Demon Lord: Erotic Adventure in Another World-Chapter 490: Bloom: Sea of the Blood Empress

Snow pressed into the wound on her side.

Not cold. Just… wet. Heavy.

Asmodea lay curled in a nest of shattered vines. Her lips were parted, drawing in air that didn't feel like air. Blood soaked the soil beneath her ribs—too much to shape, to control. It was just… spilling.

"I liked this dress…" she whispered, almost dreamily.

Her vision swam.

Frost clung to her lashes.

One of her wings twitched. The other was torn.

Kaaz's footsteps didn't echo. He didn't drag his sword-arm.

He came forward like a shadow cast by a dying flame—tall, straight, inevitable.

He said nothing.

He didn't mock her this time.

He didn't have to.

She tried to lift her arm.

Her fingers curled halfway toward the handle of her knife, then slumped.

Her magic didn't answer. Her vines lay dormant, drained. Torn apart by the enemy's attacks.

For the first time in years, she felt small. Not because she lost—because she wasn't enough. For him. For herself. For what she wanted to be.

Her breath shook.

Her heart didn't.

"You were always the weak one."

That wasn't Kaaz.

That was her.

The voice inside—the one that wore her voice like a costume when she doubted herself.

But then she remembered—

A moment in a temple.

A night with no blood.

Just Asmodeus, brushing his hand through her hair, looking at her like—

"Why do you care what others think?"

"To me... You are perfect just the way you are."

"Curse, weak or useless. I would love you even still."

Her eyes opened.

Just slightly.

The frost clung to her lips like ash. Her breath fogged and curled over her face, drifting skyward as if it too was trying to escape. Somewhere above, Kaaz was still moving—she could feel the pressure of his steps through the snow, the sharpness of his intent like an icicle pointed straight at her throat.

But her thoughts were already falling inward.

Not in fear.

Not even in regret.

Just... slow descent. Like petals drifting toward a grave.

—

She remembered when she first met him.

Before his crown. Before the blood. Before everything.

When she was wrapped in thorns of her own making, lacking everything in her life, doubting everyone that approached her, she wasn't subtle and didn't need to be. Men died from her scent, priests called her a monster... a witch.

She thought she didn't care...

And then she met him.

Asmodeus. Ryuji. That stupid, idiotic berserker who forced himself into her world like a boar charging forward, yet he stood like he'd been carved from defiance and spit.

'Handsome spit...'

She'd tried to resist his charms—of course, she did. She laughed when he resisted. She teased, taunted, pressed close with breath like wine and skin like silk. Asmodeus tried everything... but found that it didn't matter.

But he didn't flinch.

He hadn't called her beautiful.

He hadn't begged or fought.

He'd looked at her, calmly—quietly—and gave her a path, a place.

A home.

His words of affection were not grand, but filled with his genuine feelings.

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She remembered in silence. Not cold, not cruel.Just… honest.

Like he saw something behind the fangs and petals, something she didn't even know was there.

"You're the moment before spring.""You deserve to break free of your curse, and be happy, to thrive."

Her chest clenched.

Not in pain.

In want. In need. In something she'd sworn to never forget again, but this fight made her doubt such feelings, and made her crumble in defeat.

She had loved him from that moment.

Not because he was strong. Not because he was king.

Because he saw her.

Not the princess.Not the witch.Not the failure.

Her.

—

A single thorn broke through her palm, drawn not by a spell, but by memory. Asmodea grasped it tight, ignoring the pain.

Her voice, filled with a hoarse sense of resilience.

"I'm not done."

She grasped the thorn tighter, allowing her blood to run, to flow down her wrist as if the memories of him washed over her body through the crimson river. Her body trembled, emotions that remained hidden, held back for so long, finally broke through the barriers she had so carefully erected.

The cold wind of Kaaz's attack no longer seemed so dangerous; nothing compared to the harsh reminder of life without Asmodeus.

She wasn't the weapon they had made her.

No longer a witch.No longer a plaything of blood and war.Not anymore.

Asmodeus had never seen her as those things.

"You are my beloved princess of blood, these blood flowers are beautiful."

"So bloom however you desire."

Her heart pounded in time with her thoughts, the last of her doubts fading into the coming storm, torn apart by the black vines growing around her arms. The power she'd always carried within rose, and for the first time, she could feel they responded to her emotions.

The thorn that helped her awaken faded, vanishing into her blood as a small swirl of blood began pulsing around her, a pool of blood became a lake, the lake a river. Her body jerked, shuddered as if something was raging deep inside her.

The crimson shade of her power intensified, shifting like molten lava beneath her skin.

Kaaz paused, sensing the change. His expression flickered with annoyance, but the tingling in his skin and the growing magic aura from the woman's body caused him to halt.

He didn't understand what was happening.

Asmodea was no longer just a trickster, an enchantress with magic woven from blood and petals.

She was the Empress. She was his Empress.

Beneath her feet, the ground trembled, filled with blood coloured vines like threads that broke her free, wrapped around her limbs and reached towards the heavens in thick coils of ruby red. Her body seemed to glow as the air began distorting.

Her skin began to shimmer with an almost ethereal light, though beneath it, the fire of her anger—her devotion—fuelled the transformation.

The first whisper of power rose in her chest, and she closed her eyes, her breath steadying as her mind anchored itself in the feeling of his voice.

Her voice, shaking with all the sorrow, the anger, the longing, the love she'd kept buried for so long:

"For you...""For your love...""For your trust..."

Her lips parted, and with the certainty that had only been a dream before, she spoke the words she'd longed to say. Words she'd whispered to herself when the moonlight was soft and the world was silent.

"..."

In the same breath, her power exploded outward, rushing, spreading, a sea of deep red petals and thorns that tore the ground beneath her apart, flooding the battlefield with her fury. The trees shook, the very sky seemed to bend, and Kaaz's cocky grin faltered for the first time.

Her form shifted, becoming something far beyond the person who stood before. She was no longer the woman who had simply whispered Asmodeus's name in the silence.

Now, she was the blood itself.

The very essence of war and passion distilled into one word. One promise.

Her body bloomed, but not with delicate petals or roses... rather with murderous, lethal beauty. Asmodea's power unfolded like tendrils of raw, untamed magic that twisted around her like blood serpents, biting into the wintry battlefield.

She was the Sea of Blood.She was the Emperor's chosen.

And as the winds of war picked up around her, she looked up at Kaaz, her smile cruel.

"You'll see what it means to be the Empress."

—Bloom... Sea of The Blood Empress.

Kaaz's smile faded, replaced with a twinge of something unspoken. Something more serious. He could feel it now—the weight of her power. The way it had changed her shaped her into something no one could have anticipated.

But he wouldn't back down. Not now.

He flicked his hand, and the wind picked up again, swirling with razor-sharp ice.

He tried to break her spirit, the aura she emitted equal, no, maybe even greater than his queen, causing the third tooth to tremble.

"Is that all? Come on, then. Show me what you really are."

But Asmodea was no longer the woman he had underestimated.

She was his Empress.

Her power exploded forward, the flood of thorns and blood-like vines crashing toward him, enveloping the battlefield in an intense tornado of crimson fury.

He was forced to jump back, but the moment he did, the petals closed in—his back already pressed against the unforgiving ground as the vines began to choke the air from his lungs.

A flood of blood filled the battlefield...

This was Asmodea's magic, given visual form.