Supreme Monarch

—At the same time.

—In the Demon's King castle...

Albert sat on one of the sofas in "Erin's" office as he easily manipulated the image displayed on the magic mirror that floated in front of him. He had spent a long time practicing with the crystal mirror spell after he had embarrassed himself in the presence of lord Ty the other time with the trolls.

A good butler must learn from his mistakes as they arrived for perfection, and thus, he was now adept in controlling these types of items so he could easily monitor and communicate with the Kobolds that were camping and working in the Grayad plains, close to the castle's main entrance.

Truth be told, he could've also easily achieved similar results by simply going to one of the four towers on the castle walls and using his skill, •Keen eyes of a demon• to monitor the Kobolds. And while that would've been strenuous on his mana and partially inefficient, that was not the reason he had chosen to request Erin's help for this.

He had simply come here because he had wanted to check up on her. Being a Nymph that had lived the majority of her long life in isolation. Erin generally wasn't good in a crowd even back at the settlement everyone knew to give her space and let her operate at her own pace. Truly the only one that ignored that and brazenly tried to get close to her was the ogress called Callie, who had died at the claws of a Lesser Basilisk.

Albert knew Erin never wanted to get close to anyone mostly because she feared losing them. As an immortal, losing ones lined ones was to be expected but for one such being, she was a little too fragile emotionally and thus generally couldn't handle loss.

The fact that she was okay after Callie died was most likely due to the influence of Lady Liz and Rain who also kinda reminds him of Callie as they had slightly similar personalities. Being saved by Lord Ty also seemed to have helped her a lot and thus she was slowly opening up to the people around her.

Albert only came here to see if the absence of the girls would have a negative effect on her but it seems she had transferred all her focus to her work for Lord Ty and thus seemed to be doing okay. 

After confirming she was okay, Albert quickly busied himself with his work supervising the Kobolds while they set up temporary lodging for the Raven settlement, while Erin went back to studying her book. It seemed she was trying to translate the advanced magic runes by herself as there was nothing else left for her to do.

Although Albert felt it would be better for her to just have Lord Ty help her with the translation as he was most likely the only one in this world that could read all three levels of advanced magic runes, he decided not to voice his opinion as she seemed to be enjoying her work.

Leaving Jarret and Talen in charge of the castle for the day, Albert and Erin focused on their work for a while when Erin suddenly stopped and stared intently at a particular direction.

Sensing her uneasiness, Albert stopped what he was doing and asked:

"Something wrong?"

Without replying to his question immediately, she closed her eyes for a moment and then spoke to him in response:

"I'm not sure. I think someone broke into my perimeter but for some reason, I can't see or sense them."

Being a master of spirit magic, Erin had set up a perimeter around the castle per Tyler's request. The perimeter spanned further than the barrier and almost reached the forest. It was done as a precaution against enemies with stealth capabilities that would stupidly attempt to break the barrier or in the worst case, had a way to pass through the barrier unrestricted.

While Tyler was the only one able to move freely through the barrier for some reason. Although he had a theory about that, he still couldn't be sure that there wasn't someone else out there with the same access as him, and thus, fully relying on an unfamiliar barrier was foolish. 

This was why he had Erin set up a magic barrier and several anti-divination magic around the castle and also why she was the most important person in the castle in his absence. 

"Are you sure someone broke through?"

"No. Perhaps it was just nothing."

"Huh, I'll try observing to see what I find."

"Okay."

Erin tried enhancing her senses further in an attempt to locate whatever had breached her senses and seeing the worry in her eyes, Albert switched the targets of his remote viewing to the outside of the castle and tried to locate whatever it was that breached her magic perimeter.

He spent the last few minutes searching the outside for any signs of movements but to no avail as they soon gave up on that idea and concluded it was nothing as they went back to their work.

However—

That was the wrong choice as the moment they turned their attention away. The entire space within the castle shook violently as though the highest magnitude earthquake was about to bring everything down on them.

Albert and Erin's senses were immediately flooded with an extremely dangerous aura as Albert hastily contacted Jarret to immediately lead all the non-combatants into one of the training halls before he even bothered to ask Erin what was happening.

"What's going on?"

"I'm not entirely sure. It feels like a spatial collapse."

"What? Why?"

"I'm not too sure but I think someone might be trying to break the barrier."

"That's impossible. We just scanned around the entire castle, how did we not spot them."

Albert hastily turned his attention back to the magic mirror before him and scanned the view of the outside of the castle, something he had only just gone through a moment ago and had found nothing. For a barrier of this size and magnitude, it would be impossible and flat-out foolish for anyone to attempt breaking it from a distance so they had to get extremely close to it, and in some cases needed to touch it.

