Gonna Be a Demon King!

"Wow, so that's what my intestines look like…"

Those words escaped the lips of a youth sitting on the ground with his back against a broken wall.

All around him, the ground trembled with one deafening explosion after another, and the air was thick with the acrid scent of smoke and blood.

Waves of magical energy surged and clashed in every direction, painting the sky in vivid, otherworldly hues.

Yet, amid this violent storm, he seemed eerily detached, his mind fixated on the surreal spectacle of his own innards.

Everything from his left shoulder downwards had been deleted from existence, while an elbow-length stump was all that was left of his right arm.

Scars covered his face and his body, blood slowly trickled out from his right nostril, while one jagged scar tore through where his left eye once was.

This young man was clearly on the verge of death.

Raising his head, he took in the sight of the scenery before him.

War. Carnage. Bloodshed.

The ground was littered with blood, corpses and weapons. Red was the new colour of what was once a tranquil, rich plain, which had now become the stage of a full-blown war.

The air which would normally be soft and carry a gentle breeze was now deafening loud. The sound of explosions drowned any other sound in the area, something no survivor will ever forget.

From this youth's position, he could see the ordinary-looking Humans, the long-eared Elves, the scaled Dragons, winged Angels and the horned Demons.

It was a five-way battle where tens of millions of them ruthlessly slaughtered each other.

And this youth lying here in a pool of his own blood was just a random human soldier. From the torn badge on his right shoulder, it could be seen that he held of Sergeant.

His rank wasn't too high or low considering he was just an Intermediate Grandmaster Realm existence, a Level 390.

This youth was a child soldier who was drafted during mass conscriptions of every able-bodied youth in his village at the time, regardless of gender.

Because of this, this young boy who could barely see his adulthood on the horizon was now embroiled in a war on a planet far from home.

Had fate been kinder, this young boy's life would have been one of quiet simplicity. He would have woken each morning to the soft light of dawn, his hands roughened from tilling the soil, planting crops that would sustain his family and village.

The scent of earth and fresh grass would have been his daily companions, his heart content with the rhythms of rural life.

In the evenings, he would have gathered with his friends beneath the golden light of a setting sun, their laughter echoing through the fields as they played until darkness fell.

Among them was a girl with bright eyes and a smile that had always warmed his heart—his childhood sweetheart. They had grown up together, their lives intertwined like the vines in the fields they worked. He had often imagined a future where they would marry, build a life together, and raise children of their own.

But now, as he sat amidst the horrors of war on a distant, alien planet, those dreams felt like a lifetime ago.

She, too, had been drafted into this unforgiving conflict, sent to fight on a different planet. He used to wonder where she was, if she still thought of him, or if she had moved on, assuming he was lost forever in the vastness of the universe, but eventually, those thoughts faded from his mind.

The boy had never been trained for war. His skills were those of a simple villager—common, unremarkable, and he lacked the talent for the arcane.

When the time came for him to fight, he had no choice but to pick up a weapon, so he chose a sword, like the knights in the bedtime stories his father once read to him.

He fought desperately, with no natural gift for battle, but with a stubborn will to survive. He killed many, and nearly died dozens of times, each brush with death leaving a new scar across his battered body.

Through sheer determination and the accumulation of small merits, he clawed his way up a few ranks, eventually earning the title of Sergeant.

But even that hard-won rank offered no safety on this battlefield where survival was a distant hope.

Here, among Level 700s who could sink entire islands and Level 900s who could split the continent apart; this poor Level 390 boy was nothing more than cannon fodder.

The battle raged on, but he had been knocked out, caught in a brutal pincer between squads of angels and demons.

His entire squad was wiped out before his eyes, and the two enemy leaders tag-teamed him, defeating him with merciless efficiency before turning on each other in a deadly clash.

As consciousness slipped away, the boy's thoughts drifted back to her, to the life they might have had, and the peaceful future that now seemed so far out of reach.

Feeling his vision dimming, a bitter thought crossed his mind.

'Finally…I'm done with this fucking war!'

As his strength ebbed away, the cacophony of the battlefield seemed to fade into a distant murmur. The world around him, once filled with the roar of explosions and the clash of magic, grew eerily quiet.

There was no dramatic finale, no blaze of glory. His death was silent, almost insignificant, lost amidst the chaos of the war that raged on around him.

He was just another fallen soldier, another number added to the ever-growing toll, one more body among millions, his life extinguished without fanfare.

