Chapter 5 – I Stood Still and She Surrendered

The arena erupted in chaos.

Demons packed the ring, shoulder to shoulder, screaming for blood. They stomped their feet in unison, creating a rhythmic thunder that shook the ground beneath me. Claws scraped against weapons, wings flapped in anticipation, and somewhere in the back a group started chanting something that sounded like a death march set to heavy metal.​

I stood in the center of it all, absolutely terrified.

Gorgara rolled her neck, bones cracking like gunshots. She gripped her dragon bone axe with both hands, the massive weapon humming with barely contained power. Her yellow eyes locked onto me with the kind of focus a predator reserves for prey that’s about to become dinner.

“Ready to prove yourself, King?”

I wasn’t ready. I was the opposite of ready. I was negative-ready, existing in a state of unpreparedness so profound it should’ve collapsed into a black hole.

My brain scrambled for options. Maybe the System had a tutorial, a help menu, literally anything that would explain how to not die in the next ten seconds.

“System?”

I thought desperately, trying to summon those blue notification boxes.

“Status? Skills? Dodge button? Please?”

Nothing.

The System had ghosted me completely, leaving me alone with my panic and a half-orc general who looked ready to split me in half.​

“HERE I COME!”

Gorgara’s roar shook the air.

She charged.

Her feet pounded against the stone floor, each step covering an impossible distance. She moved like a freight train mixed with a missile, all raw power and zero hesitation. The axe came up, arcing through the air in a beautiful, terrible swing aimed directly at my neck.

I tried to move.

My body didn’t respond.

Fear locked every joint, every muscle. My brain sent the command to dodge, to block, to do literally anything other than stand there like a statue waiting to get decapitated. But the message got lost somewhere between my consciousness and this massive armored shell, leaving me frozen in place like a video game character stuck in a loading screen.​

The axe descended.

Time slowed to a crawl. I could see every detail of the weapon—the runes glowing along the blade, the way the dragon bone gleamed with an inner fire, the sheer weight of it cutting through the air with a sound like tearing fabric.

This is it, I thought. This is how I die. Twice. In one day.

The blade hit my neck.

CRACK.

The sound was deafening, a thunderclap that silenced the entire arena.

But it wasn’t my neck breaking.

The dragon bone axe shattered on impact with my skin, exploding into a thousand glittering fragments that scattered across the ring like deadly confetti. The shockwave rippled outward, blowing my cape back in a dramatic arc that made me look like I was posing for an album cover. Dust and debris swirled around us, creating a cinematic haze that caught the red light filtering down from the sky.​

I didn’t move an inch.

Not because I was cool, or confident, or demonstrating some kind of ultimate warrior zen. I was still paralyzed with fear, my brain stuck in an infinite loop of “oh god oh god oh god” while my maxed-out defense stat did all the work.​

The arena went silent.

Gorgara stood three feet away, her hands still gripping the handle of an axe that no longer had a blade. She stared at the broken weapon, then at my neck. Her yellow eyes went wide, scanning the unmarked armor plating where her killing blow had landed.

Not a scratch. Not a dent. Nothing.

“You…”

Her voice came out breathy, unstable.

She dropped the axe handle. It clattered against the stone, the sound impossibly loud in the sudden quiet.

“You didn’t even flinch.”

Her chest heaved, breathing hard. Sweat dripped down her temple, following the curve of her jaw. Her muscles trembled, not from exhaustion but from something else entirely—something that made her green-tinted skin flush darker.

“My strongest attack…”

She reached up with one shaking hand, touching her own throat as if imagining what just happened.

“You tanked it like it was nothing.”

I wanted to say something, to explain that I’d literally been too scared to move. But my voice box had apparently joined the general strike my body was holding against basic motor functions.

Gorgara’s breathing got heavier.

Her pupils dilated, her lips parting slightly. The aggressive warrior stance melted away, replaced by something I recognized with growing horror—the same unhinged devotion I’d seen in Elizabeth’s cyan eyes and Lilith’s crimson gaze.​

Oh no.

“Strong…”

She whispered the word like a prayer.

“So strong you could crush me.”

Her knees buckled.

She dropped to the ground, not in defeat but in complete submission. Her hands pressed flat against the stone, her head bowing low enough that her tusks nearly scraped the floor.

