Reborn with a Necromancer System-Chapter 233: The Demon King

Kai whipped his head around, shadows spilling off his shoulders with the motion. His mana sense screamed at him—yet there had been no warning, no presence before the voice.

A tall, slender woman stood there, draped in Seyren's clothes, but her bearing was all wrong. Her posture regal, predatory. Her eyes, no longer Seyren's, burned like coals.

"I've seen you," she said, voice like velvet over broken glass. "Ever since you crawled into this world. And I'm not impressed, humans. Die."

A whip of chaotic magic snapped through the air before Kai could even process her words. The blast cut shallow grooves across his chest and shredded a line across Vepice's armor.

Kai steadied himself, teeth bared. "Seyren?"

He already knew the answer.

"Yes. Queen Seyrel, at the moment," the woman purred, tilting her head as though mocking him. "Answer my question, or die."

And then she let it out. The dam broke.

Chaotic mana flooded the chamber, an ocean of pressure crashing down on them. Kai's legs buckled. He slammed a hand into the floor to steady himself, every muscle taut as if the mana itself tried to grind him into the stone. Vepice sagged forward, eyes fluttering, gone for a terrifying second before she snapped back into awareness, gasping sharply.

Kai glanced at her, lips twitching into a grim smile.

'Passive chronomancy. She's learning to stabilize even under this kind of pressure. Good.'

The massive doors behind them slammed shut with a hollow boom. The sound echoed through the chamber like a tomb being sealed. Kai's instincts screamed. He obeyed them.

Mana sight flared open.

And what he saw chilled him.

Columns of the throne room rippled with illusion and veils of false light. The shadows peeled back under his gaze. Dozens of demons—soldiers, elites, hulking brutes—lined the walls, silent as statues. They had been watching, waiting.

Then there was Seyrel. The mana gushing from her body was not just power, it was ruin given form. A maelstrom tethered to flesh.

"I suppose you were strong enough to kill Balthaz and Tornk," Seyrel said, a smile tugging her lips. "They were upper ranks, after all."

Kai didn't bother answering. He acted.

His shadow space split open and Joran emerged. The massive skeletal warrior stepped into the world like a revenant shaking off centuries of slumber. His hollow eyes burned with dark flame, and for the first time, his voice carried from his jawbone.

"Got it," he rumbled in answer to Kai's thought.

Kai blinked. The chaos sigils. They had finally worked, the bond stitching memory and will into his servant. Joran was speaking.

But there was no time to reflect.

Vepice moved first. She slid her twin blades from their sheaths, and the world lurched. Time didn't slow, it was worse than that. Her movements simply cut through the air at impossible speed, her chronomancy snapping every hesitation into nothingness.

She struck six times in a heartbeat, slashes so precise they barely opened Seyrel's flesh, thin red lines trailing across pale skin, before she dove clear of a chaotic burst that ripped the floor apart.

Joran was already there. His fist crashed across Seyrel's jaw with the weight of stone and shadow. But even as her head snapped sideways, her counterstrike gutted him.

Literally.

His stomach vanished, erased into pulp and splattered across the stones.

Kai clenched his teeth.

'He doesn't need to eat anymore. It's fine. Keep going.'

Joran didn't even flinch. His next punch broke across Seyrel's cheek. Then another. And another. Blow after blow, her perfect features crumpled under the onslaught until her face was a bloodied ruin.

The demons hidden in the hall did not move. Not one.

Kai caught their silence. Of course. They want her weakened.

Or dead.

Then they can sweep in and finish us.

"W-" Seyrel tried to speak, but Joran's fist cut her words short, smashing her against the obsidian floor.

"Stop, Joran," Kai commanded sharply.

The giant's fist halted, trembling inches from her skull.

Seyrel's jaw twitched, shattered lips struggling to form words. Her body worked feverishly to stitch itself together, flesh and bone crawling back into shape. Slowly, her mouth healed enough to speak.

Kai watched, arms folded, eyes narrowed. I couldn't speak in my final moments either. Let her have hers.

Finally, she rasped, voice thick with blood.

"You… don't understand… half the strength I hide in my shadows. Why did you try to kill us?" Kai asked, his tone measured, heavy.

"Humans," she spat, blood staining her teeth. "They persecuted us. Hunted us. So we fought back. We won. And then we were called demons... in your tongue."

"And why us?"

"You say you want to return to your world. But why did you come to ours first? Why else, if not to hunt us?"

Kai's expression darkened. "We came here to retreat—from those the people of Imeria would call gods."

Her laugh was raw, broken. "Gods? Those wretched creatures?"

Kai's brow furrowed. "Wretched creatures?"

"Some of the originals," Seyrel hissed, "escaped into your world. My scouts found them. And there—they are worshipped. Revered."

Her eyes gleamed through the bruises, feral and bright.

"And…?" Kai pressed.

"I'll kill them all," Seyrel said. "The inhabitants of your world aren't our enemies. The forebearers are."

Seyrel shifted back into her male form.

"So? What now?" Kai asked, eyes flicking across the demons slinking out from the fortress shadows. Dozens of them, some with jagged blades, others with crude spears and rusted axes.

"Now," Seyren said, his usual grin gone cold, "we kill all of these traitors that were just waiting around for me to die so one of them could take my place."

Kai raised a brow. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," Seyren said flatly, his tail curling like a whip ready to strike. "I have no need for traitors in my midst."

Vepice shifted her staff into her hands, whispering a quick incantation. "So… a truce?"

"A truce," Seyren confirmed, a deep growl building in his throat as the nearest demon snarled back. "Until we kill these… Gods of yours."

Kai let out a breath and rolled his shoulders, summoning shadows that curled around his arms. Well, that was easier than I thought.

The silence broke all at once. The demons lunged, metal scraping against stone as their weapons caught the pale light. Seyren was the first to move, tail snapping like a whip and sending one crashing into the wall. Kai's shadows surged forward to catch another, dragging it screaming into the dark. Vepice readied her blades.