And as his eyes finally closed, his last breath left his lips unnoticed, swallowed by the endless storm of violence that continued without pause, uncaring of the life that had just ended.

◇　◇　◇

The Universe.

All of space and time and their contents, comprising all known existences, any fundamental interactions, physical processes, constants and all forms of energy and matter.

The Universe, in its vast and intricate expanse, operated through a myriad of Universal Laws and Aspects, guiding the natural order of existence.

However, even these cosmic processes were not without flaws.

Perfection was an illusion, after all.

Ordinarily, when a person died, their soul would be claimed by the Law of Death and ushered into the cycle of reincarnation—provided it wasn't stolen during the brief moment before the Law of Death acted.

Unless the soul had been branded or protected by special measures, its memories would be wiped, converted into energy, and used to recreate the soul anew into a completely different existence. The newly forged soul would be distributed to incarnate into a completely different body, possibly even from a different race.

But as stated before, flaws could occur in the Universe's processes.

On the first day of Year 9013 of the 50th General Calendar, such a flaw manifested—a gravitational error on a certain Apex World within a high-level dimension.

[System Alert: Gravitational Error Detected]

|Origin: Apex World, Dimension 7589

Time Stamp: Day 1, Year 9013, 50th General Calendar, 1907th Cosmic Cycle. |

…

[System Alert: Reincarnation Path Distortion Detected]

|Impact Zone: Sector 22-B, Reincarnation Path

Status: Energy condensation observed within the affected sector. |

This error triggered a surge of energy that rippled across space-time, distorting its fabric and affecting a section of the Reincarnation Path. Within this distortion, a portion of the energy condensed rapidly and seeped into a newly formed soul, which was about to be sent out for distribution.

|Error Resolution Matrix Activated. Containing energy…|

Within seconds, the System contained the excess energy, but the damage was done.

[System Alert: Nascent Singularity Formation Detected]

|Soul Classification: Infant.

Immediate Action: Stabilization protocol initiated. |

The newly minted soul had absorbed a substantial portion of this energy, transforming it into a 'Singularity'—a rare and dangerous anomaly embodying the error that had just occurred in the Universe at that point.

Singularities, alternatively known as Irregulars or Anomalies, were flaws within the Universe's design—uncontrollable "Bugs" in the "Code" of the Cosmos.

These rare cases were points of unpredictable growth, each so saturated with bugs that the laws of the Universe responsible for balancing things out and preventing bullshit from happening completely and catastrophically break down around them.

Such immense power was far beyond what the Soul Core of the newly minted soul could withstand. As such, it shattered, erased from existence.

The energy within the fragile Soul Shell threatened to explode, and the System, sensing the impending error, acted swiftly to prevent it.

[System Directive: Soul Core Replacement Required]

|Search Parameters: Recently deceased soul with sufficient energy levels.

Match Found: Human Soul from Planet 5622-AD, Dimension 6501

Action: Condense and transfer Soul Core. |

A stronger Soul Core was required—one that could endure the overwhelming energy of the Nascent Singularity long enough for it to fuse with the existence.

At that precise moment, a random human perished on a distant planet, and their soul, claimed by death, entered the Reincarnation Path.

The Soul had not yet been wiped and the energy from their previous existence still lingered, unspent.

The System picked this soul, whose energy was enough to withstand the power of the Nascent Singularity, condensed it into a Soul Core and directly transferred it into the Soul Shell that was on the verge of collapse.

[System Report: Soul Core Transference Successful]

|Soul Status: Nascent Singularity stabilized—340 Mortal Levels consumed.

Memory Status: Retained. Permissible within error tolerance. |

The Nascent Singularity bore down on the Soul Core, and out of 390 Mortal Levels the Soul possessed, 340 of them were consumed to withstand the Singularity.

Since the soul had been selected immediately upon entering the Reincarnation Path, its memories remained intact, however, this was within the range of permissible errors, and thus the Universe allowed it.

With the Nascent Singularity stabilized, the System performed a final crosscheck for any remaining errors.

|Logging Existence of New Singularity Existence in Alatheia Universal Database. | 

[System Finalization: Error Containment Complete]

|Crosscheck Results: No additional errors detected.

Soul Status: Ready for distribution. |

Finding none, the soul was released for distribution as originally intended, and the Universe resumed its operations as though nothing had ever gone awry.