Blades collided like thunder tearing through steel, the shockwaves shredding the ground beneath their feet. Sparks lit the space between Dark and Syvrek as they danced through the storm of swordplay, two forces refusing to yield, refusing to blink. Every strike sounded like judgment. Every parry screamed with friction and fury.
Dark: You're a skilled swordsman... but I've got a better one.
He didn't smirk. He didn't raise his voice. His words came calm, but with weight—like prophecy, not threat. His crimson eyes flashed—no, pulsed. A ripple of raw command radiated from his pupils, cascading outward through the battlefield like a soul-level frequency. The entire war paused for a split second, as if Hell itself felt the shift.
Far away, Igor stood mid-clash with a King-level fiend. His blade dug deep into the creature's shoulder—and with that subtle pulse, his head tilted. The command had reached him.
Without hesitation, Igor cleaved through the King's neck like paper. The body hadn't even fallen before he vanished from the spot, dust exploding where he stood.
And then—he was there.
Right beside Dark.
No portal. No light. No shadow.
Just presence.
Dark stepped aside silently. No words exchanged.
Syvrek's gaze locked onto the new opponent, confused for only a breath before lunging forward again, keeping his momentum.
Igor unsheathed his sword slowly. Not because he needed to—but because he chose to let Syvrek see it.
The Black Sun of Pandemonium.
The Greatest Swordsman in Existence.
Igor's great-longsword hissed as it left its sheath—nearly taller than he was, forged in nightmares and polished in massacre. The edge looked dull—but only because the blood it had tasted stained it dark.
Syvrek swung first.
He never landed a second.
Igor moved like a void of thought. Each swing came so fast it blurred. Syvrek's blade collided with nothing—he was reacting seconds too late, his form unraveling by the third parry. Footing lost. Timing demolished. Igor's rhythm was beyond the physical. He was tempo itself.
Igor: Too slow.
A flash.
Syvrek was on his knees, gasping, gripping the hilt of his sword just to hold himself upright. Blood poured from his arms. Then—
Crack.
A boot connected with his face, Igor's kick sending him flipping through the air like a tossed corpse. Before Syvrek could even hit the ground, Igor was already there.
The great-longsword thrust forward.
Through Syvrek's face.
The impact wasn't sound—it was detonation. Flesh split. Skull caved. A blast of gore, grey matter, bone fragments and eye fluid erupted like a cursed firework. The top half of Syvrek's head vaporized. His body spasmed once—then dropped.
Dark blinked once. Not in disbelief. In stunned appreciation.
Dark: (thinking) Hahahaha... Igor really is strong as hell. To this day, I still question how I made him my first shadow.
Igor turned, expression unchanged, blade dripping like it had drunk something worth savoring. He took a knee.
Igor: My Emperor.
Dark: Thanks for the heads up, Igor. You are crazy strong.
Igor stood, slowly wiping the blade clean with a strip of cursed cloth.
Igor: I'm only as sharp as your shadow allows me to be.
But before the silence could settle—
A shriek tore through the air.
A rage that felt ancient and wrong.
Behind Igor, Syvrek's body twitched—and rose.
But it wasn't him anymore.
His form mutated, armor cracking, eyes burning with red spirals. Blood poured from the open stump where half his head used to be, and new flesh regenerated, raw and violent. His power spiraled outward, uncontrolled.
Syvrek: Y—YOU!!!
Syvrek: You DARE... KILL ME?!
His roar warped the air, but then—
The temperature dropped.
No, collapsed.
Everything—froze. Not in cold.
In fear.
A storm of stillness swept across the battlefield, but it didn't come from above or below. It came from the entrance.
And then... the weight came.
A pressure so heavy it wasn't pressure. It was judgment. Not a shout—but a whisper that crushed. Spiritual force surged like a descending ocean trench. Every demon, devil, beast, fiend—everything weaker than godhood—began to collapse. Knees buckled. Bones snapped. Skulls cracked under invisible force.
They dropped. One by one. Dozens. Hundreds.
Crushed into the ground by presence alone.
Footsteps echoed—slow. Heavy. Certain.
A long leather coat, swaying in the windless air. Boots that didn't step—they declared. A tricon hat cast a shadow over his eyes, but beneath it, his mustache remained etched in eternal calm. No rage. No joy.
Just resolve.
Kaelion Draegor.
The Emperor of Seas.
He walked like an extinction event.
As he passed through a crowd of surviving demons too weak to run—
Kaelion: Move.
They didn't.
They couldn't.
They were flattened into the ground—bones liquified, bodies caving, fused into the stone. Their screams were muffled by crushed throats and imploded lungs.
Dark turned his head just as Kaelion approached.
Kaelion didn't pause.
He grabbed Dark's arm—firm, silent—and hurled him into the sky like he weighed nothing. The force alone split the air.
Dark: Wha—?! When did I—?! When did he—?!
Before the confusion could settle, Igor vanished from his spot, appearing beside Dark mid-air, catching him and landing with silent control.
Back at the battlefield—
Kaelion stood where Dark had.
Facing Syvrek.
Syvrek: Keh-heh... ahhh... look who decided to return.
Syvrek: The Pirate King. The Emperor of Seas.
Kaelion: Syvrek. Prince of the Demon Empire.
Syvrek: We meet again.
Kaelion: Why were you fighting him?
Syvrek: Why? He came to Hell. Killed more than half our kind. Woke up this place with his arrogance. He summoned his army.