Even then, as far as Albert knew, such a process would require a large ritualistic Magic that needed more than a dozen mages to perform and they had set up measures that would prevent anyone from getting too close without their notice much less over 30 people.

However, contrary to his expectations, including the view he had seen earlier, there was currently a man standing only inches away from the barrier at the north side of their castle where the main gates were. 

Albert frowned. The Man's appearance wasn't visible from the mirror and his aura could not be felt, or at least, not anymore. However, Albert had a very bad feeling about him.

Bypassing magic perimeters was not especially that difficult and it was also easy to fool a magic mirror with basic level anti-divination spells. However, that did not apply to spells cast by Erin, a literal demigod.

In the entire five years, they had stayed with the red ogre settlement, they had never been surprised by monsters due to her helping the guards reinforce their magic perimeter and for someone to be able to completely fool her magic, they would have to be at an equal level as her or even stronger.

Such a being would not be any ordinary demons or even demon Nobles but either a demon lord or simply a behemoth. Albert hastily contacted Zomatsu to gather their entire fighting force at the outer ward where they would try to fend off this behemoth if he somehow manages to break the barrier.

Any ordinary behemoth would be fine as they had Erin to back them up but if this man happened to be one of the seven great behemoths, Erin's help would only serve to put her in a more dangerous situation which would be devastating for them.

He was already too close for them to test out the effectiveness of the new artilleries Lord Ty had made Bungo make for the towers although there were currently only one of them as he was yet to receive more materials.

While Albert communicated with Zomatsu and the others to get them ready to defend this castle, he kept watch of the man outside. Of course, he has tried to contact his master but he was most likely out of range and thus the call could not reach him.

The man outside wearing a white fur coat suddenly looked up. He was staring in the direction the magic mirror's viewpoint was, in essence, he was staring directly at Albert and Erin and he gently smiled at them as he waved his hand as though greeting a friend.

Albert shivered upon seeing the behemoth's face. While he had never seen him in person, he had surely heard rumors about the savage Behemoth of Greed, Mammon.

'This is bad.'

It was true that Mammon was the youngest and only charge amongst the seven great behemoths in centuries. He was originally the weakest almost them but Albert wasn't so sure that was the case. He had never seen the demon fight but Mammon was supposedly known for his seemingly limitless number of skills and spells and would stop at nothing to amass more.

He was indeed the epitome of Greed.

With a wave of his hand, Albert saw Mammon turn away and a black void that looked like the gate to the abyss appeared to his side as five demons walked out of it. He then handed one of them what appeared to be an ordinary black glove and reached into thin air and pulled out what looked to be a golden trident.

'Magic Artifacts? Don't tell me.'

As Albert thought of that, Mammon waved his hand again and another spatial gate opened up as more than fifty men dressed roughly like common thugs with only a few of them being well equipped walked out of the gate and stood behind him.

It appeared he was currently aware of their existence otherwise he would not have summoned backup before attempting to break the barrier.

With that done, Mammon suddenly stretched his arm out to touch the barrier and then used an unknown skill. The normally invisible barrier became visible for a moment as his skill sent massive ripples across the surface of the barrier that caused the entire castle to shake violently for the second time but the barrier appeared to have not been damaged.

Albert saw Mammon shrug after his second failed attempt as he turned to the demon he had given the glove to and nodded. 

The demon nodded back in response and put on the gloves while Mammon raised the trident high up. The two items seem to synchronize and Albert had a bad premonition.

"I'll go and assist Z in delaying them if that's possible. You stay here and keep an eye on things. You can also try and contact Lord Ty if possible. No matter what happens don't come out, I don't think they would be able to break through the barrier completely so most of the castle should be concealed from them. Don't come out no matter what happens to us, without a source, your life force can't recover and you'll only die in vain."

Saying that Albert hurriedly left the office before Erin could find the words to refute him as he used a skill to instantly equip himself with his black leather armor and Miaodao.

At the same time, the magic mirror that was still floating at the same spot Albert had left it in reflected the view of Hemei Sakaguchi as the trident he held and the glove in his minion's hands turned to dust and a wave of blue energy suddenly exploded from them and slammed into the massive barrier making it visible ones more.

This time, however, the barrier did not return to normal as a tiny crack could be seen at the point of impact. That one crack slowly turned to two, then three, and before he knew it. The cracks had spread all across the massive dome-shaped barrier.

*Shatter!

As though a massive glass ball had exploded, the barrier shattered into specks of light that slowly fell on the ground and Hemei and his crew of 59 were now able to walk past that spot and approach the massive metal gate.

"I suppose since they've been taking care of my castle for me, I should be polite and knock first."

*Boom!