I'm Not Your Husband, You Evil Dragon!

Location: Liebus Agency

Place: Demon Postmortem Laboratory

After hours of waiting, the examination of the captured salesman demon was finally complete.

Sara stood outside the laboratory with her arms folded, her expression growing increasingly impatient with every passing minute.

Ever since Raven and the Shadow Unit had returned with the captured demon, one question had refused to leave her mind.

According to everything they knew, the salesman belonged among the upper blood ranks of demon society, yet Raven’s unit had managed to weaken and capture him far more easily than Sara believed should have been possible.

That bothered her.

The Aesthor Stone was the obvious explanation. Raven had already demonstrated its frightening effectiveness during the battle, and later, the Queen of Atlantis herself had used the same strange aura contained within the stone to finish the demon. Yet that only created an even more important question for Sara.

Could an Aesthor Stone truly kill an upper blood-ranking demon?

If the answer was yes, then humanity might have accidentally discovered one of the greatest weapons in its entire war against demons.

They had spent years sacrificing soldiers just to defeat creatures far beneath the upper blood ranks. A weapon capable of weakening demons at that level could completely change the balance of the war.

Sara needed proof before allowing herself to believe something that convenient.

The laboratory doors finally slid open with a mechanical hiss, pulling her attention away from her thoughts. Dr. Jenny emerged carrying a digital report, followed by several younger researchers who had assisted with the examination.

Sara immediately noticed something was wrong.

Normally, Jenny would have been practically glowing after receiving such a rare specimen. This was possibly the first opportunity her department had ever received to conduct a complete postmortem examination on an upper blood-ranking demon. Instead, the doctor looked troubled, and the younger researchers behind her were exchanging uncomfortable glances.

"Chief."

Jenny approached and presented the report.

"We’ve completed the postmortem examination. This contains everything we were able to determine about the specimen, including its height, weight, internal anatomy, cellular composition, tissue structure and the genetic information we managed to isolate."

Sara accepted the report and briefly scrolled through the enormous amount of information before nodding.

"Good work, Jenny. You didn’t disappoint me."

She was about to begin reading when she noticed Jenny hadn’t moved. Sara slowly lowered the report and glanced toward the researchers behind her, finding the same uneasiness on their faces.

"Now tell me what you found."

Jenny hesitated.

"Chief... before that, I need to confirm something. You said this demon belonged to the upper blood ranks, correct?"

"Yes."

Sara answered immediately before narrowing her eyes.

"Why?"

Jenny took a slow breath.

"Because something about this corpse doesn’t make sense."

Sara’s casual expression disappeared.

"What doesn’t make sense?"

"I could be wrong. We still possess very little reliable information about the biology of demons at this level, so there are limits to what I can confidently conclude." Jenny tightened her grip around the tablet before continuing.

"But after examining the specimen several times, I don’t believe this is the demon’s real body."

Sara stared at her.

"What?"

"This body isn’t genuine."

The corridor became noticeably quieter.

Sara stepped closer to Jenny, her crimson eyes sharpening.

"Explain."

Jenny immediately opened the report and displayed several diagrams taken from the demon’s tissue samples.

"At first, everything appeared authentic. It had functioning organs, blood circulation, muscles, nerves and everything necessary for a living organism. Even after death, the tissues behaved exactly as we would expect from a genuine biological body. That’s why we didn’t suspect anything during the initial examination."

Jenny enlarged one of the cellular diagrams.

"The problems appeared when we examined it at a much deeper level. Several genetic sequences are incomplete, while others are repeated far too perfectly across different tissues. Entire sections that should contain unique biological information are simply... missing."

Sara frowned.

"Missing?"

"Yes. More importantly, many of these cells aren’t merely similar. They’re practically copies of the same underlying structure, modified only enough to perform different functions."

Jenny changed the display again, showing several samples side by side.

"It’s almost as though something took one biological template and repeatedly reproduced it, making only the minimum alterations necessary to construct a functional body."

Sara’s fingers slowly tightened around the report.

"Then what exactly are you telling me, Jenny?"

Jenny hesitated before finally saying what had clearly been troubling her entire team.

"I believe this body was created from another organism’s biological information. Whether you want to call it a clone, duplicate, artificial vessel or something else, I can’t tell you yet because we don’t understand the mechanism."

