Lord of Entertainment C446 A Deal (Patreon)

(Saza POV)

I observed the «Demon King» before me.

Even a single glance was enough to tell me he was no ordinary demon. There was something contained within him — a quality of power that defied easy categorization, mysterious in a way I hadn't encountered before.

"Saza." He repeated the name with easy calm, as though filing it away. "You're not from this world. That much is obvious — your aura is completely foreign. Nothing like anything native to this place."

He didn't acknowledge my parting shot at all. Simply set it aside.

I pressed a little harder. "It doesn't concern you that I walked into your 'castle' without a single one of your generals noticing? I moved through this entire building without triggering so much as an alert."

Rather than annoyance, or even the faint tension of wounded pride, the man broke into laughter. Genuine, unrestrained laughter, the kind that bends a person at the middle.

"Hahaha — Castle? Generals?"

'What exactly is so funny? I applied my fullest abilities to get in here undetected, and this is what I receive?'

"It seems you are underestimating me," I said flatly.

That made it worse. He laughed harder.

"Stop," he managed between breaths. "You are genuinely killing me."

"I don't believe laughter is a viable method of killing you," I said. "Demon King."

"Hahaha — you are too much."

I watched him for a moment, my patience thinning at its edges. Then I decided I'd had enough of being the source of entertainment and acted.

I released my Divine Magical Ability — «Endless Pine-Tree» — sending branches surging outward, wood splitting and twisting through the air toward him, reaching to seize.

They closed around his figure.

And he simply wasn't there anymore. Like a bubble meeting a needle — one moment present, the next dissolved — he vanished on contact, and reappeared at my side without any visible effort.

I threw myself into a Space Ability and reappeared across the office, putting distance between us.

"Since you've given me a genuine laugh for the first time in a while," Arthur said, completely undisturbed, "I'll let that one go."

I looked at him — untouched, unhurried, the weight of his presence sitting in the room like something architectural.

"I suspected meeting a demon king of your caliber wouldn't be simple," I said. "Now I'm certain of it."

He laughed again — shorter this time. "Would you please stop calling me that? I have a name. Arthur Pendragon."

I paused. In the weeks I'd spent in this world — reading newspapers, watching the television news broadcasts, piecing together how things worked here — the title had appeared everywhere, spoken with unmistakable reverence. «Demon King, Arthur Pendragon». Consistent, universal, unquestioned.

"Why do you refuse the title?" I asked. "It seems like a genuine achievement to me. You've shaped this entire world through your films and technologies — people bow to you willingly, without coercion. Compared to the demon king of my world, you are considerably more refined. More cunning. More—"

"Hold on, hold on." He raised a hand. "I can tell you've been here long enough to read the papers, which means you've been operating on very incomplete information. The 'demon king' thing is not literal. It's a figure of speech — a reflection of how dominant Hellfire has become in the entertainment industry, and the fact that I happen to be the wealthiest individual on this planet. That's all it is."

He then explained it to me plainly and without condescension: the entertainment company, the honest business, the decades of work that had built it. No dark kingdom. No iron grip over trembling subjects.

Just a demon who had built something large and legitimate, and a world that had responded by being dramatic about it in the press.

I stood with that for a moment.

The embarrassment arrived slowly, then all at once.

"So... I was wrong."

---

(3rd POV)

Arthur was genuinely amused — the real kind, not the polite performance of it. Authentic laughter came rarely these days, and this elf from another world had produced it without even trying.

The complete sincerity of her mistake was what made it land so well. She had walked in fully convinced she was confronting a conqueror, an iron-fisted ruler with generals and a castle and a kingdom built on fear, and had delivered that assessment to his face with total seriousness.

Hilarious.

It was worth noting, of course, that his actual ambitions were hardly small. He did intend to overtake this world eventually — but not through domination for its own sake. The goal was to displace Solarus and the other two known gods and place the world under the authority of Dionysus. Better hands, by his own honest assessment. Nothing like what Saza had imagined.

"You're the first person I've met who's actually traveled to this world from another one," Arthur said, settling back with something approaching genuine warmth. "So. Welcome, however unintentional."

It was true. He and Firfel had gone outward — had crossed space, encountered alien life on one other world — but he'd never had the experience run in reverse. Someone arriving here from somewhere else entirely was a first.

"How did you make it across? A «Divine Ship»?"

Saza shook her head. "An accident. I was experimenting with Forbidden Magic — the Law of Space — when something pulled me. A foreign force, strong and strange. I was curious, so I followed it." She paused. "The next thing I knew, I was standing in a room surrounded by the people who'd accidentally summoned me."

Arthur stroked his chin. 'So that's what happened.' He turned that over for a moment. The power radiating off her was substantial — comparable to Kaiser or Keanu, by his read.

He offered her a seat and conjured tea and cake without ceremony, setting them between them with easy hospitality.

"Can you get back?" he asked. "The Law of Space isn't simple territory."

"Getting back is not the problem." She accepted the tea without hesitation, which he respected. "I've lived two thousand years — I have the means. What I need is a «Portal» in this world and the right materials to anchor a chant that bridges the distance between here and my world." She set the cup down with a small frown. "The problem is that portals don't seem to exist anywhere in this world. I've looked."

Arthur's expression didn't change, but his brow ticked upward once.

He had portals connecting to most of the major countries on the planet.

"My original assumption," Saza continued, "was that only someone of a Demon King's stature would possess something as rare as a lost treasure like that. So I came to find you."

"It seems I was operating on faulty logic and have caused you trouble in the process." She straightened and gave him a composed, unhurried bow. "I apologize."

"Don't worry about it," Arthur said. "In fact — if I helped you get back to your world, would you be open to letting me come and take a look around? And while I'm at it, I'd like to register my company there as well."

Saza's eyes lit up immediately, something bright and unguarded moving across her face. "Why not?" Then, with the enthusiasm of someone sharing a plan they were genuinely proud of: "Actually, I had an additional purpose for coming here. My original intention was to defeat you — a demon king — and then bring you back to my world with me. You'd use your talents there. Advance our technologies. Bring us films, entertainment, all of it." She looked at him expectantly. "I thought it was an excellent plan."

Arthur stared at her.

She had come here to kidnap him.

He cleared his throat. "You realize that in this scenario, you are the one behaving like a Demon King."

Saza appeared to consider this only briefly before setting it aside.

"Regardless," Arthur said, "as it happens, I do possess portals—"

"Really?"

She grabbed both his shoulders with both hands, the composure of the last several minutes dissolving entirely.