Rampage — The Heavenly Demon Descends

"This is the Rampage Technique."

Heukcheon said it with her arms crossed, her voice flat as a drawn blade.

"Not merely a berserk art, either. It is such a crude thing that even calling it a technique embarrasses me."

'It's that bad?'

"It is. If my lord unleashes this technique, you will survive nearly any threat. Call it the final trump card, if you like. And yet I would rather you never use this power."

'Why?'

"Because it is far too dangerous. It begins by shattering the Black Core — the very foundation of the Black God Martial Art. My lord, this is power gained by abandoning the future, purchased through the destruction of your own core."

That was how Heukcheon judged the Rampage Technique: casting aside everything the future would have brought, tearing possibility out of tomorrow and dragging it into the present.

"I cannot fathom it. Why would anyone create such an art? Overloading the Black Core to momentarily raise one's capabilities — that much, I could understand. But destroying it outright? Why?"

"Calm down."

"The previous master's thinking eludes me. This is no expansion of the vessel. It is smashing the vessel itself — and not even to advance beyond the wreckage. It shatters the vessel for a single instant, a technique that shackles my lord's own growth."

Even as she condemned it, Heukcheon taught me the technique anyway.

She claimed she had no choice, bound as she was to the Heukcheon Demonic Sword. She had most likely placed some kind of restriction on it.

"So do not use this. They say a vessel that breaks once grows harder, but the Black Core is a different story. If it shatters, it is simply over. What remains afterward, even with my lord's Defying-Heaven dominion, is a crippled, unstable core barely holding itself together. You may be forced to abandon transcendence entirely."

She warned me several more times after that.

'And I suppose wanting to teach it to me despite the restriction was the whole point.'

The Rampage Technique — the Heavenly Demon Descent. The moment I invoked it, I was to reduce everything to nothing and rebuild ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my attack from zero.

But there was no other choice now.

My life was in danger before my vessel ever was. Perhaps the Heavenly Demon had created this art for precisely such a moment.

I readied myself to activate the Rampage.

"To you lot, this must seem a fearsome power. Die knowing it an honor."

His words etched themselves into the world.

Fwoosh!

At the same instant, crimson light erupted from his chest — a light beyond any other in its malignance. The sky corroded into blood-red, and from beneath the buildings, things like tentacles began to burst upward.

Despair washed over the knights' faces. And Kalia, finding it delightful, laughed.

Kalia's words — his mental image — began to erode the world. A radius of fifty meters. A sky stained with blood hung overhead, and here and there, black pillars like tentacles thrust up from the ground.

Overwriting the world with one's own world.

That was how the Highest Order exercised absolute power. This place had become a domain forged from his own authority.

Kalia in this state would be nearly impossible to fight. I would have needed Kim Ara and Seo Gayeon a year from now to stand a chance.

"Lee Seoha. That was your name, wasn't it?"

Gilliam stepped up beside me and spoke.

"One chance. Just one strike — somehow, I'll carve a path through."

"……"

"You run. Someone like you has no business dying in a place like this."

Gilliam turned back to the knights, his face grim and set.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry for dragging you into a foreign world's war with your lives on the line. And I'm sorry that it was inadequate old me who put you here at all."

"It's all right, Commander. Well, it's hardly the first time you've done as you pleased."

"If we're doomed to die here anyway, then the ones who can be saved should be. And a boy like him — he'll avenge us someday, I'm sure of it."

The knights bantered around their divinity, each gripping their own weapon. The words were playful, but they carried unshakable resolve.

"How amusing. Did you truly believe I would simply let you slip away from here? And with the vessel I covet most of all, no less?"

Kalia raised a hand, almost lazily.

Boooom!

From the blood-red sky, something enormous began to split open. What revealed itself was a colossal eye.

Scarlet pupils. They gazed down upon us.

The eye fixed itself on us, and crushing pressure bore down — a force that seemed to forcibly drag one's very rank a full step downward.

Distortion.

It did not merely warp space. It seized the power embedded in natural law and tore it apart, reworking it to its own taste.

An absurd power — but anything of the Highest Order could wield at least this much.

I placed my hand over my heart.

I tuned my Defying-Heaven energy through the Black God Martial Art. Defying-Heaven sprinted. The Black Core screamed.

Warning signals blared wildly, as if to say that pushing any further would put me in danger.

'What else am I supposed to do?'

One way or another, I was dead if I didn't use this here.

And even if I died — I would not become Kalia's vessel. My life belongs to me. Not to the likes of you. Even if my life burns out.

Crack.

From the region of my heart came the sound of something fissuring — and then, almost immediately, the sound of it shattering.

"You — stop!"

Whether he'd realized what I was attempting, Kalia's voice turned desperate.

"I'll spare you! Say you'll behave yourself, and I'll let every one of them live!"

Lies.

If Kalia took me as his host, he would kill them one by one, slowly, in front of their own families. That was the kind of creature he was. They all were — every demon, without exception.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Fissures spread across the Black Core. It let out one last shriek and broke apart.

Thump.

In the same instant, an ocean's worth of Defying-Heaven energy came flooding out of the ruined core.

And then —

black, forbidden power climbed upward, against the law itself.

