Appointed as the Demon King

"I was so foolish, truly."

Caelan stood before the balcony, looking at the scene before him, muttering to himself.

From his vantage point, he could see the distant sky, bright with sunshine, and verdant mountains stretching endlessly.

However, where he stood, the sky was dim, and an unknown Dark Aura enveloped the ancient castle, with thick dark clouds swirling above it, blocking out all sunlight.

Around the castle was a barren mountain, with some trees whose trunks were blackened and leaves had all fallen off.

A group of lean, hairless humanoid monsters with Kobold heads were cheerfully carrying several large sacks and running into the distance.

This was the Demon King's City, the sole residence of the Demon King on the continent of Terra.

He, Caelan, was the Demon King.

According to Terra's folk legends, the Demon King had seven great Demon Generals under his command, collectively known as the "Seven Hell Kings." They not only possessed terrifying strength but also each led tens of millions of demons and a Demon King's Army, constantly preparing to rampage across the entire continent.

Unfortunately, Caelan had never met any of these seven Demon Generals.

Was it that he didn't want to meet them?

Of course not.

He had only taken over the position of "Demon King" two months ago; before that, he was just an ordinary office worker.

One day, a prompt suddenly popped up on his phone.

"Do you want to be the Demon King?"

"Yes / No"

Caelan clicked "No" without hesitation.

But a new option popped up again.

"Do you want to be the Demon King?"

"Yes / No"

Caelan clicked away several times, but then the next one suddenly changed to—

"Do you not want to be the Demon King?"

"Yes / No"

The moment he clicked "No," he arrived here.

Before him was the dying former Demon King, who probably kicked the bucket after briefly explaining the setting to him.

Simply put, this world was primarily ruled by two factions: an Order Alliance composed of orderly races like humans, elves, and dwarves, and a Demon King's Army composed of chaotic races like demons, orcs, and rat-people.

The Order Alliance was ruled by the Supreme Heavenly Council, while the Demon King's Army was a dictatorship under the Demon King.

It sounded like Caelan's identity as the Demon King was impressive, but the reality was completely different.

It certainly was impressive a few centuries ago, but times had changed.

The change began three hundred years ago with the Heavenly War.

In that massive war that affected all of Terra, the Order faction's ultimate weapon, the Hero, fought a decisive battle with the former Demon King in the center of the continent. That battle was earth-shattering, blotting out the sun and moon, even changing the terrain and leaving a terrifying, deep canyon in the continent's center.

Ultimately, the Demon King achieved victory, the Hero was slain, and the Demon King's Army was able to bypass the Alliance's checkpoints and invade the interior.

However, the Demon King was also severely wounded in that battle and died suddenly a few years later.

The identity of "Demon King" was very special; it wasn't just about someone being powerful or having immense authority. There were two ways to inherit the Demon King's identity: one was direct designation by the previous Demon King, and the other was a random selection from other demons after the Demon King's death.

That Demon King died too quickly to designate a successor, so the identity of the Demon King fell upon an unremarkable demon Scholar.

Generally speaking, those who obtained the Demon King's identity would gain great power, but this power came with conditions...

As the saying goes, where there is light, there is shadow; the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Thus, the Demon King's power was directly linked to the Hero's. The stronger the Demon King, the stronger the Hero would be, and vice versa.

Then, something unexpected happened.

For three hundred years, the Order faction failed to produce another Hero.

Without a Hero, and coupled with the fact that the previous Demon King was inherently untalented, he was simply insufficient to lead the Demon King's Army.

If not for the "Demon King" identity and the mutual checks and balances among the seven Demon Generals, this Demon King would have been killed long ago.

However, as time went on, those Demon Generals also left the Demon King's City with their people, establishing themselves in the territories they had conquered.

Although they were nominally still subordinates of the Demon King, in reality, they all fought independently.

Three hundred years passed, and the new Demon King, a powerless Scholar, reached the end of his life. Since he was the only one left in the entire castle and didn't want to pass the throne to those Demon Generals, he simply used a spell recorded in an ancient book to randomly pull someone from another world to be the Demon King.

