The demons emerging from the abyss were disasters unlike anything the world had ever seen.
Kynakhan thought he had experienced the terror of demons, but it was merely a fragment of his nightmares.
Those they faced in the great war were the “vanguard troops.”
Among those bearing the name of demons were the weakest, unfit for combat. However, now, the demons passing through the gateway of hell to trample the world were combat troops, disciples of evil who thoroughly desired slaughter and spread fear.
In scale, it was tens of times larger than the great war, qualitatively dividing fear into nothing less than the advent of destruction.
Hellish beings, who preyed upon human lives, emerged on the surface wielding horrific torture and execution tools. In response, the Imperial Guard, the elite of the empire, assembled. The Imperial Guards were both the protectors of the emperor and the symbol of imperial might. They could even be considered representatives of human power.
However, the difference was clear.
There was no one to block the ferocious blow of the crimson demon. The halberds of the Imperial Guards aimed at the demons trembled. Desperation reached its peak. They swallowed their fear to protect the emperor and attacked the demons. And futilely, their spears broke, and their trained bodies were cleaved in half.
A gap in existence.
Even humans who had risen to the ranks of masters were nothing more than morsels to the “executioners.” Even if the halberds shattered rocks and pierced demon flesh luckily, in an instant, wounds would heal, and the attacker would pay a steep price.
The Imperial Guards and the humans who remained, driven by meager pride to confront demons, soon realized.
Even in the midst of three demons annihilating dozens of guards, the abyss remained ceaselessly birthing demons.
“…Kynakhan is finished.”
The emperor sighed.
He merely sat in his chair, gazing at the demons with empty eyes.
A man at the pinnacle of power.
But there was no outburst. Instead, he awaited death willingly.
“The empire shall perish.”
The emperor’s lament.
He spoke to the remaining humans, the children of the Rainberg family.
The sole human remaining in this place, he addressed to the children of the Rainberg family.
The emperor, having ascended to the throne at a young age, was now in his mid-thirties, yet he felt no different from a bird trapped in a cage. Nevertheless, even if he was trapped, he wore a crown, and as nobility of the empire, it was only right to show respect.
However, the young children of Rainberg did not respond to the emperor’s inquiry. Even upon repeated questioning, they did not even look at him. The emperor sighed and sat back in his chair. The despairing situation remained unchanged. He detested death. But he was curious about what they would do. He watched the four twins silently.
“All the guards are dead.”
The emperor’s gaze turned to him.
‘Rainberg’s youngest, Cantavia. Wasn’t he said to have succeeded his father’s power to become an exceptional Spirit User?’
“What are you waiting for?”
Despite facing dozens of demons, engaging in conversation with his siblings so casually, he thought he was truly audacious.
“It’s not yet time.”
Ranista Quilz Rainberg.
A genius inspector known throughout the empire.
Realizing that Ranista was smiling, the emperor frowned.
‘That person I can’t understand. What’s so enjoyable?’
“What?”
It was Melissa who answered Cantavia’s question.
“Idiot. You have to give them hope for them to reveal themselves.”
‘Tower Mage’s pride, Melissa. Why on earth are you laughing?’
The emperor could not understand Melissa’s mischievous laughter at all.
His gaze instinctively turned to Wooshas.
‘The daughter of Dementia, truly alike. But that laughter…’
On the eve of the empire’s end, everyone except the youngest son laughed.
***
Cantavia couldn’t understand his siblings’ talk of hope to the demons.
But the moment ‘it’ revealed itself in the abyss, Cantavia understood everything immediately.
“He’s been waiting for that guy.”
The ‘face’ of ‘him’ filling the enormous abyss with a diameter of 30 meters.
The horrifying demon’s face, covered in wriggling veins and thousands of eyes, slowly crawled up from the bottom of the abyss. It seemed laughably small compared to the red demons. If the size of the face was concealed, how enormous would the hidden body be? Cantavia was flabbergasted.
Long before the Kynakhan Empire was established.
There was an empire even older than Kynakhan, known as ‘Ancient.’
With outstanding technology and endless greed, they even trafficked with demons. They paid the price and borrowed the power of demons. But eventually, they began to devise ways to subjugate demons. When the arrogance of demons reached its peak, they were punished.
Giant disease.
As big as a mountain, the size of its footprint would turn into a lake if rainwater accumulated, and its swinging fist would leave a wound bigger than a thunderbolt. The ancient empire was destroyed overnight by the arrival of the giant disease.
Key figures of the empire gathered to distinguish impostors.
The demons did not miss the opportunity.
