The Incubus Archduke Dreams of a Pet Human - Chapter 33

The house atop a hill just outside the Empire was well-suited for both admiring the Imperial vista and conducting secret meetings.

A dimensional gate burst open inside the room, and Cellis stormed back in, fuming. Mammon chuckled and leisurely crossed his legs atop the stool.

“Well, well. If it isn’t my idiotic little sister.”

“Who are you calling an idiot? You’re the one who said fragmenting the soul would make breaking the contract easier, Mammon! I did what you told me and only earned Lord Asmod’s hatred!”

“Don’t worry. When I become Demon King, I’ll rip out his heart for you.”

“As if you’ll ever become Demon King. I didn’t expect Lord Asmod to come rushing over like that.”

Cellis flopped onto the opposite sofa in irritation. Really, who could have predicted it? The image of Asmod, who refused even to touch her, scooping up that aphrodisiac-drenched human would not leave her mind.

“Still, it was worth meeting her. She’s no ordinary mana pouch.”

Mammon murmured, gathering mana at his fingertips and waving them like a conductor’s baton; the contract he’d slipped in place unknowingly had taken an unintended form, establishing the condition of delivering her to Asmod. The amount of mana obtained was small, but the precaution had been worthwhile.

The mana lightly harvested from Theticia gave off a clean light at his fingertips.

“There’s a reason Asmod lavishes such care on her.”

“Even after being swept up by Sodom Hall’s slime, her soul seemed fine. If she’d been an ordinary human, it wouldn’t have ended at just that.”

Cellis added resentfully.

If someone had been flooded with an aphrodisiac strong enough to intoxicate even demons, they should have lost their reason, yet the human woman in Asmod’s arms had simply looked like she was suffering from a fever.

“The quantity of mana is extraordinary too.”

The mana extracted from Asmod’s pet human carried the scent of crushed lily of the valley. Clean yet sharp; it felt like summer sunlight.

“She is certainly intriguing. What is that human, to possess such mana?”

His bright yellow eyes curved with intrigue. Mammon rolled the smoke bead atop his red nails, toying with it. When he drew long on his pipe and blew mana into it, the silvery smoke turned blood-red and scattered into the air.

“And on top of that, even an Imperial child is searching for this human.”

As Mammon spoke, his gaze turned toward the door.

A blond man burst through the door with an anxious face. Seeing the two demons lounging leisurely in his palace, enjoying the sunlight, made his insides churn.

“Archduke Mammon!”

“Speak of the devil and the devil appears. You have something in common with demons, Periot.”

At that low chuckle that seemed to mock him, Mammon’s new contractor’s face twisted severely.

Periot Hardonia. The one who bore the Imperial name, the prince who should have entered a political marriage with Theticia, that was him.

Despite being nearly sixty, he possessed a physique as robust as a young man’s. Deep green eyes beneath thick blond hair gleamed with sinister vitality.

“How long has it been since I summoned Archduke Mammon, and yet Theticia Pelloni still isn’t at my side? After all the sacrifices I made to summon you!”

The moment he’d confirmed that Theticia had vanished in the Contaminated Forest, Periot had placed several stragglers from his unit atop the magic diagram.

This was not the first time, so the summoning had been easy. The one who had noticed the Imperial’s untimely summons first was none other than Mammon.

“I do not understand what is so special about that one human woman that everyone is in such a frenzy.”

Mammon blew out smoke while waggling the foot he had propped on the stool. Periot looked between the two demons with a bewildered face.

“What do you mean, Archduke? Who else is after that woman? The contract was to offer ten humans if you brought her to me. How can someone of an Archduke’s standing treat a contract so lightly?”

“How was I to know a mere Imperial would demand something so modest? …Well, I am not saying I will break it. I am only saying it is an unbalanced deal. For now, I have found your fiancée’s whereabouts.”

“Where, where is she? Why did you not bring her after finding her?”

“Theticia Pelloni is in the Demon Realm. Alive and well, neither dead nor having lost her reason.”

“…The Demon Realm? How could a human be in the Demon Realm… No, it does not matter where she is. Bring her before me right now.”

Blood vessels bulged in Periot’s eyes. Mammon hummed familiarly at the greed-soaked human’s frenzy.

“I would like to, but someone else has already fastened the leash around Pelloni’s neck. One who shares the rank of the Demon Realm’s Seven Archdukes with me. Asmodeus has that woman.”

Periot’s face drained of color. Having studied the Demon Realm and magic from an early age, even he knew well the Demon Realm’s hierarchy.

And yet one of the seven Archdukes, including the Demon King, held his fiancée.

Mammon chuckled as he eyed Periot.

“Our contract is no longer about finding one human; it has become a contract to steal an Archduke’s possession. I am asking whether it is worth risking my life for only a few souls.”

Periot’s face turned pale. The voice that rasped out was full of resentment.

“No… I need that woman, that traitor’s daughter.”

Periot clutching his head almost looked like someone who had lost a beloved fiancée, but his words sounded nothing like it.