Almost a month has passed since the party happened and Allan arrived. The news of the demon lord’s wife continued to spread like wildfire. Soon enough, everybody had caught a whiff of what happened on the night of the demon lord’s party. They wanted to know what kind of person the demon lord’s supposed ‘wife’ was, but unfortunately, they couldn’t. Unfortunately for them, crowd control had already been taken care of by the demon lord. He told people who came to see his wife that they’d hold a proper engagement later, then invite as many people as they could to see his wife, so for now, they’d have to use wait. That excuse seemed to work for most of the common folk and some nobles but some just kept on being persistent, even to the point of trying to break into his castle to see Marcel. 

The demon lord had no choice but to put into motion plan B, that being to spread the news that a new hero had arrived. He did it with the help of Wolfgang, the hero capable of controlling most of the information on people’s informers. Almost everybody ignored yet relied on the informers for information about all sorts of things including information about heroes, dungeons and even the prizes attained in certain dungeons. It was far easier to divert the attention from Marcel to this new hero who’d arrive, thus buying some time for the demon lord to get Marcel ready. 

Oh, and spoiler; Marcel is the same hero involved in plan B. More on that later. Speaking of Marcel, how’s he been doing these past few days? 

Well, he finally got the demon lord to fix his glitch 3 days ago, helping him a lot. Apart from being able to use magic again, his control over magic has improved a lot. It’s going to be a while to get used to it since he’d learned magic control that was useless up until arriving in the demon realms, but he’ll be fine, probably.  

These past few days, Marcel has been training his magic skills, you know, the usual fireball and now illusions topped with a bit of water and wind magic. Marcel got a bit of advice from Claude which helped him. Claude told him to use his natural advantage in learning to come up with different ways to use the spells he learns, something he didn’t think about before and just going by the book. Let’s say that he’s in a battle where he wants to fool his enemy into letting their guard down. He can, for example, use a certain attribute their weak against and disguise with illusion magic to make it seem real enough or make it go invisible to make them let down their guard so that he can strike. Claude, in short, said that creativity was the key to kicking butt. 

Another piece of advice that he got was to try and increase the versatility of the different elements that he can use at a time, for example, Marcel frequently uses fireballs as his basic means of attack but there’s probably going to be situations in the future where he can’t use it, like maybe fighting in a narrow area and trying not to blow everything up or the fireball being useless in the first place. He has to learn how to increase and decrease the effects of spells by, for example, make a fire sword or a cage or something else to try to get through the situation he’s in. The last piece of advice was probably the best out of them all. This one is also his next challenge; to try and unify two opposing elements and use them at the same time. The point is to bring out the best in both elements. Fire and water are his main targets since uh, who doesn’t like trying to make fire and water work together. The reason he’s doing this in the first place is that if he can succeed, he’ll probably be able to use fire while underwater which he thinks is cool for some reason as if there was no natural phenomenon where fire and water coexist as one. 

After he’s done with this, Claude said that he’ll give him a month off to go explore wherever he wants. He kind of likes the idea since he hasn’t been anywhere after stepping his foot into his hubby’s lair. He’s starting to feel like he’s being ignored too since apart from the maids and Allan, almost nobody comes to see him that often, even the demon lord, and he understands why, but there’s a limit to how much you can bear being ignored. He’s been channeling all of his frustrations and negative feelings into his spells, making them even more powerful than usual. 

Allan got a station set up for him to do his magical research and he’s very enthusiastic when it comes to stuff like that, so he left Marcel a few days ago and hasn’t been spotted since, making Marcel’s negative emotions rise even more. Great, now his only friend has also begun ignoring him too and just when he seemed to have given up all hope to wallow in depression over his loneliness, Allan arrives and he isn’t alone. Claude is also with him. They were both talking about something, all excited, leaving Marcel curious about what they were going on about. 

“That’s genius!!” Claude exclaimed. “Yes, if we put another black hole and four measuring and detection spells inside the crystal, we might be able to finally do it,” Allan said in excitement. Marcel still didn’t know what they were rambling on about so he asked. 

“Oh, we’re talking about making something for you. If we succeed in making it, it’ll change things for the better. We’re talking about making a magic gauging crystal with perfect accuracy. Claude told me that he’s been having problems getting a read on your amount of power no matter what he tries, so I'm working on something new with him. If we succeed, we can finally measure your magic power capacity, making your training easier and more efficient.” Allan responded. He talked with a sparkly gleam in his eye and Marcel, as usual, felt like he knew nothing. No surprise there. 

