Tap!

The calm sound of footsteps echoed throughout the city center as everything went silent.

Raising their weapons and head to stare in the direction of where the sound came from, the soldiers caught a glimpse of a figure calmly stepping out of the portal.

At that moment, every single soldier under the gaze of the figure stopped breathing. Their chest constricted, and a suffocating feeling settled inside of their body.

"Kahak!...Kahk!"

Bringing his hands toward his neck, the commanding officer gagged several times as saliva dripped down from his mouth. The other soldiers around him mirrored his actions. Normally, they would have fired at the intruder immediately, but under this crushing pressure, none could even lift a finger.

"Khak..."

Dropping down on two knees, he clenched his throat as a long strand of saliva dripped down from his mouth.

'What is this...'

Forcing himself to raise his head, the commanding officer once again felt his eyes pause on the figure that had just stepped out of the horror, and he choked with horror.

That was because he felt it.



Fear.

An unpleasant and inescapable emotion triggered by the threat of danger, pain, or harm.

It begins with your hair standing on end. Next, your palms begin to sweat, and your body experiences a wave of nausea, making it difficult for you to comprehend what lies before you.

The world feels foggy. Everything that seemed so clear the previous moment becomes blurry, and in an instant, your entire body begins to tremble, and your heart beats so loudly inside of your head that it feels suffocating.

Fear starts off as an instinctive and primitive response designed to help us avoid dangerous situations.

…But what would happen when you're in a situation where you can't avoid this so-called danger?

Helplessness.

That was what they would feel.

A crushing wave of helplessness would wash over the individual as they find themselves in a situation where they could do nothing.

"Do none of you celebrate my arrival?" the humanoid said as his words echoed inside of their ears, making the hair on the back of their necks stand up.

Fear was slowly starting to permeate their body.

"Haaa…haa…"

Unknowingly, their breathing grew heavier.

As the commanding officer slowly lifted his head up, his eyes met those of the humanoid, and his heart stopped for a moment.

'A... demon.'

But there was something peculiar about this demon. It resembled a human too much, except for the fact that its eyes were fierce crimson red with black sclera and golden pupils, along with snow-white hair that matched its pale skin, and red horns on top of its head. Not only that, the demon wore an abyssal black attire, which was a first, because the demons were all but naked, the ones they've recently seen. But aside from that, the black attire he wore seemed to absorb all forms of light.

Still, the demon's mere presence alone was enough to overcome a wave of helplessness, enveloping the soldiers and stopping them from moving at all.

"Hm?"

In the midst of their struggle, the demon frowned. Coming a little closer to them, he tilted his head a little as his glaring red eyes scrutinized their bodies up and down.

The commanding officer's body suddenly felt completely naked as his eyes scanned it. It was as if the demon knew every secret inside his body.

Gradually, as the demon continued to stare at the soldiers, his eyes lowered, and he shook his head.

“…What a disappointment.”

There were hints of disappointment in his voice as he turned his head to look away from them and whispered softly.

"None of you appeared strong."

Taking a step away from them, he looked around the area and continued to whisper to himself.

“This is strange. I was sure I detected a strong sense of mana here in this world. Perhaps I was mistaken.”

For the next couple of seconds, he didn't say anything and just quietly walked around the area with a pensive look on his face, ignoring the fact that he was literally being surrounded by hundreds of guns pointed at him.

Coming to a sudden stop, he turned around to look at the soldiers and once again scanning their bodies, his brows jumped, and a thin smile formed on his face.

"I see…"

Tap!

Taking a step closer to them, it didn't take long for him to arrive before the commanding officer.

“You must be the one leading here.”

Extending his hand, the commanding officer's vision darkened as the demon's calm covered his face. The commanding officer tried with all his might to resist, staring at the hand that was snatching at his face, but it was all in vain as the demon overwhelmed him completely without any effort on his part.

“Don’t move. I’m trying to check something,” the demon's voice echoed loudly in his ears.

As soon as his words vanished, the commanding officer experienced an electric shock throughout his body. His muscles began to tense up in response to what he did, and his eyes rolled to the back of my head.

He wanted to scream, but it was all futile effort on his end as his mouth was sealed shut. No matter how much he struggled, he couldn't make a sound.

"Mhh! Mhhhhh!"

The only noises that escaped his lips were low, muffled shouts, and the other soldiers could only watch helplessly as their commander suffered under the hands of this being.

“Ah, I see now,” the demon murmured.

Taking his hand away from the commanding officer’s head, the demon once again turned away from them with a dissatisfied look on his face.

“It appears that I have been sent to another low-level manaless world. Such a disappointment indeed. But even so…” He shook his head and lifted his gaze, his expression growing rigid. “With this world so incredibly weak, I'm just only going to send cannon fodders to devour it like many others. I have no interest in playing around in a place filled with bacteria.”

