The Strongest Demon Lord Reincarnated as a Commoner

The rest of the journey through the Blackwood was surreal. The party walked on a path of vibrant life that bloomed in Leo's wake. He moved forward, and the forest healed around them, a rolling wave of purification that pushed back the darkness. The girls followed in his sanctified trail, the silence between them no longer one of tension, but of shared, dumbstruck reverence.

There was no more jealousy, no more rivalry. Those were emotions for equals. They were now simply followers, caught in the slipstream of a living god. Even Morgana's seductive confidence had been replaced by a quiet, watchful awe. She understood now that her games of seduction were like a child playing with dolls in the presence of the dollmaker.

They soon arrived at a large, black lake, its water stagnant and oily, reeking of corruption. In the center of the lake, half-submerged in the murky water, were the crumbling spires and broken domes of a once-great city. This was Aeridor.

"The blight is emanating from the central citadel," Luna said, her voice quiet. Her sensitivity, no longer assaulted by the forest's ambient hatred, could pinpoint the source with crystal clarity. "It's not just a blight... it's a curse. A curse fueled by immense grief and rage."

"A grief-fueled curse powerful enough to corrupt an entire region for centuries?" Morgana mused, her professional curiosity piqued. "The caster must have been an Archmage of incredible power. And the source of their grief... unimaginable."

"How do we get across?" Kaia asked, gesturing to the toxic-looking water. "There's no boat, and I'm not swimming in that."

Leo looked at the lake. He could purify it with a thought, but that might alert the entity at the center. He could fly them across, but that was too flashy. He sighed, opting for the simplest, most understated application of overwhelming power.

He took a step onto the surface of the black water.

Instead of sinking, the water beneath his boot solidified into a pane of clean, translucent crystal. He took another step, and another pane formed. He walked across the lake, a bridge of pure, solid crystal materializing under his feet with each step, creating a shimmering path across the foul water.

The others hesitated for only a second before following him onto the miraculous bridge, their footsteps echoing on the magical crystal.

As they reached the city's main promenade, the sheer scale of the destruction became apparent. Buildings were tilted and broken, and the streets were littered with the skeletal remains of the city's inhabitants, their bones stained black by the curse.

"What happened here?" Luna whispered, her heart aching at the sight of such devastation.

"My Lord Azeros happened here," a new voice, raspy and filled with ancient hatred, echoed from the central citadel.

From the shattered gates of the grandest building, a figure emerged. It was a spectre, a being of roiling shadow and purple energy, its form anchored by a suit of ornate, archaic plate armor. It wore a tarnished silver crown on its spectral head, and its eyes burned with the same malevolent purple light as the blight.

"The people of Aeridor refused to bow to your dark reign," the spectre boomed, its voice filled with the pain of ages. "I was their king. I led the charge against your legions. And for our defiance, you submerged our city, cursed our lands, and left us to rot in this watery grave for a thousand years!"

The King of Aeridor. A ghost from the Old War.

Lyra immediately stepped forward, her expression fierce. "Lies! My Lord's conquests were to bring order to a chaotic world! Your pathetic city stood in the way of true peace!"

"Peace?" the King roared with laughter, a sound like grinding stone. "The peace of the grave! You will pay for your sins, Demon Lord! I have spent a millennium nurturing this curse, feeding it with the agony of my people, waiting for the day you would return. Now, this entire region will be your tomb!"

The ground shook. The black water of the lake surged, and from its depths rose colossal water elementals, their forms twisted and corrupted by the blight. The black-boned skeletons on the streets began to rise, their eye sockets glowing with purple light. An army of the dead and damned surrounded them.

The girls instinctively took up defensive positions around Leo.

"An army of ghosts and monsters," Kaia said, a grim smile on her face. Her fighting spirit was returning. "This is more like it."

"His grief is the anchor for his power," Elara analyzed, her mind racing. "If we can sever his connection to the curse, the army should fall."

