After Diablo severed the Elf King's head, he carried it with him and stepped back through the Dimension's gate.
He raised the head high and roared:
"Listen well — this is the head of your King." Then he hurled it to the ground.
The head fell onto the grass.
No one moved.
No one dared come near it.
One child stared at the head, unable to understand why the King wasn't moving.
A soldier dropped his weapon.
A woman collapsed to her knees.
An elder closed his eyes and said:
"Our age has ended."
Diablo strode forward with confident steps.
"Your King has died by my hand. Now you'll honor your word. Give me the Jewel."
Silence swallowed the entire forest. No one spoke. Even the trees fell mute. The spirits fled — but the Demon King's army roared through the forest, filling it with their screaming.
"King Diablo has won!" — the cry echoed and echoed until it carried past the forest's edge.
Everyone wept, unable to accept that their King was truly dead — the King who had sacrificed everything, who had done all he could… only to be killed like this.
Rosa stepped forward.
"If it's the Jewel you want, you won't have it."
The Demon King looked at her.
"I don't think I heard that right. Why won't you give it to me?"
"You won that battle through treachery."
Diablo laughed. "It's a battle. It doesn't matter who's in it — all that matters is who wins."
A demon pushed forward from the ranks.
"Your Majesty, King Diablo… we've found something that looks like the Mana Jewel."
The King laughed. "Did you all hear that? We've found it." Then he threw his head back and roared:
"We've won, my soldiers! Now go — kill. Tear through the Elf people, every last one of them."
Rosa's expression changed. Every face among the Elves shattered at once.
The army surged forward, killing everyone in sight.
Children. Elders. The young. Women. Little girls… they were all cut down. Many were violated.
A mother gripped her son's hand and tried to run — but a demon severed her foot, and she fell, her son falling with her. When her son tried to stand, she shoved him, screaming at him to run.
The demon had already cut his throat.
A tear slid down her face, and she screamed with everything left in her — and the demon cut her throat too.
Screaming filled the forest from every direction — but in one narrow alley, an Elf man stood in front of his trembling door, gripping a carpenter's hammer.
Behind him, his wife held their daughter to her chest, trying to muffle the girl's crying as she shook.
Three demons approached, slow and unhurried.
One of them sneered. "You're going to face us with that hammer?"
The man's knuckles went white around the handle. He didn't so much as glance at the demons.
He spoke only to his wife.
"If you find your chance… run."
The first demon lunged. The man swung the hammer and dropped him.
The second drove a spear into his shoulder.
The third severed his leg.
The man fell — but he kept his grip locked around one demon's leg, holding it back, keeping it from chasing his wife.
He turned to look at his daughter one last time…
And smiled.
It was the last smile of his life.
He screamed with everything he had left:
"RUN—"
Homes burned. Buildings crumbled. Almost nothing was left standing in the forest.
Rosa and a large group fled toward the Mana Jewel and began guarding it, wrapping the place in nearly fifty barriers to keep the Demon King out.
But the moment the Demon King sensed the location, he'd already placed a mark on it. A deadly aura tore out from that mark — half the group protecting the Jewel dropped where they stood, and the barrier shattered into nothing.
The Demon King strolled toward it, toying with them the entire way. By the time he arrived, everyone who had been guarding the Jewel was already dead.
Half had been killed outright. The other half lay there, pretending to be corpses.
Rosa cast a time-freezing spell over whichever Elves still clung to life.
The Demon King stepped forward.
"Don't think that little trick will save you. I can still sense the residue of the mana you used."
A man walked toward him with steady, unwavering steps.
He wasn't a knight.
He wasn't a commander.
He was just a farmer.
He looked back once…
and saw his wife holding their two children.
He smiled.
Then said:
"If you all survive… plant a single tree in my name. Just one."
He gripped his old spear.
Then ran straight at Diablo…
knowing full well he would never return.
He approached without a trace of fear and said:
"This is the last of the barrier we raised to protect the Jewel. Don't think you'll take it without going through me first."
The Demon King laughed.
"You're just a villager. Not a fighter. But it doesn't matter — show me what you've got."
The man charged at him, fully aware he was running toward his own death.
The Demon King raised his right hand and cut through the air. The man's right arm and the lower half of his body were severed in the same motion, and he crashed down onto his face.
The Demon King laughed. "Is that everything you have?"
The man lay on the ground, but he was still crawling — until he managed to grab hold of the Demon King's foot and said:
"I told you. You will not touch that Jewel."
"It's genuinely impressive," the Demon King said, "that you're still breathing after a hit like that. But how exactly do you plan to prove your point?"
The man answered, laughing, bleeding out:
"I'm going to take you with me. And the second I do, the failsafe barrier activates and protects the Jewel. I'm going to carve Eylor's name straight into that rotten skull of yours."