Although he spoke in a gentle manner, every word he spoke thundered in their heads and amplified their sense of helplessness.

"Oh... you just underestimate us, you little goat cunt," the commanding officer murmured weakly.

“Excuse me?” The demon looked at him with a strange expression.

“I said… you underestimate us, humans, you little goat cunt!” the commanding officer was able to muster his strength to shout in defiance.

"...Heh."

Covering his face with his hand, the demon let out one single burst of dry laugh. The laugh didn't last for long, as his complexion crumbled and his voice became deep.

"When do you insects have the right to speak back against a Duke-rank demon?"

His crimson eyes flashed with a scarlet color that totally enveloped the surrounding area as he snapped his head to gaze at the commanding officer, and a dreadful pressure descended upon the space.

"Khurk!" The commanding officer and all the soldiers instantly dropped to their knees.

Clenching his throat with both hands, the commanding officer slowly raised his head to look at the demon.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

His slow, rhythmic footsteps echoed through the city center before they paused in front of the officer. It was right at that moment that the pressure bearing down on the city center stopped.

"Khuak!"

Immediately after the pressure disappeared, the commanding officer's body reflexively gagged and a wave of vertigo hit him. With both hands on the ground, he began to heavily gasp for air while a single string of saliva dripped to the ground.

"…My bad. I almost forgot about how pathetically weak you creatures are. For a moment, I thought that you were going to die," he taunted as he burst into laughter.

But at that moment...

"Hey!"

Stopping the demon mid-sentence was a loud sound erupted from the distance. His brows furrowed, and his head turned to look in the direction of where the sound came from.

"Back to hell, you demon spawn!" a soldier, accompanied by a platoon of more soldiers, shouted as he fired a rocket from an RPG on his shoulder. The rocket streaked through the air at blistering speed, aimed directly at the demon and ready to blow him apart with a firepower capable of annihilating tanks in one shot.

However, the demon seemed unfazed, or rather, appeared as if the rocket didn't seem much of a threat to him.

As the high-speeding projectile hurtled towards him, the demon lifted his hand and simply flicked his fingers.

Yes, just a flick of a finger, no special skill, no technique, no spell, no weapon, no Magic Item or Artifact, nothing, just a simple flick of his finger on the rocket is enough to suddenly changed its trajectory and veered off course to another direction, obliterating a tree in the distance.

"Very pathetic."

Widening his eyes in shock, the soldier who had fired the anti-tank launcher was utterly dumbstruck by what he had witnessed. Before he could comprehend what was happening, he found himself soaring through the air as if drawn by some invisible magnetism and soon landed abruptly in front of the demon when he raised his finger and simply motioned the soldier towards his direction telekinetically.

"Getting caught off guard by an ant? That's careless of me," his cold voice echoed in the air, causing it to tremble as he stared at the soldier levitating in midair.

Crack!

With a twist of his fingers, the sound of bones breaking echoed throughout the city center, and the body of the soldier squeezed together.

Thump!

What followed after was a low thumping sound as the soldier's contorted body fell to the ground.

"I guess playtime is over."

Immediately, a ring of over 20 swords tainted with demonic energy materialized around the demon, hovering in midair. With a sweeping motion of his hand, he sent the swords hurtling towards the platoon behind him. In an instant, half of the soldiers were cut down by the wicked blades.

But with the demon's attention shifted away from the soldiers he had faced earlier, they suddenly felt the suppressive pressure ease slightly.

"FIRE EVERYTHING!"

Not losing this opportunity, a total of 322 soldiers raised their weapons and opened fire, sending a stream of bullets and rockets in the demon's direction.

The ring of demonic swords spun in a deadly circle, intercepting every projectile with uncanny precision. Even as the demon was engulfed in a ball of flames from the explosive weapons, he emerged unscathed. In retaliation, more swarms of floating swords were unleashed and swiftly cut down a number of soldiers in a matter of seconds.

At that moment, over a dozen attack helicopters, the infamous war machines known as A-12 Thunderwings, crested above the buildings on the General Santos skyline. As they gained a clear view of the demon, they unleashed their deadly arsenal. Bullets, rockets, and hypervelocity hellfire missiles rained down on the demon, causing further destruction to the city center and demolishing surrounding buildings every bit.

Like the aforementioned magical attack, however, the demon survived without a scratch. As the flames and smoke cleared, he can be seen suspended in midair with a pair of six bat-like wings sprouting from his back and was surrounded by a swirling vortex of a hundred swords. He stood defiantly under the shining strands of light that pierced through the cloud, making the demon radiating an aura of power and dominance.

The demon raised his palm and spoke calmly.

"[Twentieth Movement of the Dark Chronicles: Infernal Shadowstorm]."