She glanced through the laboratory window toward the demon corpse lying beyond the glass.

"But I’m almost certain of one thing, Chief. The creature Raven brought here wasn’t the original."

Sara’s crimson eyes widened.

For several seconds, she said nothing.

Then Raven’s mission report resurfaced inside her mind.

The kidnapped children.

The ritual.

The strange salesman.

And most importantly...

There hadn’t been only one salesman.

Raven had reported several identical figures.

Sara had originally assumed they were demons belonging to the same organization, perhaps even members of a strange species that naturally possessed similar appearances. Considering how little humanity knew about demon society, there had been no reason to question it further.

Now there was another explanation.

"They weren’t a group..."

Sara whispered.

Jenny looked toward her.

"Chief?"

Sara’s eyes widened further as the pieces suddenly connected.

"They were copies."

A terrible realization settled over her.

If the salesman Raven had fought was merely a duplicate, then Raven hadn’t defeated an upper blood-ranking demon at all.

"Even worse, the creature that had died inside the interrogation room wasn’t the original either."

Which meant the real salesman demon was still alive.

Sara’s expression gradually hardened, but another thought immediately followed the first, one far more dangerous.

The duplicate had seen everything.

It had fought Raven and the Shadow Unit. It had witnessed the Aesthor Stone being used against demons and experienced its effects firsthand. After being captured, it had been brought directly into Liebus Agency headquarters, where it had seen their soldiers, their captains and parts of the facility.

And then...

It had seen Erza.

Sara’s face slowly lost its color.

"No..."

Jenny noticed the sudden change.

"Chief?"

Sara barely heard her.

If these bodies were truly extensions of one original demon, then there was another possibility they couldn’t ignore.

What if information passed between them?

What if the original could see through its copies?

What if everything this corpse had witnessed before its death had already been transmitted somewhere else?

Their soldiers.

Their combat methods.

The Aesthor Stone.

Their headquarters.

And the existence of a Dragon Queen standing among humanity.

"Fuck."

Sara’s aura erupted violently.

A wave of pressure blasted through the corridor, causing several researchers to stumble backward as warning lights immediately began flashing throughout the laboratory. Jenny caught herself against the wall while Sara remained completely still, her crimson eyes fixed upon the corpse lying beyond the reinforced glass.

Only now did she understand.

They hadn’t captured an enemy and brought him into their headquarters.

They had brought the enemy’s eyes inside.

And somewhere beyond Liebus...

The real salesman might already know everything.

_________________________________

Location: Anaya City, Liebus

Place: Agency Soldiers’ Bar

While Sara was uncovering a horrifying truth inside the Demon Postmortem Laboratory, someone else within the same city was unknowingly moving toward a discovery of his own.

Unlike Sara, however, Loid wasn’t working with laboratory reports or physical evidence. Everything reaching his ears came from frightened soldiers, wounded survivors and rumors spreading throughout the Agency, and those incomplete pieces were slowly creating a version of events that seemed terrifyingly convincing.

Loid sat at one of the tables inside the soldiers’ bar, a large mug of beer resting between his hands while five lower-ranking Agency soldiers sat around him.

He hadn’t originally come here looking for information. After Fiona rejected him and ended their friendship, he simply wanted somewhere to ease his mind and stop thinking about her for a few hours, but the atmosphere inside the bar made that almost impossible.

Everywhere he listened, soldiers were whispering about yesterday’s disaster, the defeated captains and, most importantly, the mysterious woman who had apparently taken control of the entire Liebus Agency.

At first, Loid ignored the rumors, believing frightened soldiers were simply exaggerating what happened. However, after hearing almost the same story from several different tables, his curiosity finally overcame him.

He leaned slightly forward and looked carefully at the five soldiers sitting around him.

"So, according to these rumors, someone even stronger than Chief Sara appeared yesterday and took control of the Agency?"

The five soldiers exchanged glances before slowly nodding. Their expressions alone told Loid that none of them considered this merely drunken gossip anymore.

"Yes, sir. That’s what everyone’s saying. Captain Erika and Captain Elga fought the intruder first, but somehow both of them ended up defeated. Then things became even stranger because Chief Sara herself appeared, and afterward the entire Agency was ordered to recognize that woman."

