Conquest of Another World (3)
The levels of the demons ruling Devour varied wildly.
From those far beneath transcendence to individuals who had grown to the stage just below an archdemon.
Since demons drew power from karma and fear related to their epithets, innate authority was just as important as effort when it came to increasing their abilities.
No matter how hard one worked, if one’s epithet was something like “thievery,” there was a limit to how much higher one could climb.
In that sense, the surface, utterly devastated and overflowing with negative emotions, was practically a land of opportunity for the demons who had never received proper treatment until now.
About a hundred years ago.
When the Gates of Hell opened in this world.
The lower demons who had been stuck at the very bottom of Hell, scraping together petty change through pathetic contractors, all rushed out onto the surface as one.
And once they emerged onto the surface, they no longer needed to rely only on contractors they did not like.
The demons roamed the world directly and enjoyed their freedom to the fullest, and the karma and fear they earned in the process became their strength.
That was the everyday scenery of this ruined world.
A playground for demons, and a farm for squeezing out nourishment.
In truth, if they so wished, they could have driven humans to extinction at any time, but they did not.
The penalties they had to endure upon coming to the surface, such as losing their immortality, were no longer a major issue at this point.
It might have been different in the early days, just after the Gates of Hell had opened, or in the middle period when the last resistance forces were still fighting back, but now that all humans had fallen to the level of livestock, there was no one left who dared resist demons.
Slash—!
“Guh!”
That was why the phenomenon currently occurring all across the world was a massive anomaly that no one in this world had expected.
Demons were dying one by one under the sudden assault of an army of death.
“Graaaah! What is this? What in the world is this! How can mere undead do this!”
And of course.
The list of victims included not only lower beings like the “Demon of Fraud,” but also upper beings who had earned a degree of recognition in demon society.
“I had some expectations because you were called the Demon of Swords... But this is quite disappointing. I thought I might finally get to stretch myself after so long.”
The Demon of Swords, wearing the shell of a sturdy adult man, savagely gnashed his teeth and glared at the uninvited guest muttering quietly before him.
A middle-aged man wearing a black martial robe of a foreign style and holding a single longsword.
He looked utterly calm, not at all like someone who had just cut off one of his wrists.
‘Me? I was defeated by a sword? I, the Demon of Swords?!’
He glanced down at his severed right hand, still tightly gripping its sword as it rolled across the ground, and his face twisted.
Even if he had been wearing a human shell and fought with swordsmanship, the idea that he, the Demon of Swords, had been bested by someone wielding a sword was utterly impossible.
If the other demons learned of this, he would be mocked for hundreds of years to come.
Especially if his opponent was not even human, but an undead...
[I can never permit this! I will tear you to shreds without fail!]
A fierce shout burst from him, and sharp sword energy erupted from his body.
And immediately after.
A gigantic blade surged out from his severed wrist.
The transformation did not stop there.
Fwoooosh—! Crack, crackle!
His body swelled, and swords of all shapes burst out from all over him.
Greatswords, longswords, daggers, and even bizarre blades shaped like saws and scythes.
His intact left hand now had five sharp blades in place of fingers, and his hair had become thin, long flexible swords that reflected the light in every direction.
[This body is the Demon of Swords! The sword is everything that defines me! Your attacks will never be able to reach me!]
A massive monster over six meters tall, its entire body made of sharp blades, looked down upon the ground and roared.
Whatever anyone said, his epithet was the “Demon of Swords.”
He himself was a master of the sword, but the swordsmanship derived from that was merely a secondary element.
The element that symbolized him was, in the end, the sword itself.
And was the sword not a weapon that had accompanied humanity since the dawn of history, accumulating fear over long ages?
The Demon of Swords, who used it as both weapon and armor, was no ordinary rabble. He was a true upper-rank powerhouse even among demons.
“Hmm.”
Yet even before such overwhelming majesty, the middle-aged martial artist still looked unimpressed.
“If the Demon of Swords is like this... then the ‘Demon of Weapons,’ said to be above you, must not be much different. What a shame.”
He merely clicked his tongue lightly and slowly looked over the giant form emitting sword energy.
[Insolent! I’ll grind you into powder so you can never rise again!]
Enraged by that, the Demon of Swords surged forward violently, slicing space apart.
‘I was merely careless before! No sword will ever be able to wound this body!’
The swords making up his body were all tied to extraordinary legends.
They would never break, ignored any solid defense, guaranteed death once they pierced, always brought victory, and could even cut down transcendent beings.