As the words left his lips, a colossal pillar of black flames crackling with red lightning erupted from his palm. He swept the beam of demonic and chaotic energy through the air, sending up the hovering gunships in a flash of fire. At the same time, countless buildings in the background were entirely demolished, the laser continuing after shooting down the Thunderwings and literally melting through their steel structure as if they were paper.

While the demon focused on eliminating the gunships from the sky, his swords were unleashed in every direction. They mowed down the surviving Liberation army and cut through hundreds of their ranks like grass, or vaporizing them with his demonic power.

Soon after, the battlefield became a chaotic swarm of flying blades, leaving destruction in their wake.

As one soldier fled the scene, he urgently relayed a call for help through his helmet-mounted comms system.

"Under heavy enemy fire! We're taking heavy casualties! Requesting precision fire support on target!" he shouted, but his plea was abruptly cut short as he was run over by a flying sword and got his head decapitated in less than a second later. But the distress call managed to reach the rest of the Liberation Army on the flanks outside the city.

"Roger, request for fire support approved," an officer responded.

Twenty A-50 Artillery Paragons and twenty A-111 MLRS Titans swiftly prepared their main armaments as they aimed their weapons directly at the demon. In a fraction of a second, all weapons fired simultaneously, and the demon was suddenly struck by a rain of rockets, missiles, and shells with overwhelming firepower capable of reducing a small town to rubble.

It was a direct hit as the majority of the rounds had struck his body, and yet, somehow, the demon survived. At that moment, his mouth contorted into a sadistic grin.

"You should do better than that."

Immediately, forty demonic swords materialized around him and shot back across the air so fast that it was impossible to see it half the time with whatever frame-rate the surveillance camera had to offer. Each sword flew and struck the artillery unit, reducing them to debris as they scattered around the field and injured any soldiers nearby.

"God damnit!" the colonel shouted as he watched the demon's rampage on the monitors on the command tent, "Contact command, requesting authorization for aerial bombardment!"

"Are we going to bomb the city center again, colonel?" his assistance asked.

"Not just the city center, we're going to bomb General Santos entirely!" he declared.

"Colonel! The demon has stopped attacking!" exclaimed one of the officers on the monitor.

"What is he doing?"

"It's... looking in our direction!" the officer shouted in alarm.

The Colonel was dumbfounded, "What!?"

As the colonel rushed out of the command tent, he gazed up at the sky to see the flying demon fixated its gaze on their location, or rather, directly at him.

"Are you... their General?" the demon asked, a hint of amusement in its smile.

For a split second, the colonel's heart stopped, and his already rough breathing became even harder as he locked eyes with the demon's pair of cold, chilling gaze that looked back at him with unprecedented bloodlust.

Upon meeting those golden/crimson eyes, the only thing he could describe is that it seemed to be able to see through his very soul. Never before had he felt death so near to him, not even during his eight years of combat in WW3.

"W-What... the hell... are you?" he stammered with a trembled voice.

The demon's smile widened.

"Demon Lord Andromalius... is my name."

Snap!

With a snap of his finger, the world darkened as a massive dome was formed around the whole city. The Colonel and the remaining Liberation Army were dumbfounded in what they were seeing, and noticed they were enveloped in a purple light. Before any of them could comprehend what was happening...

"[Merciless]"



"Hm, not even one had survived this skill. A pity," the demon remarked nonchalantly.

What he had used was a skill to harvest the souls of all living beings that existed within a 10-kilometer radius. The only defense against this skill was to possess soul manipulation magic capable of shielding one's soul.

In fact, this skill wasn't even among the demon's strongest spells, rather, it's nothing worthy of attention at all or impressive in his standards.

But there was something about this skill that he found pleasing.

Opening the palm of his hand once again, the demon made a beckoning gesture. Following his gesture, thousands of luminous white orbs were drawn on top of his palm and gathered themselves into a singular orb that was the size of a marble.

Glancing at the orb in front of him that resembled a small white sun, the demon softly muttered.

"10,000 souls, a little snack for a reward."

Following his words, he brought his palm towards his face and sucked the orb into his mouth.

The instant the orbs entered his mouth, the demon's head recoiled back as a hissing sound rose from his mouth.

Rumble! Rumble!

The earth shook uncontrollably, and all of the remaining demons within the city fell to the ground in a prostrating manner, completely unable to move under the overwhelming pressure.

Opening his eyes and staring towards the sky, turbid air began to escape from the demon's mouth.

"Haa... 10,000 souls are delicious and addicting as usual," he mumbled in satisfaction, though a hint of disappointment lingered in his voice.

Devouring 10,000 souls was every lesser demon's dream, a step toward evolving into an Awakened Demon Lord. But for him, it was nothing more like consuming a quarter gram of sugar.

"I suppose it's time to gather the troops."