The Hero Who Became a Monster Girl Will Never Fall to Evil

“You lump of slime... are you crazy?!”

Even though Tartaros retreated the instant Vieya moved, he was still inevitably affected. His aura wavered, and his spirit form flickered in and out of focus.

Vieya said nothing. She summoned the Holy Sword and retreated to Dorothy and the others who had rushed over.

“Are you all okay just now?”

“We were only teleported out. It’s nothing,” Dorothy said. She then turned her gaze toward Tartaros and asked, “Who is he? Why did he appear here?”

“He’s a fingernail that fell off the First Demon King. By sheer luck, he crawled from ancient times to the present, carrying most of the First Demon King’s memories... for now, his strength seems average. He specializes in defense and running away.”

As Vieya explained, she kept her eyes on Tartaros’s movements, ready at any moment to activate the Holy Sword and completely annihilate him.

As long as he showed even the slightest opening, she would not hold back.

On the other side, ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) Tartaros’s spirit also stood in place, maintaining full vigilance, not daring to move recklessly.

In a situation where the opponent had already locked onto him, whether fighting head-on or fleeing blindly would be unwise.

The only path to survival was to make sure the opponent never had the chance to deliver a fatal blow, and to stall until... a third party intervened.

Sigh. In the end, there was still a deviation from the expected timing.

If only this slime had found her way here a few years later.

Tartaros sighed silently in his heart.

“Has your ex-wife’s revival ritual not started yet?” Dorothy suddenly asked.

“No. It was interrupted by this thing,” Vieya said irritably. “With something like this following me around, how could I possibly feel at ease!”

“I understand.”

Dorothy said softly. She reached into the void and drew out a cat’s-eye gemstone staff, then continued,

“Clan heads, next we will buy some time. Trouble outside the Elven Forest is about to arrive as well. This needs to be resolved quickly... as for Lady Vieya, please lend us a hand and drive this [First Demon King Fragment] out of the World Tree. After that, leave the remaining matters to me.”

The moment these words fell, Vieya immediately agreed and was the first to strike, swinging her sword to force out a flaw in Tartaros.

But the other party only fled—fled endlessly—slippery like a loach.

“O exalted [World Tree], please grant us your blessing!”

Dorothy raised the cat’s-eye gemstone staff high. In the next second, Vieya immediately felt her body grow much lighter, while the level of magic power within her remained constantly at an extremely high state.

Vieya took a deep breath and abandoned all thought.

If that was the case, there was no need to worry about anything anymore—just go all out and fight with everything she had!

Suddenly!

A violent tremor interrupted Vieya’s movement, followed by a thunderous boom coming from outside.

“How interesting. It seems the monsters outside have already stepped onto your elven lands. How about we each take a step back...” Tartaros said. “I’m not trying to negotiate with you. I simply want to secure a future for myself.”

“You leave the inside of the World Tree now, and we’ll let you go,” Vieya said calmly. But in her heart, worry inevitably rose—worry that her daughter, alone outside, might encounter danger.

Then she thought again. With Aislin and Isabelle up there, things outside should be fine.

Silently, Tartaros made no sound at all. He simply stared straight at Vieya. Vieya shuddered slightly in her heart. For some reason, she felt a sticky chill of cold sweat spreading over her body.

“You have no way out anymore!” Sul, who had been waiting for the right moment, suddenly moved. She flashed to Tartaros’s side and stabbed fiercely with a crystalline dagger!

Tartaros twisted his body and dodged, slipping past Sul like a phantom and causing her strike to miss completely.

“Don’t let him get close to the World Tree!” Dorothy wanted to pursue, but an extremely uncomfortable feeling made her stop in her tracks.

She didn’t understand why this sensation had suddenly appeared, but looking at the overall situation, their side truly only had one weakness—the World Tree itself. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

“Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”

Vieya said. She was already deliberately controlling her destructive power, so as not to chop up the revival device before her wife was even saved.

But even so, as a fragment of the First Demon King, Tartaros still did not dare to take her attacks head-on, and could only dodge in a sorry state.

Relying on the rich combat experience and spell memories in his mind, Tartaros actually managed to dart back and forth under the siege of several people. The price, however, was that his spirit form became increasingly transparent. If this continued, even without Vieya landing a direct hit, he would exhaust himself to death.

But suddenly—

Tartaros turned around. A sinister smile curled at the corner of his mouth as he raised his right hand.

“Lord of Ten Thousand Demons, Emperor of Eternal Night. So dark, so profound, boundless and infinite.”