“Forgive me.”

Her voice cracked with emotion.

“I doubted you. I questioned your strength. I’m trash. I’m weak. I’m nothing compared to you.”

The crowd of demons erupted in confused whispers. This wasn’t how duels ended. The challenger was supposed to either win or die, not collapse into what looked suspiciously like religious ecstasy.

Gorgara crawled forward on her hands and knees.

She moved toward me like a supplicant approaching an altar, her massive frame somehow making itself smaller, more vulnerable. She reached my feet and wrapped both arms around my leg, clinging tight.

“Please.”

She looked up at me, and her eyes were wrong. They had that too-wide quality, that obsessive gleam that made my survival instincts scream warnings.​

“Discipline me. Punish me for my insolence.”

She pressed her face against my armored shin, inhaling deeply.

“Use me however you want. Break me. I can take it. I want to take it.”

This is worse than Elizabeth, I thought, my internal panic reaching new heights. At least Elizabeth wanted to kill the other me. Gorgara wanted… I didn’t even want to finish that thought.

“My Lord!”

Lilith’s voice cut through the arena like a whip.

She materialized next to us in a blur of movement, her wings flared wide in a threat display. She grabbed Gorgara by the hair, yanking her head back with enough force to make the half-orc grunt.

“Remove your filthy hands from the Demon King.”

Lilith’s crimson eyes blazed with fury so pure it was practically tangible.

Gorgara didn’t let go. Her grip tightened on my leg, her muscles flexing.

“I have the right to serve him. I proved my loyalty.”

“You proved nothing but your own weakness.”

Lilith’s free hand moved to her dagger.

“He is mine. I have served him for years. You are a latecomer, a pretender—”

“He saved you from humans.”

Gorgara interrupted, her voice gaining confidence even from her submissive position.

“But he created me. He forged me in battle. Every scar on my body is a gift from his training. I am his weapon.”

Wait, what? I thought. The original Demon King trained her too? How many tragic backstories did this guy collect?

“Lies.”

Lilith pulled harder on Gorgara’s hair, bending her neck at a painful angle.

“The Demon King has no need for brutish muscle when he has refined power.”

“Refined?”

Gorgara laughed, the sound manic.

“You’re a schemer, Lilith. A politician playing dress-up as a demon. I’m a warrior. I can give him what you can’t—absolute physical devotion.”

She turned her head as much as Lilith’s grip allowed, looking up at me with desperate hunger.

“Let me prove it, My Lord. Let me show you how thoroughly I can submit.”

Lilith’s dagger pressed against Gorgara’s throat, drawing a thin line of dark blood.

“Another word and I separate your head from your shoulders.”

The training grounds had gone from chaotic arena to deadly standoff in under a minute. The watching demons backed away, giving the scene a wide berth. Nobody wanted to get caught in the crossfire between the Demon King’s right hand and his newly devoted general.

I stood there, still frozen, watching two dangerous women fight over who got to serve me while my brain tried to process how my life had become a nightmare harem anime with actual murder.​

This was impossible. This was unsustainable. I couldn’t keep juggling yandere after yandere without something catastrophic happening—

A blue rectangle materialized in front of my face.

The text glowed against the blood-red sky, visible only to me.

《 ALERT: Hero Body is being summoned by the Church. 》

No. Not now. Literally any other time would be better than right now.

《 Initiating Consciousness Transfer. 》

The world tilted sideways. I felt the connection to the Demon King body start to fray, like a rope being cut strand by strand. The mana that had been leaking everywhere suddenly reversed direction, sucking back into my core with enough force to make reality blur at the edges.

《 Transfer in 3… 》

Lilith and Gorgara were still fighting, their argument escalating to the point where other demons were forming a betting pool on who would draw first blood.

《 2… 》

I tried to say something, to give an order that would stop them from killing each other. My mouth moved but no sound came out.

《 1… 》

The Demon King body went rigid, locking in place like a powered-down robot. My consciousness yanked away from the dark armor and cold stone, hurtling through a void of blue light and error messages.

The last thing I saw before the transfer completed was Lilith and Gorgara both turning to stare at my frozen form, their argument forgotten in the face of their King suddenly becoming a statue.

Then everything went white, and I was falling toward silk sheets and the scent of lavender.