The Blood Moon guildhall was not a place of subtlety.
It was a fortress of blackened steel and crimson banners, built into the side of a dormant volcano, its architecture a blatant proclamation of power and paranoia.
It thrived in the underworld's shadows, a key distributor for the Grey Fog's most volatile contraband. Tonight, however, it was about to become a crucible.
Two figures stood at the edge of the treeline, observing the citadel of corruption.
One was impossibly tall and lean, clad in fiery shirt that seemed to burn the faint moonlight.
Fiery, perfect hair, like liquid gold, cascaded from beneath a horned demon mask. The Flame Demon cracked his neck, the sound like grinding boulders.
The other was shorter, slimmer, a wraith in form-fitting midnight blue. A ceramic mask depicting a weeping willow obscured her features, from which a long, vibrant cascade of purple hair flowed, stirring in a wind that didn't touch the trees.
The Abyssal Witch rolled her shoulders, the air around her cracking with unseen energy.
"Five S-ranks inside," the Flame Demon's voice was a low, pleasant baritone that belied his terrifying visage.
"Plus the master. Hao Xian. The 'Crimson Tyrant.' He's mine."
"Try to leave some of the building standing, dear," the Abyssal Witch replied, her voice a melodic chime.
"The vault is in the basement. I'd rather not dig."
"No promises."
They moved.
One moment they were at the treeline. The next, they were a blur of motion crossing the killing field before the main gate. Alarms blared to life, mana-sensitive searchlights snapping toward them.
The Flame Demon didn't slow. He raised a hand, and a torrent of Golden Fire, hotter than a forge's heart, erupted forth.
It vaporized the massive steel gate, along with the two reinforced guard towers on either side, leaving behind pools of bubbling slag and a cloud of superheated steam.
The Abyssal Witch flicked her wrist.
The steam cloud instantly flash-froze into a million razor-sharp shards of ice and shot forward, shredding the first wave of guards who came rushing out, their screams cut short.
They passed through the entrance, a duet of absolute destruction.
The Flame Demon was a force of nature, a walking earthquake. He didn't fight guards; he erased them.
A backhand swipe sent three armored men flying through a stone wall. A stomp cracked the foundation of a barracks, causing it to groan and collapse.
He wielded his Fire in concentrated beams, cutting through magical barriers and physical obstructions alike.
The Abyssal Witch was his perfect counterpoint. Where he was overwhelming force, she was surgical precision.
Guards would suddenly find their limbs encased in unbreakable Frost, locking them in place. Others were struck by arcs of Purple Lighting that violently disrupted their nervous systems, leaving them twitching on the ground.
She moved through the chaos like a ghost, her every gesture precise, economical, and devastating.
They carved a path through the outer defenses in minutes, a trail of frozen statues, scorched earth, and incapacitated hunters in their wake.
The guild's lower-ranked members broke, their morale shattered by the effortless onslaught. This was not a fight; it was a culling.
A massive blast of concussive force slammed into the Flame Demon, finally halting his advance.
He skidded back a foot, his boots screeching against the stone floor.
Before him stood five figures, their auras flaring like beacons of power. The Blood Moon's S-ranks had arrived.
There was a tall man with stone-like skin, a woman with blades of wind swirling around her, a spearman whose weapon crackled with green energy, a lithe figure shrouded in illusions, and a necromancer with shadows clinging to him like a shroud.
"Disaster Duo," the stone-skinned man growled, his voice like grinding gravel. "You've made a fatal mistake coming here. This will be the end of your journey."
The Flame Demon just laughed, a sound of genuine amusement. "We've heard that before. It's never true."
"We'll make it true!" The wind-blade woman attacked first, a whirlwind of slicing air shooting toward the Abyssal Witch.
"What a hassle..." The Witch didn't move.
She raised a hand, and a wall of layered ice, harder than diamond, intercepted the attack, the wind blades shattering against it.
The spearman lunged at the Flame Demon, his weapon moving faster than the eye could follow.
The Demon didn't bother to dodge. He caught the spearhead in his bare hand, the green energy sizzling against his palm but failing to pierce the skin.
"You have a nice toy..." He yanked, pulling the spearman off balance, and drove a fist wreathed in Golden Fire into his chest.
The man's armor glowed white-hot for a second before he was launched backward through three interior walls.
The fight was truly joined.
The stone-skinned man charged the Flame Demon, a living battering ram. "Damm fireball! I will shatter you to pieces!"
The Demon met the charge head-on, the impact creating a shockwave that blew out the remaining windows in the hall.
"Hahaha! Now that's a man to man fight!" The Demon laughed frantically.
They traded blows, each punch sounding like a detonation. The stone man was strong, incredibly durable, but every time the Demon's Golden Fire-connected fist landed, a chunk of his stony armor would explode into powder.
Meanwhile, the Abyssal Witch dealt with the other three.
The illusionist tried to cloud her mind, to show her visions of her allies in peril. The Witch simply closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, they glowed with Purple Lightning.
"Pathetic," she chided, and a single, precise bolt of thunder shot out, not at the illusionist, but at a seemingly empty spot to her left. There was a scream as the illusionist's true form was revealed and stunned.
The necromancer raised skeletons from the fallen guards.
"Useless old tricks," The Witch sighed, a sound of profound boredom.
She snapped her fingers. A wave of Silver Frost expanded from her, and every single skeleton instantly froze, then shattered into bone dust.
"Enough playing! I will kill you!" The wind-blade woman, enraged, unleashed her ultimate technique Blade Storm: a hundred blades of compressed air, each capable of cutting through steel.
"Nice move, now that's worth fighting!"
The Abyssal Witch finally moved, a blur of motion. She weaved through the storm of blades, her movements a deadly dance.
