The Demon Realm
“Hah… hah…”
Fenril was drenched head to toe in blood.
Crunch!
His waist twisted, and a Gonghyeol Group member’s head split cleanly in two once more. A mixture of skull fragments, brain matter, blood, and cerebrospinal fluid splattered across Fenril’s face.
“Heh!”
Struck by the spray of fluids, Fenril let out a laugh thick with pure exhilaration. It stood in stark contrast to the vacant, half-mad look he usually wore. A butcher drunk on blood and slaughter — that was his true face.
Crunch! Crunch! Crack!
The axe in his hands danced as if possessed. Every flash of its silver arc tore enemy bodies cleanly in half. Mutilated corpses piled at his feet like a mountain.
It was a truly terrifying, brutal spectacle. And still the enemies kept charging. They seemed to know neither fear nor dread. No matter how gruesomely their comrades died, they only rolled their eyes back and lunged with clawed hands, treating every death as an opening.
“Heheheh!”
That only drove Fenril further into madness. His vision turned red. Hot blood painted his body. The satisfying impact of axe against flesh never stopped. All of it dragged his mind deeper into a haze. He became a beast, and the frenzied slaughter went on.
Deep gashes carved into his flesh. Squad members died around him. He paid it no mind whatsoever. He just kept swinging. He had even forgotten the original purpose of stopping the enemy’s plan.
“Captain! Captain! Ah, fuck! He’s doing it again!”
“Kyahahahaha!”
At some point, the women’s screams that had been echoing through their sector had fallen silent.
“Goddamn it!”
Prisha, the Mukwol Squad member in charge of Team Five, spat a curse.
“Fuck, there’s seriously so many of them!”
The seven teammates with her were gasping for breath. All around them, drooling Gonghyeol Group members swarmed like a flock of crows over a corpse. There were too many — far too many. Their strength and speed were unnaturally high. These were not ordinary people. Even when their lower halves were sheared clean off, some still crawled forward on their upper bodies, trailing their own guts behind them in a display of pure mania.
“Guys… don’t you think it’s already too late?”
At Prisha’s quiet suggestion, every teammate nodded. They had given it everything they had, but the mission itself seemed to have failed. While they were locked in this bloodbath, there had been more than enough time to kill a person.
“…Shit.”
Prisha thought to herself that even if they made it out of here alive, the Commander would not let them off easily.
Rrrumble—!
The ground heaved. Over it, teal sword-qi scattered in a fine spray. Humans in white robes turned red and crumpled. Bursting out through the gap in the human wall was a half-elf woman.
Gonghyeol Group members rushed in from both sides to seize her.
Slash!
Riel cut them down with a single stroke, as if shaking off pests aiming for her flanks. The enemies blocking her path vanished. Only those trailing behind remained. She had finally broken through the encirclement.
Even so, she did not stop. She immediately kicked off and dove into an alley on her left.
Her effort went unrewarded.
“…Damn it.”
Riel’s face twisted hideously. The scar carved into her cheek warped with the expression. At the end of the alley stood three Gonghyeol Group members — and between them lay a lump of meat no longer recognizable as a human form.
Slashhh!
Her sword whipped through the air in irritation. Riel muttered through gritted teeth.
“We failed.”
“Haha. Really now.”
Hera’s mouth was smiling. Her eyes were not.
“Do you have to make it this boring?”
“….”
Belger remained silent.
Crrrack!
From the severed stump of his arm, grotesquely twisted flesh swelled upward — a shape that had not even managed half a circle. Even so, as if that were enough, Belger forced that ruined hand to lift his blade.
Fzzzz—
What wrapped the edge was not blade-aura, but the barest scrap of sword-qi. It made the complete discharge of his stamina painfully clear.
“Hmm~.”
Hera’s eyes rippled with deep interest. Belger was strong, and tenacious — tenacious enough to hold out against a Master like her and buy time. He was a textbook example of just how devastating a demon became once it learned martial arts. Creatures that already chewed through humans with their innate physiques alone; add martial study on top of that, and it was like giving wings to a tiger.
Of course, Belger’s level still only amounted to upper Expert by human standards. The gulf between Master and Expert was heaven and earth — but then there was that drug.
The black pills he had dumped into his mouth before the fight had been extraordinary. Strength, agility, reaction speed, regeneration, demonic energy… it went beyond unlocking potential and seemed to burn through his very life force and lifespan. He even insisted on a war of attrition, exploiting regeneration so fierce that severed limbs sprouted back within seconds. Even Hera could not kill something like that with a few casual cuts.
In the end—
“Haa. How embarrassing, putting on a show like this in front of my little brother.”
