The crimson eyes of the Demon King Iris reflected the cold, mocking expression of the Heroine Furenna. The faint, almost bored expression she wore seemed to ripple slightly at the words.
A curve touched her lips—not a pleasant one, but more a sign of displeasure at an unexpected reaction.
“It seems the recovery truly is progressing well,”
the Demon King’s voice remained steady, yet carried an added, indescribable, spine-chilling note of amusement,
“given you already have the energy and the strength to talk back to me.”
“Still as sharp-tongued as ever, I see. But in your current situation, that’s not a good thing.”
Furenna’s eyes narrowed, her mind already forming another instinctive retort to hurl back—
THUMP—!
An invisible, intangible, yet massive and mountain-like oppressive aura descended without warning!
“Ungh—!”
Furenna only managed a short, choked gasp. Her pupils dilated instantly. Everything before her eyes—
the Demon King’s figure, the eerie green moss, the cold walls—warped and dimmed at once!
It was as if the weight and chill of the entire world had been concentrated in that single moment, crushing down mercilessly upon her already bruised and burdened spine!
The strength in her legs vanished in a thousandth of a second. Her knees slammed uncontrollably onto the cold, rough stone floor with a sickening crack.
Immediately after, her upper body could no longer hold itself up. Her entire person fell forward like a moth swatted down by an invisible, giant palm, collapsing heavily to the ground, prostrate.
Her cheek pressed against the icy floor. Her silver hair, disheveled from the violent motion, fanned out across the dark flagstones.
It wasn’t just her body being forcibly pressed down.
That oppressive aura seeped into her limbs and bones, violently squeezing her internal organs. Her breathing instantly became as difficult as a broken bellows. A piercing, bone-deep cold invaded her marrow, nearly freezing the flow of her blood.
Worse was the fear, a pressure that reached directly into her mind, like the deepest nightmare descending, attempting to crush all thought of resistance, making her want to prostrate herself in worship from the depths of her soul, to abandon all struggle.
This was the pure magical pressure emanating from Demon King Iris.
Having lost her own magic, Furenna had no way to resist this force.
“Cough… cough…”
Her lungs struggled to move air. A coppery taste rose in her throat.
Iris paced slowly, the gleaming tip of her boot coming to a stop at the very edge of Furenna’s lowered line of sight.
She leaned down slightly. Her voice came from above, still betraying little emotion, but laced with a horrifyingly “instructive” tone:
“A sharp tongue isn’t endearing, my dear little Heroine.”
She seemed to sigh lightly, with a touch of false regret, and continued,
“I thought the first lesson was sufficient to teach you how to curb that pointless edge and clever talk while you are here.
But it seems now…”
The invisible pressure vanished as suddenly as it had come, like a receding tide.
“…the dosage was insufficient.”
The sudden disappearance of the pressure brought a wave of weakness and a backlash of violent coughing that sent another shudder through Furenna’s curled form.
She gasped for air in great heaves, each inhalation tugging at the dull ache in her abdomen and the lingering pressure in her chest.
She tried to stand, but lacked the strength.
Yet the young Heroine did not try to scramble to her feet immediately, nor did she make any sound of lament or weakness.
Instead, using all her might, she laboriously, bit by bit, lifted her head, which felt as heavy as if filled with lead.
Her silver hair stuck in disarray to her sweaty forehead and cheeks, a few strands even stained with the bloody froth from her own coughing.
But the amber eyes that lifted to meet the Demon King’s held no tears, no fear. Only a towering, blazing fury and an unyielding will that burned even more intensely after being forcibly suppressed, almost on the verge of erupting.
The fury was so pure, so bright, it seemed it would incinerate the very being before her who had brought all this humiliation and pain.
Meeting this gaze seemed to please Demon King Iris even more.
She straightened up, crossed her arms, and regarded Furenna’s current state—a mix of embarrassment and defiance—with leisurely appreciation.
“However, I didn’t come today to review old lessons.”
The Demon King changed tack, her tone becoming somewhat lighter, almost conversational.
“Actually, I have some news for you.”
“One piece of good news, one piece of bad news. Heroine Furenna, which would you like to hear first?”
Furenna continued to glare at her fiercely, her chest rising and falling with her breaths, but she remained stubbornly silent.
“Hmm? No choice?”
Iris raised an eyebrow, a dangerous glint flashing in her crimson eyes.
Furenna finally caught her breath enough to speak, her tone stiff and accusatory:
“I’d rather first ask about that human girl called Xiao Ling!”
Silence stretched, filled with a wordless standoff.
After a few seconds, Iris seemed to shake her head with a touch of regret.
“It seems you’re learning the content of the first lesson faster than I imagined.”
She said it softly, as if remarking on a trivial matter.
The moment the words left her mouth—
“Ungh!”
That heavy, icy pressure descended once more!
But this time, it wasn’t a sudden explosion. It was like a slowly rising tide, increasing bit by bit, strand by strand,
pressing down upon Furenna’s body and soul, which had just regained some semblance of feeling.
Even though it wasn’t violent, it carried an undeniable, steadily growing sense of suffocation,
as if measuring the limits of Furenna’s endurance, reminding her who held absolute control.
Furenna’s body tensed again. She clenched her teeth, resisting the increasing weight and cold, a low groan escaping her throat.
She tried to straighten her spine, but under the relentlessly growing pressure, the effort was utterly futile. She could only manage to keep herself from being pressed flat onto the floor again.
“I believe I reminded you,”
Demon King Iris’s voice was exceptionally clear and cold within the gradually intensifying pressure,
“not to try bargaining with me, or taking matters into your own hands, while you are here.”
“What you need to do now is listen. And then… obey.”
