Demon King – Chapter 484 – The Director’s Office

“Ah, these days… every family has its own hard-to-read scripture.”

Sighing as she spoke, after hearing about the old director’s experiences, the little Demon Lord could not help but feel her heart soften. Sympathy naturally welled up inside her.

After hearing all that, driven by that sympathy, she actually wanted to help out somehow. But setting aside her identity as an infiltrator, Eiru really could not think of anything here that needed her help right now.

“Better hurry up and find the source of that weird aura. Leaving something like that alone in a place like an orphanage will probably cause trouble.”

Scratching her head, Her Majesty the Demon Lord turned around, planning to continue tailing the old director… and then realized he was gone.

Yes, truly gone. Along with the magic imprint she had just placed on him, that old man had simply vanished into thin air inside this building.

“No way? Is this place actually haunted?”

She expanded her magical detection range and checked again and again. After confirming several times that she really could not find the old man anywhere within the building, the little Demon Lord fell into complete confusion.

It made no sense. In broad daylight, a living person just disappeared like that? And it happened right under the eyes of someone at the top tier of the mystical side like her?

Somewhere deep down, she could still feel that the magic imprint she had placed on him was functioning normally. But no matter what, she simply could not locate his existence. Expanding the range did nothing. This bizarre situation inevitably made her think of certain horror movie developments.

“Don’t scare me, okay? I’m just someone who plays with magic. Don’t bring supernatural ghost stuff into this…”

Even though she was a Demon Lord, as a girl who had been deeply traumatized by horror movies in her childhood, Eiru was genuinely afraid of this kind of thing.

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“Third floor. Go down the corridor. The innermost room…”

The voice suddenly rang out in her head again. This time, it at least provided clear information.

“Huh? Did the other side finally get their internet connected? Your 3G network is awful. Hello? Hello? Where’d you go?”

Eiru replied the same way as before, half complaining. The other side once again gave no response.

‘What the hell, such terrible signal?’

She grumbled inwardly, but at least this time she had a clear destination. The Demon Lord spread her wings and flew straight toward the place mentioned…

Arriving at the door of the room indicated by the mysterious voice, Eiru saw the sign hanging above it. The words “Director’s Office” made her even more certain she had not come to the wrong place.

“Then I’ll be disturbing you~”

After probing with magic and confirming that there was no one inside or nearby, the little Demon Lord reached out and pushed open the door, stepping into this room that seemed to hide the answers…

—————

“What about your side?”

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After circling the entrance of yet another orphanage a few times, Yuki looked at Jiaqi, who was beside him bent over with his hands on his knees, panting heavily. He deleted another address from the memo app on his phone.

“Not this one either. Delete another one… this place too, huh?”

Having run around nonstop, Jiaqi was clearly struggling now.

“How many are left? We’ve basically run through half of Huanghai’s orphanages already, haven’t we?”

“No choice. With just ‘orphanage’ and ‘photos displayed outside’ as clues, all we can do is run through every orphanage in Huanghai.”

Saying this helplessly, Yuki flagged down a taxi. The two of them got in and headed for the next target.

Logically speaking, with those two clues, they could have just asked Jixian and the others about their activity locations, then estimated the nearest orphanages from there. Finding Eiru should have been easy.

But unfortunately, that girl’s activity range was absurdly wide. As a hacked existence who could flap her wings, accelerate, and fly straight out of the atmosphere, Yuki was honestly starting to doubt whether she was even still within Huanghai City at this point.

“Didn’t you put a tracker on Lu Brat? Check it!”

Jiaqi leaned back against the seat to rest, suddenly remembering that Yuki should still have one more move.

“It’s useless. That idiot either turned the tracker off or there’s some signal issue over there. I can’t find her at all. Otherwise, why do you think I’m dragging you around running from place to place like this?”

“Damn it, Huanghai has at least forty children’s orphanages. We’ve only checked ten so far… at this pace, we might not even find Lu Brat by tomorrow.”

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Jiaqi let out a cry of despair. But what could they do? They still had to find that stupid girl.

“That’s why this time I absolutely have to properly deal with her…”

Yuki clenched the seat cushion tightly, only to earn himself an eye roll from Jiaqi.

“Give it a rest. You really think you can bring yourself to do it? At this point, forget dealing with her. If Lu Brat so much as trips and falls on the road, you’d probably be so scared you’d rush over checking here and there…”

After all, every time Yuki said he was going to deal with Eiru, he never had the heart to actually do it, letting that girl escape disaster after disaster. Jiaqi was convinced this time would be no different. No matter how much she caused trouble, the guy next to him would never have the heart to lay a hand on her.

“You should be glad Lu Brat isn’t a real troublemaking kid. With how much you dote on her, something would definitely go wrong otherwise… Seriously though, if you really can’t bring yourself to do it, I can do it for you?”

Jiaqi suddenly sat up, tossing out this line in a strangely negotiative tone.

Hearing this bizarre suggestion, the look Yuki gave Jiaqi became a lot more subtle. This guy didn’t have some kind of weird fetish, did he?

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m just thinking you can’t bring yourself to do it, so I’ll help share the burden. Back then, I did have experience disciplining Little Ya. Should be able to apply it to the current Lu Brat… probably?”

“No, no thanks. I’ll discipline my own wife myself… Right now the key thing is getting her back. Those things might be suspicious, but at the very least everyone should discuss them together and research them as a group, right?”

Turning down the other party’s bizarre proposal, Yuki steered the conversation back on track. But Jiaqi clearly had a different opinion.

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“I think Lu Brat’s just overthinking it… Your mom’s white-haired with blue eyes too, and she’s not some Daughter of Amber Crystal. Nothing ever happened to her.”

In Jiaqi’s view, something as rare as a Daughter of Amber Crystal only appeared once every five years. And even when one did appear, families would keep it tightly hidden. How could it be possible for that girl to just wander around outside and casually see one?

Not to mention that Amber Crystal had already gone missing. After Eiya, no more Daughters of Amber Crystal had appeared. Even if the photo that silly girl saw was the real thing, it would be impossible for that person to still be alive now. Digging into the past would not yield any results anyway.

—————

While the two grown men were still rushing along in the car, on the other side, Eiru was staring wide-eyed at the secret door that had just opened in front of her.

To be fair, she had just noticed a few pretty interesting puzzles on the office desk. She first solved a chess puzzle, then linked the positions of the pieces to some symbols and deciphered a string of numbers…

Feeling that the string of numbers had a strong resemblance to musical notes, the little Demon Lord casually pressed them out on the nearby piano… and the bookshelf suddenly opened.

Her Majesty the Demon Lord poked her head inside and found that behind the secret door there was only a vertical ladder leading downward. From the pitch-black depths below, a familiar yet deeply unsettling sensation continuously stimulated her senses.

Tension, excitement, and novelty. This movie-like development had the little Demon Lord feeling slightly thrilled, itching to go down and find out what lay beneath.

Without the slightest hesitation, she leapt straight into the secret passage. What Eiru did not know was that this reckless decision of hers would cause her, for a very long time afterward, to be unable to completely escape the psychological shadow cast by what she would see down there.