Chapter 1 Izaks

Izaks' words stunned Hao Ren. He never imagined that this tough guy, who could stop children from crying wherever he went, would be drinking alone on New Year's Eve because he missed his daughter—not that missing his daughter was the key point, but the key point was that this big brother actually had a daughter!

"You have a daughter?" Hao Ren stared blankly at Izaks, trying to find any signs of drunkenness. "Really?"

"Why can't I have a daughter?" Izaks grinned. "You don't think I should have kids?"

"No, it's just that you don't seem like the 'daughter' type," Hao Ren blurted out what he was thinking. "The impression you give people...even if you had a child, it should be a son, eight feet wide in the shoulders and twelve feet tall, holding a mace studded with gold, with a two-foot-wide chest hair. Only that image would match you."

Izaks squinted at Hao Ren. "So, in your opinion, he should have been born with a mace, right?"

Hao Ren nodded subconsciously, but quickly realized that it wasn't very reasonable. "Uh, that's too challenging..."

"...You're the only ones who can talk to me like this. I couldn't even find a guy like you to be my brother before," Izaks paused for a moment, then sighed. "You're changing the subject. I'm not kidding, I do have a daughter. Age-wise, she's old enough to be your great-grandmother, but where we are, she's still just a little girl...about this tall, running around all day."

As Izaks spoke, he raised his hand and gestured to a height slightly taller than the table next to him. Hao Ren immediately felt that this big brother was drunk, mistaking his current human form for his demon form. The height he was gesturing to only reached Hao Ren's navel. Could there be a demon of that size?

But he didn't say anything, because he could tell that Izaks had been bottling things up for half a year, and now he really wanted someone to talk to. This great demon with a mysterious past never talked about his past, and today was a rare opportunity.

"I told you, I have a family and a business," Izaks suddenly changed the subject and mentioned his former empire. "In the demon hierarchy of our world, I am a 'King'. Some people in the human world call my level a 'Demon King'."

"What kind of level is that?" Hao Ren asked, following up on the topic. "Sounds pretty high-level."

Izaks laughed, seemingly a little proud. "It is indeed very high-level. You could say it's the highest level of demon. In our world, there's constant infighting. Factions fight each other, and even those within the same faction fight each other. Demons especially are serious about fighting. We divide up a lot of territory. A powerful demon will gather tens of thousands of lower-level demons and fight with other leaders of similar ranks all day long, without their own fixed base. Whoever grabs a piece of territory will temporarily be king of the mountain for a few days, and then they'll be beaten away by someone else before long. Those are the 'Demon Commanders', also called 'Warlords'. These demons are just minor characters. Their little teams are only equivalent to bandits and robbers, and they can be wiped out by others at any time. They can even be killed by their own subordinates at any time.

"Among these Demon Commanders, there are occasionally some who are more capable. They have the ability to seize a larger piece of territory as a fixed base. These guys occupy a place for a long time, and no one around can shake their position. At the same time, they can lead a stable team. This level is called a Lord.

"Above that are those who are especially good at fighting and especially clever. They rule over many lords, have territory equivalent to an entire country, and even have the ability to occupy an independent space. These guys can even establish a complete and stable ruling system like humans, with demon countries, armies, subjects, and traditions. Those at this level are Kings."

This was the first time Hao Ren had heard such detailed information from Izaks. It seemed that the demon society in his hometown was different from the other legends on Earth, and also different from the "local demons" that Vivian had described. It seemed that even within the same race, different civilizations would be established in each world.

He was quite interested in this. "So, you had a country under your command?"

"I did, and it was the most powerful in history, even larger than the largest empire ever established by humans," Izaks nodded. "But it was destroyed."

The big guy sighed, and then continued, "You all probably think I'm pretty strange, right? As a demon, I'm only thinking about peace between the races—I've investigated what demons are like in other worlds, and almost every world's demons tend towards chaos and brutality. There are very few like me. I know I'm a freak, everyone there told me that.

"But in the beginning, I was no different from other demons—those Demon Commanders who were fighting all day long, those Demon Lords who were satisfied with occupying a corner of the world and then thinking about invading the human world all day long. I used to be like them, one of them."

"How did you change your ambitions later?" Hao Ren looked curiously at Izaks.

"Because of a human," Izaks looked at the bottle in his hand, as if trying to see an old friend from the reflection of the bottle. "It was an alchemist, which is equivalent to your scholars here.

"That year, I had just led my team to wipe out a territory and drove away other demons nearby. In our words, I had changed from a Demon Commander to a Lord. At that time, I was young and vigorous. As a newly promoted Lord, I urgently needed to prove my strength, and there were no demons nearby who were strong enough for me to challenge. So, I made a decision similar to what other demons would do in that situation—I lured some human wizards, opened a portal in the human world, and invaded a country."

"That's what a lot of demons did back then," Izaks raised his eyebrows slightly. "The spatial structure of our world...is different from yours. Our universe is made up of a large number of chaotic but intrinsically regular space 'sacs'. Individual spaces, large and small, are connected through unstable channels. Each space may contain a continent or several planets. This spatial structure made my hometown full of all kinds of races and countries, and also triggered all kinds of chaotic wars. There were many human kingdoms, widely distributed, and very strong, so many demons regarded 'invading and destroying a human kingdom' as the best way to show their power. This proved that a demon had the wisdom to open a giant space gate, and the power to destroy the enemies on the other side of the gate.

"The country I chose was unremarkable, nothing to say. I wasn't even interested in dealing with those civilians who only knew how to scream and run away and the vulnerable human armies—now that I think about it, it seems to be a good thing—I led my troops directly into their royal capital. The king and ministers had already escaped to other spaces through the portal before the city was broken. I raised my flag in the castle and declared that this country had become demon territory, and all humans were reduced to slaves.

"Then I started checking my spoils of war, searching the treasuries and wizard towers for human alchemical creations that were highly regarded in various races.

"Finally, I met that strange guy, a small, hunched-over human old man. He was holed up in a dilapidated wizard tower near the castle, wearing a human alchemist's robe, with holes in his clothes and a scruffy beard, looking like a down-and-out old beggar. He was doing experiments in the alchemy lab, and I even suspected that he had been locked in there for several years—he didn't even know about the war that had happened in the country. When my soldiers kicked open the door, he turned his head and cursed the demons who broke in, saying that they had messed up the measurement data in the lab."

Izaks had a strange expression on his face. "I should thank that brainless demon guard now. He didn't kill the old man on the spot, but strictly followed my orders—to report any strange items to the leader when they were discovered. He regarded the old man as a strange thing and called me over to see the novelty. So, I shrank my body and squeezed into that human's alchemy lab. Guess what happened next?"

Hao Ren realized that Izaks was completely immersed in his memories, so he followed the topic wherever he went. "What happened?"

"That old man told me to get out too!" Izaks suddenly laughed heartily. "Four demon guards broke into his lab, and then at least an hour passed until I arrived. During this time, he was bowing his head and fiddling with those parchments, not even noticing that the people who broke into the room were not his apprentices, but a group of demons!"