The pressure increased another notch.
Furenna felt her very bones groaning under the strain.
The edges of her vision began to darken.
“Bad news.”
Finally, three words were forced with immense difficulty from between her tightly clenched teeth.
“Very good.”
The pressure dissipated as slowly as it had appeared.
A smile that could almost be called “gentle” appeared on Demon King Iris’s face, as if genuinely pleased by her student’s “progress.”
She took a few steps forward and crouched down in front of Furenna.
Then, she performed an action that made every muscle in Furenna’s body freeze instantly.
Demon King Iris reached out and lightly patted the top of Furenna’s head, covered in dust and sweat, with her black-leather-gloved hand.
The gesture was casual, as if petting a misbehaving pet that had finally obeyed.
“The bad news is—”
Iris’s tone even took on a hint of deliberately sorrowful regret,
“my dear little Heroine, for a period of time to come—perhaps a few weeks, perhaps a little longer—
I’m afraid I won’t have much leisure to come visit you personally.”
“You’ll have a little stretch of time… without my presence. Doesn’t that seem a bit… lonely?”
The pat on the head wasn’t heavy, but it filled Furenna with more humiliation and fury than any direct blow.
She jerked her head to the side, trying to pull away, but the Demon King’s hand had already withdrawn.
The Heroine lifted her eyes. The fury in her amber gaze was almost tangible, a mix of ferocious, extreme loathing and icy coldness:
“…And the good news?”
“Oh, my,”
Iris immediately adopted an exaggerated, utterly fake expression of sorrow, even pretending to wipe away a nonexistent tear from the corner of her eye with a fingertip.
“To think you wouldn’t feel the least bit sad about not seeing me for so long, and only care about the good news? That hurts my feelings so much~”
Even as she spoke of being hurt, the smile on her face grew brighter. In her crimson eyes, mockery and a glint of something almost cruel danced together.
“But, who am I to deny a student? I am, after all, a merciful teacher.”
Iris stood up, brushing non-existent dust from her hands. Her tone shifted.
“The good news is—”
Her voice turned frigid. Simultaneously, without any warning whatsoever,
her right fist, which hung at her side,
wrapped in a tightly condensed, intensely concentrated aura of dark red magical light,
shot forward with a speed Furenna couldn’t possibly react to,
and struck her completely unprotected abdomen with brutal force!
THUD—!
A dull, heart-stopping impact.
There was no explosive sound of shattering bone, but the concentrated force penetrated like the heaviest battering ram, bypassing the cushion of flesh and fat to land squarely, devastatingly, on her internal organs!
“Hah—!”
Furenna’s eyes bulged instantly. Her pupils contracted to pinpoints!
All sound, all cries of pain, all breath were completely strangled in her throat by this indescribable agony in that single moment!
She couldn’t even feel her own lungs. She only felt a wave of destructive impact explode within her abdominal cavity, churning, tearing, crushing everything inside!
Her vision was instantly replaced by pure black and white and flashing stars. Her ears filled only with the roar of rushing blood and the phantom sound of her own organs screaming.
Time seemed to stand still.
The young Heroine remained frozen in a twisted posture—slightly hunched forward, hands instinctively moving to cover her abdomen—as if the moment of her collapse had been stretched into infinity.
Only the instantaneous, all-consuming agony that set every nerve screaming reminded her of what had happened.
It took several long seconds before the air, forcibly trapped, burst from Furenna’s convulsing throat along with bloody froth and a fractured groan of pain.
“Cough—! Gag—!”
She could no longer maintain her posture. Her entire body went limp as if all her bones had been removed, collapsing weakly to one side, curling into a ball on the floor.
Her body spasmed violently, uncontrollably. She retched dryly, vomiting up nothing but tears that flowed freely, mixed with blood seeping from the corner of her mouth.
The explosive, center-of-the-storm pain in her abdomen didn’t fade with the end of the blow. Instead, like ripples from a stone tossed into a pond, it spread out in deeper, more persistent waves of cramping agony.
Every attempt to breathe became torture. Her vision blackened in waves; she was on the verge of losing consciousness.
Yet, just as Furenna’s awareness was about to be submerged by the pain, a cold hand shot forward,
clutching without a shred of mercy the silver hair scattered on the floor, matted with dust and tears, and yanked it upwards—hard!
“Agh—!”
A tearing pain erupted across her scalp, forcing Furenna to follow the motion, compelled to lift her head and expose a face twisted and pale as paper from extreme agony.
Iris’s face was now inches away. The false sorrow was gone, replaced by a pure, delighted smile. Her crimson eyes curved like crescents as she savored every detail of Furenna’s pained expression, as if appreciating a masterpiece.
“See? So much quieter this way.”
The Demon King’s voice was as soft as a lullaby, but the words were cold as blades.
“Always so prickly, all claws and defiance. So unappealing. You need to learn empathy, Furenna.”
She tilted her head slightly, her smile widening. She enunciated each word clearly as she made her announcement:
“The good news is, let us officially begin the second lesson.”
“The theme is—”
Demon King Iris paused, admiring the way Furenna’s amber eyes, scattered from pain and suffocation, yet instinctively gathered a flicker of defiant light at the word “lesson.” She slowly uttered the deeply ironic phrase:
“—learning empathy. And understanding.”
“I will miss you terribly during my absence. Shouldn’t that be a two-way street?”
“I will personally teach you how to let go of that pointless pride and stubbornness. How to feel, to comprehend…”
“And to make the correct choice.”
As her words faded, the eerie light of the dungeon seemed to grow even colder in their wake.
In her agony and suffocation, Furenna’s blurred vision held only the Demon King’s face, wearing its cruel smile, and those words, lingering like a curse.