Caelan was that unlucky fellow.

"I was so foolish, truly."

Caelan repeated his murmur, sighed, and turned back into the room.

When he encountered a wobbling Skull Head in the corridor, Caelan even greeted it.

"Good morning, Skull Head—"

Unfortunately, the other party did not respond, nor did it show any reaction.

"Skull Head" was the name Caelan gave to these Undead; originally, each one had a different name, but Caelan quickly realized he couldn't tell them apart, so he collectively called them Skull Head.

He lived alone in the vast Demon King's City... though there were some Undead, but Undead had no brains and could basically only be controlled by necromancy.

When he first arrived, Caelan was startled by these Undead several times, but now he was used to them.

All the treasures accumulated by countless generations of Demon Kings in the Demon King's City had been taken away by the Demon Generals, leaving behind only unwanted scrap metal, plus the terrible environment of the Demon King's City—

Who knows which Demon King had their brain squeezed by a door, but they were so afraid that people wouldn't know this was the villain's headquarters that they cast an almost permanent dark cloud spell over the entire city, causing the Demon King's City and its surrounding areas to barely see the sun all year round.

The atmosphere was certainly well-achieved, but it wasn't very comfortable to live in—it was dark and damp, and even monsters didn't like living here, moving out one after another.

Only some mindless Undead remained here.

However, fortunately, over so many years in the Demon King's City, some people did use their brains to solve the food problem.

They cultivated a large variety of edible crops that thrived in dark environments—primarily various mushrooms—with all sorts of flavors and completely different textures and forms, which at least prevented Caelan from becoming the first Demon King to starve to death.

Moreover, the previous Demon King was very diligent; Caelan directly inherited his mushroom garden and lived by cultivating mushrooms every day, and the harvest was quite good.

Speaking of which, when he first ate these mushrooms, Caelan even saw dancing little people, but after eating them a few times, he was fine.

As expected of a Demon King's body, its Chaos Adaptation was terrifyingly powerful.

It even granted him a talent.

"Poison Resistance: Has a certain resistance to poison."

Oh right, after coming here, there's also a status panel, but it's generally not very useful, so Caelan almost forgot about it.

"Caelan, the Demon King"

"Race: Demon King"

"Level: 1"

"Strength: 48+0"

"Agility: 51+0"

"Stamina: 45+0"

"Endurance: 46+0"

"Magic: 50+0"

"Talents: Demon King, Chaos Adaptation, Dark Aura, Poison Resistance."

The first three were talents he had since he arrived, among which "Chaos Adaptation" was a common talent for chaotic races—

"Chaos Adaptation: Has extremely strong adaptability to any environment."

And "Demon King" and "Dark Aura" were exclusive Demon King talents—

"Demon King: You possess power capable of rivaling Heroes and dispelling light."

"Dark Aura: You look very dark."

—"Looks very dark"? What kind of talent is that?

Ever since there was an output and no one guarding it, other monsters that hadn't completely fled would come to steal or snatch food... for example, the group of Kobolds he just saw had just left his warehouse.

Looking at the smashed warehouse door in front of him, Caelan sighed deeply.

He originally thought he had hidden it well enough, but he didn't expect these Kobolds to have such keen noses.

They were also coming in greater numbers each time; if this continued, he would run out of food.

"They'll probably come again tomorrow, I need to figure out a way to deal with them..."

Caelan mumbled softly and entered to tally his losses.

This was originally supposed to be a bedroom, and the original furniture was still there. Because Caelan had temporarily moved these mushrooms here, he hadn't looked closely before.

Now that he looked carefully, the room's decor was quite fancy, and it probably used to be inhabited by a relatively high-ranking demon.

And as Caelan picked up the scattered leftover mushrooms on the floor, the corner of his eye suddenly caught sight of something shining under the bed.

It was an ancient-looking book with a metal cover engraved with various intricate patterns.

In the middle of a pile of patterns, there were also a few words written.

Caelan laboriously deciphered them using the demon language he had only recently learned.

"Chaos... Chaos... Book? Chaos Encyclopedia?"