Chapter 53: Dad Mode: The Spy Who Feared Me

【Lucifer PoV】

I am going to murder this boy.

My throne room is dark, lit only by the flickering flames of hellfire sconces and the eerie glow of my crystal ball. I’ve positioned my favorite chair directly in front of the viewing orb, a bowl of popcorn balanced on the armrest. This is what parenting has reduced me to—spying on teenagers through magical surveillance like some obsessed reality TV viewer.

But this is necessary.

My daughter Lilith has been acting strange lately. She smiles at random moments, hums while conducting experiments, and actually leaves her laboratory to socialize. These are red flags. Major red flags. A father knows when his daughter is compromised, and mine has been compromised by a boy named Eksu.

I hired the best spy in the demon realm to investigate.

Shadowstalker, they call him. Master of infiltration, assassin of kings, a demon so skilled he once stole the underwear off an archangel without being detected. His fee was astronomical but worth every soul coin. I need to know what kind of threat this Eksu poses to my precious daughter’s virtue.

The crystal ball flickers to life.

I lean forward, shoving popcorn into my mouth as the image sharpens. The spy has transformed into a common housefly, positioned on a wall in what appears to be the academy courtyard. Brilliant. No one suspects a fly.

There he is.

Eksu sits on a stone bench beneath a flowering tree. He looks ordinary, painfully average even—brown hair, regular build, wearing the standard academy uniform. This is the boy who has bewitched my daughter? This unremarkable child?

Then he sighs.

The sound doesn’t reach through the crystal ball but I can see his chest rise and fall, see his shoulders slump in what a fool might interpret as boredom. But I am no fool. I am Lucifer, King of the Underworld, and I recognize power when I see it.

That sigh contained mana.

Dense, suppressed, terrifying mana. The kind that doesn’t explode outward but compresses inward, creating a vacuum of power so intense it bends reality itself. The air around him shimmers subtly, distorting like heat waves over desert sand. He’s releasing his aura in controlled bursts, testing his own limits, mocking anyone foolish enough to observe him.

He knows we’re watching.

I drop my popcorn, kernels scattering across the obsidian floor. My hands grip the armrests hard enough that the wood cracks beneath my fingers. This boy, this seemingly ordinary student, is a monster hiding in human skin.

“Shadowstalker, be careful.”

I whisper the warning even though my spy can’t hear me. The crystal ball is one-way observation only. All I can do is watch in horror as my highly-paid infiltrator buzzes innocently on the wall, completely unaware of the danger.

Eksu shifts on the bench.

His movement is casual, lazy even, but I see the truth. Every micro-adjustment of his posture is calculated. He’s scanning his environment, processing threats, categorizing risks. His eyes drift across the courtyard with the bored expression of someone who’s seen a thousand battlefields and found them all lacking.

Then his gaze stops.

He’s looking directly at the wall. Directly at Shadowstalker. Directly at my spy disguised as a fly barely three millimeters long.

Impossible.

My blood runs cold. Shadowstalker’s transformation is perfect, his mana signature completely suppressed. There’s no way a human boy, no matter how talented, could detect a master demon spy using ancient concealment techniques.

Unless he’s not human.

Eksu’s eyes are dead. Void of life. Empty of the warmth and naivety that should characterize a teenage boy. Those are the eyes of someone who’s killed before, who’s ended lives without hesitation or remorse. Those are predator’s eyes.

He raises his hand slowly.

“No, no, no, don’t do it Shadowstalker, abort the mission!”

I’m shouting at the crystal ball like an idiot, knowing my spy can’t hear me. My popcorn bowl tips over completely, kernels rolling everywhere. I don’t care. I can only watch in mounting terror as Eksu’s hand rises higher, his fingers spread wide.

Is he casting a death spell?

I’ve seen death magic before. I’ve cast it myself. But I’ve never seen someone prepare a spell with such casual disregard for the target’s life. His expression doesn’t change, doesn’t show bloodlust or anger or even mild annoyance. He’s going to kill my spy the way someone might swat an insect.

Because to him, that’s all Shadowstalker is.

His hand moves.

【Shadowstalker PoV】

This mission is going perfectly.

I cling to the wall in my fly form, compound eyes providing a panoramic view of the target. Eksu sits on the bench, looking bored and harmless. Lord Lucifer is probably wasting his money on this surveillance job. This kid seems normal, maybe even weak. What did Miss Lilith see in him?

Then he sighs.

The air pressure changes instantly. My wings buzz involuntarily as some invisible force presses down on me. The mana concentration around him spikes, then compresses, then vanishes completely—absorbed back into his body with such control that it leaves no trace.

That’s master-level mana manipulation.

I’ve been a spy for three hundred years. I know the difference between natural talent and trained skill. This boy has both. He’s suppressing his aura so completely that even I almost missed it, and I’m literally watching him from five meters away.

Maybe Lord Lucifer was right to hire me.

Eksu shifts on the bench and his head turns slightly. His eyes sweep the courtyard with mechanical precision, analyzing, cataloging, dismissing. Then they stop. They focus on the exact section of wall where I’m positioned.

He can’t see me.