Syvrek: Not my fault.
Kaelion didn't blink.
Kaelion: That fight is over.
Kaelion: Your battle is with me now.
Syvrek's eyes twitched. Then widened. Then narrowed again.
Syvrek: Hah. Even better.
Kaelion reached behind him slowly—and unsheathed his blade.
It wasn't a sword.
It was declaration.
The blade spanned longer than most spears—void-black steel with stormsilver edges, serrated not in pattern, but in purpose. Ancient glyphs etched into the core pulsed faintly, like waves rising and falling. The hilt was wrapped in serpent-leather soaked in demon marrow, and the guard shaped like a kraken's eye—watching. Judging.
Kaelion planted it once against the stone.
The entire battlefield cracked in a perfect line.
A silence followed—not peace, but the kind of pause the universe takes when something irreversible is about to happen. Every pair of eyes that could still see turned toward the source of that sound. Even the wind stopped. Even the sky looked away.
Kaelion Draegor stood motionless, his blade lowered, one hand gripping the hilt like a final anchor between destruction and restraint. His coat fluttered gently, leather worn from storms no man had survived. His tricon hat cast a shadow that seemed deeper than the laws of nature allowed.
Syvrek twitched.
The regeneration had finished—but something wasn't right. His body was fully healed, yes. But the tremble in his left hand wasn't defiance.
It was hesitation.
Syvrek: (breathing heavy) You still carry that thing...
Kaelion didn't move.
Kaelion: It never left me.
Syvrek's eyes darted across the cracked battlefield, taking in the lines of destruction Kaelion hadn't even meant to cause. Every demon in sight was either dead or pinned to the dirt by pressure alone—writhing, choking, unable to breathe beneath the weight of Kaelion's presence.
Syvrek gritted his teeth.
Syvrek: That sword... that pressure... You really haven't changed.
Kaelion stepped forward. Once.
The ground groaned in protest. The crack widened beneath him like the land itself refused to bear his step.
Kaelion: You have.
He glanced at Syvrek—not with pity. With fact.
Kaelion: I remember a time you spoke with pride. With principle. Now you're just screaming.
Syvrek's fingers tightened around his blade, fury leaking from his voice.
Syvrek: Shut the hell up.
Kaelion: No.
Another step.
More demons were crushed into the ground, their bodies curling in on themselves like dying stars. Their screams were muffled—by dirt, by blood, by the sheer force of spiritual gravity that Kaelion carried like a crown.
Syvrek snapped.
He lunged forward, blade blazing, screaming through his teeth.
Syvrek: DON'T LOOK DOWN ON ME!!!
But Kaelion didn't move.
Not yet.
Syvrek closed the distance in less than a blink, blade screaming downward—
And Kaelion finally shifted.
One tilt of his sword.
That was all.
Steel met steel—and Syvrek's entire body stopped like he'd hit an invisible wall made of history. The impact didn't push him back. It didn't knock him away.
It froze him.
Kaelion's sword didn't block—it judged.
Syvrek's knees bent. His spine compressed. His arms shook from trying to push down with all his might, and Kaelion hadn't even lifted his blade past his waist.
Kaelion: You're swinging like someone who doesn't know who they are anymore.
Syvrek roared and kicked off the ground, pulling back and rotating mid-air to try and strike from behind—
Kaelion turned his wrist.
Just his wrist.
His sword followed.
And Syvrek was flung across the battlefield like a ragdoll hit by a hurricane.
He slammed into a mountain of corpses, crushing dozens of his own dead behind him. Smoke billowed. The air sucked inward.
Kaelion exhaled through his nose. Barely audible.
Dark, watching from the top of a shattered spire far behind, blinked twice.
Dark: (thinking) I knew he was strong... but this strong?
Igor stood beside him. Still. Silent.
Dark: (thinking) No... this isn't even a fight.
Dark: (aloud) This is what it looks like when one Emperor reminds the world why his title still matters.
Kaelion began walking again, dragging his blade against the stone. The screech of it wasn't steel on rock.
It was time grinding against inevitability.
Syvrek rose, coughing black blood.
Syvrek: (spitting) You think this ends with me? You think Hell bends to you now?
Kaelion didn't respond.
He raised his blade fully—just once.
The pressure multiplied.
Every mountain in a 5-mile radius cracked at the base. Lava boiled from the trenches nearby, screaming into the air as if Hell itself was being scalded. Syvrek stumbled, his legs buckling beneath the weight of that single action.
Kaelion: No, Syvrek. I don't think Hell bends to me.
Kaelion: I know it does.
And then he moved.
The clash came—not in an instant, but in a thunderstorm of precision. Kaelion's first strike carved through Syvrek's blade like it was made of bone. The weapon split diagonally, shards flying in every direction. Before Syvrek could even react, the second strike followed—slashing across his chest with a blow that didn't cut just flesh, but willpower.
Syvrek fell to one knee, coughing blood, chest heaving. He tried to form words—but there was no air left in his lungs.
Kaelion walked closer, blade resting across his shoulder.
Kaelion: Still think you're the one choosing who dies today?
Syvrek glared upward, one eye swollen, one arm limp, fury giving way to desperation.
Syvrek: You... bastard...
Kaelion raised his blade again—
And just as the final blow was about to land—
Another presence descended—crushing everything in its path. Even Kaelion... felt it. Heavily.
To be continued...
End Of Arc 5 Chapter 20.