It should have been the last.
* * *
‘What the hell is this……’
Why was he, whose soul had been burned, lying in bed and chewing the porridge that others scoop for him?
[Uhahaha! Totally funny! Are you a baby? What are you doing with that bib!]
‘… It’s a napkin. You bastard.’
Why is the bastard Demon King who said he would burn his own soul so terribly talking loudly in other people’s heads?
Time to go back by one day.
When he opened his eyes at the feeling of a wet towel wiping his forehead, he saw an elderly woman in fancy clothes looking at him and weeping.
“Morres! Baby! Do you recognize your mother?”
“Ooh! Prince! You finally came to your senses!”
Seongjin blinked in bewilderment among the people making a fuss.
Old fashioned and colorful room. Extreme care from people who appear to be attendants.
At first, he thought it was the afterlife.
It was only when he heard a familiar voice in his head that he realized that the situation was unusual.
[Hey, don’t be so idle, quickly come to your senses! Are you still awake?]
What is this arrogant voice?
‘… Demon King?’
[Oh, you recognize this body! Because I couldn’t open my eyes, I thought my soul was completely ruined. As you know, the Flames of Gehenna is very hot, right?]
Why is this bastard?
Wasn’t that the end of it then?
[Whoa, whoa. Don’t get agitated. Calm down. you need to wake up now. It is said that the soul is still in an unstable state. It’s a body that you barely entered, but if you make a mistake, you’ll bounce back out?]
What are you talking about?
If Gehenna’s cowardice or my punches were lacking, I’ll get rid of them again.
Seongjin tried to get up while grinding his teeth, but he had no choice but to lie down again. It was partly because the people around him were frightened and grabbed him, but strangely, his body felt languid and heavy.
It’s hard to breathe. His limbs were too heavy.
“Morres! Why? Baby, where does it hurt?”
“Prince! Calm down a little… … .”
Let go of me! The Demon King is still alive! Gotta kill that bastard……
[… uh, hey? Are you experiencing high blood pressure right now? Then, as soon as you’re resurrected, you die again. Now, take a deep breath! Okay? Hup-ha. Hup-ha.]
What nonsense is this Demon King! What are these people doing to hold me back?!
Let go! Let go!
“Ouch!”
For a moment, I felt like my back goal was craving, but suddenly my eyes spun.
“Mores!”
“Prince!”
The sound of people’s urgent cries went far away, and it became dark right in front of my eyes.
After a while, Seongjin came to his senses again, still lying in the same place and surrounded by the same people.
And the damn demon king’s voice, which I don’t know where it came from, was still the same.
[Wow, I thought it was right to have a temper, but you seem to be really serious.]
‘You, this bastard……’
Creak.
When Seongjin gritted his teeth viciously, the demon king hurriedly continued.
[Oh, sorry. I won’t say anything bad now, calm down, okay? Let’s talk, talk. Isn’t it good?]
‘What? This bastard?’
The conversation between the two seemed far away.
However, Lee Seongjin, who had been expressing his anger so excessively that he wondered if he was dying because of his anger, surprisingly quickly calmed down within less than half a day.
It was because the Demon King’s body had already been burned down, and only a part of his soul remained like debris.
I was at a loss as to how to deal with a guy who only heard his voice when he was angry.
He calmed down his anger and listened to the demon king’s explanation in silence.
After the final battle, the Flames of Gehenna completely annihilated Seongjin’s body along with the Demon King, but for some reason, it is said that it did not do much damage to Seongjin’s soul and quietly faded away.
Perhaps, thanks to the unexpectedly rapid evolution of the flame, even a little bit of his soul remained, the Demon King said in a calm tone.
[Most of my noble soul has been burned away, but I can’t figure out why you’re safe.]
“…….”
[Anyway, because of that, I lost almost all of my strength and dignity. What is left now is the remnant of the original personality.]
The point is that you can never go back to being the former mighty demon king.
‘Then it’s going to disappear somewhere, why are you talking and fucking in someone else’s head?’
The Demon King sighed at Seongjin’s curt reply.
[Well, it’s not that simple. Do you know what I haven’t tried? But I can’t escape. Any attempt to get away from you is excruciatingly painful thanks to the divine aura around you. It’s a terrible pain that crushes the source itself. If time passes as it is, perhaps even the fragments of the remaining soul will disappear completely?]
‘It has been concluded. just disappear cleanly. It’s simple.’
[You bastard! Would it be like you? Huh?]
He wanted to get rid of Seongjin as well as the remaining soul neatly without a speck of dust.
But how can you catch and kill something that has no substance in the first place? There is no way we can bring back the Flames of Gehenna right now.
Lee Seongjin tended to rush without looking around as long as he had a purpose, but at least he wasn’t so clogged up with a thirst for the impossible.