'……What is this?'

Kalia watched Lee Seoha warily — and then flinched before he could stop himself.

'I'm on guard against a mere mid-tier?'

The realization struck him as absurd. This was, after all, a space where his own mental image had eroded the world — a domain of authority built from his own power. Here, he was all but invincible.

This was the kind of place where even a Transcendent could only hold out for hours at most.

Yet Kalia did not lower his guard.

Something told him that something unimaginable was about to happen.

A being rose. That was the only way it could be described.

Forbidden black took on human form. There was nothing of Lee Seoha in it.

A being ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that was simply, utterly black revealed itself — and Kalia understood at last what he had been sensing.

That thing is lethal to demons.

It was kin to the nameless force that had once seized everyone's attention and erased a thousand magic soldiers with a mere gesture. If that power affirmed the death of demons, this one denied their very existence.

"A last desperate struggle, is it?"

"I feel strange. Like my body has vanished."

At Kalia's words, what had been Lee Seoha answered without so much as glancing at him — the casual indifference of someone who could kill him at any moment.

"No — maybe it's because I'm here that I can draw out this power. It feels like my limits themselves have been smashed to pieces."

The being that had been Lee Seoha took ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a moment to measure his own rank.

Power attained by forcibly ripping possibility wide open.

And then Lee Seoha understood. This space felt profoundly familiar to him — it was because the Rampage Technique had been used here that he could touch this rank at all.

The demonic energy saturating this place had lifted his rank a full step higher.

'……Now I want to take more than I was supposed to gain from this.'

If there was a later, that is.

Lee Seoha smirked and casually raised his hand.

RUUUMBLE—!

The colossal eye that filled the sky began to slam shut by force. Its gaze had been fixed on him. So what? Lee Seoha curled the corner of his mouth and sneered back at it.

"Wh-what? Why — why is the eye—?!"

"……Dear God."

Gilliam stared at the sky, dumbfounded.

'Am I dreaming right now?'

He didn't understand the why of it, but Kalia had drawn power from some outer entity and opened that eye — and Lee Seoha had closed it with a flick of his hand.

Which meant that Lee Seoha, in this state, ruled this entire domain.

"Heavenly Demon. So that's roughly what it means — the power to wield demonic energy however I please."

Murmuring those words, Lee Seoha took a single step.

Black Heaven Step.

Click.

One step. He had walked exactly one step. Yet Lee Seoha was suddenly beside him.

The being had crossed his line of sight without the slightest effort.

'Insane! This is impossible!'

This was the Highest Order.

He had even manifested his mental image into this world. Even a Transcendent could not exercise this kind of power inside their own domain.

He swung his arms. Swung the light of destruction.

Sword Gang.

And then he drew out the power of the outer realms.

Distortion. Layer his image atop it.

Demonic energy poured down from the crimson sky.

Kalia unleashed everything. Space warped around his six arms as they were sheathed in Sword Gang, and a force that shredded reality itself hurtled toward Lee Seoha. That power alone could reduce an entire city to ash. In raw destructive terms, it rivaled a nuclear detonation.

Lee Seoha flicked his hand, light and easy. The gesture met all six arms.

Thud.

A soft sound. But the result was anything but soft.

Kalia's six arms crumbled to powder against that single gesture. Ash drifted on the wind. The hand passed clean through Kalia's torso, punching a massive hole straight through it.

"……This cannot be."

Kalia whispered the words, hollow and distant.

Ash scattered. The Blood Heaven began to close. Lee Seoha felt his own existence thinning out.

As the Blood Heaven sealed itself, his rank fell — it had been raised a step by the Mara Heaven-Roaring Hell Path, after all.

And at the same time, his existence scattered.

The Rampage Technique's time was running out.

'Is that it, then?'

Something about it felt unfair. No matter how he turned it over, wasn't the difficulty absolutely insane? If it hadn't been him here, they might have lost at least three Transcendents.

'……Whoa.'

Lee Seoha let out an involuntary breath at the sheer volume of Defying-Heaven energy. At this rate, it had nearly doubled.

The Highest Order truly was a different beast.

And yet he felt a pang of grief, too. His Black Core was shattered now — who knew what he'd still be able to do.

The moment that thought took shape, the Defying-Heaven energy began reconstructing his heart on its own.

'What is—'

"I never dreamed you would put this to use so soon."

Heukcheon's voice reached him — but the atmosphere was nothing like usual. And then he realized he was standing in a space of pure, blinding white.

At its center stood a black throne.

Heukcheon sat upon it as though she had always belonged there — legs crossed, watching me with a smile full of amusement.

'Wait — is that really Heukcheon?'

Her presence had changed entirely. If he had to compare it to anything, it was closest to the Overlord's.

The aura of one who reigns wrapped around her — and not merely reigning, either, but carrying within it the will to smash through anything that dared stand in her way.

"Hello. Lovely to meet you, junior. Shall I introduce myself properly?"

She looked at me with a delighted smile, as though she'd just let slip some tremendous secret.

"I am the Heavenly Demon. The tenth of the Heavenly Demons, and the founding Cult Leader who created the Black God Martial Art. And I — am Heukcheon."