The elder wipes the smear of crystalline blood from his jaw.
His eyes, moments ago indifferent, now carry a gleam—interest sharpened into something predatory.
"You strike harder than you look," he murmurs, crystalline veins pulsing beneath his skin.
Merin answers with silence.
Silence—and killing intent.
His Dao materialises fully behind him: the Devouring Maw, vast enough to swallow mountains, its abyssal teeth dripping with law energies—space, emotion, the five elements, and the boundless resentful hunger of demons.
Above them, the sky warps.
Below, the world holds its breath.
Then—
They move.
Not with the reckless speed of lesser cultivators, but with precision honed over centuries.
A step.
A blink.
A ripple in space—
—and they clash.
The elder's hand forms a blade of crystalline light and swings downward. The strike doesn't cut space—it decides where space will break. The result is absolute.
Merin intercepts with a palm coated in devouring law.
The collision ripples reality. Sand beneath them vaporises. The air screams.
Neither retreats.
The elder moves first, stepping sideways into a fracture in the world. He emerges behind Merin, palm raised.
"Crystal Seal."
Ten crystalline formations appear in a circle around Merin—locking time, space, qi, soul, and motion.
Merin doesn't flinch.
He lets the seal form.
Then he smiles.
The Devouring Maw burns with bloody brilliance—
—and the seal cracks.
Not shattered by power, but consumed at its foundational runic level.
The elder's brows lift a fraction.
"…devouring at the law-structure level."
Merin answers with Thousand Eyes—a hundred beams of fire and ice, weaving into a lattice of destructive patterns.
The elder shields with overlapping crystal wings. Explosions ripple outward—glass shrapnel, frozen flame.
Still equal.
The elder grows more serious.
His Dao appears—an enormous crystalline dragon, body made of fractal plates, each scale reflecting a different law of creation.
It opens its mouth, releasing a roar that distorts reality.
Merin responds.
The Devouring Maw roars back, vibration law woven into sound—shaking mountains, cracking sky, splintering the elder's dragon into fragments.
But those fragments don't disappear.
They multiply.
From one dragon comes three.
Merin clicks his tongue.
A test, then.
No—an escalation.
He meets them with bare hands first—shattering one dragon's fangs, tearing another's wing at the joint. The third bites his shoulder and crushes bone—but Merin rotates space around his body and appears behind it, slamming a punch through its spine.
The battlefield is chaos now—devouring winds and crystalline storms ripping apart the world around them.
But neither retreats.
Neither gives an inch.
The elder lifts a hand.
His voice carries—not loud, but absolute.
"Crystalline Authority: Judgment Bloom."
The sky fractures into a field of crystal flowers—billions of them—each one humming with law intent.
They fall.
Not like petals.
Like executioners.
Merin's eyes narrow.
He raises his hand, forming a devouring vortex the size of a city.
The flowers strike the vortex—
—and vanish, consumed instantly.
But the elder doesn't stop.
He raises another hand.
"Second Bloom."
The flowers reappear.
Then—
"Third Bloom."
The flowers glow.
Merin's vortex swells—devouring faster, deeper, hungrier—until every petal is gone.
Silence again.
But this time, Merin breathes heavier.
And the elder notices.
"A devourer cannot sustain infinite consumption," he says softly. "Not without cost."
Merin's lips curl.
"It's worth the cost."
Both Dao avatars swell—dragon and maw colliding in the sky, bite-for-bite, claw-for-fang, law-for-law.
Their clash isn't just physical—it's conceptual.
The elder's Dao crystallises existence, forcing order.
Merin's Dao consumes existence, returning it to raw potential.
Opposites.
Perfect counters.
At first, balance holds.
Merin lands strikes that tear crystalline plates from the elder's body.
The elder counters with cuts that slice into Merin's spine, ribs, arms—leaving wounds that resist healing.
Their bodies become maps of destruction.
Still equal.
Still unbroken.
