The feeling in her throat was terrible, but pretending to be drunk was even worse.
“Cough, cough…”
The Demon King cleared her throat.
The sting of the strong liquor still lingered.
Despite Sephine’s teasing just now, she hadn’t broken character.
It showed how long she must have trained for this.
As they say, official matters are handled officially, personal matters privately.
After discussing Kingdom affairs with Sephine, it was only natural to move on to their feelings.
But Sephine was a stubborn one.
She would never speak her true heart unless she was facing someone completely defenseless.
This was the lesson the Demon King had learned from spending so much time with Sephine.
Only by summarizing and reflecting could one grow.
Over these many days, there had been no real progress in their relationship, and the Demon King felt she was partly responsible.
She wasn’t bold enough, smart enough, or well-planned enough.
And she had too few allies.
Sephine was the King—the entire Kingdom was her network.
She had to make good use of it.
Having stolen a kiss from Sephine just now was already satisfying.
It was still so captivating, so heart-shaking.
All thanks to her old father for keeping Sephine here.
But then again, Misilanka had volunteered to help restore their relationship.
Logically, the relationship between the Demon King and her father should have been quite strained.
However, the day after meeting Catherine at Sephine’s house, the Demon King had gone home.
This was how it went—
“Why are you back? You kicked your sister like that and still have the nerve to come back?”
“I’m sorry… but I didn’t want to either.”
“Can’t control your own body? Feel like a stranger suddenly took over?”
“How did you know?!”
“Was it you?”
Vi silently resented her father in her heart.
When her mother left, he didn’t stop her.
He just abandoned the three of them to fend for themselves in the wild forest.
“Idiot! You think I didn’t support you becoming the Demon King for no reason? You really think that seat is easy to sit in?”
“How would I know? You never tell me! You hide everything from us!”
“I… fine. You’re grown up. It’s time I told you everything.”
The Demon King had only intended to scold him a bit, but this stubborn old man actually intended to reveal something.
A basic attack turned into an ultimate move.
“Does our family really have a secret?”
Vi asked, full of doubt.
As far back as she could remember, her family had lived in poverty, barely scraping by.
At least her mother was hardworking, and her father could barely support them.
Until one day, her parents had a fight, and her mother left.
After that, her father drank every day, but he still gave his daughters enough money for food.
To grow up healthy, they needed more nutritious things, so Vi started hunting.
But even that only kept them alive.
“Idiot, why do you think you’re so talented? It’s because of our genes!”
Even Misilanka, who was drunk and unconscious every day, could puff out his chest when talking about the family’s superior genes.
Misilanka fumbled in the dark and led Vi into a basement she had never seen before.
It was right beneath their house, yet she had never sensed its existence—clearly shielded by some powerful magic.
“Our family was originally court mages for the royal family of the Kingdom of Magic…”
“Are you trying to say you fell in love with Mom, who was from the royal family? The royal family didn’t allow it, so you changed your names, hid in the forest, lived a hard life, and Mom couldn’t stand it and went looking for a way to defeat the royal family?”
“Huh? You already know.”
Vi was shocked.
Wasn’t this exactly the plot of that novel on their bookshelf?
Almost identical!
“Are you messing with me even now? That’s just a story from a novel!”
“That novel was written by your mom. And besides, our family wasn’t that bad off, right? I remember giving you money on time.”
“It was never enough! Never enough! Why else would I go hunting?”
“I thought you were just exercising. So it was for money… Why didn’t you say so? Your dad may not have much, but I’ve got plenty of it. Also, us court mages didn’t study magic much; we mainly studied alchemy.”
Alchemy was a branch of magic.
At least that’s how it was recorded in this world’s magical encyclopedia.
The most important point was that alchemy was based on equivalent exchange, hence also called equivalent exchange magic.
“Look, aren’t these Gold Coins?”
Misilanka opened the lid of a wooden barrel. Inside, all gleaming Gold Coins.
The quantity was enough to affect the exchange rate between Gold and Silver Coins.
“So we were exiled because we disrupted the currency circulation?”
“No, not really. It’s just that the previous Demon King also liked your mom. I didn’t like that, so I took her and ran.”
Vi felt like the sky was falling.
Her childhood “miserable experiences” were just her father’s whim.
She thought back carefully.
When her mother was still around, the family was actually quite happy.
After she left, her father became gloomy every day.
“Hard life? I thought you were happy every day.”
“Then why did we have to live such a hard life?”
“Look at me now, but your dad was a real handsome guy before. You’ve read the book on my bedside, right? I actually wrote it. I was just trying a new alchemy technique and accidentally turned myself into this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hard to explain.”
Misilanka answered with a self-deprecating air.
“Then why don’t you change yourself back?”
“Daughter, you have to understand. It’s easy to go from big to small, but hard to go from small to big. The excess materials from the original body were already consumed as the activation cost for equivalent exchange.”
“Meaning…”
“That’s right, I no longer have the ability to choose my appearance.”
“Then you mean… I turned Sephine into this, and she can’t be changed back either?”
“That’s right. That part I made up. The so-called Demon King’s ability to change a partner’s appearance doesn’t actually exist.”
“What?!”
“To get back at that Demon King, I altered all the books recording Demon King’s authority. Those so-called Demon King rituals they use now are actually alchemy rituals I invented.”
That’s right.
To confuse the Demon King, Misilanka rewrote all records about Demon King’s authority.
To the point where later generations had come to accept “the Demon King can freely change a partner’s appearance” as objective fact.
This was bad.
The Demon King’s heart began to panic.
After all this, Sephine couldn’t be changed back.
The Witch’s insight was truly no joke.