The maid squad is too strong, what use is there for me, the Demon King?

(486!)

Heading eastward, towards the blazing sun.

They had long since lost count of how many waves of attacks from the Soul-Scorching Scorpions they had encountered, and there was no need to care anymore.

These were all low-level fodder who didn't require Gray's intervention. All Gray needed to do now was guide the waiters using the "four-dimensional map" in his head.

Thanks to the existence of the "four-dimensional map," the biggest crisis in the desert, "losing direction," no longer exists. Gray, along with his servants, has a very clear direction, but they cannot determine their destination. It is precisely because the destination is unknown that Gray is going to find a way to "break the deadlock."

Gregor looked up at the horizon, feeling a pang of unease about the affairs of the celestial realm.

The group continued their eastward trek through the desolate desert. The lower-ranking servants once again vanished into silence, like a moving backdrop; only the faint rustling of their footsteps sinking and pulling out broke the eternal golden stillness ruled by the blazing sun.

Aita licked her increasingly chapped lips, her orange-gold vertical pupils scanning the seemingly unchanged sand dunes around her warily. The pain in her ribs and arms, under the relentless high temperature, burned her nerves like an inextinguishable ember.

Sita's steps remained precise and steady. Her wide black robe shielded her from most of the heat, but the occasional slight adjustments in her gaze beneath the hood revealed that she had not relaxed her monitoring of the environment.

Gray was still walking at the front, his black robe, which swallowed the light, was the only absolute black in this blazing white world.

His mental energy, like invisible tentacles, continued to spread outward from him, scanning for any possible energy fluctuations or signs of life beneath the sand and in the air, while also precisely locking onto the location of their destination—the coordinates of something special that, in his perception, was getting closer and closer.

However, as the distance closed, the information fed back by his vast and unfathomable spiritual power remained blank.

Only sand. Deeper, thicker, hotter sand. Undulating, lifeless dunes, indistinguishable from their surroundings.

Nothing at all.

This puzzled Gray.

Although I haven't arrived yet, the result of my mental exploration is that there is nothing there, even though I have already used my mental energy to explore the location of the "red cross" on the map.

It shouldn't be...

There's nothing there. Surely the Demon King's legacy wouldn't be meant to annoy him and waste his time, would it?

Or is there a problem with the map? It turns out that the "four-dimensional map" did not accurately predict the changes in the terrain in later generations, causing the actual location of the "red cross" to change?

In the desert, a vast expanse of yellow sand is the most normal sight.

This extreme “normality” became the greatest anomaly in Grena’s all-knowing perception.

His envisioned stronghold, ruins, energy source, or even a trap should all possess a unique energy signature or physical characteristic. But there, nothing was there; it was so pure it was suspicious.

Just as Gray, at the very front of the group, was about to step onto the ridge of a massive sand dune, below which lay the final coordinates he had pinpointed with his mental energy—

His heavy hood tilted slightly at an almost imperceptible angle, and for the first time, his figure, which had been moving steadily forward, showed a noticeable pause.

"Ok?"

A very faint nasal sound, tinged with genuine doubt, escaped from the shadow of the hood.

The voice was as soft as a mosquito's buzz, yet it seemed to carry a strange weight, instantly putting Sita and Aita, who were right behind them, on edge, and even causing the low-ranking servants behind them to freeze in their tracks.

His mental energy, like the most precise probe, repeatedly scanned the area behind the sand dunes, but the feedback remained the same—empty, only the ancient yellow sand.

This completely contradicts the information he obtained from the map. Could it be an incorrect coordinate? Or some kind of sophisticated disguise he'd never encountered before, capable of deceiving even his mental abilities?

With this rare hint of unease, Gray set foot on the ridgeline of the dunes.

Ahead, the view suddenly opened up, but... as expected.

A vast, bowl-shaped sand valley unfolded before us, surrounded by even higher dunes. The valley floor was flat, devoid of anything except for the fine ripples created by the wind.

Under the blazing sun, the golden sand grains reflected a blinding incandescent light, and the air was violently distorted by the high temperature, making the empty space look like a swaying phantom.

This is it. The coordinates are perfect. But there's nothing there.

Gray stood still on the ridge of the dune, his black robes fluttering slightly in the deathly hot wind. His heavy hood turned slowly, as if making a final check.

His spiritual power, like mercury spilling onto the ground, penetrated deep into the sand, reaching several meters below the surface, yet yielded nothing. Only sand, the purest, deathly sand.

At the very moment when this ultimate emptiness and silence reached their peak—

A sudden change occurred!

Without any warning, the space a few meters directly in front of Gray suddenly collapsed inward.

That wasn't an explosion of energy, but rather a hole being forcibly torn open in space itself!

A spatial rift with extremely irregular edges, constantly twisting and writhing, and an interior of absolute nothingness and darkness suddenly appeared.

It made no sound, yet it exuded a terrifying suction force that devoured everything in its path.

This suction force is not a violent energy storm, but a more fundamental and terrifying pull at the level of rules, as if that void is the destination of all things, and everything in the present world is an anomaly that needs to be recycled.

Gray, being the closest, was the first to be impacted. His light-absorbing black robe was instantly ripped backward by an invisible force, fluttering wildly. The sand beneath his feet was sucked into the dark fissure like flowing water, disappearing without a trace.

However, Gray did not immediately resist or retreat the moment the suction force touched him. Within a fraction of a second of the crack appearing, his vast mental power had already analyzed its energy composition and manner of emergence.

This crack... was not formed naturally, nor is it like the destructive fluctuations that usually occur when space is torn apart.

The way the crack appeared had a... stiff, urgent, even somewhat rushed feel to it. More importantly, within that all-consuming suction force, there seemed to be an extremely faint, yet undeniably real, trace of intent—

"quick!"

A vague, urgent urging, as if it had traversed endless time and space and exhausted its strength, mixed with the suction force, crashed into Gray's mental perception.

This discovery gave Gray a jolt, and his energy to resist the suction momentarily faltered.

It was in that instant of hesitation and judgment that the suction force of the spatial rift suddenly surged, as if it had seized upon his momentary vulnerability.

Gray was forcibly sucked in using spatial means for the second time...