Rebirth of the 8th-Circle Mage

Everything happened in the blink of an eye.

The giant hand stretched out and clutched Henry viciously, and in a flash, it disappeared into the Demon Realm Gap.

Henry was plunged into darkness. He eventually heard something break, and he could finally see after that.

He quickly looked to see what had shattered, and he saw the shards of the Magic Shield he had involuntarily cast.

After making sure he hadn’t sustained any injuries, Henry took a look around, and he got goosebumps all over the body as soon as he recognized his surroundings.

‘This is…!’

There was a violet milky way that stretched across the sky, which was dark as the space, and the landscape had the reddish hue of the sunset.

Shadowy rocks stretched out into the distance as though thunderbolts had wrecked the whole area, and the air was filled with toxins that could kill a person in an instant.

This mysterious landscape was unlike anything Henry had ever seen before, not even in his wildest dreams. It was strangely harmonious and paradoxically beautiful.

Indeed, this was the Demon Realm. Henry had never been here before, but he could instinctively recognize what this realm was.

“The Demon Realm….!”

Henry couldn’t help but exclaim in admiration. He wondered if he was the first human to ever set foot in this realm.

But his admiration was short lived, as a huge shadow loomed over his head. Henry instinctively cast his Magic Shield as he felt the murderous presence above him.

Boom!

He was hit with tremendous force, a powerful vibration surging through his head. His head was throbbing, and he felt like his eardrums were about to pop.

It was a massive fist that had rung his bell, and Henry immediately recognized that it was the same hand that had dragged him here.

- Kraaaaa!

The ground was shaken by a bone-chilling cry, one that couldn’t be compared to that of a wild beast. A powerful gust of wind quickly followed, causing Henry’s clothing to flap and his hair to flutter.

The fierce wind caught the dust scattered by the earth-shattering roar and turned into a giant whirlwind.

“Sword on.”

Henry summoned his Colt Sword and swiftly infused mana and divine power into it. Then he swung it with great speed at the giant fist that was pushing against his Magic Shield, threatening to break through it.

Henry’s blade sent forth a golden light that arched into the opponent, like a majestic wave crashing into a cliff. The radiant slash left a long crimson line on the giant’s fist, proof that Henry’s slash was effective.

The giant cried out in pain and withdrew his fist.

The looming shadow that had been obscuring Henry’s vision finally disappeared, and he finally got a chance to look at the visage of his kidnapper.

Henry looked up, but his gaze wouldn’t reach the giant’s face.

“How tall is this…!”

The giant was so incredibly tall that Henry couldn’t spot its face.

It was simply absurd.

Ogres and trolls, who were four to five meters tall, were essentially infants compared to this giant.

Besides his height, the giant was so absurdly robust that its bulging muscles were obscuring his face from anyone looking up at him.

“Fly.”

Henry immediately soared into the sky, traveling upward until he could make eye contact with the creature. He flew at such great speed that he seemed to cleave through the air.

He finally reached the creature’s face, but he couldn’t see its eyes, for they were concealed by what looked like a blindfold. Actually, the material looked too sturdy to be a blindfold; it was closer to a helmet.

The creature’s eyes were also partially covered by dark, tousled hair like that of a vagabond.

Whoosh!

Just then, the creature swung its giant hand at Henry, who used Fly to swiftly dodge the attack, but the creature was unrelenting.

‘Damn it! I must look like a fly or a mosquito right now!’

Henry felt rather offended by how the creature kept swinging its hand at him as though it were trying to get rid of a pesky mosquito in the summer.

However, the good part was that the attacks were quite easy to evade. In fact, Henry quickly got used to the telegraphed swings that he felt like yawning.

He shook his head as he continued to fly at high speed.

‘It’s too predictable and boring.’

The creature’s swings were destructive and fast, but it was exceedingly easy to predict their trajectory.

After dodging countless attacks, Henry decided to change things up.

He flew high above the creature, completely out of its reach, and stared at it. Compared to before, the creature seemed tiny now.

Henry held his sword with both hands. Part of him wanted to unleash a destructive magic bombardment, but magic seemed like an inappropriate form of revenge for a creature that had treated him like a mosquito, so he opted for the sword.

Henry took a proper stance and pointed his sword at his target. He then concentrated and a golden glow radiated from the tip of his sword.

The bright glow soon stabilized itself and expanded endlessly, looking like a golden horizon. This was Henry’s Aura blade wrapped in his divine power.

Henry raised his Aura blade and shouted, “Milky Way Strike!”

Whoosh!

This final attack, which Henry considered better than a magic bombardment, was none other than Von’s decisive skill, the Milky Way Strike.

Henry swung his Aura blade in a downward arc at lightning speed, and being a weightless mass of energy, the long Aura blade flew effortlessly toward the enemy, drawing a crescent moon in the sky.

After reaching its target, the Aura blade returned to Henry with the same crescent trajectory, ultimately drawing a golden circle that looked like a waning moon.

When Henry took back his Aura blade, he thought he had perfectly cut the giant, and as proof…

Thud-!

The seemingly unstoppable giant was split in half vertically, each part of his body falling to either side.