Once he accepted that situation, he began to think that the babbling guy next to him was surprisingly useful. It was because he was a former demon king and knew a lot.
The Demon King, who came to his senses a day earlier than Seongjin, had quickly collected quite a bit of information about this new world and Seongjin’s situation.
It’s an efficient way to peek into someone’s memory by directly contacting the soul, or something.
Thanks to this, while lying on the bed and being cared for by people, Seongjin quickly began to learn about his current condition based on the noise he was talking about.
According to the Demon King, this is a world of a completely different dimension, far from Earth or the Demon World.
[We are a very lucky case. There was a high possibility that it would be scattered across the void as it is, but strangely, it flowed into the Main World.]
the Main World?
[It means higher dimension. It’s at least a couple of levels higher than Sigurd District 34 or a World of Flames like Gehenna.]
‘A World of Flames? What’s Sigurd District 34?’
The Demon King clicked his tongue.
[Wow, such an uncivilized class the Earth is. You don’t even know the name of your dimension. Do you guys have no concept of dimension at all? I should have known from the moment you rushed to die. Wow… these ignorant things.]
He regretted leaving the head of the demon king. At least he could beat him up before he started teasing him.
Perhaps feeling something eerie, the demon king’s soul trembled.
But to feel his soul so directly, he feel kind of dirty.
[So harsh. You’re a really nasty guy. But now we have become soul mates……]
‘… Shut up!’
Anyway, this place belonging to the higher dimension is the Holy Empire Delcross.
It is a nation governed by the Holy Emperor who receives the protection of the Main God from generation to generation, and it is a powerful empire with many kingdoms and grand dukedoms under its command.
The Holy Emperor is currently in the 17th generation, and he was the biological father of this body.
In other words, Lee Seongjin was now a prince. Was that why the people’s attitudes were so polite?
[Now your name is Morres Klein. He is the third prince and the fourth child of the Holy Emperor, who turns 15 this year……]
‘He’s a child?’
[He’s a very famous fool.]
His mother, First Queen Lisabeth Asein, was the daughter of the high-ranking Grand Duke Asein, and was the queen with the greatest background among women in the imperial palace.
Standing proud even in front of the Emperor or Empress, she had no doubt that her son, who inherited the noblest blood among the imperial family’s children, was the crown prince who would succeed the Emperor.
And that expectation soon turned into excessive enthusiasm for education and emotional attachment.
Fortunately, even when Prince Morres was young, he was a prince who tried to follow his mother’s expectations.
He wasn’t far superior to his other siblings, but at least he steadily acquired the qualifications of a prince.
However, from around the age of 7, he suddenly became more and more angry for no reason, and it is said that he became more and more indifferent.
He cursed at the maids and attendants or committed violence without reason. When he gets bored, he throws things to pieces and smashes them, and also often tease or harass the escort knights severely.
During class, he insulted and ridiculed the teachers again and again, and after hearing the queen’s scolding several times, he stopped attending classes altogether.
As if he were looking at Seongjin’s evil, the demon king excitedly boasted about this foolish prince’s dark history.
‘But it’s too detailed for information obtained in just one day, isn’t it? Is this believable?’
[Ugh! These are information that I have detected by directly contacting the souls of people around me. Even if you die alone and wake up, it’s high-quality information that can’t be gathered in a short time. So know how to be grateful.]
‘……’
After that, the prince’s daily life went downhill.
The neat etiquette disappeared and he began to tire of moving his body to the extreme.
In the end, he gave up the swordsmanship class he liked, and lay on the bed, lounging around every day, picking up only snacks.
People couldn’t figure out what caused his sudden change. Presumably, the young prince had been quietly following the greedy queen until now, but I could only guess that he was under extreme stress without realizing it.
Over the years, the noblest prince turned into an ignorant and obese pig with a bad temper and quick to roll around.
[Then he suddenly collapsed.]
The incident happened four days ago.
Morres, who went to bed after eating well the day before, suddenly suffered from a high fever of unknown cause from dawn, and completely lost consciousness that afternoon. She had no evidence of poisoning, and it was an unfamiliar symptom to call it a disease.
The skillful members of the imperial family scrambled for the prince, but the prince never came to his senses.
The Holy Emperor visited the hospital room while delaying state affairs, and the Queen stayed in the hospital bed all night with tears.
And four days after the fever started, Lee Seongjin, not Morres, woke up in this body.
‘Then where did the real Morres’ soul go?’
That is what Seongjin was most curious about. Unintentionally, it became a form of possessing someone else’s body, and this state was not normal even in his opinion, as he had no spiritual knowledge.
Wouldn’t it be a big deal if the original suffered damage because they illegally occupied a normal person’s body?
However, the Demon King’s reaction was not very good.
[Well? When I woke up, there were no other souls in this body other than ours. Couldn’t he have already died of a fever?]