I’m using Shadowveil, an ancient technique that bends light and mana around me. Even archangels have failed to detect me when I’m using this. A human boy, no matter how skilled, shouldn’t be able to—

His eyes lock onto mine.

Every instinct screams danger. My demon blood goes cold. Those eyes aren’t human. They’re empty, devoid of emotion or mercy. I’ve seen those eyes before on ancient demons, on battlefield commanders who’ve lost count of their kills. Those are the eyes of someone who’s transcended normal limits of power.

He raises his hand.

My wings buzz frantically. Every nerve in my transformed body screams at me to flee but I’m frozen, paralyzed by the casual certainty of his movement. He’s not preparing a complex spell. He’s not channeling mana into a formation. He’s just raising his hand like swatting a fly is beneath the effort of proper magic.

Because I am just a fly to him.

His hand cuts through the air in a lazy arc, nowhere near close enough to actually hit me. Basic physics says I’m safe. The distance is too great. Even if he generated a wind blade, I could dodge.

Then his 【Absolute Defense】 pulses.

The shockwave is invisible but I feel it like a hammer to the chest. His defensive barrier expands outward in a perfect sphere, not to protect him but to attack. He weaponized his own defense system. The pulse hits me with enough force to crack ribs, if I had ribs in this form.

I’m thrown backwards, my fly body tumbling through the air.

My concentration shatters. The Shadowveil technique collapses. I revert to my true demon form mid-flight—three meters of scaled muscle, horned head, clawed hands. I hit the ground hard, skidding across cobblestones.

Students scream.

I don’t care. I scramble to my feet and run, dignity forgotten. My wings unfold and I take flight, desperate to put distance between myself and that monster wearing a boy’s face.

He detected me instantly.

Three hundred years of training, ancient stealth techniques passed down through generations of demon spies, and he saw through it all in seconds. Then he attacked with such casual precision that I didn’t even see the spell formation. He just swatted the air and his defense turned offensive.

I fly faster, putting buildings between us.

My heart pounds against my ribcage. My hands shake. I haven’t felt genuine fear in centuries but right now I’m terrified. That boy is a monster. An apex predator disguised as prey. Lord Lucifer needs to know immediately.

Miss Lilith is in danger.

If that boy decides to hurt her, no one could stop him. His power level is beyond anything I expected. His bloodlust, though suppressed, was palpable the moment he looked at me. He could kill her with the same casual effort he used to swat a fly.

I need to report this.

I angle toward the demon realm portal, pushing my wings harder. The academy shrinks behind me but I can still feel those empty eyes watching, analyzing, deciding whether I’m worth chasing.

I pray he lets me go.

【Eksu PoV】

There was a fly on the wall.

I hate flies. They’re annoying and they buzz near your face when you’re trying to enjoy a rare moment of peace. I was sitting on this bench specifically to avoid Elizabeth’s training session and Lilith’s “honest courtship attempts,” which somehow involve even more chemicals than before.

The fly kept buzzing.

I swatted at it halfheartedly, not really expecting to hit it. My 【Absolute Defense】 pulsed slightly from the movement, the way it always does when I make sudden motions. Some kind of automatic response to potential threats.

The fly exploded into a full demon.

What.

A three-meter-tall scaled creature materialized where the fly had been, crashed to the ground, and then flew away screaming. Students scattered in panic. The library windows shattered from the sonic boom of demon wings. The bench I’m sitting on cracked down the middle.

I just wanted to sit here.

I sigh again, deeper this time, and stand up from the broken bench. Someone’s going to blame me for this. They always do. Elizabeth will probably accuse me of secretly hunting demons. Lilith will write seventeen pages of analysis on “The Defensive-Offensive Paradox of Eksu’s Combat Style.”

I just wanted five minutes of peace.

A professor runs over, wand drawn, eyes wild with panic.

“What happened? Was that a demon spy?”

“There was a fly. I swatted it.”

The professor stares at me like I’ve admitted to assassinating royalty.

“You… swatted a demon spy?”

“I swatted a fly. It turned into a demon.”

The professor’s expression shifts through confusion, disbelief, and finally settles on exhausted acceptance.

“Of course it did.”

He walks away muttering something about transferring to a quieter academy. I stand there surrounded by screaming students and broken architecture, wondering why my life has become a series of escalating misunderstandings that I have zero control over.

Somewhere, someone is probably watching through magic and drawing completely wrong conclusions.

I sigh for the third time today.

All I wanted was to sit on a bench and be bored in peace, and somehow I’ve probably started an interdimensional incident. Elizabeth is going to be so smug when she hears about this. Lilith is going to write a thesis.

I miss being a normal baby with normal baby problems.

At least back then, the worst thing that happened was enchanted rattles hitting my forehead. Now I accidentally terrorize demon spies just by existing.

I walk away from the broken bench, ignoring the chaos.

Being powerful is exhausting, especially when you’re not actually trying to do anything impressive. My 【Absolute Defense】 just exists, constantly, turning every mundane action into a potential catastrophe.

I need a nap.

And maybe a new hiding spot that doesn’t attract flies.

Or demon spies.

Or whatever that was.