The old man walked toward the castle gate without hesitation, not even looking back, as if there were no need to confirm anything.
If I left the range of his aura, the demonic energy he had been holding back would obviously rush at me again, so I followed close behind him.
Still, sticking too close to the old man would look rather odd, and if I stayed right beside him, I might get caught up in his battle, so I maintained a certain distance.
After all, I had once heard from someone reliable that in battles between Masters, craters large and small appearing was an everyday occurrence, and even if mountains weren’t sliced apart, their overall height was often reduced.
I had to keep at least this much distance.
If I stayed too close and got swept into the old man’s fight, I would be one hundred percent dead. Or fatally wounded, at the very least.
But perhaps I had been too conscious of that.
When the demonic energy suddenly pushed hard against the old man’s aura, it brushed lightly against my body before being forced back out by his aura.
The time the demonic energy and I were in contact was no more than an instant.
But the moment I touched that demonic energy—
“Huh?”
I was already standing atop the ash of the monster horde that had come out of the castle and met its death at the old man’s hands, along the path we had walked just moments ago.
There was no time to figure out what had happened.
I hurriedly drew up my aura and defended myself against the demonic energy.
“Ugh.”
Then, before my aura ran dry, I sprinted toward the old man at full speed.
Fortunately, I hadn’t been pushed back that far, so I was able to return to the range of the old man’s aura quickly.
‘Did he slow down a little for me?’
The man who always acted as if the whole world was beneath him, who only ever ordered me around with a curt “Let’s go,” had waited for me?
I found myself seriously pondering the unfamiliar question that had arisen in my mind.
Because if the old man had walked at the same speed as before, I would have had to run for much longer than this.
The old man looked at me after I returned to the safe zone and said,
“That is one of the abilities of the Demon Archduke we are about to face. Remember it well.”
After giving a brief explanation of the technique I had just suffered, he walked forward again.
‘Sigh. As if someone like him would wait for me. It was probably just my imagination.’
Seeing the old man say only what he wanted to say and then keep walking, I was able to arrive at an answer regarding the misunderstanding I had just had.
***
After that, similar disturbances came several more times.
But none of them were able to pierce the old man’s aura to the same extent as the first attempt.
The Demon Archduke had probably poured all its strength into that first try, intending to break completely through the old man’s aura.
Even if it had been able to keep crashing demonic energy into us at the level of that first attack, the Demon Archduke would not have been able to stop the old man’s steps for even a single second.
After a little more of that meaningless time passed,
the Demon Archduke seemed to cleanly acknowledge that it could not break through the old man’s aura.
‘The pattern of its attacks… has changed.’
Suddenly, the structure inside the castle began changing in real time before my eyes.
At first, it tried to endlessly copy and connect certain sections of the castle to trap the old man, but it was broken through before it could even make a proper attempt.
A staircase that had clearly been in front of us suddenly turned into a wall, and so on.
Since its demonic energy did not work on the old man, the Demon Archduke seemed to be trying to block our approach as much as possible by influencing the objects around us instead.
Other miscellaneous tricks continued trying to interfere as well, but every last one of them collapsed meaninglessly before the old man’s overwhelming might.
If the Demon Archduke was expending a considerable amount of power to interfere with us, then it was completely wasting its strength.
The old man seemed to be aiming for that, too.
If that had not been his intention, he could have proceeded like this from the very beginning.
—Whoong. Whoong.
The old man stepped up into the empty air.
‘Void Treading…!’
One of the techniques said to be a symbol of Masters, usable only by martial artists who had reached the Master realm.
For ordinary Masters, simply fixing their bodies in midair was usually the best they could do, but the old man used it freely, rising higher and higher.
I, too, was dragged along to the top floor of the castle like a kitten being carried by the scruff of its neck by its mother.
—Bang!!!!
The closer we got to the top floor of the castle, the more countless barriers blocked the old man’s and my path.
But the old man still rendered all of them meaningless.
‘Is this Demon Archduke just low on intelligence?’
When people usually think of demons, they often imagine them as cunning, deceptive toward humans, and fundamentally clever.
But the Demon Archduke’s actions now were the exact opposite of that image.
It should have realized by now that its techniques were meaningless against the old man.
How strange.
Well… maybe these were traps it had set up long ago.
Or perhaps it knew they were meaningless and was simply struggling anyway.
But honestly, while I found the demon strange, I found the old man even stranger.
The fact that he could block all of the Demon Archduke’s demonic energy and techniques meant that the old man’s world was far more precise, complex, and complete than the Demon Archduke’s world.
The world of a Demon Archduke who had lived for so many years it was impossible to count, and the old man, a mere human, could defeat it?
‘In truth, the old man was not human.’
You never knew.
He might have been a god.
In any case, we eventually broke through every obstacle and reached the top floor.
Sure enough, once we reached the top floor, the quantity and quality of the demonic energy I felt were clearly different.
This was definite proof that this place was its domain.
‘Still, the old man will win.’
I believed in the old man’s might.
I didn’t particularly consider the possibility of him losing.
Rather than that, I was focusing all my attention on how much I could see and gain from this battle.
