Demon Lord: Erotic Adventure in Another World-Chapter 494: Burn: Blade of the Emperor

The rocks groaned where they pinned her.

Vinea lay half-buried under a collapsed ledge of blackened stone, the breath forced from her lungs with every heartbeat. Her sword lay nearby—snapped midway down the blade, its molten core flickering faintly like a dying ember.

Snow, once white, now steamed against the shards of fire leaking from her broken horns.

Above her, the ground trembled.

A booming laugh, childlike and full of excitement, rolled across the battlefield.

"C'mon!" Gorrhan shouted, hopping from foot to foot like an oversized child begging for another round of a game.

"Don't stop now! You're close—I can feel it!"

The massive demon lumbered closer, his stone arms crackling with barely contained seismic energy. His back, ridged with jagged spines, hummed in rhythm with each booming step.

"You're strong!" he said brightly. "Stronger than the little cracks you're making!"

Gorrhan never insulted or attacked Vinea when she didn't fight back, a strange battle that confused her at first... but the demon childishly resembled the man she loved,

Another rumble shook the frozen terrain as he slammed a fist into the ground, not aiming at her, but beside her. A warning. A heartbeat.

But the force shook her organs as she vomited blood.

"Come on, pretty horns! You gotta show me!"

Vinea gritted her teeth.

Her body refused to move easily. One of her legs was twisted awkwardly under the rubble. Her breathing was a total mess as she gasped and swallowed the air like a fish out of water. Every twitch of her fingers sent jagged knives of pain up her spine.

But she didn't hate him.

She could feel it—the honesty. The innocence behind the force.

Gorrhan wasn't trying to humiliate her.

He was trying to wake her up.

The snow melted around her slowly, forming rivulets of steam that rose like spirits into the dim sky. Her molten horns pulsed once, then faded back into dull heat.

She lowered her forehead into the crook of her arm, teeth clenched so tightly they ached.

Her voice was silent.

But in her heart, a whisper stirred:

"I can't give up here."

"Not when he gave me a reason and the strength to fight."

"Not when I can finally... burn brightly, like Liana did!"

The stone above her shifted, scattering pebbles down her back, but she couldn't feel it as her thoughts turned inward, drawn towards the most important moments in her life.

To the moment she first met him...

Not a romantic confession but more like a trial.

False whispers about him slipped into her ears, and she appeared to watch and judge him worthy of her sister and the royal family..

Ryuji Vincenzo..

A man from another world, thought to be another weak 'false hero' to be used as fodder to make time for Alan to become stronger... He became someone her little sister Liana became almost obsessed with.

To Vinea... to Princess Anne, he was a thorn embedded far too deep.

He was like a sword, too stubborn and refusing to bow.

Vinea had been told to judge him.

If he was a danger, she was to ensure he was "removed."

If he was a fraud, she was to expose him.

If he was weak, she was to forget him.

But then she saw him fight.

Not from behind glass, not from whispers or letters.

In the arena.

The dirt soaked in blood, the air thick with fear, and Asmodeus stood alone, back straight, blade lowered at his side, facing men who outnumbered and outarmed him.

He didn't roar.

He didn't posture.

He fought like a wildfire—violent, radiant, uncontrolled, only in the sense that he refused to be extinguished.

She had seen warriors kill before.

But he was something different.

"I cannot remove my eyes... he is beautiful," she remembered thinking, her heart racing faster and faster as it became difficult to swallow her breath.

"He is different... I need to fight him, speak to him!"

Afterwards, when the arena's sand was black with spilt blood, and he still stood breathing, broken but unbent, Vinea felt her hand move against her will, pressed over her chest.

Not in duty.

Not in caution.

In reverence.

It was the first time she questioned her mission.

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The first time, she wondered if her sister Linea hadn't been bewitched—

—but simply the first to see him properly.

The snow around her shifted again, fire in her veins pulsed, slow and steady and for the first time she met him, wearing her titles like armour:

Princess. Watcher. Judge.

She was told to observe him, not to feel.

But that changed the first time she saw him fight.

There, in the dust and blood of the Grigor arena, Asmodeus fought without banners or songs—only the brutal rhythm of survival. Not seeking glory. Not bowing to fear.

She had watched from above, standing stiff beside Linea, pretending she felt nothing.

But her hands had curled at her sides.

Her heart had clenched.

"Not power," she thought, even now, the memory burning bright in her chest."It was never his power I loved."

"It was his will."

The way he struggled. The way he refused to surrender, even when the gods themselves seemed set against him. And when Vinea faced her limits—when her mortal body, so loyal and so fragile, could no longer keep up....

He hadn't looked at her with pity, told her to kneel and only offered his hand.

"Become stronger," he said.