Does it mean that they entered the body of a person who had just died of an illness at the right time?
‘Then what if we get out of here?’
[Why? Go out? It’s a body without a soul anyway, so I think it’s highly likely to die?]
‘… Is there a way out?’
The demon king’s answer was relentless.
[Why not? You just have to die.]
‘……’
Lee Seongjin’s expression became sour.
It was certainly not a bad feeling to be unexpectedly revived.
Even when he was dying with the demon king, he knew that extinction was inevitable, and he was intoxicated with the sense of accomplishment of destroying the demon realm—even though it was left behind by unburned garbage—he thought this was enough.
However, when he woke up again, hid past life, which was dotted with patience, hardship, and deficiency, came to him with a different feeling.
A life of simply cutting and shaving oneself in order to fight and get rid of the Demon Realm.
Seongjin’s past life could not be said to be happy even with good words.
So what now? Coulf he really live a new life in the body of another person?
Could he consider this miraculous coincidence as a reward for an unhappy past life?
As Seongjin is in trouble, the demon king, who has no way to know his complex feelings, rubbed salt to the wound.
[Anyway, how about a pig? Became the son of the highest in the country? Wow, congratulations. Your life is full, you.]
Yeah, that was a problem too.
Seongjin swallowed his saliva as he looked at his bloated body spread across the bed.
The bulging belly fat that obscured the view despite lying down, and the thick limbs that were so fat that the joints couldn’t even fold completely.
Being out of breath and feeling exhausted after tossing and turning for a while is probably not the only after-effect of a fever.
Even if he came in, he had such a lousy body. Seongjin sighed as he recalled his former body covered in mighty muscles.
‘Is this good……’
This is what happened over the past day.
And now, Lee Seongjin was lying on a splendid bed, with a napkin wrapped around his neck, and eating porridge as if he were a baby bird that Queen Lisabeth was carrying.
“Here, Morres, say ‘ah’ one more time.”
He was about to die of embarrassment, but Seongjin reluctantly opens his mouth again at the queen’s sympathetic face.
The sound of the demon king laughing almost out of breath echoed in my head.
[Puhahahahaha! I’m going crazy! I’m dying! I’m gonna die from laughing! Uhahahahaha!]
That bastard, he’d get rid of it someday.
Lee Seongjin swallowed the porridge roughly, and then stopped the queen, who was about to take the next porridge.
“Uh… Mother? I’m full now. It must have been hard, but I think you can stop.”
“Morres……”
The empress stared at her son with a sad expression for a moment, then lowered her head and wiped away tears with the end of her fancy lace sleeve.
“Yes, I realize that your memory is not perfect. You never called me mother.”
“Uh, um……”
It’s insanely awkward!
First of all, in order to avoid unnecessary suspicion, he roughly glossed over that his memories before he fell ill were vague, but every time he talked to the queen, Seongjin was afraid that the fact that he was not Morres would be discovered, and his heart was nervous.
This time, Seongjin hesitated, not knowing what to answer, but the demon king, who had peeked into the memory of the queen’s soul, tipped her off.
[You seem to usually call her queen mother1 ?]
Hey, what do you know?
No sound came out, so Seongjin had no choice but to answer like this in the end.
“… I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. It was such a terrible fever. Even though His Majesty directly took care of it, the heat seldom went down, so this mother was worried that something big was going to happen.”
The queen adjusted her sleeves with a graceful gesture and carefully took Morres’ hand.
“This mother is very happy that you woke up so well.”
When the soft and warm hand touched him, Seongjin had to work hard not to harden his expression. This is because this situation of having to pretend to be a son to someone who is not his mother was terribly sinful.
The real son has already died and even his soul has disappeared, and since this person can’t know that fact, she can’t even mourn.
But that doesn’t mean he could say that he was another soul that has taken over Morres’ body.
There’s no way she’d believe that, and even if she did, it’d be a problem.
What if you dare to exorcise right away? And what if his soul was really cast out of this body?
He didn’t have a lot of attachment to this extra life, but he didn’t want to commit suicide in such a grandiose way.
“But there are good things about being sick. How long has it been since my child is sitting face to face with this mother so calmly?”
“Hahaha……”
Morres, you crazy son of a bitch. How could your mother be happy with such trivial things?
Lee Seongjin couldn’t help but laugh with an awkward face.
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T/N:
1 At first Seongjin called Lisabeth 어머니/eomeoni which means mother and a more polite version of the word compared to 엄마/eomma. But Morres used to call her 어마마마/eomamama which kinda literally translates to your highness mother. But it kinda sounds awkward when written in english so I tried to change it to something with a similar meaning. Also here Lisabeth is touched that Seongjin is calling her mother because it just has a more friendly/closer vibe compared of queen mother.