Kidnapped Princess C1

Chapter 1

A leisurely afternoon. Sunlight streamed through the window. Black hair, steeped in shadow, swayed gently in the breeze, catching the light and glimmering with a silken sheen. The hair, meticulously maintained, gleamed with health.

He was using a pile of documents as a pillow, indulging in a sweet afternoon nap. The languid sunlight softly embraced him, guiding him deeper into the realm of dreams.

Bang!

At that moment, the door burst open, and a man with ram’s horns on his head stormed in.

“Demon King! We’re in trouble!”

“Gasp! I wasn’t sleeping! I was working hard…!”

“The humans have declared war!”

The man blinked groggily, his expression still hazy from sleep. Though the word “war” clearly reached his ears, his mind lagged behind in comprehending it.

The Great Empire, Apellius.

On the entire continent, only one empire reigned supreme. Their power showed no signs of decline. They were arrogant and cruel, basking in the privileges of the victors—perhaps to make up for the humiliation they had long endured.

Long ago, there had been five races in this world: demons, elves, beastmen, dragons, and humans.

Among them, humans were the lowest of the low. Unlike the others, they lived barely a hundred years before their fragile lives withered away.

They lacked the elves’ affinity for nature and their ability to commune with spirits, the beastmen’s robust bodies, the demons’ mysterious power known as magia, or the dragons’ mastery of advanced magic.

On rare occasions, a powerful human would be born—but compared to the might of the other races, they were insignificant, a drop in the ocean, still fragile and easily crushed.

The law of the jungle—survival of the fittest—was the natural order.

However, out of pity for humankind, the gods bestowed upon them a great hero: the first king, Apellius, known as the Incarnation of the Sun and the Son of God.

With his arrival, humanity won the war. Even now, historians struggle to explain how it was possible. To say that they won is misleading—survived would be more accurate.

Under Apellius, the so-called Son of God, humans banded together to form a kingdom. Their absurd reproductive rate allowed them to multiply rapidly, while the other races—dwindled by war—continued down the path of extinction.

The dragons, once hailed as the strongest, were too self-absorbed to seek mates, their numbers dwindling until they could be counted on one hand. The elves, who revered the World Tree as their mother and lived around it in harmony with nature, suffered as the tree weakened from the scars of war, their numbers fading alongside it.

The beastmen, unable to restrain their hot-blooded nature, waged wars among themselves over territory, their young—defenseless in their half-grown animal forms—frequently becoming prey.

As for the demons, it was said they dwelled in the “Black Forest,” a land steeped in miasma, untouched by human contact. Few had ever seen them; none who entered the Black Forest had ever returned. Thus, humans called that place the Demon Realm.

And so, humanity became the victor of war. After countless ages, humans came to rule the world. They claimed fertile lands, prospered, and birthed generations unending.

Yet even a reign lasting five thousand years will eventually crack.

Drunk on their self-proclaimed supremacy as rulers of the world, humans committed the ultimate folly: they provoked Halstel, the First Dragon—an ancient, living relic, and the strongest being in existence. He fell into corruption, lost his reason, and became the Mad Dragon.

The aftermath reached even the Demon Realm.

His footsteps echoed through the long corridor, each stride laced with anger.

Because of those foolish humans, he had been summoned to the Demon Realm and endured endless suffering. Out of all the people on Earth, how absurd that he was the one chosen by the gods. All he had done was save a cat from being hit by a car—only to end up hospitalized.

While he lay unconscious, a god appeared to him.

[Your compassion has moved me. I wish for you to stop my first son, who seeks to destroy the human Empire of Apellius. He is a dragon, a being no mortal can withstand. Thus, I shall bestow upon you a powerful body and strength.]

With radiant light blazing behind him—straight out of a movie or novel—the god simply announced his decision.

It had been so outrageous that he couldn’t even protest before being whisked away.

He barely managed to seal Halstel, the dragon who had gone berserk with the intent to destroy the world.

“Unbelievable! Instead of thanking me, those humans stab me in the back? Who do they think saved them? They were the ones who angered Halstel in the first place—and I was the one who sealed him! Without me, they’d all be extinct!”

“Of course, my lord! All thanks to you!”

Elvin puffed out his chest proudly, as if it were obvious, and then darkly suggested they annihilate the humans.

“They crumble like dust before a single spell. Did they not once try to claim your accomplishments as their own? We should have wiped them all out then—”

“Put your claws away.”

“Yes, my lord.”

For someone with the horns of a goat, Elvin had the temper of a tiger. The sight of him instantly unsheathing his claws was terrifying.

The Demon King sighed deeply.

He had once been human himself, yet the arrogance and hypocrisy of humankind had long worn away any sense of belonging.

