Kaizen stared at the door.
It was only five feet away from him.
Five very reasonable feet.
'I need to leave,' he thought desperately. 'I need to leave right now.'
It was only two in the afternoon. The sun was still shining outside like nothing was wrong. The campus was enormous, practically its own city.
There had to be empty benches, forgotten corners, maintenance rooms, or at least one janitor closet where a person could crouch in silence and rethink their life choices for the next forty-eight hours.
Anything was better than being locked inside this literal mausoleum with the actual Prince of Darkness.
He slowly, agonizingly slowly, shifted his weight and began to stand up from the bed, every movement careful and deliberate, like he was disarming a bomb using only bad instincts.
'Just walk out casually,' he told himself. 'Say you're going to buy milk or something. Normal humans love milk. Nobody questions milk.'
He even rehearsed it in his head.
'Hey, I'm just stepping out to get milk.'
Perfect. Flawless. Completely believable.
Then he froze mid-motion.
His eyes drifted back to the black-clad figure sitting at the demonic desk, hunched over his work like an ominous gargoyle with a scholarship.
And reality slapped him.
'I can run away now,' Kaizen realized, dread pooling in his stomach, 'but I still have to come back here to sleep eventually. I literally live here.'
His gaze slid to the bathroom door.
'My toothbrush is sitting right next to his toothbrush.'
The horror deepened.
'My socks are in the same dresser as whatever cursed demon capes he owns.'
Avoiding the Plot had always been his number one survival rule. Stay out of sight. Stay out of trouble. Stay far away from anything with dramatic background music.
But how exactly did you avoid the Plot when you were legally contract-bound to share a bathroom with it?
'My life is completely over. I'm going to die of stress before finals week even starts.'
BAM!
A fist slammed down onto the mahogany desk.
The sound detonated through the room like a gunshot.
Kaizen did not just jump.
He ascended.
For a brief, beautiful moment, his soul left his body, hovered above the scene, observed his own pathetic trembling form, and then returned out of sheer obligation to continue panicking.
He did not scream.
He did not try to run.
His survival instincts took over completely.
Kaizen dropped to the floor and rolled under the bed in one single, smooth, terror-powered motion.
WHOOSH. SLIDE.
He lay there among dust bunnies and lost socks, shaking violently, both hands clamped over his mouth to stop any traitorous noises from escaping.
'He triggered,' Kaizen thought in pure despair. 'He finally triggered.'
'I must have breathed too loud.'
'This is it.'
'He's entered his Enrage Phase.'
"Insolent… stubborn… two-dimensional trash!"
Klaus was cursing.
But he was not cursing like a normal angry college student who had just failed an exam or stubbed his toe.
He was cursing like a deeply disappointed Victorian vampire who had just discovered that modern architecture existed.
"Why?!"
Klaus hissed, grabbing a fistful of his own perfectly styled hair and tugging on it like the universe personally owed him an explanation.
"I have consulted the Codex of Shadows! I have accessed the ancestral memories of the Third Circle! So why?! Why does the mana refuse to align?!"
He violently flipped a page in one of the thick tomes.
RIP.
The sound echoed through the room like a death sentence.
"This author is a complete charlatan!"
The Demon King Candidate snarled, glaring at the book as if it had personally betrayed him.
"An absolute fool! How can the output possibly exceed the input without a proper catalyst?! It defies the fundamental Laws of Equivalent Ruin!"
Under the bed, Kaizen was sweating bullets.
Literal bullets.
The sweat dripped off his face and pooled onto the floorboards beneath him, his shirt sticking uncomfortably to his back as his heart hammered like it was trying to escape his ribcage.
'He's furious. He's failing some kind of spell. This is really bad.'
In books and games, when a Demon King failed a spell, one of two things happened. Either the spell backfired and erased a city block, or the Demon King erased the city block out of frustration.
Sometimes both.
Kaizen squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could, as if that might somehow reduce the blast radius.
'I'm F-Rank,' he reminded himself weakly. 'My defense stat is literally zero. My HP is fifteen. Fifteen.'
'If he sneezes in my general direction, I die instantly.'
He slowly cracked one eye open and peeked out from under the bed frame, just enough to catch a glimpse of Klaus's expensive boots pacing back and forth across the floor with sharp, angry steps.
Each one sounded like a countdown.
'And he's a D-Ranker,' Kaizen continued, his brain helpfully supplying even worse information. 'But not just a normal D-Ranker. He has the special Candidate title.'
Kaizen knew the game mechanics by heart.
Titles were never cosmetic.
Titles always gave hidden buffs.
[Title: Demon King Candidate]
Buff: +50% Magic Power.
Buff: +200% Intimidation.