The two made Marcel sit down and they explained in detail how it’ll work and everything until he finally understood. From what he got of their explanation, they were going to get a magic crystal, then enchant it with spells for blackholes and spatial storage but also detection spells, then they’ll bind them all together into the crystal and do, a magic gauging crystal with perfect. The process was much more complicated when Claude explained it but who has the time for long explanations. Hurray, for Marcel being a smart genius. Basically, after him putting magic into it, the blackholes and storage spells will store his magical power while the detection spells will filter the magic to determine how pure the magic is. To get the most accurate read on Marcel’s magic, they’ll need to make sure he empties it all, leading to the reason they need the blackholes and storage spaces. After determining the quantity and purity of the magic, the crystal will display the amount in numeric value and the size of that value determines the amount of magic he has. Claude was hoping that this time, he’ll finally get a read on Marcel’s magic. 

After their little chat with Marcel, Claude and Allan checked on his progress with the whole creativity, unity, and versatility of magic thing and afterward, then left to go finish their blueprints and start building their crystal. Marcel continued with his practice until he once again felt bored and went to find ways to entertain himself. 

After waiting a while longer after already knowing that he was bored, he got even more bored out of his mind and went to go find the demon lord to see if he could help him find a solution to his boredom and loneliness. After searching for like a minute or so and finally heading to the throne room which he was now very familiar with, he found the demon lord. 

The demon lord, as usual, looked sublime and awe-inspiring in his throne, but you can’t blame Marcel for not blushing since his human brain had already gotten from ‘I can’t take his handsomeness anymore’ to ‘No surprising. He’s very handsome’ over the past month. Now he rarely blushes when close to the demon lord, making him make fewer mistakes in front of him, all thanks to the great adaptability of the human or not so human brain.  

The demon lord asked him what he wanted and he talked about his boredom and as usual when the demon lord wanted to take him somewhere, he grabbed him and teleported away. They arrived in front of a giant door and the demon lord lifted the spell on it and they both entered.  

What Marcel saw in that room was a mountain he’d never seen before. It was a mountain of everything he ever wanted, a mountain full of all his hopes and dreams. Armors, swords, jewels, even things that he always wanted but never got. They were all there and the quality of them all was no less than the best. 

He finally put Marcel (the full-grown man although still 16) down and let him get familiar with the treasures. It didn’t take Marcel long before he put away his shy demeanor to get touchy-feely with them. 

“This is all yours. I prepared all these beforehand but never got the chance to give it to you until now. There are seven more like these, by the way, so don’t hesitate to take anything here. It’s yours after all.” The demon lord said with a smile and Marcel couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Really?!” with a sparkly gleam in his eyes like some child. The demon lord thought that it was cute. He just stood there and watched him as he continued to get familiar with the armors and other stuff and he’d occasionally ask, “What’s this?” or “How do you use this?” and just like that, half an hour past. 

After half an hour of watching Marcel fiddle around with the treasures, the demon lord prepared to leave. Seeing Marcel’s happy expression was enough to fill him with the energy needed to go fend off the countless men and women still wanting to meet Marcel. Their persistence was enough to get him to ask the one person who managed to get under his skin, Vitalis, the spirit of the world but also the once everybody else referred to as Supreme Administrator, for help. She naturally agreed to help the demon lord create a double identity for Marcel to help him be both the demon lord’s wife and a hero.  

Marcel the hero, according to their plans won’t be arriving until the day when he heads for a dungeon. She’s already spread the news that another hero would be arriving soon and in doing that, managed to give the demon lord some time to create a clear distinction between his future wife and the future hero. The demon lord plans to tell Marcel today but he doesn’t want to since the plan will cause a permanent change in Marcel that he might not want. They thinking of replacing the current Marcel with another. 

Just as he was about to leave with a guilty conscience over what he’d be forced to tell Marcel sooner or later, Marcel picked up a strange looking 3x3 Rubik's cube and asked about it. 

“Oh, that’s an illusory dungeon. It’s something that witches specialize in. It’s something people here like to play with. Try it! It’s used to train the mind. You might get a skill from just playing a game.” The demon lord then took it and instructed Marcel on how It worked. He rearranged the multicolored cube several times and then he gave it to Marcel and left. Marcel examined the cube multiple times. He tried doing the same thing as the demon lord and nothing happened until his hand accidentally pushed one of the smaller cubes into the cube. It was like a button. The next thing that happened was his surroundings switching in the blink of an eye into that of prairie and that wasn’t the only thing he was seeing. There was a small body of water that could be seen across the distance and a creature stood in front of the small body of water, drinking it. He wasn’t sure what was at that creature was since he couldn’t see it clearly since it was far away. 

Marcel still didn’t know what was going on and figuring out the current situation he was in took more priority than that creature... that was suddenly standing in front of him.  

The creature that was suddenly in front of him was about a golden lion. It was 2 meters and it looked ready to jump at Marcel. He had a bit of a staring contest with the beast and then Marcel. . .