For several seconds, the new king and the two newly arrived guests stared at each other wordlessly. Questions popped up in their minds non-stop.

"Unbelievable..." Sullivan muttered. "Truly unbelievable."

Meanwhile, it dawned on Dhein why Fiorelle chose to come with Sullivan Wixorn. As expected, it had to be because of how he accused her during his wedding, or at least it was part of it.

Dhein stood from his seat, guilt gnawing at his heart.

But before he could speak, Fiorelle's words had stunned him.

"Dhein, did you... do that on purpose?" she asked.

He fell silent.

"Did you break my heart and manipulate me to join my father so that we could meet here?"

Dhein blinked a few times.

'What the heck is she talking about?'

"I understand now, Dhein. You didn't really mean those words, right?"

He opened his mouth.

"I—I mean, yeah... but..."

His words were cut when he saw tears forming in her eyes.

She immediately wiped them and said:

"Thank goodness... I didn't want to hate you..."

Dhein's eyes widened, and he hung his head in shame.

"I'm sorry, Fiorelle."

Out of the blue, Sullivan walked forward and spoke.

"So you really did defeat the demon king. And now, you're here to conquer Sekhtar itself."

Dhein took a deep breath and lifted his gaze.

"That's right."

Sullivan furrowed his eyebrows.

"And you're expecting us to serve you," he said.

It seemed that Sullivan and the Demon King were connected somehow — most probably due to the curse inside his body. But since they believed the Demon King to be defeated and he had not yet taken any actions such as triggering the curse, Dhein figured that the Demon King had indeed been neutralized.

It was no surprise. After all, Zarria, Axerion, and the strongest people in the continent were there.

He pushed Shina away from the range of the teleportation spell, too, so she should be safe. There were no concerns about the people he cared about for now.

'That's great... I can focus on my job here.'

He nodded.

"Sullivan, I have discovered the truth about the demonkind."

The old man lingered as though staring through his soul.

Dhein continued.

"I understand your fury against humanity now. Your wife, Tersi... she was just an innocent person who suffered unjustly because of human ignorance."

After a brief silence, a faint chuckle escaped Sullivan's lips.

"Yes," he muttered.

Fiorelle looked at the two of them back and forth with asking eyes.

She then spoke.

"What are you two talking about?"

When Sullivan didn't speak, Dhein answered first.

"Fiorelle, everything we knew about demons was wrong."

He started to explain everything he had discovered about this race —how they were just another kind of evolved animal like them and how the former king's tyranny had destroyed their souls.

Demons weren't evil in nature. They were just trying to survive from Angelus' cruel reign.

"And that's why I want to help them. Right now, we can't expect the human empire to accept demons as citizens, so I'm planning to fix their living conditions here instead."

Fiorelle listened closely with a serene expression as the scion of divinity spoke.

"As you may have already observed, this nation is dirt poor. I want to create hospitals, schools, markets and a stable food supply. Yesterday, I appointed the first ten provincial governors that I'm sure I can trust. With your help, the progress will be even better."

After he said those words, Sullivan cupped his chin with his fingers.

"So you dethroned the Demon King for this purpose, huh... Who would have guessed? That all along, your goal was to save an entire race of people."

None of those were true, but Dhein didn't talk...

Sullivan nodded.

"Okay, I'll help you."

Dhein celebrated internally.

Fiorelle stepped forward.

"Me too. Just tell us what we have to do."

With all the things going smoothly, Dhein wanted to throw a celebration right then and there, but he knew a lot of work had to be done. With the help of these two powerful and capable people, Dhein felt a lot more confident that they would be able to accomplish so much.

"First," he said, pointing at the doorway towards the balcony.

"Let's build a staircase."

***

Dhein showed Fiorelle the detailed blueprint of his plan to develop the provinces of Sekhtar. The first step was creating a chain of command through the governors, which was kind of complete. Now, they had to create the first public hospital for the sick citizens.

Sullivan took on the role of a doctor. He was knowledgeable in this field, too, so there was no other fit for the role.

The strong demons went to work right away. Dhein decided that the hospital should be at the very center of the nation, where all citizens could access it with equal ease.

That day, the construction of the first Sekhtarian hospital had begun.

Since there was no currency to spend yet, the workers were paid with the first form of tax — sugarcanes. It was the most valuable crop at present, and it was the harvesting season as well. So when Dhein was deciding how the workers should be compensated, he ordered the governors to collect five percent of the sugarcane yields as tax.

The day flew by with Dhein closely inspecting the construction. At this rate, they would be able to finish this in five months.

"This is good," he muttered to himself.

When they returned to the castle, the other half of the staircase was completed and being hardened. It should be usable by tomorrow.

'This is the last time I'll be flying you up,' Cyreth said, laughing.

"Oh shut up," Dhein retorted.

"What was that?" Fiorelle asked from behind him.

Dhein flinched as he almost forgot she was with him the entire time.

"Nothing! Let's go," he said before switching to Cyreth.

***

< THE NEXT MORNING >

Dhein, Krushe, Parro, Amarih and now Fiorelle and Sullivan sat at the long table for breakfast. Dhein introduced them to one another before making his big announcement.

"Krushe, thank you for taking care of Amarih."

The demoness was visibly exhausted. Somehow, taking care of a child was even more taxing than following an evil lord.

"Starting today, little children like her will go to learning halls everyday. We'll go with that for now since we have no budget to build a whole school."

They looked at him.

"Learning halls?" Fiorelle asked. "Who will be teaching the kids?"

He smiled and looked back at her.

Dhein found out that demons never had teachers. The ones who were able to learn how to read, write and compute learned from reading books that had been brought from Olcourian libraries.

He then answered.

"Fiorelle, I assign you to be the first educator of Sekhtar."

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