Passive Skill: [Aura of Despair]
Effect: Causes low-level mobs to faint when in close proximity.
'I am the low-level mob,' he screamed internally. 'I'm fainting! I'm literally fainting right now!'
His hands shook as he pressed himself flatter against the floor, trying to minimize his existence as much as physically possible.
'If I stay perfectly still,' he prayed, 'maybe the Aura will think I'm already dead and move on.'
"Is it the angle?"
Klaus muttered to himself, grabbing his crow-feather quill and stabbing it violently into the inkwell.
"Is it the curvature of the planet? Do I need to account for the atmospheric humidity?"
He leaned over his paper, his demonic aura flaring up visibly. Black and purple smoke started rising from his shoulders like he was on fire.
The temperature in the entire room dropped a full ten degrees.
Kaizen's teeth started chattering uncontrollably.
'He's charging up! He's going to blast the desk! And I'm lying right next to the desk!'
"Unacceptable!" Klaus roared. "I, Klaus Silver, cannot be defeated by mere parchment!"
He raised his right hand dramatically. Dark energy crackled around his fingers. He was literally about to obliterate his homework out of pure frustration.
Kaizen knew he had exactly two choices:
Option 1: Stay under the bed and get vaporized.
Option 2: Say something and probably still get vaporized, but maybe get a quicker death.
"P-please don't kill me!" Kaizen squeaked from under the mattress.
The dark energy vanished instantly.
Klaus spun around, his blood-red eyes scanned the entire room.
"Human?" Klaus asked, sounding genuinely confused. "Where... where are you?"
"Down here," Kaizen whispered pathetically. "In the dust."
Klaus looked at the bed. He slowly crouched down, tilting his head to peer under it. He saw Kaizen's terrified face staring back at him from the darkness.
"Why..." Klaus paused, genuinely baffled by what he was seeing. "Why have you retreated to the sub-floor?"
Kaizen's mind raced desperately. He couldn't say 'Because you look like you're about to nuke the entire room.' He needed an excuse. A cultural excuse that a sheltered Demon wouldn't think to question.
"It's... a ritual!" Kaizen blurted out. "A human prayer ritual!"
Klaus raised one elegant eyebrow. "Under the bed?"
"Y-yes! Under the bed!" Kaizen stammered, sweat stinging his eyes. "We... we do it to prove that no amount of earthly comfort is above the gods! By lying in the dust, we show proper humility to the divine!"
'I am literally pulling this complete nonsense out of my ass,' Kaizen screamed internally. 'Please buy it. Please be gullible. Please be stupid.'
Klaus paused. He stared at Kaizen for a long, extremely uncomfortable moment.
'Strange creatures indeed,' Klaus thought, stroking his chin thoughtfully. 'To willingly reject comfort just to appease their invisible deities... primitive, yet oddly fascinating.'
'These humans are very weird, indeed.'
'This "Kaizen" is clearly a perfect specimen of the common folk. With his pitiful power level, he represents the baseline of average humanity.'
Klaus nodded slowly to himself.
But then a new thought suddenly crossed the Demon Prince's mind. He looked at the failed magic circle on his desk, then back at the trembling human under the bed.
'Humans have terribly short lifespans. Because of this biological limitation, they are known for their terrifying adaptability.'
'They learn quickly just to survive another day. Could this little human... be taught?'
Klaus's crimson eyes bored into Kaizen.
'If I teach him the absolute basics of runic language... could a fresh pair of eyes possibly spot the error in my calculations? It is a gamble, but a potentially worthy experiment.'
While Klaus was having this profound internal monologue, he was just staring blankly at Kaizen, nodding slowly.
To Kaizen, this was pure concentrated horror.
'He's nodding,' Kaizen thought, tears welling up in his eyes. 'He's staring at my ribs and nodding.'
'He's thinking about how to properly season me. He's deciding if I would taste better grilled or stewed!'
Klaus stood up gracefully, brushing the dust off his pristine black trousers.
"Come out," Klaus commanded. "Finish your 'prayers.' I require... a second opinion."
Kaizen's heart just stopped beating entirely.
'A second opinion?! On what?! My meat quality?! Does he want me to judge which of his torture instruments looks sharpest?!'
"C-coming," Kaizen squeaked.
He dragged himself out from under the bed, now completely covered in dust bunnies. He stood up on legs that were shaking like jelly.
'If I give the wrong answer, I die. If I give the right answer, I probably still die because then I'll know too much.'
He looked at the door. It felt miles and miles away now.
'I can't run. If I run, he'll hunt me down like prey. I'm trapped. I am literally trapped in a room with a bored Demon King candidate who wants to play some kind of twisted game.'
"Come here," Klaus said, pointing to the desk covered in ominous scribbles and symbols. "Tell me... what do you see?"