The sunset-red ground was stained by the giant’s black blood, which eventually flowed from the corpse into yet another river.

“That thing was nothing.”

It had been a clean cut, making for a rather spectacular debut for Henry in the Demon Realm.

Henry dismissed his sword and went back on the ground to the fallen creature’s body.

“Anyway, the Demon Realm… Is this really the one who brought me here?”

Henry found it hard to believe that the creature that had managed to take him by surprise and drag him through the Demon Realm Gap had died so easily.

He clicked his tongue and looked down at the bloody remains of the giant. He then turned his head and proceeded to admire the strange but beautiful landscape of the Demon Realm for a while.

After taking in the scenery, Henry started to slowly collect his thoughts.

‘So… I failed to close the Demon Realm Gap once again. On top of that, I still haven’t figured out why the demonic beasts in the forest are going wild or why the First and Second Districts were empty. On top of that, I've been kidnapped to the Demon Realm.’

Henry replayed in his mind everything that had happened so far, and he frowned when he reached a conclusion.

He couldn’t extract any useful information from those events.

‘What the hell is going on?’

Henry was getting frustrated at the fact that he wasn’t even close to fixing anything.

- Master.

Just then, Klever called out to him.

“What is it?”

- I have something to tell you, so if you don’t mind, could you summon me?

At Klever’s polite request, Henry didn’t hesitate to summon him.

Klever appeared before Henry in human form, and he quickly bowed and thanked him for summoning him.

“No need for that, but what’s going on? How come you specifically requested to be summoned?” asked Henry, somewhat confused.

- Master, it seemed that you were having a bit of trouble, so I wanted help even if just a little.

“Ah… Now that I think about it, you’re from the Demon Realm right?”

- That’s right.

“Great, but since you’ve been away from the Demon Realm for quite some time now, how can you help me?”

- I will provide you with information.

“Information?”

- Yes. If you could give me just ten minutes, I shall come up with some information that will satisfy you.

“Ten minutes? Sure, I can wait ten minutes.”

- Thank you, Master.

Klever disappeared as soon as Henry granted him permission, and exactly ten minutes later, he reappeared in front of Henry.

- I’m back, Master.

“Oh, ten minutes sharp. Now then, tell me what information you gathered and how.”

Henry looked rather uninterested as he urged Klever to tell him what he had found.

- Firstly, I spent the ten minutes you gave me to hunt demonic beasts that were nearby.

“Hunt?”

- Yes. One of the abilities that I possess is Consumption, and it allows me to absorb the memories of my opponents.

“...Ah!”

Only then did Henry realize how Klever was trying to help him, curiosity instantly painting his expression.

Seeing Henry’s reaction, Klever continued with his explanation, hoping to live up to his master’s expectations.

- According to the memories of the demonic beasts, the monster you defeated earlier was a candidate for the new Demon King that the Demon God had chosen himself.

Based on the memories he had gathered, Klever first answered the questions Henry would be most curious about.

However, Henry couldn’t help doubting his ears.

“What?”

A Demon King?

Even though that creature was massive, Henry had killed it with a single swing of his sword, so how could the Demon God have chosen that creature as a candidate?

It made no sense, so Henry looked at Klever in disbelief.

Seeing his expression, Klever continued.

- Of course, the information I’ve gathered might not be accurate. However, during the ten minutes you gave me, Master, I consumed twelve different demonic beasts, and I’m telling you the things that all of them knew.

The memories of twelve different demonic beasts had to be a pretty reliable source of information. But that was specifically why Henry found it even harder to believe.

“... So that means I’ve just defeated the Demon King chosen by the Demon God, who only shows up once every ten years or so?”

- I think so.

“...Huh?”

- The candidate’s name was Brillente, and apparently wasn’t always that big. But one day, he suddenly went insane and started consuming all the demons and demonic beasts around him.

“All of a sudden?”

- Yes. After he went insane, all he did was destroy and consume the demonic beasts.

“Then… by any chance, was there someone else who went through the Demon Realm Gap like me and got eaten?”

- Gap as in…

Klever closed his eyes for a moment at Henry’s question. He searched through the memories of demonic beasts he had consumed and slowly nodded.

- There is.

“Damn it!”

His fears were coming together like the pieces of a puzzle.

‘Did Brillente start going insane because I killed the Messiah?’

That thought suddenly flashed through Henry’s mind. He asked Klever about it, but unfortunately, he couldn’t find anything about that in the memories of the demonic beasts he had consumed.

Even without a response from Klever, Henry felt as if the scattered pieces of this puzzle, which had seemed impossible to solve, suddenly fell into place all at once. He was sure of it.

The reason the demonic beasts were still going wild even though the Messiah was dead, the reason the Second and the First Districts had been empty, and finally, the reason there was a new candidate for the Demon King named Brillente who was constantly consuming and destroying things in the Demon Realm…

Henry hadn’t intended to solve everything this way, but he had inadvertently done it. A wave of futility washed over him.

He turned to Klever and said, “Good work, Klever. We should get back now…”

The only thing left was to return to where he had come from.