For every blade that came near, a shard of ice would materialize to intercept it with a sound like shattering glass. She wasn't just defending; she was analyzing, timing.
She found her opening. As the wind-blade woman paused to gather more energy, the Witch pointed two fingers.
A single, finger-size spike of ice, so cold it burned the air around it, shot forth. It pierced through the whirlwind, through the woman's defenses, and neatly pinned her sleeve to the wall behind her, not harming her but perfectly immobilizing her arm and disrupting her focus.
Back with the titans, the Flame Demon had finally grown bored. The stone-skinned man was relentless but outclassed.
"You're durable," the Demon conceded, blocking a punch that could level a building. "But are you heat-resistant?"
He placed a hand on the man's chest. There was no explosion, no flashy fireball.
Instead, a wave of intense, concentrated heat radiated from his palms.
The stone man's eyes widened as the rock comprising his body began to glow, first red, then orange, then yellow.
He screamed, not in pain, but in terror as he felt his very essence being superheated.
The Flame Demon stepped back, and the S-rank hunter stood frozen, a glowing, petrified statue.
With a gentle tap, the Demon pushed him over. He hit the floor and shattered into a million steaming, hot pieces.
In less than ten minutes, five S-rank hunters had been defeated. The grand hall of the Blood Moon guild was a wrecked, smoldering, and partially frozen testament to the Duo's power.
Silence descended, broken only by the crackle of dying fires and the groan of strained architecture.
Then, a slow clap echoed from the top of the grand staircase.
A man walked down. He was of average height, wearing elegant crimson robes. He looked calm, almost bored.
This was Hao Xian, the Crimson Tyrant, Guild Master of the Blood Moon. His aura wasn't a flare; it was a suffocating blanket, a pressure that promised immense, violent power.
"An impressive display," Hao Xian said, his voice smooth and deadly.
"Truly. You've tidied up the mediocre help. It saves me the trouble of doing it myself."
The Flame Demon cracked his knuckles. "We're here for the ledger. The one that details your dealings with the Grey Fog. And your rotten head. The order is negotiable."
Hao Xian smiled, a cold, cruel thing. "You are welcome to try and collect both."
He didn't shout. He didn't flare his aura. He simply raised a hand, and the very air in the room compressed. The Abyssal Witch's ice formations cracked. The Flame Demon's boots groaned under the pressure.
Hao Xian's power was absolute control over kinetic energy. He could redirect it, amplify it, nullify it.
The Flame Demon launched a blast of Golden Fire that could melt a battleship.
Hao Xian flicked his wrist. The fireball veered off course, shooting upward and taking out half the ceiling, raining debris down.
The Abyssal Witch sent a spear of ice sharper than any diamond at his heart. He pointed a finger, and the spear shattered in mid-air, its own kinetic energy turned inward upon itself.
"You see?" Hao Xian said, beginning to descend the stairs. "Your power is meaningless before me. I control the very force of your attacks."
The Flame Demon grinned behind his mask.
"You control kinetic force?" He took a step forward, then another, his golden fire dying down.
"Then let's try something with less 'force' and more… impact."
He shot forward, not with a blast of fire, but with pure, physical speed. He threw a punch, a simple, straightforward blow.
Hao Xian caught it easily, redirecting the kinetic energy. The wall behind him exploded outward.
The Flame Demon threw another punch. Another redirected explosion.
Another. And another.
Hao Xian was smiling, effortlessly deflecting each world-shattering blow, using the Demon's own power to destroy the guild hall around them.
"Fool! It's no use! You are only destroying your own surroundings!"
"Am I?" the Flame Demon asked, never ceasing his relentless assault.
The Abyssal Witch watched, her mind working. She saw what her partner was doing. He wasn't just attacking; he was herding.
Every redirected punch was strategically placed, weakening specific load-bearing structures, carving a specific battlefield.
Hao Xian, arrogant in his power, didn't notice. He was too busy enjoying his apparent superiority.
The Flame Demon launched a final, tremendous haymaker. Hao Xian, with a condescending smirk, prepared to redirect it straight up, to blow the entire roof off the fortress.
But the punch never landed.
At the last second, the Flame Demon vanished, using the kinetic energy of his own aborted punch to propel himself backward.
Hao Xian's smirk froze. He had gathered a tremendous amount of energy to redirect a punch that wasn't there. The energy, with no outlet, rebounded on him internally.
"You bastard! what the hell does it mean!" He grunted, stumbling back a step, a trickle of blood leaking from his nose. It was a tiny wound, but a wound nonetheless. His perfect defense had been tricked.
The Abyssal Witch chose that exact moment to act. While Hao Xian was momentarily distracted and destabilized, she didn't attack him.
She attacked the ceiling above him—the ceiling her partner had meticulously weakened with his 'misdirected' punches.
With a single, precise jet of Silver Frost, she targeted the final, critical stress point.
With a roar of shearing metal and crumbling stone, the entire ceiling of the Blood Moon guild's main hall collapsed directly on top of Hao Xian.
The Crimson Tyrant disappeared under a mountain of rubble, the sound echoing like a tomb slamming shut.
The Dust filled the air. The Disaster Duo stood amidst the devastation, watching the pile of rubble.
The Flame Demon dusted off his shoulders. "See? I left the basement intact."
The Abyssal Witch muttered "Focus dear, The fight isn't over."
A low, earth-shaking laugh emanated from beneath the rubble. "You… you think a few tons of rock can hold me?"
The rubble pile began to tremble. Then it began to glow with an intense crimson light.
The fight was far from over.
---
A/N: Taking a short break for busy schedule, Next chapter will be at Friday.