Demon Lord: Erotic Adventure in Another World

The cold wasn't what hurt.

It was the weight.

The crystal wall lay across her chest, heavy as stone, shimmering with warped reflections of her own battered body. Her right arm twisted and pinned between two slabs of jagged ice. Her shield lay inches from her fingers, but she couldn't reach it. Her fingers were too numb to close.

Above her, the light refracted in perfect geometry. Arcs of silver and blue danced along the mirrored domes that enclosed her—Scael's waltz, still spinning, still flawless.

"How long will you lie there?" came the voice.

Silk-smooth. Arrogant. Too close.

"Is that your oath?" Scael asked. "To die as a mute monument?"

She didn't answer.

"You really are the most loyal, aren't you?" he sighed.

"That's what they always say about the silent ones. Loyal. Steady. Useful."

A shape moved across the crystal ceiling above her—his tail, his claws, his silhouette.

"But loyalty without recognition?" he chuckled.

"That's slavery. You're just the shield. The extra."

Levia's lips were cracked. Her mouth bled faintly. She couldn't feel her jaw, but she still ground her teeth.

"He says their names," Scael continued. "Asmodea. Vinea. Lumina."

He crouched just above the edge of her prison, upside down in her mirrored view.

"But yours?"

"When did he last say yours?"

The ice creaked. A new fracture split across Levia's armour, right at her sternum. Her lungs struggled to draw in cold air, her left eye bloodshot and half-closed.

Still, she did not scream.

Still, she did not move.

Levia listened.

Not to him.

To the sound of her own breath.

Slow. Grounded.

Her heart beat once, and then again.

Even buried, even alone—

She endured.

The cold wasn't fading.

But it wasn't winning either.

Levia's fingers scraped against the edge of her shield—just enough for skin to split. She didn't wince. Pain didn't matter. Not compared to what she remembered.

The arena roared in her memory.

Not with triumph.

With betrayal.

She saw her hand again—her hand trembling as it drove the divine sword into his chest.

The sword of light. The will of the goddess. She had watched it punch through his ribs, carve his flesh open, and heard him gasp.

"Haha, thank you."

He'd said that before swaying, almost falling to the ground.

Back then, she wasn't his. She was hers—an apostle of the goddess. A puppet.

She remembered the moment the light shattered. The goddess's will cracked within her bones, her divine blessing burning away in his gaze. Ryuji—no, Asmodeus—stood before her, bleeding, but smiling.

Even when she ruined with him... he didn't show her true hatred. He cupped her chin and said:

"You're not my enemy."

"And from now on, you're mine."

She had fallen to her knees then, not out of devotion. But shame. He accepted her broken self, on the brink of collapse and gave her a new meaning, a new name!

The memory wasn't bright or some kind of romantic image... It was heavy.

But it was hers.

Her shield moved.

A tremor of magic rippled through her body, curling into her spine. Her ribs groaned. Her shoulder cracked back into place. Her fingers tightened.

Scael's mirrored world began to ripple.

He watched her with narrowed eyes.

"So you remember," he said. "Good. Hold onto it. Your failure. Your mistake."

She pushed herself up on one knee.

"You're right," she said, voice ragged. "I failed him."

"But he forgave me."

"That's why I swore—never again."

She reached out and slammed the base of her cracked tower shield into the ice.

Magic surged.

The impact echoed like a war drum.

Not a clash.

Not a scream.

Just one low, final note that rolled across the battlefield like a warning before a siege.

The ice beneath Levia spidered outward—lines of black tearing through the crystalline floor. Her shield groaned in protest, the surface cracking wider until it looked more like shattered glass suspended in air than steel.

The pieces didn't fall.

They floated, held together by writhing ribbons of black mist. Energy swirled inside each shard, binding them with something older than magic—will.

She didn't lift it. She pressed it into the ice.

"Shatter," she said.

The fragments pulsed.

"Shield of the Iron Empress."

Her armour surged with power—not fire, not frost—weight.

Thick black plating grew over her limbs in rigid plates. Gold filigree formed along the joints like old language carved into tomb walls. Levia's shoulders expanded with broad pauldrons, heavy enough to crush a horse beneath them. Her hair whipped backwards, loose and unadorned, framed by the halo of steam rising off her skin.

Her eyes opened fully now, unblinking. Focused. Void of doubt.

"You can dance," she said, slowly rising to full height.