“I saved them from annihilation by the demons, and yet they boasted that they had defeated the demons themselves.”

He could only laugh in disbelief when, after Halstel’s army decimated them, the humans dared to proclaim that they had slain the dragon.

Who had sealed that insane beast?

When he fought Halstel, not a single human had been in sight. They hadn’t even reached the fortress gates—they had been too busy struggling to survive the miasma.

“To think it’s already been three hundred years…”

Only the demons knew the truth. Whether any human still did, he wondered. Twisting history to suit themselves—that was the nature of mankind.

It had been humanity that drove Halstel to madness in the first place.

They had killed the dragon’s beloved child, plunging him into rage and despair. Halstel cursed the world, reaching out to the demons to annihilate humankind.

The title of Demon King was earned through sheer strength. The previous Demon King perished, unable to defeat him, and so he—the human-turned-warrior—had ascended in his place.

Back then, his only purpose was to destroy humans. His existence shattered the balance of the world. There was a reason he was called a living relic of ancient times—his power was beyond comprehension.

The memories alone made his head ache. The century he had spent since being summoned had been nothing but torment.

Stopping a deranged dragon had nearly driven him insane. Without the god’s gift of a magically enhanced body, he would have stood no chance.

After sealing the tyrannical Halstel with his own hands, he somehow found himself crowned as the new Demon King.

For a time, he had felt like the protagonist of some novel—not the hero who slays the Demon King, but the one who becomes him.

And one hundred years of that life—what a cruel joke. Time had long lost its meaning; what once felt precious as a human had now become as trivial as the name of a kennel.

“I should never have listened to that god. One moment he’s whining about the suffering of humans and demons, and the next, he’s begging me to spare the dragon who nearly destroyed everything. What kind of god pities his own corrupted creation just because it was his firstborn?”

There had been no choice. He was dropped into this world and begged—no, ordered—to save the god’s child.

At first, the god had spoken with the dignity befitting a deity, but it hadn’t taken long for his true nature to show.

No, perhaps because he was a god, he had no grasp of reason, pressing upon him an impossible demand.

The one destroying the world was Halstel—how could he be saved? Killing him was the only way to restore peace. But he’d had no choice—he was already trapped in this world.

Because of that demand, he had tried to persuade Halstel. But all his efforts had been in vain; the dragon’s madness could not be quelled.

If he were to recount every ordeal he endured during that hundred years, it would take a full year of unbroken speech. Especially if he began with the god’s misdeeds…

“So why did the humans declare war? There must be a reason. Did any of our people cause trouble on their side? Some fool caught while toying around? I forbade them from making pacts with humans, didn’t I? No one stirred up trouble, right?”

“Of course not.”

Elvin nodded proudly.

That’s what he thought. He might slack off at times, but he always did what mattered. No matter how he looked at it, the humans had no reason to wage war now.

It had been three hundred years since the last conflict. It wasn’t as if old hatred suddenly flared anew.

“Then why?”

“A divine prophecy has been delivered.”

A prophecy…? No way…

The god from his dreams flashed through his mind. No matter how many times he rejected the offer, the god had promised him a “reward” for saving the world.

But this was nothing like the reward he’d asked for. What sort of idiotic prophecy had that flowery-headed deity bestowed this time?!

A blazing fury ignited within his chest.

『Blessed by God and loved by the Great Hero, a child shall be born who receives every blessing of the world. The radiant darkness shall shine as light itself. This one shall rule the world.』

The golden letters engraved upon the massive stone tablet glowed with a divine brilliance—clearly not the work of mortal hands.

The Pope held the tablet reverently in both hands, as though cradling a sacred relic. Behind him, priests in immaculate white robes followed in solemn procession through the grand corridor and into the council chamber.

The chamber, where noblemen of the highest rank gathered, was in an uproar more befitting a marketplace than the court of an empire. These were men who normally prized dignity above all, but today, decorum was forgotten.

“Your Majesty, I beg your pardon for not being able to bow properly.”

“Never mind that! Bring it here at once!”

The Pope presented the tablet to the ninety-second king of the Apellius Empire.

“So it’s true…”

The golden script was proof enough; no human hand could produce such divine writing. The king’s face darkened as he rubbed his dry face in distress.

“This is the translation, Your Majesty.”

Since few could read the divine tongue, the Pope had prepared an interpretation himself.

“Are you certain this translation is accurate?”

“I heard it directly from God Himself. The prophecy stands before your eyes. Do you doubt me?”

The Pope’s tone sharpened. The Apellius Empire, true to its mythic origins, had worshiped a single god for ages untold, unwavering in its faith.

As the high nobles leaned forward to examine the translation, one of them paused at a single ominous line.

“‘Radiant darkness shines as light…’”