The impact was absolute, a violent collision that stripped me of my humanity in a single second. I was no longer Kenji, the Triple-Element prodigy, nor was I Reyansh, the calculating detective. I was merely a broken heap of organic matter, buried beneath a ton of jagged stone and splintered debris. Every shallow breath I took was a wet, gargling struggle against the crimson foam filling my lungs. My internal map was a chaotic mess of trauma—ribs snapped like dry twigs, lungs punctured by bone shards, and a spine that felt like a shattered glass rod.
Through the haze of dust and the metallic scent of my own blood, a shadow fell over me. It was a darkness so thick it felt tangible, a cold shroud that silenced the screams of the dying village around me.
The High-Rank Demon loomed over my wreckage. He didn't look like the mindless beasts from earlier; he possessed a terrifying, ancient elegance. His voice was a tectonic grind, a low-frequency rumble that bypassed my ears and vibrated directly into the marrow of my teeth.
"You are a magnificent Knight," the Demon rumbled, his violet eyes glowing with a sickeningly respectful light. "You nearly broke my guard. That last strike... it possessed a fragment of raw, unfiltered power that rivaled my own kin. Such a warrior deserves an ending worthy of his spirit."
I tried to laugh, but the only sound that emerged was a grotesque bubble of blood popping on my lips. Reward? My soul was vibrating at a thousand different frequencies of pure agony, and this monster was speaking of honors.
"In our lands," the Demon continued, leaning closer until I could smell the rot of a thousand dead worlds on his breath, "the greatest of vanquished foes are not buried in the cold dirt. They are consumed while their hearts still pulse. It is our highest tribute—to become one with the victor. To be eaten alive is the ultimate sanctification of your strength."
'Honor? You call this honor?' My mind, the part of me that was still Reyansh, flickered like a candle in a hurricane. I looked up at his gray, stone-like face and spat a mouthful of gore. "If... if you want to eat," I wheezed, the words tearing through my shredded vocal cords, "then eat your fill and go back to whatever hell you crawled out of. Take me... but leave the others. Do not return to this world!"
I was bargaining with a god of hunger. I realized that survival was a ghost story I had told myself. If I could just buy Hina and Yumi a few more seconds of life, maybe this cycle of suffering would finally find a purpose.
The Demon's smile was a jagged line of obsidian teeth. "I cannot grant that, little morsel. I am here for the harvest. Everyone in this realm belongs to the soil or to me. You simply have the privilege of going first."
The Azure Intervention: Breaking the Limit
As the Demon's massive, clawed hand reached down to peel me from the rubble like a piece of fruit, a streak of blue lightning cleaved the atmosphere.
SHING!A severed gray limb flew through the air, black, oily blood spraying across the stones. Kiran, the Azure Knight, stood between me and the abyss. He was no longer the calm, disciplined leader I knew. His eyes were twin stars of pulsating, violent blue mana, and the "tubes" beneath his skin were glowing so brightly they looked like they would burst through his flesh. He was steaming—his very sweat evaporating from the heat of his overdriven core.
"I will not repeat my mistakes," Kiran hissed, his voice trembling with a mixture of grief and lethal intent.
The change in him was terrifying. His strike pattern, which previously required a three-second reset to stabilize his Rank 7 mana, had been forcibly compressed. He was moving in one-second bursts of impossible speed. He was a blur of blue steel, a hurricane of desperation. But I saw it—the micro-trembles in his hands, the way his feet dragged by a fraction of a millimeter. He was redlining his soul. He was burning his life force to buy my shattered body a few more seconds.
The Demon's severed arm began to regenerate instantly, the muscle fibers knitting together like writhing snakes. Then, the true catastrophe arrived.
The two other Commander-level auras—the "Foreign Goods"—stepped out of the haze. Standing together, their collective weight felt like a million corpses being pressed onto my chest. The very air turned toxic, the oxygen replaced by a heavy, demonic pressure.
Kiran charged. He was magnificent, a lone god of war fighting a losing battle against the end of the world. He struck the first commander with a force that shattered the sound barrier, but the second blocked him with a sound like two planets colliding. The third commander didn't hesitate. He delivered a counter-blow so precise and powerful that I saw Kiran's azure mana-shield shatter like cheap glass. The Rank 7 Knight was sent hurtling through the air, skipping across the earth like a stone on water until he disappeared into the dark treeline of the forest.
The Devouring: A Symphony of Bone
And then, I was alone with the hunger.
The Demon pulled me from the debris. He didn't use a blade to end my life. He used his teeth.
CRUNCH.felt my collarbone snap under the immense pressure of his jaws. The sound was amplified inside my own skull—a wet, splintering crack that signaled the definitive end of my humanity. He tore a strip of flesh from my shoulder, and the pain was so sharp it turned ice-cold. It was a white-hot agony that made me wish for the void, but the Death-Link kept me tethered to the nerves. I felt every chew, every grind of his molars against my humerus.
'What did I do to deserve this?' my soul wailed into the emptiness. 'Every life I inhabit is just a new stage for me to suffer. First the fire of the palace, then the suffocation of the carriage, and now this butchery...'
My hatred began to boil, turning from the cold calculation of a detective into a black, oily rage. 'I will kill them all. If this world demands a Sovereign of Agony, I will give them a master they cannot survive.'
As my vision finally began to bleed into a permanent black, a familiar, sickeningly sweet voice whispered from the depths of my subconscious.
"Oh dear... such exquisite hatred. You shouldn't be so bitter, my sweet Reyansh. The banquet has only just begun..."
The Witch. Even at the threshold of the afterlife, she was there to feast on my despair.
The Transition: Passenger in a Monster's Skin
Suddenly, the world vanished. There was no pain. No sound. Only an infinite, suffocating darkness that felt like drowning in ink.
I didn't want to wake up. I didn't want to control anything anymore. But the Link—the invisible, cursed chain—wouldn't let go. My vision returned, but it was fractured, tinged in a predatory violet hue. I realized with a jolt of horror that I was seeing through the Demon's eyes.
I was inside the thing that had just eaten me.
In front of me stood Kiran. He had crawled back from the forest, his armor in tatters, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated grief. He looked at me—at the monster I now inhabited—and I saw a single tear of blood fall from his eye. He thought I was gone. He thought he was looking at my murderer.
Kiran lunged with a suicidal fury, his blade glowing with the last embers of his Rank 7 mana. The other two Demon Commanders moved to protect "me," but then I felt it. My soul—the essence trapped inside this Demon's stomach—began to burn. It wasn't the heat of fire; it was the gravitational heat of a dying star.
The Demon's body began to convulse. My soul was acting like a parasite, consuming the Demon's energy from the inside out to sustain my consciousness. I watched, a helpless passenger in a monster's skin, as the Demon raised his hand to counter Kiran.
The collision was catastrophic. The shockwave didn't just break the surrounding ruins; it sent a ripple of force so immense that it split the massive mountain behind the village into two distinct halves. The earth groaned as millions of tons of rock crumbled into the valley.
I felt my essence being drained, my soul acting as a black hole, pulling every ounce of mana from the Demon to fuel a power I didn't yet understand. Kiran dodged the lethal strike by a hair's breadth, his movements desperate and ragged.
The chapter ends as the mountain continues to fall, the dust blotting out the moon, and the three Demons standing amidst the wreckage of a broken world, with my soul screaming in the silence of the abyss.