And all those abilities had become his power in their entirety.
That was the proud authority of the Demon of Swords, which had driven countless heroes to despair over long ages.
As long as that arrogant undead was a swordsman holding a sword, his circumstances should not be any different.
“Tsk, you’re no better than a beast. You were better off a moment ago.”
That should have been the case...
Shhhk—
The body of the Demon of Swords, who had been rampaging ferociously, came to a halt.
Without realizing it, his gaze slowly lowered.
[Huh?]
A strange diagonal line crossed his upper body, one that had not existed before.
Crack—
Clatter, clatter!
Along that fissure, the severed blades began to fall away one by one.
And at last, unable to bear its own weight, his upper body collapsed straight to the ground.
Clang! Crash—!
A hollow victory decided in a single blow.
But that was not the only thing important to him right now.
[Keheuk! How! How could you cut me with a sword!]
The Demon of Swords had been cut by a sword.
Faced with that unbelievable situation, he could not help but fall into confusion.
A strike that ignored his authority?
By his common sense, such a thing could never happen.
“I don’t know why I have to explain something so basic.”
In response, the great martial artist who had once surpassed the supreme realm and touched the Mythic Realm, the Heavenly Demon, lightly stroked the beloved sword in his hand—
the Heavenly Demon Divine Sword—and replied indifferently.
“This body is the sword, and the sword is this body. For a sword strike made by the heart, whether its subject is actually made of swords or not is meaningless.”
It was merely a simple application of body and sword as one (身劍合一)
and the Heart Sword (心劍).
Of course, that monster, who only considered the theoretical essence of a sword and was not a martial artist seeking the ultimate of martial arts through cultivation, would never understand.
[Graaaah! No! This makes no sense! For me to fall like this...!]
Those were all of the Demon of Swords’ final words.
With the flash that followed, countless remnants of swords soon shattered and collapsed.
Leaving them behind, the Heavenly Demon slowly rotated his wrist.
“Hmm, still, it wasn’t entirely meaningless.”
The duel itself had ended quickly, but in truth, the process had not been entirely easy.
Whatever the case, the fellow had indeed been his natural opposite, so he had needed to put his utmost into that single strike, to the point of nearing his limit.
In the process, he had been able to recover some of the realm he had lost when his memories were damaged.
Though his level itself might still fall short compared to when he was alive, with the help of all sorts of corrections now, he should not be too far behind in terms of power output.
Just as the subordinate undead who had arrived belatedly were collecting the demon’s remains as spoils.
“It seems you’ve finished. I heard the Demon of Swords was a rather strong individual, but you truly are impressive.”
A woman slowly approached him and spoke.
A female warrior wearing armor so black that not a single speck of light shone from it, as if it had been forged from the abyss itself, and carrying an equally black shield and war hammer.
Watching the black aura rising from her body gradually encroach upon the surroundings, the Heavenly Demon slowly nodded.
“It seems you finished without any major problems as well.”
It was the former cleric who could be called his peer, the Scribe.
The undead following behind her also bore traces of battle here and there, as if they had just gone through a fierce fight.
“My opponent was not such a strong demon, after all. Thanks to that, I was able to firmly engrave the proper teachings upon him. To think he would proudly spout an impious name like ‘Demon of Disbelief’ when our Lord has personally descended upon this world?”
With the words that only death awaited heretics, she shrugged and smiled brightly.
All while proudly resting a gigantic hammer, drenched in an unidentified reddish liquid, on her shoulder.
“Well, fine. In any case, does this mean this sector is roughly finished?”
The Immortal Army’s blitz operation was still ongoing even now.
Like cancer cells spreading through a body, legions of death scattered across the world were tenaciously targeting demons.
Of course, their losses in the process were not small, but given the racial characteristics of undead, that was not a particularly big problem.
After all, in this world filled with resentful deaths, there was an abundance of materials with which to replenish their forces.
“That’s right. Then next would be...”
The Scribe, who had been answering him, suddenly stopped speaking and stared blankly into the air.
The Heavenly Demon showed the same reaction.
Somewhere far away, beyond what the naked eye could observe.
They felt one of two immense powers that had been violently clashing swallow the other and forcefully press it down.
And after a brief moment.
“...It seems he has finished.”
“It is over.”
A short phrase escaped both of their mouths at the same time.
“Then only one remains now?”
“That’s right. That side can effectively be considered the main dish.”
“I look forward to it. I hope there are more useful fellows there.”
