After escaping from Lilith, Cassian let out a long sigh of relief, the tension finally slipping from his shoulders.
"What was her deal anyway?" he muttered. "Another minute and she would've turned that entire hall into a bedroom if I gave her the chance."
Dealing with women was one thing.
Dealing with someone like her was something else entirely.
Lilith wasn't just beautiful — she sat at the very top of that scale, and being a succubus only made it worse. Every glance, every word, every movement carried intent behind it, subtle but constant, like pressure that never quite let up.
If this had been the original Cassian, none of that would've mattered. The man treated women no differently than men, indifferent to anything beyond power and control. He wouldn't have reacted, wouldn't have hesitated.
But that wasn't him.
He was just a normal guy thrown into this situation, and no amount of titles or power changed that.
"…Yeah," he muttered, "that's going to be a problem."
So giving her the throne to get her off his back wasn't a bad decision. It solved a problem without creating a bigger one.
The next step was obvious.
The treasury.
He had one big advantage — he had inherited Cassian's memories along with this body. Without that, even standing here would've been dangerous. A Demon King's body with no understanding of how to use it wasn't power, it was a liability.
Like handing a race car to a kid.
It wouldn't end well.
Meanwhile, in Lilith's chambers, she hadn't stopped moving since the moment she returned.
She paced beside the bed, steady and unhurried, but her mind was anything but. The conversation replayed without her permission, pulling her attention back no matter how many times she tried to set it aside.
For years, the pattern had been simple. She proposed. He refused. Nothing changed.
That was expected.
What wasn't expected was him offering her the throne.
The thought kept circling back, refusing to settle. It didn't make sense, no matter how many times she turned it over.
Cassian had never been unclear about what he valued. The throne came first. Everything else followed at a distance. His rule was built on control, enforced through laws that left no room for interpretation — minor defiance wasn't tolerated, it was ended. Quickly, cleanly, without hesitation.
That was how he ruled.
Direct. Absolute.
The only reason she had never been on the receiving end of that was because she had never crossed the line that mattered. As one of his generals, she had value.
Her ambition to stand beside him as queen had never been enough to provoke him — a king needed a queen eventually, and he had tolerated her persistence because of it.
Which made this worse.
Offering the throne for five years. Talking about stepping away. Mentioning marriage afterward like it was a possibility instead of a refusal — none of it aligned with anything she had seen from him. It didn't fit the man she had spent years studying.
Her steps slowed.
Was he setting her up?
Placing her at the center of everything meant that if anything destabilized — if the realm fractured, if decisions failed — the blame wouldn't land on him. It would land on her. A clean way to dismantle her position without ever raising a hand.
But that didn't hold either.
Cassian didn't operate indirectly. If he wanted her gone, she would know it. He would make sure of that.
It was his nature.
Which left her with something she liked even less than a threat.
Either he had changed.
Or there was something about him she still hadn't figured out.
***
On Cassian's side, he stepped into the treasury and came to a slow stop.
The room stretched far wider than necessary, its walls lined with sealed artifacts and storage cases wrapped in protective sigils. Gold covered the floor in uneven mounds, mixed with weapons, relics, and objects that carried faint, unstable auras — suggesting they were anything but ordinary.
For a moment, he didn't move.
It wasn't just wealth. It was scale beyond reason, the kind that stripped value down to pure excess and made any normal comparison pointless.
"As expected of a final boss…" Cassian muttered, eyes scanning the piles. "This is absurd."
Not awe — recognition. The reaction anyone would have standing in front of something built beyond all logical limit.
Then his expression settled.
All of this belonged to him now.
He walked forward, turned, and let himself fall back into the nearest mound. The gold shifted under his weight with a heavy, flowing sound, coins spilling outward before settling around him like a slow tide.
He stared up at the ceiling.
No plots. No heroes. No goddess, no holy sword, no Lilith.
Just the deeply unreasonable satisfaction of lying inside a literal mountain of wealth.
At the very least, one wish from his old life had finally come true: sleeping on a pile of money.
After fifteen minutes, Cassian pushed himself up from the gold, letting the coins settle back with a quiet shift. He exhaled once, then focused. He wasn't here to indulge in this — there was a reason he came down in the first place.