As they had annihilated the ancient empire by summoning the giant disease, they aimed to destroy the empire overnight. It was not an uncertain plan but a cruel punishment. A punishment toward arrogant humans who dared to disturb the grand fate before ‘that time’ came, an inevitable punishment that could neither be avoided nor resisted. On this day, as originally planned by the demons, the Kynakhan Empire would have perished.
However, even the discerning demon didn’t know something.
Wooshas feared ignorance. She even guarded against the wriggling of the ‘bugs.’ Wooshas knew better than anyone the countless sins born of ignorance. That’s why even though she knew of their existence long ago, she did not act. The children of Rainberg limited their powers severely at Wooshas’s suggestion. Even when they peered into the abyss, the abyss also peered into them. The twins knew that while they monitored the demons, the demons also observed them.
What they offered to the demons while hiding their power was ‘hope.’
Even now, the demons had never realized whom that hope was for.
Demons.
Beings born to plunder lives.
The gateway connected to the abyss was ‘outside this world.’
When they descended, they ignited the lives on the surface and sought to move outward through the gate.
But even in the place they so desired to reach, beings standing at the pinnacle began to invade the “demon’s world.”
Finally, as the head of the divine disease emerged from the gate and entered the surface, all the trees of Quilz Castle withered simultaneously due to boiling malice. What did the thousands of eyes of the divine disease see? The giant of destruction only looked at one man.
“Disciple, behold.”
That man was Ranista.
Or, the one standing at the pinnacle of Asura.
“What can be severed and what cannot.”
The man drew his sword.
It was an ordinary iron sword.
“It’s not the sword in the hand that decides.”
He slowly swung the sword. The sluggishly swinging sword seemed unable to even cut through straw.
“It’s the heart of the one wielding the sword.”
Just one stroke.
It took several seconds for Ranista’s sword to slowly swing back into its scabbard. No one thought Ranista swung the sword to strike. He turned his back to the enemy and looked at Cantavia.
“What… have you done?”
At Cantavia’s question, Ranista smiled wickedly.
“Don’t you see, haha.”
Crack!
That was the moment.
It began with the sound of a breaking stone.
Thud!
The countless sounds that followed merged into one, sounding like an explosion.
Melissa sighed briefly.
“Oh, frightening.”
The crimson demons who annihilated the Imperial Guards.
And the divine disease that contaminated the earth with malice, the giant of destruction.
They all turned into ‘fragments.’
Not only the exposed head of the divine disease but also the hidden body within the gate shattered into thousands, tens of thousands of pieces in an instant. The torn fragments continued to be cut away, turning into powder in a futile manner. Cantavia couldn’t believe it, but he had to believe in the ‘visible’ reality. The method was simple. Just strike, strike, and strike.
In that brief moment when the sword seemed to move slowly, he struck the divine disease and demons into dust. Ranista lightly tapped Cantavia’s head with the hilt of his sword, looking astonished, and said,
“As one reaches the end, one can sever as one desires. I call it the realm of the profound sword. Ha, what do you think? Isn’t it magnificent?”
Cantavia had experienced it briefly with the help of Wooshas.
The sense of a superhuman, reversing the flow of time in the world and experiencing a different era alone.
But it was different.
“M-Master.”
Actually,
Cantavia saw it.
He saw it precisely but immediately forgot.
Although he saw Ranista rampaging in another era with his own eyes, his body and brain did not accept it and erased the memory. It was a defense mechanism of the body. If he had remembered that sight, Cantavia’s brain would have exploded. Cantavia respectfully bowed his head to Ranista.
“Bravo!”
Dalbi bit Cantavia’s finger with a mischievous face.
What happened exactly, the emperor didn’t know.
But at some point, in the blink of an eye, all the demons shattered and scattered.
He only saw Rainberg’s children saying something and then suddenly throwing themselves beyond the gate.
“Mom….”
The emperor, left alone, burst into tears.
Ranista and Melissa didn’t hesitate to jump into the gate.
Ah, was that so.
From the beginning, Wooshas’ purpose was.
Before Wooshas’ sister jumped into the gate, she said to me,
“Beyond this, there are messengers of Chilak.”
She suggested to me,
“Perhaps they are more fearsome than any other demons.”
Damn.
“And what you want is also there. Choose wisely, dear little brother.”
Wooshas’ sister disappeared beyond the gate. Scratching my head on the edge of caution, I sighed and took a step forward. From my previous life, all I needed was this ‘one step.’
Huh?
Dalbi looked at me and tilted her head.
“I know. Seems foolish.”
In the endless corridor of hell, I couldn’t help but laugh for some reason.
