Magnus

Overview

Magnus is the Demon King of the Demon Realm and the sovereign under whom demonkind is unified. By the time of Volume I, he has ruled for more than six centuries and lived for seven hundred and fifty years. He is protected by three royal knights, although the history presented in the prologue stresses that this protection is not necessary for a ruler described as ancient, powerful, brutal, and cunning.

Magnus remains a distant but decisive force in the human history around the Tower. After Shun intervenes in the Hikari Civil War, the punishment for that transgression is said to be meted out by Magnus. The precise price is not made public. Human rulers fear favouritism toward the Lord of the Tower, but none dare question the Demon King or risk renewing the Demon War.

Connections

Magnus’s authority frames the treaty that constrains Shun and the consequences of its breach. His rule also defines the political background of the Demon Realm and the war in which Shun, Kimiko, and Reiko became heroes.

The vision on the plains of Hikari

Chapter 19 gives the first direct depiction of Magnus in Volume II, as a vision that seizes Shun Sato at the moment of his victory.

He is seen enthroned in a vast hall of polished flagstone with pale light falling through tall stained-glass windows onto a long velvet carpet leading to a raised dais. The throne is marble and gold set with crimson rubies, and behind it stands an enormous wooden clock whose pendulum keeps an audible beat. Magnus appears as an old man but is enormous, with shoulders and a scarred chest carrying decades of war, a steel-grey beard, a full mane of white hair, horns curling from his brow like a ram's, silks of the demon realm, and luminously red eyes.

What the vision conveys is not rage. Beneath the malice radiating from the throne, the dominant emotion is disappointment. Magnus raises his arm to shoulder height in a motion Shun recognises instantly as the herald of unimaginable suffering, and dismisses the vision with a flick of two fingers.

The vision confirms that Shun's breach of neutrality has consequences already in motion, and that he expects them. The punishment itself is not shown at this boundary.

Named as the coming storm

Chapter 20 does not show Magnus, but it is the chapter in which Shun Sato finally says aloud what he expects from him. Refusing Yumi Raijin's plea to remain in Hikari, Shun explains that he is not a guest or a citizen but a fuse — a weapon of destruction — and that Magnus will use him as an excuse to reignite the war.

His assessment is unqualified: Magnus will burn down the world to ashes just to find him, will stop at nothing, and his stubbornness is without equal. Offered the possibility of facing him together, Shun refuses on the grounds that he cannot be the reason Yumi and her people die.

This is the clearest statement of the Demon King's character given to the reader so far, and it comes from the one person in the story who has defied him and survived. The punishment Shun has been anticipating since the vision on the plains still has not arrived at this boundary, though a company of the Royal Knights under Akiyama Magnus is approaching the Tower as the chapter closes.

The one Shun will answer to

Magnus does not appear in Chapter 21, but the chapter is organised around him. Surrendering to Akiyama Magnus, Shun says that whatever words he has to speak are for Magnus's ears only. He is then imprisoned beneath the Demon Castle to await the day he will stand before Magnus and, in the narration's words, meet his end.

The prison conditions are attributed to him directly. Shun's rations of mouldy bread and water in a broken glass are described as meals made to degrade him — a lesson that however low Shun thought he had fallen, Magnus could always dig deeper. The chapter ends before the audience takes place.