CHAPTER 1: ESTABLISHING A LOCAL IDENTITY

Consciousness slowly crawled back into Sabath's mind.

A rhythm of cold drips pattered regularly against his forehead and cheek. When his eyelids opened bit by bit, the first view welcoming him wasn't the majestic high-arched ceiling of his demon fortress, but a weather-worn wooden roof stained with water spots. Raindrops snuck through the gaps in the roofing tiles, falling squarely into a tiny plastic basin resting beside his futon.

The cramped room smelled of stale dust blended with the faint aroma of unfamiliar cooking.

"Oh, you're finally awake?"

A child's voice bounced from a corner of the room. A little girl with black hair tied into a ponytail was sitting on a wooden chair. She held a fairly thick picture book while gazing toward the bed with wide, curious eyes.

The words tumbling from her mouth sounded completely alien to the Demon King—a linguistic structure never documented in any ancient tome across the continent of Ashtion.

Sabath knitted his brows. He tried to push himself up into a sitting position, but a sharp, stabbing pain instantly shot through every joint in his body.

"Where is this?!" he barked in the Ancient Demon tongue.

The door creaked loudly as it swung open. The middle-aged man who had found him in the city park last night stepped inside, carrying a wet towel and a bowl of hot soup.

"Relax, you're in a safe place," the old man said in Japanese. He was operating under the assumption that the young foreigner in front of him was either a stranded tourist or a severely dehydrated cosplayer who had fainted. "Eat some of this soup first. You look like you haven't eaten in a week."

To Sabath, however, the old man's speech was nothing more than meaningless noise.

Unwilling to waste precious time, Sabath's hazel-brown eyes suddenly flashed bright, emitting a terrifying surge of blood-red light. The lingering remnants of the Demon King's mind-control magic shot forth, piercing directly into the pupils of both the old man and the little girl.

In an instant, both humans froze in place. Their eyes went completely blank and unfocused. The bowl of soup in the old man's hands trembled slightly, though it didn't spill.

"Explain everything to me... Where am I, and who are you?" Sabath commanded, his tone chillingly uncompromising.

Under the influence of absolute hypnotic magic, the old man began spilling everything. In a matter of minutes, Sabath absorbed all the basic knowledge regarding this new realm: a planet named Earth, a country called Japan, and a modern human society that existed entirely without magic.

The old man's name was Kazuki Uishiro, a impoverished park security guard barely scraping by. The little girl beside him was his granddaughter, Kazuki Saya. Their lives were fraught with hardship; Uishiro's wife had passed away long ago, while Saya had been abandoned by her parents at a young age.

After lifting the hypnosis spell, Sabath proceeded to examine the physical state of his body and his core mana.

The findings were thoroughly disappointing. His remaining mana reserves were nearly depleted. Although Earth's atmosphere was naturally restoring his energy at a slow crawl, the flow of mana inside his body remained wildly unstable. Losing his grand horns to the Hero's blade had shattered his energy control, leaving behind a chaotic and dangerous flux of mana.

I cannot afford to act recklessly in this magicless world, Sabath analyzed silently. I need a safe dwelling and an official identity to observe this world without interference.

Using the very last fraction of mental magic he could wring out, Sabath reshaped the memories of both Uishiro and Saya. He planted a deep-seated false memory into their minds—crafting a fabricated story that he was a distant relative who had just returned from overseas.

From that exact second, the true identity of the Demon King was officially cloaked under a brand-new name: Kazuki Kanata.

A few days later, Kanata stood by the roadside near the Kazuki family's run-down house, watching the flow of human traffic with an indifferent glare. His eyes locked onto a group of teenagers walking together in matching, neat uniforms. The male and female students laughed together, tossing around silly youthful jokes that felt entirely foreign to Kanata.

"Old man," Kanata called out without turning his head. "Who are those people wearing the same clothes?"

Uishiro, who was tinkering with his battered bicycle, looked up. "Ah, them? Those are students from Hibiki High School down at the end of the street."

"School..." Kanata muttered, processing the term.

A school was a gathering place for youth, a hub where information circulated rapidly, and the ideal environment to hone mental discipline while observing human behavior from up close.

That evening, Kanata focused the paper-thin remnants of his reality-manipulation magic. By subtly altering the memories of the local board of education officials and magically forging administrative paperwork, he slipped the existence of "Kazuki Kanata" into the school registry without raising an ounce of suspicion.

The newly manifested Hibiki High School uniform jacket now fit perfectly around his frame.

Kanata stared at his reflection in the cracked mirror inside his cramped room: a young man with slightly messy black hair, wearing a tidy uniform, and wearing a meticulously calculated, friendly smile.

The new game begins... Let's see just how far I can fool these humans.