Malthios’s Final Battle with Hero Eliza

Malthios’s final battle with Hero Eliza is the defeat that ends his first rule as Demon King, but not his ability to threaten Algeya again. In his throne room, he meets the advancing Hero’s party without a speech or an attempt to retreat. The fight turns on his effort to isolate Eliza, her sudden escalation of power, and the sigil he activates as he falls—an act that gives his defeat the shape of a promised return.

Causes and the narrowing war

By the time Eliza’s party entered his territory, the balance of power had shifted against Malthios. Mortals had grown in number and strength, built kingdoms and alliances, and formed the united country of Algeya. Their advance was helped by the slow replenishment of the Demonkin: before Malthios’s ascension, many had been killed by Demon Lords attempting to become Demon King. The Demon King’s castle and the surrounding far-northern region remained beyond mortal settlement, but the territory still safe for demons had contracted to that isolated area.

Malthios knew the Hero’s party had crossed into his lands. The scouts he sent out did not return, including Luvel and Nissle; he assumed they had fled, though the text does not establish what happened to them. The alarm in the castle nevertheless caught him by surprise. He was in the library, a place where he could be alone even when he was not reading, when his general Keplo burst in with the news that the Hero had arrived. Malthios’s initial annoyance gave way to excitement. He directed Keplo to funnel the party into the throne room and chose to face them there himself.

The party enters the throne room

Malthios waited on his stone throne until the doors crashed open and six people entered. Eliza was immediately identifiable to him by the glow around her and the reddish blade in her hand, a weapon made and blessed to take the Demon King’s head. Her companions comprised two fighters, one specializing in close combat and one in ranged combat, two mages, and a healer. Malthios did not study their faces: he regarded them as collateral damage in the fight he intended to have with Eliza. After years without such an encounter, he smiled.

Neither side opened with a speech. Malthios tried to divert the rest of the party so that he could concentrate on Eliza, dropping a column onto their healer. The attack distracted the mages as they tried to stabilize the injured member of their group. The two fighters, however, soon returned to the fight. Malthios deflected them with apparent ease, then raised a circle of fire around himself and Eliza, cutting the two of them off from the others. The opening attack thus bought him isolation, but it did not remove the danger posed by the rest of the party.

Eliza turns the duel

Within the ring of fire, Eliza continued to attack without showing fear. Malthios’s blue fire lit the gold, red-jeweled hilt of her sword as it struck his black blade. Their mana and physical strength appeared evenly matched: the weapons rang together, pressure from their magic met between them, and cracks opened in the floor beneath their feet. Both sustained injuries, though neither was initially badly hurt. Malthios believed he had changed since his earlier battles. He was stronger now, and no longer a powerless Demon Lord watching his friends die; he was Demon King, and expected to win.

Eliza’s fighting style helped her endure that contest. Unlike the previous Hero Malthios had faced, she kept her power at a level that did not immediately consume her life force. The advantage did not last. Her light suddenly intensified and her mana spiked. Malthios raised his black blade to block her next strike, but the sword shattered like glass. Eliza’s weapon pierced his stomach, and the burning pain locked his limbs as he gasped and fell to his knees. She kept her sword embedded in him and told him, “Die now, Demon King.”

The defeat was made explicit in the physical details: Malthios was on his knees, wounded through the stomach, and Eliza controlled the weapon lodged in his body. Still, he reached for the sigil inked on his forearm and answered, “You haven’t seen the last of me, Hero.” Eliza pulled her sword free. As his crown slipped from his head and his vision darkened, Malthios forced mana into the sigil. His final resolve was not surrender but a threat that Algeya and its Hero would one day cower before him.

Defeat, return, and legacy

The battle closes with Malthios apparently dying, but the sigil and his last words complicate the meaning of victory. His vow is later borne out by his reincarnation as the Demon King within Theo, which turns the old defeat into the beginning of a new conflict over what his return means and what should be done with him. The story also distinguishes victory over a ruler from the eradication of the danger he represented: after Malthios’s defeat, remnants of the Demon King’s army remained across the land under the surviving Demon Lords, and the Hero’s party continued protecting ordinary people.

The consequences of the battle persist into Theo’s later public trial. There, the court identifies Theo as host to the reincarnated Malthios and considers his role in protecting the Demon King; the proceedings bring the question of Malthios’s responsibility and future into public view. Luc states that, as Hero, he has a duty to kill the Demon King, but also the power to choose when. The eventual judgment sentences Malthios to life in prison and clears Theo of all charges. This later resolution does not undo Eliza’s victory: it shows instead how the original fight’s unfinished consequence—the Demon King’s return—forces a later generation to confront whether defeating him means only killing him again.