Chapter 1509: Chapter 213 - Leon Vs. Pride (7)
Unknown Merchant’s POV
The Demon Continent was famous for many things.
Unfortunately, almost all of those things involved dying.
Its ecosystem was notoriously wild and unpredictable, and it was widely regarded as one of the most dangerous places in the entire world. Most people who talked about traveling there usually did so in the past tense, assuming that anyone foolish enough to venture into the Demon Continent had already accepted that they probably weren’t coming back.
Back then, I was a first-time merchant.
I had a lovely wife waiting for me at home and a child who, one day, I hoped would inherit the business I was trying to build from the ground up. Of course, while this was technically my first time running my own trade operation, I wasn’t exactly inexperienced. I had traveled with merchant caravans before, learned the basics of negotiation, logistics, and survival, and even managed to avoid getting robbed more times than I was comfortable admitting.
That had to count for something.
At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.
When I decided to establish my own business and travel across the Demon Continent, I genuinely believed I had prepared enough. I spent months gathering supplies, studying maps, learning about local territories, and listening to stories from veteran merchants.
Looking back on it now, I realized that preparation only mattered when the world agreed to play by the rules you prepared for.
The Demon Continent didn’t.
I was making my way through one of the vast plains when I stumbled upon a place that completely shattered everything I thought I knew.
At first, I thought I had gotten lost.
Then I thought there had been some kind of natural disaster.
Then I realized neither explanation was terrifying enough.
A massive stretch of land had been utterly destroyed.
The ground itself had been carved apart, scorched black in some places and shattered in others. There were enormous craters scattered across the landscape, while entire sections of earth looked as though they had been torn out and thrown somewhere else entirely. There were no trees. No wildlife. No signs of life whatsoever.
Just destruction.
Pure destruction.
I stared at it for what felt like several minutes.
Then my knees started shaking.
What kind of monsters could have possibly done something like this?
That question kept repeating itself in my head.
What.
Kind.
Of.
Monsters.
I wasn’t a warrior. I wasn’t some legendary adventurer blessed by the gods. I was a merchant.
A merchant.
My greatest skill was haggling over the price of dried meat and pretending I understood market trends.
If whatever had caused this destruction happened to show up while I was traveling, then there wouldn’t even be a fight.
There wouldn’t even be a chase.
I would simply cease to exist.
Honestly, I doubted I would even have enough time to regret my life choices.
The landscape looked like two monsters of unimaginable strength had collided with each other and decided that the surrounding environment no longer deserved to continue existing.
Perhaps they had fought over territory.
Perhaps they had fought over pride.
Perhaps one of them had simply looked at the other the wrong way.
At that point, I wasn’t interested in finding out.
I turned around.
Immediately.
That was the exact moment I decided to quit being a merchant.
Some people might call that cowardice.
I prefer to call it a survival instinct.
Later, I became a bard.
It turned out that singing songs about terrifying experiences was considerably safer than actually experiencing terrifying things.
So I sang.
I sang about my brief career as a merchant.
I sang about my journey across the Demon Continent.
And most importantly, I sang about the place where two incomprehensibly powerful monsters had apparently fought a battle so devastating that even the land itself seemed traumatized by the experience.
People loved the story.
Eventually, it became a famous myth.
I, meanwhile, remained very satisfied with my decision to never become a merchant again.
***
Leon’s POV
Lucielle and I eventually stopped fighting.
Not because either of us had won.
Not because either of us had lost.
We simply reached the point where continuing had become completely pointless.
We had been fighting for over five days.
Five days.
At some point during the fourth day, I had honestly started forgetting why we were still fighting in the first place.
Neither of us was capable of decisively defeating the other. Every attack was blocked, countered, avoided, or simply endured through sheer stubbornness. If we had continued, then we probably would have kept fighting for several more days until one of us eventually collapsed from exhaustion.
And frankly, that didn’t sound particularly fun.
So we stopped.
"Do you understand now?" Elise asked, looking at Lucielle. "Leon isn’t nearly as weak as you’ve been making him out to be."
Lucielle didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, she folded her arms and puffed out her cheeks slightly.
Honestly, she looked less like a terrifying demon and more like a child who had just been told that someone else got the last piece of cake.
"I don’t understand it," she finally said.
Her expression hardened.
"And I refuse to acknowledge that he’s strong enough to fight Satania."
Well.
That was certainly direct.
"I’m strong," she continued. "I know that much. But Satania is much stronger than I am. What we just did..." She paused for a moment before shaking her head. "That doesn’t even come close to proving that you have a realistic chance of defeating her."
I scratched my head.
To be honest, I wasn’t particularly offended.
"Well, at this point, I don’t really care whether Satania is stronger than me or whether I’m strong enough to beat her," I said.
Because that was the truth.
"As far as I know, I haven’t actually done anything that would provoke her personally. If I can just stay hidden and avoid attracting her attention, then I don’t think it’ll become a problem."
Lucielle immediately looked frustrated.
"Which is exactly why I’m telling you to leave the Demon Continent right now," she said.
She stepped closer.
"You’re already done with what you came here for, aren’t you? You came looking for Elise. You found her. You confirmed she’s safe. That means you can leave now."
"Well..." I muttered.
She wasn’t wrong.
The entire reason I had come to the Demon Continent in the first place was because of Elise.
And now?
Now I knew she was alive.
I knew she was safe.
I knew she wasn’t suffering.
Objectively speaking, my mission had already been completed.
Of course, there were still things that worried me.
A lot of things, actually.
But none of them were immediate enough to force me into making a decision.
After thinking about it for a few moments, I finally spoke.
"I think I’m going to stay here for a while."
Lucielle stared at me.
Then her eyes widened.
"Why?!" she asked.
She looked genuinely shocked.
Honestly, I thought the answer was pretty obvious.
Because despite everything that had happened, despite the danger, despite the warnings, and despite the fact that everyone with functioning survival instincts would probably call me insane, I had already made up my mind.
"Because," I said, "I want to defeat Satania."
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