The moment the words fell, Lano and Sul, who had been closing in, immediately retreated warily, keeping their distance. Afraid that with a single misstep, they might fall into some sinister ancient curse and never recover.

Against beings like this, carrying memories from antiquity, the most troublesome and hardest things to deal with were precisely those lost ancient secret arts. Because you never knew—

However, after everyone stayed on guard for a long time.

Nothing happened.

For a moment, Sul, who had led the retreat, felt a bit awkward. She wanted to say something, but from the corner of her eye she caught sight of the slime’s face looking somewhat pale.

She froze and asked, “Little slime, are you okay?”

“......”

Vieya did not answer, her expression slightly dark. When Tartaros had spoken those words just now, everyone else had been perfectly fine, with no reaction at all—but the imprint branded on her chest had, for the first time in a long while, grown scorching hot again.

‘What’s going on? What did that sentence mean? Why did it resonate with the imprint?’

‘Right... this imprint is that damn Demon King’s handiwork. I’ll just ask her directly later.’

With that thought, Vieya once again connected to the unfathomable great power within the Holy Sword. In an instant, brilliant light flared around her. The condensed magic power was compressed and solidified again and again, its might skyrocketing to the extreme in the blink of an eye! Then, without another word, she slashed a sword strike straight toward Tartaros, intending to annihilate him with a single blow.

Once she moved, Vieya held nothing back.

“Hey, why are you rushing again, you slime?”

Seeing this, Tartaros cried out in fear, then immediately twisted his body backward. With that retreat, his figure vanished once more.

“Again! That move where he suddenly disappears completely from the world’s aura and perception, then reappears in a safe place!” Sul ground her teeth.

Vieya also couldn’t see Tartaros’s figure, but that didn’t stop her from swinging the magnificent sword light in her hand directly according to her own “prediction”!

Boom—!

With a thunderous explosion, Dorothy’s eyelids twitched. The entire World Tree space shook violently, a sword scar stretching for thousands of meters across the smooth, jade-like ground.

At the same time, Tartaros, who had just concealed his form, was also shaken out by the area damage. The relaxed smile on his face slowly faded.

On the other side, Vieya ignored the frustrated, heartbroken expressions of the three elves and instead looked at Tartaros, snorting lightly.

“Looks like this is all the strength you have now. Waving a big blade in front of me—go back and train for a few more years.”

Vieya expanded her perception, staring unblinkingly at him, trying to capture Tartaros’s emotions. What she received, however, was only calm as placid as a lake.

Tartaros stood there with his hands lowered.

In the next second, he smiled.

“Thank you for granting my wish, milady.”

Before the words even fell, dense cracks spread across his spirit form. Vieya’s previous strike had hit him squarely. In his current state, he could neither dodge nor escape.

So he simply stopped trying.

Immediately after, Tartaros closed his eyes, and his spirit form exploded. At the same time, at the very bottom level of the Abyss Dungeon in the southern lands, before a suspended ice coffin, a black demon flapped its wings and hovered in place, its gaze strange.

Tartaros’s spirit had died.

But this was only one of the spirit bodies nurtured at the bottom of the Abyss Dungeon. If one died, a second would be born with time.

The final layers of the entire dungeon were not, in fact, the resting place of the First Demon King’s wife’s remains, as that previous spirit had claimed.

They were a nest—one that could continuously give birth to Tartaros’s spirit bodies.

At the same time, Vieya also began to doubt the authenticity of the words she had heard back then in the dungeon.

There had to be lies mixed in.

But that didn’t matter anymore. As long as the liquid time was real, that was enough.

Thinking this, Vieya stopped the scattered thoughts in her mind and looked at the three elves slowly approaching. She blinked and said,

“You can leave now. For the next while, let me stay alone with the World Tree, alright?”

Boom!

At this moment, another loud explosion came from outside. The vibrations were intense, as if countless ship cannons were bombarding the Elven Forest.

Dorothy sighed deeply in her heart and said helplessly, “Then we’ll go out first to deal with what’s happening outside. If you finish your matter as well, whether it succeeds or fails, remember to tell me...”

‘Tell you whether it succeeds or not?’

Though somewhat curious, Vieya simply assumed Dorothy’s sense of responsibility was too strong. She didn’t ask further, and nodded in agreement.

“Alright.”

Boom!

The ground trembled.

Dorothy frowned slightly. Without lingering any longer, she turned and quickly left with the three elven clan heads.

Watching their departing figures, Vieya thought for a moment, then raised her hand and retrieved the Golden City that had been discarded to the side.

‘People may be bad, but gold has done nothing wrong.’