The Strongest Demon Lord Reincarnated as a Commoner

The rest of the night passed in a thick, suffocating silence. Morgana, wrapped in her blankets, soon fell into an exhausted sleep, a faint, satisfied smile on her lips. She had achieved a level of intimacy with Leo that the others could only dream of, and she didn't care that it was born from her own foolishness.

The other women, however, were not so serene.

Elara couldn't focus on her map. The image of Leo carrying Morgana was seared into her mind. It wasn't just jealousy; it was a frustrating sense of her own inadequacy. Morgana had used her sensuality and vulnerability, Lyra used her unwavering devotion, and Luna used her gentle kindness. What did she, Elara, have to offer? Her pride? Her power? Leo was unimpressed by both. For the first time, the noble prodigy felt utterly outmaneuvered in a game she didn't even know she was playing.

Kaia's frustration manifested as restless energy. She abandoned sharpening her sword and began practicing her forms, her movements sharp and aggressive. She was angry at Morgana for her perceived deception, but she was also angry at herself. She had always believed that strength was the only thing that mattered, but here, in this strange new court, other currencies were clearly in play.

Luna felt a quiet sadness settle over her. She retreated further into herself, her book providing little comfort. She knew she couldn't compete with Morgana's confidence or Lyra's devotion. The small, hopeful connection she had felt with Leo now seemed fragile, easily overshadowed by more dramatic events.

Lyra, ever observant, watched them all. She saw the seeds of discord and insecurity. While she disapproved of Morgana's methods, she recognized their effectiveness. She made a mental note: physical proximity and displays of vulnerability were powerful tools for gaining her Lord's attention. She would have to adapt her own strategies.

Leo, caught in the middle of this silent emotional storm, simply closed his eyes and feigned sleep. He could feel their turmoil like a dissonant hum in the air. This was precisely the kind of complex, messy human interaction he had found so exhausting in his previous life. He was beginning to think that boredom had been an underrated blessing.

The next morning, they entered the Blackwood Forest. The change was immediate and stark. The sunlight struggled to pierce the canopy of gnarled, leafless branches. The ground was a carpet of black, slimy mulch, and the air was thick with the stench of decay and corruption. Twisted, thorny vines covered every surface, and the silence was unnatural—no birds sang, no insects chirped.

Morgana, now dressed and seemingly recovered, though slightly pale, stuck close to Leo. "The blight's concentration is ten times stronger than the military's reports indicated," she said, her tone now serious and professional. "This isn't a slow corruption. It's an active, aggressive invasion."

As they ventured deeper, they began to encounter the corrupted fauna. A pack of wolves, their fur matted and their bodies covered in glowing purple sores, lunged from the shadows. Their eyes burned with mindless rage.

"I've got them!" Kaia yelled, eager to release her pent-up frustration. She met their charge head-on, her sword a whirlwind of steel. She was a phenomenal fighter, but the corrupted wolves were unnaturally resilient. They ignored wounds that would have felled a normal beast, their bodies driven by the blight's malevolent energy.

"They're too numerous!" Elara called out, preparing a spell. "[Sunfire Lance]!" A spear of golden light shot out, impaling one of the wolves and causing it to burst into purple flames. But for every one they struck down, two more seemed to emerge from the oppressive gloom.

The team was quickly being surrounded. They formed a defensive circle, their backs to each other.

"The blight... it's whispering," Luna said, her hand pressed to her temple. "It's full of hate... It hates life... It hates... him." Her eyes widened as she looked at Leo. The ambient malevolence of the entire forest was focusing on him, recognizing him as the greatest threat, the antithesis of its nature.

The ground began to tremble. The thorny vines covering the forest floor began to writhe and twist, growing at an alarming rate. They shot up, forming a cage of living, hateful thorns around the party, sealing them in.

"It's a trap!" Evelyn would have said, had she been there.

Morgana began chanting a dark curse, her magic effective but slow against the sheer volume of enemies. They were being overwhelmed.

"There's too many of them!" Kaia grunted, kicking a wolf away. "We can't fight the whole forest!"

"We don't have to," a calm voice said.

All eyes turned to Leo. He stood in the center of their defensive circle, looking at the writhing vines and the snarling beasts with an expression of profound, cosmic annoyance.

"This noise is giving me a headache," he stated.

He lifted a single finger.

He didn't channel mana. He didn't chant or gesture dramatically. He simply tapped into the fundamental concept of the blight itself—its nature as a corruption, a parasite on life. And he issued a single, silent, absolute command to the very core of its existence.

"Die."

A wave of absolute, silent power radiated out from him. It was not an explosion. It was not a wave of light or force. It was a wave of Order. A wave of Purity. A wave of Life.

Everywhere the wave passed, the blight was not just destroyed; it was reversed.

The glowing purple sores on the wolves vanished, their mindless rage replaced by confusion as they were restored to normal animals. They yelped, tucked their tails between their legs, and fled into the woods.

The thorny, twisted vines instantly withered, turning to black dust. In their place, vibrant green shoots pushed up from the forest floor. Small, white flowers bloomed on the branches of the dead trees. The oppressive gloom lifted as sunlight, pure and golden, streamed down through the canopy for the first time in years.

The stench of decay was replaced by the fresh, clean scent of damp earth and living plants. A bird, somewhere in the distance, began to sing.

In the span of five seconds, Leo had single-handedly purified a square mile of the most corrupted forest on the continent. He had reversed a Class-A threat with less thought than it took to swat a fly.

His party stared, utterly dumbfounded. They stood in a perfect circle of life and light, while just beyond its border, the dark, corrupted forest remained. He had created a sanctuary, an island of purity, with a thought.

"What... what did you just do?" Elara asked, her voice trembling. This display was somehow even more terrifying than the duel. The duel was a demonstration of combat prowess. This was a demonstration of creation and un-creation. This was the power of a true god.

"I told the blight to be quiet," Leo said, lowering his finger. He looked around at the now-thriving forest floor. "Much better."

Morgana stared at him, her lips parted in awe. The dark, forbidden arts she wielded were about controlling and twisting energies. He had simply commanded reality to reassert its proper, healthy state. Her magic was a muddy puddle next to his ocean.

Kaia looked from her sword to the blooming flowers. Her entire philosophy of fighting her way through problems had just been rendered obsolete. Why swing a sword when you could command the world to fix itself?

Luna felt the change on a psychic level. The cacophony of hate that had been screaming in her mind was gone, replaced by a gentle, harmonious hum of life. It was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. And it had come from him.

Lyra knelt on one knee, bowing her head. "A miracle of purification. As is your right, My Lord."

Leo ignored them all, his gaze fixed on the path ahead. The purification had acted like a sonar ping, revealing the true source of the corruption. "The sunken city is that way," he said, pointing deeper into the remaining darkness. "The concentration of blight is... unnatural. Someone is actively generating it."

His casual act of purification had not only saved them but had also solved the mission's primary objective.

He started walking, leaving the others standing in the circle of miraculous life. They looked at each other, then at his retreating back. The gap between them and him had just become an impassable, infinite chasm.

They were not his teammates. They were not his rivals.

They were witnesses. And their journey into the heart of the darkness had just truly begun.