Chapter 189: Alliance of the Fugitive and the Demon Queen

Ophelia’s proposal remained in front of Ryan as she kept her hand extended toward him.

He observed her calmly. He already knew her motives and she didn’t seem to be lying, of course, he still couldn’t firmly trust her.

Dealing face to face with a demon king in her own territory wasn’t something that could be taken lightly.

He knew well how power structures operated in this world. He knew how quickly that race could change their mind or break agreements if their own interests were affected by external matters.

However, rejecting her offer while already at this point would not only be a mistake on his part.

It meant losing a direct opportunity to use the enemy faction’s abundant resources in his favor, and also losing the small information network he now had regarding Rigal’s movements.

Turning his back on Ophelia right now also implied having to face two separate demon king factions in the future.

’So, working hand in hand as allies will at least give me the possibility for my party to level up; Helen, Mirian, and Karol cannot continue being simple S-rank warriors.’

Ryan began to review the status of the stats of the heroines accompanying him in the village.

In the human nations, reaching the S-rank was seen as the maximum level of existing power. The absolute ceiling a mortal body could aspire to before being unable to withstand any more mana accumulation inside.

But the overwhelming difference in strength he verified firsthand upon seeing Helen being so easily bested by Ivis’s dragon form at the dungeon entrance demonstrated a very harsh reality.

The simple base stats of a high-ranking demon would kill them in a real combat without training restrictions.

If he wanted to protect them and ensure that his entire party survived the dangers of this continent in the long term, he needed to expose them to real enemies.

He needed to put them into a large-scale war environment to force them to break those system limits through pure continuous combat experience.

Ryan began to think about this situation, and his true benefits of collaborating with this demon queen. Even if he couldn’t trust her blindly.

At least in his view, he was fine with that.

He didn’t need her friendship, nor did he need her to trust him either. He only needed to use Ophelia’s enormous resources as the main battlefront.

’But, even so, after hearing everything she said. For her, the best thing would be to kill Demon King Rohan’s daughter.’

The reasoning crossed Ryan’s mind with crushing logic as he still held off on taking the queen’s hand.

If the parasitic deity strictly needed a body that contained a demon king lineage, but was defective as a vessel in order to take control, that fugitive girl was the centerpiece of the entire enemy plan.

If Ophelia truly wanted to stop the incarnation ritual and prevent that entity from obtaining a physical body at all costs, the simplest order would have been to attack the weak root.

The most direct course of action would have been to send her own stealth-expert assassins to hunt down Zelyn across the entire continent and kill the vessel before Rigal or his troops found her first.

The matter was still being evaluated while Ryan’s thoughts still analyzed the final details of the entire purpose of this alliance.

’No, I am sure she already considered that option. But that doesn’t solve the problem... If she were to die, sooner or later they would get a substitute. For Ophelia the most viable option is to eliminate the middleman.’

The corrupting power of a deity wasn’t going to stop forever simply because they lost a single key piece on their game board.

If the girl died, the deity would look for another bastard descendant in the future.

They could even manipulate the mind of another infernal-rank demon in some distant place of the world to force him to conceive a new defective vessel as time passed.

As long as Demon King Rigal remained alive, he would continue providing the immense military force, the resources, and the safe and protected territory.

The threat of incarnation would inevitably continue growing on the demonic continent as long as that middleman continued operating.

Ryan let out a heavy sigh. Then he looked her directly in the eyes as he extended his hand toward her.

’I mean, eliminate Demon King Rigal.’

Their hands met in a firm handshake, a handshake that marked an implicit alliance between a fugitive human and a demon king.

A solid plan, with a common objective, where both sides would benefit.

The alliance that was about to be formed was, of course, being completely ignored by all the nations of the world, including human kingdoms, elves, and demons.

The church and the strict order of the holy knights continued to blindly believe that Ryan was just a simple criminal heretic acting alone, hiding cowardly in some forest in the human world.

They didn’t have the slightest idea that he was standing at that very moment in enemy lands, closing a direct political and military deal that would completely alter the balance of power in the demonic lands.

No one knew that the fate of the nations was being decided in a simple secluded cabin.

And of course, for the deity as well.

While the wind tossed their hair, the handshake continued to dissipate the distance between them.

Ophelia seemed to quickly notice that Ryan had set aside his defensive and constantly calculating attitude to finally accept the terms of this war.

"That is great, in the end you decided to collaborate with me." Ophelia said, placing her other hand on top of the back of Ryan’s hand, shaking it.

Then she let go of him with a wide smile, keeping her hair from blowing into her face while looking at him.

The heavy and almost suffocating tension that had filled the small cabin during her entire explanation about the massacre on the border finally disappeared completely.

The atmosphere gave way to a much more relaxed and casual attitude from the ruler of Morrisen.

"So, after this battle is over, I will be considered a demon king, huh?" Ryan asked, remembering the exact same words Ophelia said in the dungeon when she visited them.

To the human world and the rigid political system of the church, any individual who managed to take control of troops and possessed or conquered the territory of a demon king was categorized under that exact same world-danger-level status.

It didn’t matter if it was an original demon or a human, the system would immediately label him as an annihilation threat.

"Ha, ha, ha," she laughed out loud. "Yes, but do not let that worry you, it is a much better title than simply being called a heretic."

The woman’s clear laugh demonstrated that to her, all the titles and renown dictated by the human nations were nothing more than a simple political joke without any kind of real combat value.

’No, they will surely give me much worse nicknames after that. Not that it matters much either.’

Being formally called a demon king, traitor to humanity, or S-rank criminal did not reduce his accumulated stats.

Nor did it nullify in any way his debt skill, which was the very basis of his entire survival in this hostile environment.

In the end, this world’s system only recognized true power, the gathering of levels, and the final results obtained after surviving death on the battlefield. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Then Ryan looked at her with curiosity.

Despite having sealed the alliance and agreed upon the objectives, there was one final detail in this entire long conversation that didn’t quite fit for him.

A reasonable doubt regarding the powerful mass mental control that the deity exerted over infernal-level demons, just as Ophelia had mentioned in her disturbing tale.

If the deity could brainwash an infernal general and an entire town without them even noticing the manipulation, anyone on that continent could be an inactive agent.

"By the way, and how are you so sure that I am not being manipulated by the deity and this is all a fake?"