"Choose your own strength, your own path."

It wasn't salvation. But it was a choice, and he didn't save her.

He believed she could save herself.

The heat in Vinea's veins boiled up, crackling against the shattered rock around her. Her broken sword hissed, veins of golden light threading through its cracked edge. Her tail, once limp and tattered, now twitched, sharpening.

"It's always been him."

"The strength I envied."

"The strength I wanted to reach."

"The one I…"

The words burned into her heart.

The fire inside her finally had nowhere left to hide.

It burst upward—not wild, but sharp—carving through her broken body in precise lines, stitching her muscles, fusing her shattered bones.

Her horns, once chipped and cracked, glowed molten silver at the roots, golden at the tips, veins of fire branching across their length like living rivers of devotion.

Her sword, split, useless—began to hum.

Golden and silver light wove through its cracks, binding the broken steel together not with metal, but with purpose. The rubble pinning her shifted—then evaporated, the heat too pure, too focused to be resisted by dead stone.

Vinea pushed herself upright, her breaths slow and even, despite the blood still dripping from her fingers.

Her sword lifted.

A single word shaped itself on her lips—not shouted.

"Burn."

The air flexed inward, like the world itself bowed before the command.

"Blade of the Emperor."

The transformation didn't change her silhouette dramatically.No wings. No roaring flame storm.

Just a refinement.

Her armour blackened at the edges, intricate lines of fire-etched sigils running along her waist and thighs. Vinea's once simple tail sharpened into a molten spearhead, flickering golden behind her.

And her blade—Her blade no longer reflected light.

It was light.

A silver-gold inferno shaped into the narrow profile of a longsword, its core pulsing with each beat of her heart.

Across the battlefield, Gorrhan's massive body paused mid-bounce. He blinked, his simple, excited expression brightening even more.

"OHHH!" he cheered, clapping his huge rocky hands together hard enough to shake the frost from nearby cliffs.

"There it is! There it is!"

He pounded his fists into his chest, the stone plates vibrating with happiness.

"Now we can really fight!"

Her first stride carved a molten line through the frost, a perfect seam of glowing silver fire in the snow.

"For him."

"Only him."

She raised her burning sword.

Her eyes—one gold, one silver—reflected not hatred.

But devotion sharpened into a weapon.

Different from the other women, he power created only to protect and attain the image, the young man in the arena who stole her heart.

The earth shook beneath her boots.

Vinea's blade, molten and alive, cut a burning path through the frozen ground with each step. Steam hissed from every footprint she left behind. Her horns glowed like twin suns behind her brow, the molten gold and silver casting wild shadows across the torn battlefield.

Across from Vinea, Gorrhan's figure shuddered, his stone arms cracked under the pressure of Vinea's aura, but a smile remained pasted on his face. The spines along his back vibrated and created a beautiful, low-pitched echo too low for human ears.

"That's it!" he shouted, voice booming like a festival drum.

"That's what I was waiting for!"

Vinea didn't answer.

She didn't need to.

Her blade answered for her, blazing brighter as she charged forward.

The first collision was deafening.

Her burning sword met his massive forearm with a clang that split the air, flames and splinters of stone exploding outward in a circular shockwave. Ice cracked, cliffs splintered.

The blizzard itself recoiled around them, leaving a hollow, still eye in the storm where only fire and stone contested.

Vinea didn't retreat despite the struggled, but she pushed forward!

Her blade carved deep into Gorrhan's granite flesh, molten lines searing into his massive fists—but not deep enough. His punches came back with titanic force, each strike slamming against her sword or shoulders, with a low shockwave staggering her backwards, leaving bruises even through her enchanted armour.

"Good! Again!" Gorrhan laughed, voice bright with pure joy.

"Hurt me more! Show me what he gave you!"

She roared wordlessly and swung again, a horizontal cut that sprayed burning silver fire across his chest. Gorrhan grunted, sliding back a half step. For a moment, it looked like he might fall, but... he smiled wider instead.

The ground beneath him cracked—not from her, but from him.

He slammed his stone fists together.

The air trembled.

"W-What's going on!?" Vinea gasped with a distorted and demonic voice.

However, no answer came as Gorrhan's spines flashed brilliant white—and then—

"Fracture!" He said, grinning.

"Crumbling Gate."

The shockwave wasn't an explosion.It was a collapse.

The very terrain bent inward toward Gorrhan as his stone body superheated from within.His arms glowed with volcanic heat.Every step he took now vibrated the bones of the earth.

He rolled his shoulders.

Chunks of steaming stone fell from his arms, revealing reinforced obsidian muscle beneath—bristling with raw, brutal energy.

"Now," Gorrhan said, crouching low like a sprinter.

"Let's see which of us falls first!"