Another soldier nodded quickly in agreement.

"I heard the same thing from someone stationed near the training facility. Apparently Chief Sara didn’t even challenge her properly. She acknowledged the woman and allowed her to take command."

Loid’s eyebrows slowly drew together. He lifted the mug toward his lips but stopped before drinking, his thoughts becoming increasingly focused on the strange information.

"I see..."

He placed the mug back onto the table.

"But what do you think? Don’t you think these rumors might be false? Sara suddenly surrendering authority to some mysterious woman sounds ridiculous."

One soldier immediately shook his head.

"I don’t think they’re false, sir."

"Why?"

The soldier glanced toward the others before lowering his voice.

"Because soldiers are getting arrested for speaking against her."

Loid’s expression changed slightly.

"Arrested?"

"Yes. Anyone openly refusing to accept the woman’s authority, insulting her or spreading things against her is being detained. Some are even being removed from active duty."

Another soldier leaned toward the table.

"I heard nearly two hundred and fifty soldiers have already been arrested, suspended, or demoted."

The other soldiers nodded, confirming they had heard similar numbers.

"That’s why I think the takeover really happened," the first soldier continued. "Chief Sara wouldn’t suddenly punish hundreds of her own soldiers for questioning some unknown woman. Not unless something forced her to."

Loid became silent again.

That last sentence bothered him.

He slowly rubbed his chin while looking down at the table, replaying everything he had heard. Even if he accepted that this mysterious woman was extraordinarily powerful, there were still too many things that didn’t fit.

"But that still doesn’t make sense."

The soldiers looked toward him.

Loid raised his gaze.

"If Sara were stepping down, then Elga should have been one of her successors. There are already captains and an established chain of command. Why would some woman nobody has ever heard about suddenly be placed above all of them?"

Nobody answered immediately.

Loid continued thinking aloud.

"And you’re telling me this same woman somehow defeated Captain Erika and Captain Elga, overwhelmed elite soldiers, made Sara submit, and then immediately gained enough authority to arrest hundreds of Agency personnel?"

His eyes narrowed as he looked around the table, trying to find even one person who possessed a proper explanation for everything that had happened.

"Who the hell is she?"

The soldiers exchanged uncomfortable looks, but none of them seemed capable of giving him the answer he wanted.

"I don’t know, sir. Most of us haven’t actually seen her ourselves."

"Neither do I. I haven’t actually seen her."

"Same here. I only heard that she has white hair."

"Someone from another division said she’s incredibly beautiful, but terrifying at the same time."

Another soldier leaned closer before lowering his voice.

"I heard people couldn’t even stand properly around her."

Loid leaned backward in his chair as his fingers slowly tapped against the side of his mug. Something about the entire situation felt wrong, and the more information he gathered, the less the official explanation made sense to him.

Fiona’s strange behavior returned to his thoughts again, followed by the sudden emergency inside the Agency and now the appearance of an unknown woman powerful enough to somehow place herself above Sara.

Fiona suddenly pushed me away. Then the Agency descended into chaos, and now some unknown woman has taken control of everything.

Loid’s eyes slowly widened as another possibility entered his mind.

The five soldiers immediately looked toward him.

Loid’s expression became unusually serious.

"...maybe this woman is manipulating everyone?"

The table fell silent.

One soldier blinked.

"Manipulating?"

"Manipulating them? What exactly do you mean, sir?"

"Think about it. What if she isn’t forcing Sara to obey through strength?" Loid asked, his expression becoming increasingly serious. "What if she’s controlling her mind?"

The soldiers looked at one another.

For the first time, none of them dismissed the possibility.

"Actually... that might be possible."

Another soldier suddenly straightened in his chair when a forgotten memory returned to him.

"Wait. I remember something."

Everyone at the table immediately turned toward him.

The soldier hesitated briefly before explaining that he had visited one of the wounded elite soldiers in the hospital after yesterday’s incident.

The man had been badly injured and barely conscious, but before passing out again, he had repeatedly mentioned something Captain Raven screamed during the confrontation.

"I visited one of the shadow soldiers in the hospital yesterday. He was injured pretty badly, but he kept talking about what happened before everyone lost consciousness."

Loid immediately focused on him.

"What did he say?"