The top floor was structured like a king’s audience chamber.
I raised my head to check the appearance of the Demon Archduke sitting at the far end—
“Do not raise your head. The battle has not begun yet.”
—but the old man stopped me.
“The moment you see that thing’s existence, your soul will begin to be corrupted by demonic energy from that alone.”
The old man said that once the battle began, the Demon Archduke would have to focus on fighting him and would be unable to play any tricks on me, so it would not be too late to look then.
“Kek. Kek. Kek. Kuhahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!”
Hearing that, the Demon Archduke bent over and burst into wild laughter.
“What in the world are you, human? How do you know so much about us!!!!???? Why does my power not work on you!!!!!!”
The Demon Archduke screamed.
Even with my head lowered, I could infer its actions to some extent.
The Demon Archduke was tearing at the skin of its own face with its nails, blood streaming down.
Its appearance was like that of a madman.
The way it suddenly jerked its head up and tried to meet my eyes was honestly so chillingly demonic as well.
“They are cunning. Things like human emotions do not exist in them. Do not pity them. Do not lend them your ears. Humans often entrust their judgment to what they see and hear. Reason and curiosity, humanity’s strengths, are not tools that help grasp the essence of phenomena when dealing with demons. To them, they are merely easy prey to shake.”
The old man was always calm.
An indifferent tone, explanations that conveyed only facts.
That was the appearance the old man had shown me until now.
But now, in the old man’s words, I could feel anger laid bare without any attempt to hide it.
It was surely an emotion deeply connected to the old man’s past.
No one could become that angry at someone who had nothing to do with them.
I could feel it.
With those last words, the old man no longer had any intention of leaving that thing alive.
The only reason he had kept it in this world until now was that he needed time to explain things to me.
Now that its role was over, there was no longer any meaning to that demon’s existence.
The old man’s Formless Sword, made of aura, blazed up fiercely as if it could no longer endure.
The old man also responded to his own aura and took his stance.
“Tespatium!!!!!!!! I cry out your abominable and vile true name!!!!!”
The moment he finished speaking, the old man’s figure vanished without a trace.
The place where the old man appeared again was right before the Demon Archduke, Tespatium.
His posture was slightly lowered.
From beneath the Demon Archduke’s chin, the old man cut upward with his sword.
‘It reached!’
A distance that would absolutely reach. A speed that would absolutely reach.
The old man’s attack possessed a level of precision and sharpness brought to the extreme, worthy of his realm.
However,
Tespatium, without any warning whatsoever, was suddenly far away from that spot as if it had teleported.
It had reacted just before the old man’s attack could touch it.
But the old man was no pushover either.
—Tap!
The old man immediately pursued Tespatium and swung his sword.
At my current level, the old man’s speed was practically on par with the Demon Archduke’s teleportation,
but seeing that thing continue to react successfully, it seemed that at realms above Master, the old man’s movements were at least somewhat visible.
Not that this particularly put Tespatium in an advantageous position.
“Why are you not affected by my demonic energy!!!!!!”
It seemed to have thought that at close range, its demonic energy would be enough to break through the old man’s aura.
But despite the old man being right in front of it, the demonic energy could not touch even a single hair on him.
To begin with, the old man was not giving the demon even a single second to try anything. At this rate, Tespatium’s chances of victory converged to zero.
That thing knew it too, which was why it was screaming in such a furious voice.
But that did not mean this battle would end anticlimactically.
‘Its attacks aren’t working at all, but it’s still a Demon Archduke in name and reality.’
As if proving my prediction correct, the creature stopped attacking the old man.
Then, through magic, it split its own form into several.
Each of the separated demons looked different.
Since it was said to handle the concept of space-time, they were probably all Tespatiums from different points in time.
‘It’s a trick to hide the main body, and at the same time, to buy time to cast magic.’
The Demon Archduke, which had done nothing but flee until now, used its other selves to charge into the old man’s blazing aura like moths to a flame.
“Kraaagh!”
“Ugh!!!”
The old man did not panic and cut them all down.
But the Tespatiums from other space-times that the Demon Archduke had summoned continued increasing even now.
Then, perhaps thinking it had bought enough time, one of them began chanting an incantation.
A magic circle that seemed to symbolize the gears of a clock was forming before its eyes.
‘He needs to stop that!’
Even if it was the old man, the concept his opponent handled was none other than space-time.
There was no way leaving it alone to cast magic would be advantageous in battle.
The old man seemed to think the same as me, for he lightly drew a circle and swept the Tespatiums away.
Then he charged at the one using magic—no, he didn’t.
The place where the old man appeared was empty air, where nothing existed.
‘Why?’
Countless questions arose in my mind.
Was he confident he could block whatever magic the demon used?
Or was there some reason I didn’t know?
The answer was the latter.
“Kraaagh!!!!!!!!!”
The old man cut through empty air where nothing could be seen.
No one could have avoided questioning that judgment.
Not until the Demon Archduke fell to the floor, burning painfully in flames.
‘Humans often entrust their judgment to what they see and hear.’
It was the moment the words the old man had spoken before the battle began were brought full circle.