Hera, too, had failed to hold her sector. While the two of them clashed, she had been unable to stop the murders unfolding across three directions. More precisely, she had shattered two of them by launching sword-force through openings — but she had failed to catch the last one in time.
“It’s over.”
Belger murmured it through a steady pour of blood. Hera could not bring herself to argue. She had failed herself; there was no reason to expect her subordinates had succeeded. Leon was still busy hunting down some bizarre demonic beast.
Hera steadied her breathing and asked,
“What exactly are you trying to do with the souls? Become a devil or something?”
“Ridiculous… Devils cannot be made this way.”
“Then what?”
A strange light flickered in Belger’s eyes.
“See for yourself. It’s just finished.”
The next instant—
—Thoom!
A pulse rolled through the earth as if the ground itself had a heartbeat, and then—
Krrrrrrumble!
The land began to shake as though an earthquake had struck.
And yet—
“…! Wh-what is this?!”
For some reason, it was Belger who cried out in shock, his eyes stretched wide and filled with pure confusion.
The citizens of Pribil heard it.
A clear voice that rang across the world. The name Leon Crusif. A declaration that the forces of evil would be struck down. An order not to hide — to come out, to run.
And so the citizens who stepped outside saw it.
Heaven and earth flickering with a brilliant blue light. A boy soaring through the sky, sword wreathed in dazzling flame. The grotesque monster that kept falling back before him. A thrilling spectacle of rain, cloud, lightning, wind, sky, and space itself moved by a single blade. And at last, the monster’s remains, shattered to pieces by the boy’s sword and tumbling from the clock tower.
The citizens felt it.
The fear that had been quietly devouring their spirits, vanishing as if it had never been. And in its place, joy, excitement, rapture, and awe filling every gap without a single crack. Themselves, cheering for the savior who stood so proudly atop the tower.
Atop the clock tower, the entire city spread out below at a glance. The aftershock of the Jecheon Sword Style had driven every storm cloud away, revealing a clear night sky. Down in the city, people were looking this way and cheering as one. Their roar rang in his ears like background music.
Right in the middle of it all—
“I think we’re fucked.”
Leon muttered, raking his wet bangs back from his forehead.
“We took too long.”
The communicator was still dead silent. The powerful aura he assumed belonged to Hera’s battle was still erupting in intermittent bursts.
Fzzzt—.
Aria space-jumped and joined him.
“Master.”
Leon caught the rest of it from her tone alone.
“It’s finished.”
“Yes. Any moment now—”
—Thoom!
Krrrrrrumble!
The earth beneath the city trembled faintly. Immediately after, Leon felt an ominous energy rising across the area. Connect the points where it welled up, and a massive magic circle would clearly take shape.
Gwooooooom—!
The wicked energy amplified at a terrifying rate. A dark crimson light began to faintly coil through the air. A scorched, acrid stench rode in on a sudden gale.
“….”
Leon swept his gaze over the citizens below with darkened eyes. They were staring up in bewilderment at the sudden phenomenon — people who would soon have their souls ripped free, leaving only empty husks behind.
And yet—
“…?”
Even after quite some time had passed, not a single person outside had collapsed. There was not even a hint of staggering.
“I told you, didn’t I?”
Aria spoke up.
“Fear is the most important medium.”
“Ah… no way.”
“Yes. People whose fear has vanished are no longer targets. Thanks to you, Master.”
“….”
Leon’s expression turned strange. Aria glanced at his face and added,
“But… the ones who aren’t like that…”
Leon turned his gaze and sharpened his eyesight with mana. Pale, smoke-like shapes were rising here and there. Most of them seeped out from inside buildings, from inside homes. Souls.
People who had heard Leon’s voice and still not moved. People who had failed to cast off their fear. Those ones became targets without exception, sacrificed to the magic circle. By a rough count, their number easily reached five hundred.
The extracted souls flew through the air and converged on a single point.
“…What are they trying to do with that?”
At the center of the city — more precisely, in one corner of the plaza.
Crack! Fzzzz— Crack!
The gathered souls began to vanish in bursts of black sparks. Leon felt a vast power condensing there. Not mere physical force, but a power from another dimension that warped and twisted the world itself — as if those souls were being offered as a sacrifice to summon something.
Leon furrowed his brow.
“Can we stop it?”
“…It’s already too late.”
Right after—
KRAAAAAACK—!
A fissure split open in empty air. Space tore and cracked apart. Dimension connected to dimension.
“…!”
Leon’s eyes flew wide open. From between his parted lips slipped a murmur of pure disbelief.
“The Demon Realm…?”