The soldier swallowed before answering.

"He said Captain Raven warned everyone that the intruder had possessed Chief Sara. Apparently Raven believed the woman’s ability was similar to Suriya Rakh."

The moment that name was spoken, several soldiers visibly reacted. Even among lower-ranking personnel, Suriya Rakh wasn’t an unfamiliar name.

He was an upper blood-ranking demon infamous for invading minds and manipulating what his victims perceived, making people believe things that weren’t real or forcing them into actions they would never willingly choose.

"Suriya Rakh? You mean the upper blood demon?"

"The one who manipulates people’s minds?"

The soldier nodded firmly.

"That’s what I heard. Captain Raven believed Chief Sara was under hypnosis or some kind of mental control."

The table went completely quiet.

Suddenly, the impossible story didn’t sound quite so impossible anymore.

One soldier slowly looked toward Loid.

"If that’s true, then Chief Sara didn’t willingly give her the Agency."

Another immediately nodded as he connected the theory to another strange event.

"And Captain Elga and Captain Erika fighting each other would make sense too. Maybe they were manipulated into attacking one another."

Loid’s jaw gradually tightened.

Something clicked inside his mind.

Fiona.

Her rejection.

The sudden coldness.

The way she had ended their friendship and behaved completely unlike the woman he believed he knew.

Until now, Loid had been unable to understand why she had changed so suddenly.

But what if Fiona hadn’t changed?

What if someone had changed her?

His fingers slowly tightened around the beer mug.

The soldiers noticed the change in his expression but remained quiet.

"So that’s what happened..."

Loid whispered.

His grip tightened further.

A thin crack appeared across the mug.

"Fiona..."

A thin crack appeared across the mug beneath his tightening fingers. Loid’s thoughts had already moved far beyond their original conversation, and every painful thing Fiona had said to him was now being reinterpreted through the conclusion he desperately wanted to believe.

Her rejection was no longer a rejection in his mind, and her decision to end their friendship no longer felt like her own choice.

Fiona wouldn’t suddenly end everything between us like that. She wouldn’t throw away our friendship as though it meant nothing. Someone must have made her do it.

CRACK!

The mug shattered inside Loid’s fist, causing all five soldiers to recoil in surprise. Beer spilled across the table while broken pieces of glass fell between his fingers, and blood gradually mixed with the alcohol running down his hand.

Loid barely reacted to the injury, however, because his mind was completely consumed by the conclusion he had reached.

"Sir...? Your hand."

Loid slowly opened his bleeding palm and stared at the shattered glass for several seconds. When he finally raised his head again, the confusion that had been visible on his face earlier had disappeared, replaced by a frightening seriousness.

"I see. So Fiona was being controlled too."

The soldiers looked at one another uneasily. None of them had actually said that, but Loid had already convinced himself.

He slowly stood from his chair.

"If this woman is controlling Fiona, then every second Fiona remains near her could put her life in danger. If she managed to manipulate Chief Sara herself, there’s no telling what she could make Fiona do."

The five soldiers became silent.

None of them tried encouraging his theory anymore, but Loid was already too convinced to notice their hesitation.

Fiona’s rejection, Elga and Erika fighting, Sara’s submission, the arrests and the mysterious woman’s sudden rise to power had merged inside his mind into one seemingly perfect explanation.

Loid stepped away from the table and began walking toward the exit.

With every step, the heartbreak that had originally brought him into the bar was replaced by anger toward a woman he had never even met.

He no longer saw Fiona as someone who had rejected him; in his mind, she had become another victim who needed to be saved.

Before reaching the door, Loid stopped and glanced toward the distant Agency headquarters. His wounded fist remained tightly clenched at his side as blood slowly slipped between his fingers, but his attention remained entirely on the mysterious woman he believed was responsible for everything.

"Whoever you are, I’ll find you. And if you’re the one who did this to Fiona, I’ll make you pay for what you’ve done."

Loid’s eyes narrowed as his expression turned cold. He still didn’t know who the woman was or what she truly wanted, but in his mind, she had already become his enemy.

"I’ll make sure you suffer the worst death you’ve ever seen."

With those words, Loid pushed open the door and walked out of the bar, unaware of just how dangerous the woman he had decided to challenge truly was.

To Be Continued...

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!