He began searching through the scattered artifacts, moving past sealed cases and unstable relics, eyes narrowing as he scanned each section.
"Where is it…"
Among everything stored here, he was looking for one specific item.
The Gem of Dolus.
A top-tier artifact, rare even within this treasury. It didn't radiate overwhelming power, but its effect was far more dangerous than brute force.
It distorted perception itself — enough to blur presence, mislead senses, and conceal someone in plain sight. Even someone at the level of a Demon King could be misled if it was used correctly.
In the original story, it was the tool that allowed the hero to get close enough to deliver the final blow.
And it hadn't ended up in his hands by chance.
Lilith had taken it from this very treasury, passed it through enough hands to keep her name clean, and made sure it reached the hero without a single trace leading back to her.
"…Lilith."
He moved past rows of weapons and relics, ignoring anything that gave off an obvious surge of power, until he stopped at a small display set slightly apart from the rest.
A single gem rested there, tied to a thin thread.
It looked ordinary at first glance. Almost forgettable, sitting among artifacts capable of reshaping battlefields and toppling kingdoms.
Cassian picked it up and studied it briefly before letting out a quiet breath.
"Yeah… this is it."
No wonder it was overlooked. That was the entire purpose. An artifact built for deception would never announce itself — it survived by being dismissed.
"It even hides its own value," he muttered, faintly amused.
His fingers closed around it.
"This will be useful for my future plans."
A small smile appeared before he could fully suppress it — subtle, brief, and completely out of place on a face like his. At most an awkward thing, barely qualifying as a smile before it faded.
Hidden in the corner of the room, unseen, Lilith watched.
Her form wasn't physical. Dream Walking — the innate ability of all succubi, allowing their consciousness to slip free from the body and move undetected. As one of the strongest among them, she could bypass detection entirely. Even from the Demon King.
What future plans…?
Cassian turned slightly, still holding the gem.
"Now I can leave the demon realm," he said under his breath. "Let things run on their own… and in five years, everything should be taken care of."
Lilith's eyes narrowed.
Taken care of…?
"And Lilith…" he continued, almost casually, "I should deal with her before she becomes a problem."
That was enough.
He's planning to kill me.
There was no hesitation in that conclusion. From everything she knew about him, that line left no room for interpretation.
Meanwhile, Cassian's thoughts moved in a completely different direction.
Deal with Lilith. Make her queen. Give her everything she had ever chased so there would be no reason left for betrayal. If she had the throne, the future he knew wouldn't happen.
Simple. Practical.
"…Pity," he added, almost to himself. "She's a beauty."
He wasn't naive enough to approach her directly. Lilith hated men — not as a preference, but as something deeper, something with history behind it. Whatever had planted that in her made sure any attempt to get close would backfire before it even started.
Reaching toward something that dangerous without protection wasn't courage.
It was just stupid.
In the corner, Lilith stilled.
Those last words didn't sit right.
Cassian — the same man who had never once looked at her as anything beyond a persistent inconvenience — had just called her a beauty. Casually. Almost to himself, like the thought had slipped out before he could stop it.
For a moment, something softened in her expression.
A small smile formed before she could help it.
Then the other words caught up.
Deal with her before she becomes a problem.
The smile faded.
It didn't matter how he spoke or what came before it. She knew what that phrase meant from a man like him. She had spent years watching him, studying every decision, every move, every word chosen and discarded. Cassian didn't leave threats unresolved. He didn't warn. He acted.
And she had just heard him say her name in the same breath as problem.
So he wants to handle me before I become one…
A cold smile replaced the first one, sharper and entirely different in nature.
Hmph. Do you really think it's that easy, Cassian?
You're dead wrong.
Her eyes narrowed, resolve settling in clean and final.
Wherever you go, I'll follow. And whatever you're planning — I'll make sure it ends in failure.
Her form faded, slipping out of the treasury without a sound, as if she had never been there at all.
Cassian, completely unaware of being watched, continued looking around the treasury.
With the gem secured, he didn't waste time. His gaze moved across the racks again, this time picking out a few other items that could actually be useful.