But Leo wasn't paying attention to the army. He was looking at the spectral king, his head tilted with a look of mild confusion.

"Aeridor..." he murmured to himself, searching the vast, dusty archives of his memory. "Water mages... silver crown... Ah."

Recognition dawned. He looked at the hate-filled spectre. "I remember you now. You weren't the king. you were the Court Jester."

The spectre froze. "What... what lies are you spouting now, demon?!"

"Your king surrendered," Leo stated plainly, as if recounting a boring historical fact. "He bent the knee, and I spared his city. I was having a particularly merciful decade. This city wasn't sunk by me. It was sunk about two hundred years after my reign, during the Scouring of the Lesser Gods, when they tried to erase all memory of me. They were the ones who butchered your people."

He pointed a finger at the ghost. "And you. I remember you. You tried to assassinate your own king for surrendering. You were executed for treason. Your 'grief' isn't for your people. It's the pathetic, selfish rage of a failed traitor who died a fool's death."

The revelation was so utterly anticlimactic, so personally humiliating, that it shattered the spectre's millennia-old narrative.

"LIES! LIES!" the ghost shrieked, its form flickering violently. Its entire identity was built on the lie of being a noble, tragic king. Leo had dismantled it with a few sentences of historical correction.

"Your curse is powered by a lie," Leo continued, his voice utterly devoid of sympathy. "That makes it fragile."

The spectre, driven into a corner by the truth, let out a final, desperate roar of rage. "It doesn't matter! My hate is real! It will be enough to destroy you!"

He raised his spectral hands, and the full power of the blight, the concentrated agony of a thousand years, coalesced into a single, massive beam of world-ending energy aimed directly at Leo.

The girls braced for an impact that could annihilate the entire island.

Leo simply watched the beam approach. He didn't raise a shield. He didn't counter-attack. He just... stood there.

The beam of pure chaos and hatred slammed into him.

And nothing happened.

It didn't explode. It didn't splash against an invisible barrier. The beam just... flowed into him, absorbed without a ripple, like a river flowing into the sea. He was not just immune to chaos; he was its master. The blight was a child throwing a tantrum at its father.

The spectral king stared, his power being drained into the very entity he was trying to destroy. "How...? This is impossible! My hatred is endless!"

"No, it's not," Leo said. And then he did something unexpected. He looked past the king, his gaze focusing on the army of skeletons. He saw the tattered remnants of their armor. He saw the sigils of the soldiers.

And he saw something that made him pause.

On the rusted gorget of a skeletal captain, he saw a familiar crest: a stylized silver blade. The crest of Commander Evelyn Blade's old unit.

And on the shield of another knight, a sunburst sigil. The mark of the Solari Empire's royal guard.

He looked at Elara, whose family was known for producing battle-mages. He saw the skeletons of mages in robes bearing a faint, tarnished version of the Valerius family crest.

His eyes widened slightly in genuine surprise.

"This Scouring..." he murmured. "It wasn't just a random purge. The 'gods' targeted the bloodlines of those who had dealings with me—those who surrendered, those who traded, those who served."

He looked at his team. At Elara, whose ancestors had likely negotiated with his forces. At the absent Evelyn, whose predecessors had probably fought and died in this very purge. At Princess Anya, whose imperial ancestors must have had some connection to him.

This wasn't just ancient history.

It was their history. Their families, their nations, their personal traumas—the roots of it all could be traced back to the forgotten wars of his first life and the brutal retaliation that followed.

The true villain wasn't some pathetic, lying ghost. It was the entire power structure of the current world. The gods and kings who had built their thrones on the ashes of his memory.

The blight-curse sputtered and died as the spectral king ran out of power. The army of the dead crumbled into dust.

Leo stood in the silence, a new, cold light in his eyes. His personal quest for a quiet life had just intersected with the deep, hidden wounds of the entire world—and, more specifically, with the painful backstories of the women who were inexplicably gathering around him.

This was no longer just about him wanting a nap. This had just become personal.