Prologue

Long ago, this world was on the brink of destruction.

It happened one thousand years ago, in an era of endless conflict, when the lords of every land wielded their power and authority to fight against one another. War erupted between one large country and an alliance of three smaller countries. Towns were reduced to ruins, forests were burned, and devastation spread throughout the land.

Even as people and animals alike lost their homes and the fighting raged beyond its tenth year, the war showed no signs of calming down. Rather, the ferocity continued to increase. Just as despair had nearly devoured the entirety of the continent, there came a turning point. However, the deliverer was no god or savior, and what they delivered was not mercy or salvation.

The great war ended—not in peace—but because of a fresh calamity.

A powerful entity reduced tens of thousands of soldiers to ash in an instant and planted fresh seeds of despair across the continent. This being would be given a name by later generations: the demon lord.

He led an army of arcane monsters—beasts that possessed sword-deflecting shells and sharp fangs that could pierce through shields. The demon lord himself wielded an enormous amount of magical power, and he advanced through the lines of armies, breaking through what pitiful resistance mere humans could muster.

After a single day and night, a country fell to his strength. With a foothold secured, the onslaught picked up even more speed. The demon lord’s grip gradually spread further across the continent.

At long last, the feuding countries realized that they should put aside their petty squabbles, and they resolved to join arms against their fearsome adversary. This was the opening scene of the war between humanity and the demon lord, a fight for the survival of the human race.

No, “fight” is much too presumptuous a word to use. This conflict would be better labeled as the beginning of a descent to hell, where the humans lost ground one-sidedly. The demon lord’s fist came down atop all in equal measure: on the pompous royals and nobles reclining on their luxurious chairs, on the weary soldiers exhausted from long years of war, and on the peasants devastated by the burning of their fields.

The demon lord eroded away at the continent, laying waste to everything in his path.

What stopped the total annihilation of the human race was good fortune and stout perseverance. Even as humanity crawled through the dirt, hounded by monsters, they groped for some means to resist the demon lord. Ultimately, they succeeded in sealing him away. This was nothing short of victory for every human, though the eventual triumph had taken over half a century of continuous struggle.

The demon lord returned several times over the next few centuries, but humanity always fought back and prevailed, despite the hardship. Each time, the seal holding back the demon lord had its accuracy improved. In the last five hundred years, the seal hadn’t been broken even once.

At long last, peace returned to the continent. In the extended era of tranquility that followed the demon lord’s onslaught, many countries rose and fell, and little by little, tales of the demon lord dwindled away. Even in Nevel, which had been an established nation for over a millennium, stories of the demon lord were relegated to remnants and confined to fairy tales.

But the demon lord hadn’t disappeared. He rested still, basking beneath one of the many temples in the Kingdom of Nevel, waiting in quiet slumber.

Waiting for a hand to rouse him.