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Soren hit the ground hard, his heels carving two deep grooves through the mud.
"You can't hurt me in your current state," the yellow-robed elder said, hovering in the air. His cloudy eyes were full of mockery. "With the power you have now, you really think you can ruin the master's plan?"
Soren pushed himself up. "What exactly are you people trying to pull with all this?"
The elder let out a cold laugh. "What are we after? Humanity's greatest tragedy is that you always assume the universe runs on logic."
Soren shrugged. No point pushing for answers the old bastard clearly wasn't going to give.
He drove power into his legs. The ground shattered beneath him.
He launched upward again, sword flashing toward the elder. The old man didn't bother dodging. He reached out like before, ready to catch the blade.
At the last second Soren changed the angle mid-swing, turning the overhead chop into a precise thrust aimed straight at the elder's chest.
A flicker of surprise crossed the elder's face. He hadn't expected the kid to adjust his technique that fast.
Soren's arm muscles locked tight. Alastor blurred into a storm of afterimages.
[Million Thrusts]
A torrent of lightning-fast stabs rained down faster than the eye could follow. The sword tore through the elder's robes, but even that barrage of attacks only left shallow cuts across his body.
As the wounds multiplied, black gas began leaking from them—thick, reeking of demon.
"Filthy insect!" the elder snarled. His body shook and a violent shockwave burst outward, blasting Soren backward.
Soren's eyes narrowed. Before the wounds opened, the elder had felt completely human—no demonic scent at all. Now that the injuries were forcing it out, the suppressed power was leaking through. Same trick as the demon sealed inside Michael Myers. Hidden inside a human body to slip past Heaven's radar.
But the demonic energy coming off this yellow-robed bastard wasn't pure. It felt corrupted, polluted. The black mist carried a nauseating, wrong feeling that made Soren's skin crawl.
He flipped in mid-air, tapped his toe against nothing, and used the momentum.
[Demonization – Double Jump]
He rocketed forward again. The demonic power flowing through his body reorganized itself under the guidance of Sword Saint Style, moving in perfect, efficient sequences before exploding out through his arms.
Soren's sword speed hit a whole new level.
He carved through the air in continuous arcs, sword qi weaving together like a net that completely enveloped the demon.
The yellow-robed elder had no time to dodge. He was forced to tank the entire barrage. Sword light detonated across his body, shredding his robes to rags. The impact hammered him out of the sky and slammed him into the rubble of the square.
Dust and smoke billowed up.
A brutal aura exploded outward and scattered the cloud instantly.
The elder stopped pretending to be human. His true demonic form burst free.
His body swelled to nearly ten feet tall, covered in thick, rock-like armor. Curved goat horns jutted from his skull. But parts of him weren't solid flesh at all—just churning clouds of black mist where limbs and torso should have been.
Soren landed and looked the demon over. "That your real face? Looks like someone stitched together a sad excuse for a doll."
The demon didn't rise to the bait. It stomped forward like a walking fortress, charging straight at him. Its black-mist arm morphed into a massive scythe and came crashing down.
Soren raised Alastor to block and leaped back. The moment he touched down he lunged in again, driving the lightning sword hard into the demon's chest. Sparks flew. The demon tanked the hit and swung its other thick arm in a wide sweep. Soren ducked under it and stabbed back, but the blade still couldn't punch through that armored shell.
Wind rushed behind him. He jumped clear, putting distance between them again.
Soren shook out his numb wrist. "Tough bastard. Like hitting a damn turtle shell."
The demon was no real threat to him in terms of speed or power—just ridiculously hard to cut.
"Soren! Catch!"
Nico's voice cut through the chaos. She had been gone since triggering the explosives, but now she was back, hurling something metallic and mechanical straight at him.
A dark-silver prosthetic arm.
"Put it on! It's a demonic power amplifier. It'll forcibly boost your output by a full tier!"
Soren didn't hesitate. He caught the arm and slammed it onto his right stump. Vents hissed as internal clamps locked into place, sealing over his flesh.
He funneled every remaining drop of demonic power into the prosthetic. Blue rings along the arm lit up one after another, power cycling through them and growing massively stronger with each pass before concentrating in his palm.
Still not enough.
Soren could feel it. Even with the boost, ordinary slashes weren't going to split that turtle shell in half.
"Pointless," the demon sneered. "You're wasting your strength. The master sent me to guard this altar. He gave me defense beyond anything you can break. All I have to do is stall you until he arrives. Then every last one of you dies."
Soren's brow furrowed. If this guard dog was already pushing the edge of lord-class, then whatever the master was… it had to be at least a hell lord.
He glanced down at the mechanical arm. The power inside it had built to a dangerous peak. Internal components were vibrating hard, threatening to overload and tear themselves apart.
If he didn't end this fast, the real boss showing up would turn everything to shit.
Soren lifted his head and met the demon's eyes.
"Yeah? Usually the ones who think their shell's unbreakable are the ones who die the ugliest."
Before the last word left his mouth, a terrifying surge of power detonated from the prosthetic. Soren drew in a deep breath and used his exclusive talent to seize that overwhelming force, compressing it tighter and tighter in his grasp.
When it reached the breaking point, he slammed every bit of it into Alastor.
The lightning sword let out a tortured scream. Its blade vanished beneath a thick sheath of violent purple light.
Soren gripped the violently shaking greatsword with both hands. The ground beneath him exploded. His body turned into a streak of purple lightning and he rocketed straight at the demon.