After lightly exchanging words, they turned and began walking.
Toward the teleportation magic circle that the undead mages had just completed.
Wooooong—
Such large-scale movement was not limited only to them. It was a sight shared by most of the undead in this world.
A massive current that shook even the already rigidly fixed fate of the world in a single stroke.
And so the Immortal Army, after sweeping through the Archdemon of Sorrow and then the Archdemon of Destruction and his subordinates with unstoppable momentum,
turned its banners all at once toward the forces of the final remaining archdemon.
The strongest demon reigning at the pinnacle of Devour.
Toward the place ruled by the Demon of Infinity.
***
Hans slowly nodded as he rotated the bones throughout his body, checking his condition.
‘Indeed, now I understand why archdemons are called the pinnacle of this world.’
Sorrow, whom he had succeeded in hunting first, and Destruction, whom he had brought down second.
Both were formidable foes possessing troublesome authorities.
Sorrow’s authority rendered enemies within its domain powerless while nullifying all hostile attacks directed at itself.
It was an excellent power for battles against armies, and at the same time an ability specialized for self-preservation.
No matter what kind of energy it was, the moment it approached the fellow, it weakened and scattered away, making it impossible to land a proper attack.
[There is no such thing as an absolute in this world, however.]
The same applied to the Archdemon of Destruction, who possessed the authority to annihilate everything in the surrounding area.
If it had been his subordinate undead, they would have melted down without even being able to approach them, but to him, who had never intended to receive his subordinates’ help from the beginning, it was meaningless.
As the ruler of death in name as well as truth, there was no way he would be inferior to those archdemons.
‘Still, that’s a shame. If the Archdemon of Death had still been around, it seems it would have been quite helpful to me as well.’
In the process of eliminating the two archdemons, he had also managed to accomplish his original goal to a certain extent.
He had wondered, and indeed, traces that the Beoncheon Society Leader had visited this Devour remained here as well.
‘The being who destroyed the wall of the world, opened the Gates of Hell, and hunted down absolute beings including the Archdemon of Death. The only one capable of such a thing is the Beoncheon Society Leader.’
Unfortunately, however, he had not been able to obtain all the information he wanted.
Since Sorrow and Destruction had apparently been promoted after the Gates of Hell opened, there were quite a few matters from before then that they did not know.
[Keuheuheut, as expected, beating down the Archdemon of Infinity will be the surest way.]
The only being who had been lucky enough to survive the Beoncheon Society Leader and had maintained the position of archdemon until now was Infinity.
He had heard that Massacre and Fear, who had also survived, had lost their lives to the Executioner about a hundred years ago.
‘Did the disappearance of Hell’s archdemons after being devoured by him become the trigger for the world’s destruction?’
In other words, the balance of the world had collapsed on Hell’s side first, not on the surface.
With the scales already tipped heavily and even the barrier dividing the two worlds pierced, it was only natural that demons had surged out onto the surface and roamed about.
In effect, the basic design of the dimension called Devour had completely collapsed.
‘If I clear out all the demons that crossed over to the surface first, won’t some way forward open up? The administrator of this world will handle the rest.’
Before cleaning and organizing, the priority was to remove the sewage that had flowed back.
The demons of Devour were beings born from the negative elements that made up the world.
Even if he wiped them all out now, they would probably naturally occur again in Hell after a long time, but by then, the world’s barrier should have recovered to some extent as well.
Just buying that time should be enough for him to say he had done his part.
‘Of course, to do that, I need to clear away those things first.’
Hans looked ahead with black flames blazing in his eyes.
An immense army filled the plains.
Those troops were not the Immortal Army under his command.
[Indeed, Infinity...]
A legion of Hell summoned by a demon.
It was not merely a matter of inflating numbers, either.
Among them were also many high-ranking demons he had considered quite troublesome until now.
‘There are a great many identical-looking ones. Even among those who should have already died and vanished. Don’t tell me it can even copy demons who have already died.’
That was probably not the full extent of the ability, either.
Was the concept of “infinity” not a word with truly endless possibilities, one that could be utilized in any manner?
‘Well, it doesn’t matter.’
However, Hans was not concerned in the slightest.
Because, after all.
“Kyaaaaak—!”
[For the King of Death! Slaughter everything that stands in our way!]
“Krrrrk!”
[Uuuuuuu——!]
He was the pinnacle of necromancers, more specialized in large-scale pitched battles than anyone else.
The Immortal King.