Until—
The elder speaks three quiet words:
"Crystal—Supreme—Pulse."
A pulse ripples outward.
No light.
No sound.
No energy signature.
But Merin's knees buckle.
His Dao trembles.
Something inside him—something deeply woven into the laws of the demiplane—shifts against him.
Merin's eyes sharpen.
"Supreme authority…"
The elder's smile is thin.
"Yes. This world belongs to my race."
The elder's next strike comes too fast.
A crystallised fist impacts Merin's chest—piercing through bone and flesh, shattering ribs.
Merin flies backwards, tumbling through space. Before he recovers, the elder is already there.
A second blow—this time to the spirit sea.
Merin coughs blood—not ordinary blood, but demonic essence, leaking power.
The Devouring Maw strains—its edges flickering.
Merin grits his teeth, eyes burning crimson.
He unleashes everything—emotion, law flaring, space folding, devouring surging—
—but the elder is no longer matching him.
He is overwhelming him.
Blow after blow lands—each one guided by a Supreme-tier understanding of martial law.
Merin defends.
Devours.
Counters.
Survives.
But the cracks in his Dao grow.
The maw trembles.
Law lines distort.
Fragments break away like crumbling teeth.
The elder presses a hand against Merin's sternum.
Crystals grow beneath his skin like invasive roots.
"Human," the elder says quietly, "you are strong."
He pushes.
Merin's entire body folds around the strike.
"But strength without lineage is nothing."
He strikes again.
Merin coughs mist instead of blood—his body no longer merely injured, but coming undone.
He exhales once.
A decision.
Enough hiding.
Demon energy erupts.
His hair lengthens and bleaches to molten silver, his pupils tighten into predatory slits, and fangs push past his lips. His palms distort into obsidian claws, and crimson runes spread over his skin like blooming madness.
Power—raw, ancient, unmistakable.
Not human.
Never human.
The elder staggers back, voice cracking.
"...A demon."
Merin chuckles—low, cold, cruel.
"Now you finally understand. Good.
Get ready to die."
The elder's crystal blade halts mid-swing.
His eyes tremble.
"You… are not human."
Behind Merin, a demonic aura rises like a storm swallowing the heavens—thick enough to twist laws and silence the world. His presence feels older than history, hungrier than death.
A being forged by instinct, wrath, and devouring intent.
A true demon.
Merin tilts his head, expression clean and eerily composed despite the ragged mist trailing from his lips.
"I warned you," he murmurs, tone almost bored.
"You mistook restraint… for weakness."
The elder doesn't retreat by choice—his instincts drag him backwards, spine rigid with primal fear.
"You shouldn't exist," he breathes. "Demons are forbidden—corruption to all worlds."
Merin smiles—a curved blade disguised as kindness.
"Then allow corruption to teach you."
He moves.
No flash of space law.
No technique name.
Just movement—clean, decisive, unstoppable.
A claw tears across the elder's torso. Crystal armour forms, but too late—the blow pierces flesh and Dao, leaving cracks glowing with corrosive demonic energy.
The elder gasps—
"How—"
Another blow.
Deeper.
Faster.
Every strike doesn't just injure—it consumes.
Crystal dissolves, law lines unravel, and the elder's aura collapses layer by layer.
"You believed lineage made you superior," Merin says while casually stepping through the elder's panicked counters.
"Who gave you the right to decide my fate?"
His knee crashes into the elder's ribs. The sound is sharp—like ice breaking.
Blood sprays—glinting like ground gemstones.
"Now fate is rewritten."
His voice softens to a whisper right beside the elder's ear—almost affectionate.
"Into your death."
Desperation erupts.
Crystal Judgment Cataclysm.
The void fractures into blinding white—a rain of crystal blades descending like divine punishment.
Merin still doesn't dodge.
His Dao descends—the Devouring Maw.
It opens.
And the world seems to lean toward it.
