ROOOAR!!!
A deafening roar ripped through the park—so deep it felt like the ground itself was puking. More Lesser Void Terrors poured out, way more than before. Twenty turned into thirty, into a writhing tide.
"Crazy," Theo breathed, drool at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were blood-red. "Let's destroy these."
I opened my mouth. "We won't survive this, Theo—let's ru—"
But before I finished, twenty-eight of them sprinted toward us like a wall of teeth and hunger.
'How long was I going to keep being useless? How long would I hide behind excuses and "training" and hope? This wasn't some manga save-the-day moment where the protagonist gets a miracle because the plot says so. We weren't protagonists.'
"Adrian, man up!" I screamed inside myself, the thought more a command than a prayer. "We should fight. To the death if we have to. That's how you get stronger—through blood, sweat, and shit that actually hurts."
Theo grinned like a lunatic and charged. I could see the look in his face—pure, filthy joy at the chaos. He was a beast unleashed.
My hands tightened on the daggers. The Demon God's whisper threaded through my head like a dark promise, and for the first time in a long while, fear tasted like fuel.
"All right," I told myself. "Then let's kill these donkeys—together."
And we ran.
Towards the monsters we charged—two idiots facing down death itself.
"Theo, wait—!" I barely got the words out before he roared,
"Spear of Enyos!"
A crimson spear materialized in his hands, its jagged head humming with killing intent. The air around it warped from sheer pressure.
I froze mid-stride. The Spear of Enyos? That was Ares' own weapon. No ordinary slayer sponsored by him ever got something like that—only his chosen warriors.
Just who the hell was Theo?
The spear pulsed like it was alive, and when Theo twirled it, the ground beneath him cracked. His eyes were burning, his grin feral.
So he's not just blessed, I thought, my chest tightening. He's something beyond that. A prodigy—a freak among monsters.
And yet… he was still my friend.
Theo leapt high into the air, his body outlined in blood-red light.
"Chaos Polemics!" he roared.
A crimson wave erupted from him, slicing through the air with terrifying precision. The explosion of energy tore through the lesser void terrors like paper, limbs and black ichor scattering across the ruined park.
But I couldn't just stand there watching. Weak or not, I had to move.
"[Infernal Surge]!" I shouted.
A faint red glow flickered over my body, my muscles tightening—barely an increase, but it was something. My heart pounded in my ears as I charged forward, twin daggers ready.
"[Demonic Heavenly Splitter]!!"
I slashed upward, the blades burning with demonic energy. The first lesser void terror split clean in half, collapsing with a screech that shook the ground. I didn't stop—I spun and went for the next one, cutting, dodging, surviving.
But no matter how hard I fought, Theo was on a completely different level.
He was grinning—blood splattering his face—as he called out attacks that sounded like something straight out of divine scripture. Every move he made obliterated groups of lesser voids, while I could barely take down one at a time.
It wasn't training anymore. It was slaughter.
Then, as if the lesser voids had been toying with us all along, the tide turned.
While Theo charged ahead like some blood-crazed protagonist, cutting down anything in his path, a shadow moved above him. Before he could react, claws came from behind and above—razor sharp and glinting with dark energy.
SHRRRKK!
Theo coughed out a thick spray of blood. The sound was horrifying. His knees buckled as he clutched his stomach, blood seeping between his fingers like water through a broken dam.
"Theo!!" I shouted, but before I could reach him—
One of the lesser void terrors appeared right in front of me. It was faster than before, almost mocking my sluggish reaction. Its claws glowed faintly purple before slashing upward with devastating force.
SLASH!
Pain shot through my chest as blood poured out. I staggered, trying to catch my breath, when another blow came from behind. I didn't even see it coming.
CRACK!
The impact threw me forward. My back burned—deep claw marks tearing through my flesh, my shirt soaked in blood. My vision blurred.
I gasped, barely holding onto consciousness as my knees hit the ground. The world spun, screams and monster roars mixing into a chaotic blur.
So this was it…
The end of another weakling's story.
Then I died—like an extra in a novel.
A third-rate nobody in a manga.
My body went numb, the world fading into silence. The warmth of blood left me, replaced by a biting cold that seeped into my bones.
So this is death, I thought. No grand ending, no heroic last stand—just… emptiness.
For a moment, I wondered if Theo was still alive. If he was still fighting those monsters, bleeding out like I was. I wanted to call out to him, but before I could, everything went dark.
Pitch black.
I floated—or maybe I fell—into an endless void. No light, no sound. Just the faint echo of my own voice as I whispered,
"Where… am I?"
Then it hit me.
Theo.
He was still there fighting, hanging on to a thin thread.
"Someone help him! Please!" I screamed, but my voice didn't echo.
"Arghhh!" I shouted, crying, screaming—whatever it was, it came from a place beyond reason. I felt pathetic and powerless.
Had I not agreed to come here, none of this would've happened.
We'd still be fine. Still training and we'd still be alive.
So it was his fault?
The thought crept in like poison.
No—maybe it was mine. Maybe Leon's. Maybe Evelyn's.
Every voice in my head argued, overlapping, twisting into something ugly.
Some said it was Theo's fault for dragging me here.
Some said it was mine for being weak.
Some said it was Leon's and Evelyn's for throwing us into that cursed Genesis Protocol.
If we'd never met them…
If we'd never joined Titans Wrath…
We wouldn't be here.
We wouldn't have died.
And yet—somewhere deep in that chaos—
a faint, distant voice whispered:
"Do you want to live?"
Huh I said.
Do you want to live.
Then—out of the suffocating dark—a faint light flickered.
It wasn't warm. It wasn't divine.
It was red.
From that dim glow, a figure stepped forward.
His hair was split—half white, half crimson—flowing like silk that caught both dawn and dusk.
Eyes, a deep shade of blood, stared right through me as though peeling apart my soul.
He wore clothes that looked out of place for whatever realm this was—oversized, stylish, dripping with confidence.
Loose pants, layered silver chains, Timberland boots that looked more fit for a runway than for war.
It was like staring at a Y2K fashion ad in hell.
The darkness bent around him.
And when he spoke, his voice was smooth—too smooth.
Like velvet laced with venom.
"My name," he said, smirking as if the world itself bowed to him,
"is Luciferin—and I am the Demon God."
<[End of chapter 11]>