Angels really are an extraterrestrial civilization, then there are tens of millions of light-years between them and us. That immense distance and long span of time would be enough for reproductive isolation to form between us.

Yet Angels and Humans still produced offspring.

Lux, what do you think is going on there?"

For a while, Lux didn’t know how to answer Yang Yu’s question. It wasn’t that he’d never thought about it—he had tried to seek answers from the past. But none of those answers fit his ideals.

If we follow those theories, then Angels who can have children with Humans are, without a doubt, also Humans.

"If Angels truly think Humans are a base and worthless race and want to completely wipe us out, then why lower themselves, copy our genes, and have mixed-blood children with us?"

Lux immediately refuted Yang Yu: "There might be some conspiracy behind that!

They can’t adapt to the current Magic World, so they thought of such a strategy.

That’s right.

As long as they can have mixed-blood offspring with Humans living in this world, then they have a chance to control those mixed-blood children and slip into this world without anyone noticing, to carry out their own plans."

Yang Yu let out another long sigh: "Who couldn’t cook up a conspiracy theory when they don’t have enough evidence?

Right now I could just say that the goddess civilization from outer space is actually the Humans who once lived in this world. A long time ago, a great catastrophe befell this world. Those with advanced technology chose to abandon a portion of the population and flee to another planet.

What those refugees never expected was that tens of thousands of years later, the people they’d abandoned not only failed to die out on the original planet, but slowly dragged themselves back to the age of civilization and gained the ability for interstellar travel.

With no supporting evidence at all, this logical-sounding claim of mine could still be made to sound perfectly plausible.

Who knows... maybe that’s really how it is.

However, I’d rather believe another possibility.

Lux, you say they have mixed-blood offspring with Humans so they can secretly infiltrate this world, so I have to ask you properly.

Your former companion Amon—do you, in your heart, really see him as nothing but a puppet of the Angels, and not a living, breathing person who truly existed in this world?

What kind of life did he live, what agonizing choices did he face...

You saw all of that with your own eyes, didn’t you?

Not only him—your companions, what sort of lives they each lived... You’ve also read through the complete history recorded by the Nine-Life Cat Demons, haven’t you?"

Lux fell into Silence.

Thinking back on the life Amon had experienced, every choice he made came from his own will—at least Lux believed it was his own self-will, not the result of anyone’s manipulation.

When he first met Amon, Amon once told Lux that his father had relied on one resolute decision after another to win over his mother, who was like an iceberg. Even though his mother rejected him countless times, she eventually still fell in love.

Amon had always been proud to be their son. Even in the end, when he was eroded by Darkness under that immense pressure, he never felt any regret.

Amon was always a living, breathing person of this world. Even now, he lives on in Lux’s heart.

Not only him—the other companions were the same.

Their faces and laughter surfaced in Lux’s mind; he had spent countless beautiful years with them.

Some moments were so beautiful that Lux once thought he didn’t deserve to have what he had now.

All of this came only because he accidentally killed the Hero and snatched it all from the Hero’s hands.

If the Hero had such outstanding companions, then no matter how foul his personality was, after a series of adventures he would certainly have grown, hoisted up the banner of Hero.

...Instead of leaving it to a fake like him, with unstable strength, to take the companions and go adventuring.