Survival Guide After Accidentally Kissing a Demon - Chapter 367

*She Smiled Sheepishly*

The cause of everything…

It all began with the lords of Hell gathering to discuss their who-knew-which plan to ‘spread sin throughout the mortal world,’ only for every plan to end in failure.

Failure after failure dampened the lords’ enthusiasm and taught them a lesson.

They decided that whenever they came up with a new plan, it was necessary to send a representative into the future to see how it turned out.

If it ended in failure yet again, then aside from expending some magic to open the Gates of Hell together, they would not need to waste any further effort.

Among Hell’s seventy-two pillar Demons, Lord Ashera—the Demon ranked twenty-ninth who represented sloth and indolence—had the misfortune of becoming the representative responsible for looking into the future.

Our Lord Ashera soon grew tired of the task.

After all, who would want to watch their own side meet a dismal end? Especially with such frequency.

Besides, he was the Demon of sloth. How had he somehow become the busiest one in all of Hell?

It was enough to make our Demon Lord laugh in exasperation.

When the Gates of Hell opened for the who-knew-how-many-th time, Lord Ashera, who found the situation more and more absurd the longer he thought about it, decided to use the opportunity to travel through time.

The God of Destiny was not the only one unable to resist the temptation of peering into their own future. A Demon with the power to travel into the past and future was no different.

Far in the future, he was astonished to discover that he would have a wife.

A wife.

What a strange and unbelievable word.

To the Demon Lord, the discovery was utterly novel.

It filled him with surprise and delight.

Then the Gates of Hell closed, and he returned to Hell.

Even after his return, he remained immersed in endless speculation and fantasy.

From then on…

Whenever the Gates of Hell opened, Ashera took the opportunity to travel even farther into the future and see his wife.

But to avoid affecting his future self, he could only conceal his presence and watch her quietly from a great distance.

For that reason, his enthusiasm for every new plan to ‘spread sin throughout the mortal world’ became visible to the naked eye.

Of course, he still skipped the gatherings of the lords. He merely sent his black dragon mount to the meeting place to ask questions on his behalf and urge the Demons to come up with a new plan as soon as possible.

In any case, the process continued through several plans.

Until one day, the Demon Lord suddenly discovered that the person his future self called his wife had disappeared.

Without a sound.

As if she had never existed.

After seeing her fading outline as she vanished, he could only keep moving backward along the timeline.

Someone must have made an enormous change to the past, causing the two of them to miss one another.

“So…”

Leaning back as she sat cross-legged beneath the Heaven Tree, Beili caught the distracted black lamb. She gathered his fuzzy little ears and held them upright, kneading them as she asked, “Tell me honestly. What were you thinking about just now that had you lost in thought for so long?”

After two seconds of silence, the black lamb let out a man’s chuckle.

“I think I should stop using magic related to time, my dear little butterfly.”

At that, Beili released the black lamb’s ears and asked in confusion, “Why?”

“Because I only just noticed something. It turns out that Gods can fall.”

Recalling the remnant left behind after the God of Destiny’s fall, the Demon Lord belatedly began to worry.

“When humans die, they go to another world. When Demons fall, they return to Hell. Tell me…”

He asked the question at an unhurried pace.

“Where do Gods go after they fall?”

Beili quickly understood what he meant.

“So that is what you were worried about.”

“Actually, this is very easy to solve.” She teased him. “Don’t you Demons in Hell love studying bugs more than anything?”

Thinking that he might not understand, Beili continued to explain.

“Here is the bug: if you discover one day that I have fallen, then go back to the point where we first met. Wouldn’t we be together again?”

Still, now that the Demon Lord had brought up the subject of time magic, she also happened to recall that final period in the mortal world.

After coming to Hell, Beili had never found the spare attention to ponder the question that had troubled her, both because her divine power had taken so long to recover and because the Demon Lord was far too clingy. At this moment, the mystery abruptly unraveled.

Beili understood now.

If the dagger was also a sacred artifact capable of killing a Demon, and obtaining a sacred artifact required offering up the most precious thing one possessed, then for Beili, that could only have been the heart.

Even if it was Ashera’s heart.

Her intense murderous intent had triggered an encounter in which the heart could be exchanged for the sacred artifact.

Then the Demon Lord, who had followed her to the Far South, appeared and desperately tried to prevent the version of her inside the encounter from dying that way.

“Back then in the Far South, you did not know that it was an encounter. You did not know that people who died inside the encounter would come back to life, did you?”

Although something had gone wrong with the process, by a strange twist of fate, the outcome—her obtaining the sacred artifact—had not changed.

The black lamb tipped his head back and stared intently at her.

After a moment…

As though unwilling to revisit that memory, he changed the subject.

“What if I cannot find you?”

The next second, the black lamb transformed into a silver-haired man in black robes.

Still seated beneath the Heaven Tree, he gave a soft sigh and drew her into his arms. A faint smile colored his voice.

“After all, whenever you tried to shake me off before, you always hid yourself very well.”

He had a point.

Beili smiled sheepishly.

“Then this time, you will hear my true name.”

She plucked a gray feather and placed it in his hand. In a soft voice, she said, “Honored Demon Lord, my name is Beili.”