The Demon King's face twisted, and he moved to kill him before it was too late.
But he was already far too late.
The place erupted. When the Demon King emerged from the blast, only his head remained — everything else had been burned to nothing.
The King regenerated from his head, seething with fury. He turned toward the Mana Jewel, reaching to pull it free.
But the barrier activated and severed his entire arm.
The King staggered back, consumed with rage. He raised a single finger and said:
"I'm not leaving this place empty-handed."
He summoned a dragon and had it breathe fire across the forest, burning it to the ground.
The Demon King took the Elf King's head with him and withdrew.
Before leaving, he climbed onto a raised platform and roared with terrible authority:
"Hear me, my soldiers… The battle is over. But the war is far from finished. A few short days, and we return here again."
Then he smiled and said:
"Let's go. This place now belongs to history."
He carried the Elf King's head with him, and murmured to himself:
"If you'd been born in my kingdom… I would have made you my right hand."
The demon army withdrew.
But the forest…
was never the same again.
There was no more screaming.
Only…
broken, scattered weeping.
A woman searching through the dead.
A child shaking his father's shoulder, still believing he was only asleep.
An old man gathering pieces of the dead into a cloth.
No one asked anymore:
Who died?
The question had become:
Who's still alive?
—
Spring passed…
Then summer…
Then autumn…
Then winter.
Once…
Then twice…
Then ten times over.
Trees grew over the ground where warriors had once fallen. The blood vanished.
But the memories…
never did.
The children who survived…
grew into men.
And those men…
carried a fear in their eyes that no child should ever know.
—
Ten years after the Demon King's massacre, Rosa and the remaining Elves finally awoke.
They began to gather, counting their numbers. Of their entire people, only 1,500 remained.
They wept. And together, they swore an oath: they would kill the Demon King.
They began clearing the land, trying to restore it to what it once was. Ruin still blanketed the entire forest, and bodies lay scattered everywhere.
Once the corpses and fallen trees had finally been cleared away, someone stepped forward and said:
"We need someone to rule us."
They gathered, and the debate began. Voices rose in agreement, one after another, until someone asked:
"Who will be King?"
Another answered:
"Rosa, obviously. She carries the royal blood."
Rosa froze. "No… I don't deserve to rule. Look — she's my brother's wife. Make her the ruler instead."
The former King's wife laughed. "I'm pregnant. I can't take the throne. It has to be you."
Rosa kept refusing — but the others wouldn't let her.
Once she was named ruler, she said:
"We need to build new homes now. We need to grow stronger. And we need to rebuild our numbers."
Fear still lingered on every face around her.
No one blamed them for it — not after a massacre that had come without warning.
Rosa stood alone before her brother's crown.
She reached her hand toward it.
But she couldn't bring herself to touch it.
She sank to her knees.
Pressed her head against the royal robe.
And wept…
for the first time since the war had ended.
After a few minutes…
she wiped her tears.
Stood.
Took hold of the crown.
Then turned to face her people.
And said:
"If we keep weeping…
then everyone who sacrificed themselves for us will die a second time."
She saw the fear, the hesitation still written on their faces, and said:
"Why do I see only sorrow and fear? Where is your resolve? Where is your fire? What would our friends, our loved ones say, if they could see us like this? What would… my brother say? Will you let the Demon King walk away from what he's done? This is something we owe it to ourselves to take seriously."
They began to shout, their spirits rising, and Rosa carried them forward with her.
—
A year passed. The former Queen gave birth to a daughter.
The news reached Rosa quickly. She rushed to the room, a bouquet of flowers in her hands, a smile that refused to leave her face.
She opened the door.
She heard an infant crying.
She smiled. "Looks like the little one beat me to the welcome."
But no one answered.
She stepped closer to the bed.
The Queen lay there…
still.
Rosa reached out and touched her shoulder.
Her body was cold.
For a moment, Rosa forgot how to breathe.
Then she looked toward the cradle.
The baby girl was crying, alone.
Rosa lifted her into her arms.
Slowly, the child began to calm.
Rosa looked down at the infant's face and saw her brother's features traced across it.
She whispered:
"You've lost your mother…
but I won't let you lose your family too."
She held her close.
Then walked out of the room, saying:
"From this day forward…
you're my daughter.
And your name… will be Miko."
—
Deep in the heart of the forest…
the Jewel didn't rest on some pedestal of gold.
It hung instead among the roots of an ancient, towering tree.
Its green light pulsed like a heartbeat.
And with every pulse, the air around it grew purer.
The trees reached their roots toward it.
And the small spirits circled it endlessly…
as though guarding a mother of their own.
(End of Chapter 53)