Demon King: Hero, don’t run away!

It took a while for Tico to tell Yang Yu a story about a man cursed intensely, who endured numerous hardships, gained the recognition of the Holy Maiden, and finally broke the curse to be reborn.

In that story, the tool used by the Holy Maiden was the Holy Light Acceleration Stone, a legendary item said to be from the Heavenly Realm.

Afterward, Tico also narrated several stories to Yang Yu about people being manipulated, including drug manipulation, mental manipulation, brainwashing control, and so on, which were quite horrifying.

Due to the distant times, the authenticity of many of these stories is unverifiable, and Tico only allowed Yang Yu to take it as a trivial reference.

In Tico’s stories, most people broke free from control due to having a powerful soul or having their soul intensely frustrated, but there were also those who used drugs, rituals, and other means to break free from control.

Regarding the matter of the Enchanting Demon, Yang Yu asked Tico to investigate separately, focusing on methods to break the charm and ways to prevent being charmed.

Tico investigated very carefully, even seeking out the reporter Keke Ai, who had previously caused them trouble, to personally confirm.

Charming Magic is also a rather special magic, and not everyone can use it.

What can be confirmed is that those who can use charm are basically all females.

An interesting point is that a significant proportion of the offspring born to those who use charm are girls.

The most terrifying aspect of Charming Magic is that those who are charmed have no idea they are charmed. Tico started from this point and taught Yang Yu some preventive methods.

Yang Yu diligently pulled out a small notebook and noted down everything Tico said.

The conversation started in the evening and continued until midnight before Tico reluctantly finished speaking about half of what he had found out.

When it was time to work, Tico bade Yang Yu goodbye and went to help his master organize the bookshelf.

Tico planned to tell the rest to Yang Yu after a good sleep the next morning.

While Yang Yu was gathering intelligence from Tico, the war situation was increasingly unfavorable to the Luo Ze Empire.

In the military conference hall of the Luo Ze Empire, General Wayne Jason held a war status report with a furrowed brow.

It wasn’t just him; most of the generals present also had furrowed brows, worried about the frontline battles. They hadn’t slept well for days, fearing that as soon as they closed their eyes, news would come of the beastmen army capturing another city.

”The situation is worse than imagined. Who would have thought that the beastmen could still explode with such power.”

”They refused our request to exchange prisoners.

This winter, we’ve lost many well-trained soldiers. If we can’t get those soldiers back, we’ll have to let untrained recruits take their place.

Untrained recruits can easily cause problems, widening the breach in our defense, and resulting in unreckonable casualties.

During recruitment, we made many promises to the soldiers. If we can’t fulfill them one by one...”

”Now what about promises, those beastmen bastards clearly want to slaughter us. Faced with such danger, we should use everything at our disposal. I suggest a nationwide mandatory draft, a fight to the death.”

”Calm down a little. Forcing untrained soldiers onto the battlefield might only boost the enemy’s morale. The beastmen now seem to differ greatly from the ones we used to face.”

”Yes. Centaurs, Winged Hand Clan, Swamp Frogmen, Half-crocodiles, Tail Spear.....

The special subhuman units emerge one after another, leveraging their advantages in various terrains to achieve remarkable results in battle.

The beastmen’s command method is also completely different from before, as if they are a whole new army...

Their high morale is even more frightening.

In contrast, our morale has plummeted, and the influence brought by the Colorful-haired Masked Man hasn’t completely dissipated, especially for those soldiers who have seen those images...

Going to the battlefield like that, I’m afraid it won’t be long before they directly surrender; they’re barely combat effective.”

”Damn the Colorful-haired Masked Man, is there still no news of him? If we capture him, we must tear him to pieces. If it weren’t for him, we would’ve achieved our goal long ago!”

”So far... we have no information about him at all. A group pretending to be them was captured at the border, and before the news spread, he was already prepared to buy time and slipped away completely undetected.

He’s quite dangerous. His negotiation performance suggests all of this was premeditated. He might be in our country, gathering information for the beastmen.”

”Since they are subhumans, it should be easy to find. We can try setting up an inescapable trap.”

”It’s useless. Looking at last winter’s reports, there are some clues that the Colorful-haired Masked Man probably looks like a human, no, he might actually be human himself.

He always manages to produce some strange things, likely possessing control over some undisclosed ruins; we are unsure what knowledge or power he has obtained from it.

The location of the ruins might be known only to him.

Being so clever, he might have already left himself a retreat path, intentionally revealing the things from the ruins, not without meaning.”

”Is that so... It’s not surprising then that he can use the instruments we developed. Are we to capture him alive?”

The chatter in the conference hall, initially focused on solving the immediate problem of the beastmen attack, veered towards the capture of the Colorful-haired Masked Man, as if the war couldn’t be fought unless he was apprehended.

The Emperor of the Luo Ze Empire, Emperor Luo Hui, watched all this with furrowed brows.

The positions of the Luo Ze Empire and Wansheng Country had completely reversed. After that negotiation broke down that day, the Luo Ze Empire only received some insignificant ”compensation” from the giant dragon.

Some compensations were as good as none, such as a complete ban on Wansheng Country from using any attacks capable of burning down cities.

Now shifting to passive defense, with civilians mostly in the cities, and the Colorful-haired Masked Man disappearing, no one would use such attacks to assault cities.

When escaping, the Colorful-haired Masked Man didn’t kill a single person, only knocked them down, even with the Luo Ze Empire’s shamelessness, they couldn’t extract any more benefits from the giant dragon or Wansheng Country, let alone think about stopping this war entirely.

Luo Hui let out a long sigh, and the generals in the conference hall quickly stopped their arguments, all looking toward the Emperor of their country.

Luo Hui looked at the silent intelligence department minister and asked,

”So, Liu Qi, have you learned the reason for their sudden outbreak of war?”

Liu Qi’s beautiful eyes narrowed slightly, seemingly at a loss for words.

Emperor Luo Hui sensed something amiss and asked, ”What... is there something you can’t mention?”

Liu Qi replied, ”No, because... what I’m about to say is indeed special. So, I hope to discuss it with Your Majesty alone later.”

”It’s okay, say it here for everyone to hear.”

Upon hearing the Emperor’s command, Liu Qi hesitated but still spoke out according to the Emperor’s will, disclosing the intelligence gathered:

”Your Majesty, though it’s hard to believe, the beastmen have already discovered our true purpose.”