He stopped at a dark bracelet resting among sealed artifacts.
"The Bracelet of Veles…" he muttered, picking it up.
A dark attribute artifact, useful for amplifying and stabilizing magic for dark-attribute users. Not something flashy, but practical.
He kept it.
A moment later, his eyes fell on a ring.
"The Ring of Freyr…"
A cheat-level item. Something capable of healing almost any wound, even if the body was on the verge of collapse. In the original story, it had ended up in the hero's party.
Again, because of Lilith.
Cassian clicked his tongue lightly.
"…Of course."
He slipped the ring on without hesitation.
After that, his attention shifted to the mountains of gold.
Unlike the artifacts, this wasn't something he could ignore.
He raised his hand slightly.
"Tier 0 magic — Subspace."
Space distorted in front of him, forming a massive black void that swallowed everything it touched. The piles of gold began to lift and disappear rapidly, drawn into the subspace one wave after another.
Within moments, the towering heaps were gone.
Cassian lowered his hand, glancing around the now-cleared space.
He needed that gold for later. It was his anyway, and leaving it behind made no sense.
As for the rest of the artifacts — most were useless to him. Some cursed, some too situational, others simply not worth carrying. He could deal with all of them easily enough, but taking everything would only complicate things.
Besides, Lilith would be managing the demon realm for the next five years.
Leaving something behind wasn't generosity.
It was her pay.
Then he returned to the room to sleep. He really needed it.
He had used too much of his brain in a single day, thoughts running nonstop without pause, and now everything felt heavier because of it. His head ached faintly, not from pain but from overuse, like something stretched too far without rest.
Sleep wasn't just a choice anymore.
It was necessary.
When he opened the door of the bedroom—
"Oh, Demon King, you came. I've been feeling some pain in my chest… would you look at it?" Lilith asked, her voice soft, almost casual.
She was already on the bed.
Lying comfortably.
One leg crossed over the other, the fabric of her nightgown loose in all the wrong ways, slipping just enough to leave very little to imagination.
She rested her head slightly against her hand, watching him with a small, deliberate smile, one eye narrowing just enough to pass as a wink.
Cassian didn't move.
His eye twitched.
He could recognize a trap when he saw one, and this one had it written all over it.
"…You broke into my room," he said flatly, not even trying to hide the irritation.
Lilith didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she shifted slightly on the bed, slow and unbothered, as if the question itself wasn't worth acknowledging. The movement didn't help—if anything, it made things worse.
The room felt… wrong.
Not because of her presence alone, but because of how easily she filled the space, like the atmosphere itself had adjusted to match her. The faint scent in the air wasn't from incense this time, something softer, heavier, almost distracting if he paid too much attention.
Cassian's gaze flicked once—and immediately stopped.
Nope.
Too much.
"…And what exactly," he continued, tone still controlled, "made you think this was a good idea?"
Lilith smiled, unfazed.
"I was bored," she said simply, as if that explained everything. Her fingers traced idly along the edge of the fabric near her shoulder — not pulling it, just enough to draw attention without doing anything outright. "And you weren't here."
A pause.
"So I decided to wait."
Cassian stared at her.
"…You have your own room."
"I do."
"Use it."
"No."
Instant. Unbothered.
Cassian exhaled slowly through his nose, dragging a hand over his face before letting it fall.
"About that pain in your chest," he said, voice dry.
"It's still there," she replied, softer now. "Maybe you should come closer and check properly."
He looked at her for a long second.
Then he raised his hand. A sword pulled free from the subspace.
"I can just cut it open, take a look, and put it back."
Lilith blinked.
"Cut it open?"
"Don't worry." His tone didn't change. "I learned proper heart surgery."
A pause.
"The success rate is fifty percent."
Silence.
For one rare moment, Lilith just stared at him.
Then she moved. Off the bed in one smooth motion, already at the window. The glass swung open, wings extending sharp and sudden behind her.
She didn't argue. Didn't try.
She just left.
Mid-air, she turned once — just long enough to look back at him.
And winked.
Then she was gone.
Cassian stood there for a second.
"…That worked better than expected."