Chapter 379 - 247: What Right Does a Defeated Opponent Have to Bargain With Me?

At these words, Balenzuo truly didn’t dare to move.

Balenzuo grunted from his position on the ground. He still seemed defiant, but his body was far more honest. He lay there, not daring to move an inch.

This demon had been shot several times with a sniper rifle. It was an experience few could comprehend, as a single hit from a heavy sniper rifle would typically obliterate a human body.

It was precisely because of the demon’s unique physique that this Balenzuo had gained some... special experience.

Fang Zhen pressed the barrel of his AWP sniper rifle against Balenzuo’s head, wondering how he could subtly ask for the demon’s true name.

Before he could, Balenzuo spoke first.

Balenzuo’s voice was still androgynous, neither male nor female, but it now carried a metallic quality that made it sound quite magnetic.

"What can I do for you to let me go?"

"If you spare me, the things I can do and the services I can offer you will surely exceed your imagination."

Fang Zhen was amused.

’Well now, aren’t you just serving yourself up on a silver platter?’

But this was just Fang Zhen’s inner thought; his expression remained calm and composed.

"Tell me your true name, and perhaps I’ll consider letting you live."

Balenzuo froze at his words.

"You want to know my true name? How do I know you’ll actually let me go?" Balenzuo asked.

Although the question was laced with doubt, Fang Zhen could still hear a flicker of hope for survival in Balenzuo’s voice.

"You’re the loser here. You have no right to bargain with me."

"Speak when I tell you to. If you don’t, you die," Fang Zhen replied with a cold sneer.

Balenzuo fell silent.

In that moment, Fang Zhen recalled what he knew about demons. Many different sources of information had mentioned the matter of a demon’s true name.

Demons have a true name, and if someone learns it, the demon will either become that person’s slave or have its various attributes greatly weakened, making it easy to subdue or vanquish.

A true name is a demon’s weakness.

’A demon’s true name is like getting their computer account and password,’ Fang Zhen thought. ’It’s the password to the demon’s soul. Once you have it, you can open a backdoor.’

As this thought crossed his mind, Fang Zhen didn’t let up. He pressed the cold muzzle of the AWP sniper rifle against Balenzuo’s head with even more force.

That was enough to completely break Balenzuo’s defiance.

"My true name is Ashes Zenunim."

Balenzuo spoke the name.

Upon hearing it, Fang Zhen suddenly felt a peculiar sensation in his Spirit.

He seemed to perceive that he could now perform many strange spiritual activities. It was as if he had formed some kind of connection with the demon—not a telepathic link, but something on a higher spiritual plane, one that connected directly to the demon’s soul and memories.

A flood of information surged into Fang Zhen’s consciousness, but he couldn’t yet decipher it.

The feeling was like chatting with someone who brings up professional concepts and terminology; you vaguely feel like you’ve grasped something, yet the concrete details remain just out of reach.

Fang Zhen didn’t know exactly what was happening, but he had a gut feeling that this information was the reason the "Instance Life Game" wanted him to learn the demon’s true name.

Furthermore, it could potentially lead to many important matters he didn’t yet understand.

These sensations lasted only a moment before Fang Zhen refocused his mind on the present.

The two main mandatory objectives for this instance were now mostly complete.

Fang Zhen had found the Demon Duke and learned its true name. All that was left was to kill ’her.’

But before that, there were still three optional objectives, two of which were related to Balenzuo.

The relationship between the Demon Duke and the fallen Kingdom’s civil unrest, and the Demon Duke’s true purpose.

He had already learned about the former from Ottis.

Balenzuo had, perhaps intentionally, provoked King Joseph the Thirteenth of Zambein, turning the once-wise king into a man with a mental illness.

But what was the Demon Duke’s true purpose?

Fang Zhen figured he could force the answer out now.

Fang Zhen looked at the demonic form of Balenzuo still lying on the ground and asked coldly, "You took the form of Duke Balenzuo and stirred up trouble in the Kingdom of Zambein. What was your goal?"

"Remember, don’t try to deceive me. I hold your true name, and your life, Ashes Zenunim."

As Fang Zhen spoke the true name, he felt a strange sensation, similar to when he used his Violent Hypnosis ability.

Although Fang Zhen hadn’t used the skill, he could clearly feel that after using the demon’s true name in conversation, Balenzuo was unable to resist answering, unable to hide the truth, and could only speak honestly.

This was, perhaps, the weakness that the true name imposed upon Balenzuo.

Balenzuo’s face contorted, as if trying to resist some sort of power of law.

But it was obvious that ’her’ individual power was no match for the power of the law.

In the end, Balenzuo’s spirit yielded, and before Fang Zhen, ’she’ revealed ’her’ innermost thoughts.

"I wanted to obtain great power in this world, ideally the position of King. After achieving that wish, I would turn this place into my personal domain, selling the souls produced here to the devil race. And in the end, if there was no more value to be extracted, I would sell this place to the demons to gain a path to promotion and a higher status."