"But I only need to walk."

She raised her broken, spectral shield.

It howled.

Not a sound—an atmospheric shift. A force pressing down on the battlefield like the sky was lowering itself by inches.

Scael tensed—his insectoid form coiling defensively.

"You're different now," he muttered.

"No," Levia said, stepping forward, boots crunching ice.

"I've always been like this. I just lost my way, lost in his warmth."

Scael moved first.

He spun with sharp, elegant grace—his tail slicing arcs of frost into the air, pincers gleaming, his silhouette caught mid-pirouette as if trapped in a painting. The mirrored walls around them, with dozens of reflections, perfectly copied each movement or action.

"Let's see how long you can remain arrogant!"

He struck.

A dozen needle-thin ice shards fired from the spinning motion of his claws—angled, jagged, fast. Too fast.

Levia didn't flinch.

She stepped forward. Raised her fractured shield.

The shards struck—and stopped.

Not blocked in the conventional sense—consumed. The dark mist that wove through the broken segments pulsed once, and the spears of ice were pulled inward, frozen mid-air, their kinetic force bled dry.

Her shoulder rolled, and she pressed forward again, another step, cracking the ground like a spider's web under her heel.

"You're not countering," Scael hissed. "You're just walking—!"

"Yes."

Her voice didn't rise.

Another step. The ice field warped.

A mirror to her left fractured slightly. Another reflection showed her bleeding, faltering—and it failed to sync with her motion.

The illusion slipped.

She wasn't just breaking his spell.

She was invalidating it.

Scael snarled.

He dived toward her, tail whipping around in a spiralling arc. He clanged off her shield with enough force to send most knights flying.

She took a half-step back, then stomped forward.

Crunch.

The mirrored platform beneath her collapsed into ice dust.

"You're no dancer," Scael spat.

"Yes, I am his shield, protecting him from harm, destroying his enemies..." she said again. "Even when shattered into pieces."

"Now be buried."

She planted her shield into the ground.

It unfolded—expanded—fragments flaring outward like iron wings. A concussive wave rippled forward, a shockwave that shattered the ice terrain into splinters. The mirrored walls felt like cheap glass. The illusion dissolved.

Scael staggered. He blinked.

And for the first time, she noticed that this demon that shattered her confidence...

He looked small.

The air was still.

Scael's waltz—his spirals, his mirrored illusions, his frost-lined stage—lay broken around them. Fragments of symmetry scattered like bones from a fallen sculpture.

He was breathing hard now.

Three cracks appeared in his polished exoskeleton. One pincer dragged along the ground, limp and dented. His tail twitched erratically, the frost on its stinger dulled.

"You're… nothing special," he spat between panting breaths."No speed. No elegance. Just—pressure."

"Correct," Levia replied. "But he still loves me!"

She raised her shield—not as a wall this time, but like a door being closed.

He leapt again, pushing his failing body into a high-speed spiral, trying to repeat the spin that had outclassed her before.

She stepped forward.

One step.

Her boot struck the frost—and it broke.

Her shield met his momentum mid-air, and it swallowed it.

The moment his body made contact, the force didn't bounce.

It sank.

Like hitting a swamp of condensed gravity, his bones crunched beneath the pressure. His movement stalled.

Then she stepped again.

The second step shattered the ground beneath them both, and his feet lost contact.

She rotated slightly, adjusting her grip, and drove her shield into his chest.

Not as a punch.

As a verdict.

Scael flew backwards, not far. Not dramatic. Just hard.

Straight into one of the last upright mirrors—his own fractured reflection greeted him before it splintered around his body like glass around a bullet.

He didn't rise...

Levia watched him in silence, thousands of sharp blades piercing his exoskeleton, green blood oozing from his lips and nose.

The demon was dead and would never rise again.

Levia lowered her shield and took a moment to adjust her breath. Her armour hissed softly, steam rising in curls from the impact.

She didn't look back.

"Two."

When she tried to step towards Asmodeus, her armour and shield shattered like broken glass, without power—her legs shook, before she crumbled to the ground, something sweet and warm oozing from her lips.

"Ah..." with a gasp, Levia reached her limit.

"...Asmodeus..."

Her hand extended, hoping to reach the distance aura... before a pair of arms wrapped around her waist and a familiar voice echoed in her ears.

"You did your best, Levia... now rest."

The blonde woman's hair fluttered as she looked back.