Chapter 2:

Chaos Encyclopedia and Skull

The Noble Demon King

"Chaos Encyclopedia? What's it for?"

Caelan, as a Demon King, instinctively felt that this book was unusual.

He thought for a moment, then suddenly raised the book above his head.

"Ding! Chaos Encyclopedia system has been bound!"

The room fell silent.

He had provided his own sound effects; unfortunately, the expected sound did not appear.

"Hmm... Avada Kedavra!"

"Urabaha!"

"Gulara, God of Darkness!"

"Tuo!"

"..."

Unfortunately, it seemed not to be voice-activated; there was no reaction at all.

And he wasn't young anymore; though no one else was around, recalling his actions just now still felt a little awkward.

Caelan set the book aside, preparing to sort out the mushrooms in front of him first.

It was fine before he started sorting, but once he did, it was another bolt from the blue—

"Damn it! All the salt was stolen, not a single bit left!"

"Salt" was a seasoning made by drying and grinding a crop called 【Salty mushroom】, used to provide crucial saltiness.

But with the weather in the Demon King's City, drying was impossible; it relied entirely on air-drying, which made salt extremely scarce.

On the balcony of Caelan's room, a row of Salty mushrooms was still air-drying.

And now, having no salt left meant that Caelan would have to eat completely bland food for a period of time.

"You bastards, I'll remember this grudge!"

...

Evening, after dinner.

At the top of the dark Demon King's City, a sliver of light shone from a window.

Having just eaten boiled mushrooms with no flavor at all, Caelan's rage had reached its limit.

A person can live poorly, but they cannot eat poorly!

He had to find a way to deal with these Kobolds!

And currently, the most promising method lay in the book he had just found.

"Chaos Encyclopedia... Illustrated Handbook..."

Under the lamp light in his room, Caelan casually opened the heavy book, with a notebook beside him—this was his notes from self-studying the Demonic language using a book left by the previous Demon King—preparing to carefully read what was written inside.

But unfortunately, nothing was written.

Flipping from back to front, all the pages were blank.

It wasn't until a piece of paper fell out from between the pages that he saw a line of Demonic text written on it.

"...I... uh... what useless..."

Caelan struggled to decipher the words, guessing and piecing them together, finally forming a sentence.

"The demonic treasure I sought for many years is nothing more than this; it can only control some low-level demonic beasts, useless, useless!—Kolas Wallger"

"Kolas Wallger? I remember he was..."

Caelan jumped off his chair, quickly walked to the bookshelf, and pulled out a book.

"My Latter Half of Life," Author: Kolas Wallger.

Kolas Wallger was a Demon King from many years ago. This book mainly tells the story of how he lost confidence after being defeated but not killed by the hero, then passed on the Demon King's position to someone else and traveled the world alone.

Caelan skimmed through the Demon King's memoir, though he didn't understand most of it, he could look for the keywords "Chaos Encyclopedia" and then translate the context.

That night passed just like that.

By the time Caelan put the book down, the sun had already risen again on the distant horizon, and his notebook was densely filled with notes.

He finally understood what this thing was.

Simply put, in the legends of the Demon Race, this book could control countless armies.

To defeat the hero, Kolas Wallger began traveling everywhere to find this lost demonic treasure... and he actually found it.

But once he got his hands on it, he realized that this treasure was not as useful as the legends claimed.

It required defeating the demonic beast first before it could be absorbed into the Illustrated Handbook, and those too strong couldn't be absorbed. Summoning them again also required magic power, making it very impractical.

What was special was that it could consume magic power to strengthen the demonic beasts in the Illustrated Handbook, and also fuse different demonic beasts together, but after all that effort, the strength of the created demonic beasts was "just so-so," so he simply dismissed all the demonic beasts in the book, letting them survive on their own.

However, the "just so-so" here was relative to Kolas Wallger, the Demon King.

For example, the famous ferocious demonic beast "Chimera" was a creation of this Illustrated Handbook; a single one of these monsters could wipe out a squad of fully armed knights.

For the current Caelan, this was clearly a clear path to improving his own strength.

And if he had controllable demonic beasts, at the very least, those Kobolds wouldn't dare to casually steal things anymore.

The only problem was, where were the demonic beasts he could defeat?

"...It seems there really are some."

Thinking of this, Caelan, who had stayed up all night, was no longer sleepy. He hugged the book and pushed the door open.

He found the Undead in the corridor, the Skeleton Soldier "Skull Head."

The strength of these Skeleton Soldiers was not very high, even weaker than an ordinary adult male, but if that were the only reason, Caelan wouldn't dare to approach them.

The main reason was that Skeleton Soldiers had no brains; they only attacked living beings from orderly factions, completely ignoring Caelan, the Demon King.

The first time Caelan saw these Undead, he was so scared that he broke one, and the Skeleton Soldier didn't retaliate at all during the entire process.

It probably wouldn't now either.

However, despite saying that, Caelan was still a bit nervous.

He placed the Chaos Encyclopedia aside, took down a decorative axe from the wall, raised it high, took a deep breath, and then brought it down heavily.

Crack!

Skull Head's Skull Head flew off, along with an arm.

The Skeleton Soldier's body also swayed precariously, looking like it was about to fall apart.

"Hey, don't die! If you die, I can't use you!"

Caelan quickly threw the axe aside and grabbed the metal book on the ground.

He had understood how to use this treasure when he read Kolas Wallger's memoir earlier.

Caelan quickly opened the first page, faced Skull Head, and instinctively channeled his magic power into it.

"Come in!"

His internal magic power was extracted, forming a complex black-and-white rune that floated around the Skeleton Soldier.

Subsequently, the Skeleton Soldier's body rapidly disintegrated, wrapped by the rune and absorbed into the book page.

Looking at the page again, a Skeleton Soldier's image had appeared on the first page, with descriptive Demonic text below it.

【Skull Head • Low-Tier Undead】