Every blade, every rule-construct, every thread of crystallised authority is dragged inward—absorbed with screaming resonance.
The elder stares in frozen horror.
"No… no— that technique is—"
"Perfect," Merin finishes.
The maw snaps shut.
Silence.
Only the elder's broken breathing remains.
Merin reaches out, almost gently, and grips the elder's face between clawed fingers.
"You wanted my life," he says softly.
His tone grows silk-smooth—terrifyingly calm.
"So now—you will become fuel."
Demonic sigils blaze—and the elder's flesh begins dissolving, converted into energy pouring into Merin like a tide. The elder claws at his arm, but the gap between them has already become a void.
"You—monster—!"
Merin lazily licks crystalline blood from his thumb.
"Yes."
Another pulse—half the elder's Dao forcibly torn away.
The elder collapses to his knees, body flickering between matter and nothing.
Merin lifts his hand for the final blow.
Claws ready to pierce the heart and end the lineage.
"You overreached," he says softly.
"This is the consequence."
His strike falls—
—but never lands.
A new aura erupts—older, sharper, sovereign.
A blade of fire and frost carves through space, intercepting Merin's arm with a detonation that fractures mountains and flash-freezes the very air.
Merin is hurled back—slamming through floating stone before halting mid-air, claws sparking.
The Fireice Sword lands in the elder's hand.
It sings.
Supreme Dao ignites.
The elder straightens—rejuvenated by the sword's acceptance.
"Demons," he says, voice now steady with borrowed supremacy,
"deserve death."
Flames cold as winter and frost hot as stars bloom along the blade.
He swings.
The strike isn't fast.
It is absolute.
Merin raises a defence—but the Supreme Law ignores it.
Space splits.
Demonic runes crack.
And Merin's body bursts apart—scattering into blood mist, shadow fragments, and a thin thread of laughter that fades into the void.
Below, Demon Merin's disciples—who had gathered to support Silan and Mengui against Axel—freeze. Their faces pale. Their breaths hitch.
He was their master. Their pillar.
They don't care that he's a demon.
They never did.
They grew in a world isolated from the outside, knowing nothing of demon bloodlines, laws, or ancient grudges. To them, he is simply Master.
And now—he's gone.
Or so it seems.
A shimmer forms.
A crack in the inner void.
And Merin appears again—standing motionless between worlds. His eyes remain closed, his form smooth and pale like flawless porcelain—no wounds, no breath—only pressure.
A silence heavy enough to suffocate.
The elder lifts the Fireice Sword again, ready to finish what he started.
Silan doesn't hesitate.
She grips the Icefire Sword.
It blooms—violent, ancient, sovereign—Supreme might rippling through reality as she points its edge directly at Axel.
Her voice cuts through the battlefield:
"Old man—if you strike again, I will kill him."
Axel stiffens.
The elder pauses.
A heartbeat of stillness.
Then—soft laughter.
A dry, ancient mockery.
"According to the laws of our race," he says coldly, "a demon must be killed the moment it is discovered."
The Icefire Sword trembles in Silan's hand—
—and its glow fades.
Her expression twists in disbelief.
Why?
The answer doesn't come from her own thoughts.
It comes from the blade.
A whisper—ancient and weary—echoes in her mind:
*"Among the four Supremes who struck down my master…
One was Demon lineage.
He was trusted.
He betrayed him."*
Silan's grip tightens.
Her breath shakes.
Betrayal. History. Hatred older than any memory.
The elder raises the Fireice Sword high.
Space bends.
Reality screams.
The killing strike descends—
And Merin's eyes snap open.
A vast pupil manifests behind him—cold, formless, absolute.
A Heaven's Eye.
It releases a beam—not light, not energy—but law.
The two powers collide.
Space ruptures. The world tears. Mountains crumble to dust.
And Merin moves.
Not fleeing.
Not defeated.
But choosing.
He steps into the crack formed by the clash—into the void beyond the demi-world.
And disappears.
---
End.