Chapter 47: Demon Extermination Operation – Full-Scale Battle (4)

It was in a completely unexpected and strange place.

A corner of the basement, hardly noticeable, and no signs of a demon anywhere nearby.  

Instead, Soares and Yuria stood before a solid barrier neither of them had ever seen before.  

Because of it, they had to wander for quite some time.

Without Soares, they might never have found it at all.  

[This barrier? It weakened over time, so we barely managed to break it. The core was inside.]

Zion nodded slightly as he relayed the guess to Yuria.

It was probably because Zion and Arcs had been steadily wearing down the lust’s main body, draining its strength bit by bit.  

[As expected, Yuria. The lust’s body just lost about a third of its mass. I think there are two more cores besides the one we just found…] 

[By analyzing the moment the lust’s body disappeared earlier, we pinpointed the approximate locations.]

Arcs naturally chimed into the comms, [The second core is 94 meters west from your current position. The third core is 23 meters above and 28 meters southeast of the second.]

Soares, listening in with them, immediately identified the remaining core locations and turned on her heel without hesitation.

Yuria hurried after her, caught off guard.  

“Leave finding the cores to me. Yuria, you focus on what you do best.”  

“Right, that makes sense.”  

What followed was an unstoppable momentum.

The lust’s unconscious will summoned a horde of demons, but they were relentlessly cut down one after another as the two hurried through the Imperial Palace.  

It took barely ten minutes to destroy the remaining two cores.  

“Hah, hah…”  

Wiping the sweat pouring down her face, Yuria collapsed onto the floor.

Soares stood with neat composure, but her stamina was drained as well.  

In the narrow storeroom and stretching out into the hallway, the floor was so littered with demon corpses that there was hardly any room to step.  

Both of their clothes were torn and dirtied in places, a complete mess.

Still, their expressions were as bright as ever.  

[Zion. We destroyed all three cores.] 

Zion’s response came promptly.  

[Well done, Yuria. Just as I expected.] 

Those words were exactly what Yuria wanted to hear most during this long, grueling night.  

Tension instantly melted away.

Yuria’s body had already long passed its limits.  

The next moment, her vision suddenly stretched out as if someone was pulling it away, and her consciousness was swallowed by a deep darkness.  

***

As Frey unleashed magic in full force, he suddenly realized the far eastern sky was faintly brightening with sunlight.  

“Entered Jedo around 2 o’clock… no, maybe 3? Even counting short, it’s been two or three hours.”  

It was both a long and short time.

During his days as an active Awakened, he often worked on-site nonstop for nearly a week.

But that was years ago.  

He wasn’t feeling fatigued exactly, but a strange drowsiness lingered somewhere within.

Maybe because it was the first time in a while he’d been able to exert his full power without restriction.  

“Almost done with clearing everything.”  

Frey glanced sideways.

The prince’s pale face stared straight ahead, nodding with difficulty.  

Even such a small action required all his concentration, beads of cold sweat forming as if a wild voice whispering inside him could take over his mind if he lost focus for even a moment.  

“He really held out till the end.”  

Frey wasn’t underestimating the prince’s willpower.

Rather, seeing someone at the demonization stage suppressing the mutation purely with mental strength was a phenomenon he’d never encountered.  

His feelings were half admiration, half surprise.  

“Just hold on a bit longer. Almost all the monsters are cleared, and that Nadja or whatever witch thing should be finished soon too.”  

“I told you I’m fine. More importantly, focus. A few monsters still remain.”  

“That little lot? I can take care of them just by glaring. You’ve been working hard all night, get some rest.”  

“Cut the irresponsible talk. If anyone dies because of that, I’ll never forgive you. Next is south. Don’t slack off, get moving!”  

Frey chuckled at the fierce threat but obediently followed the prince’s orders.

After all, he acknowledged the prince’s command skills shown throughout the dawn.  

Frey never doubted he’d make mistakes against mere monsters, even if in numbers.

But none of those monsters ever even approached the city walls, thanks entirely to the prince’s leadership.  

Supporters fighting in the defensive battle had to spend a sleepless, tedious night behind makeshift barricades inside the walls until dawn.  

“I wish we had someone like this as Zion’s comrade. There’s no one to act as a brain with a broad perspective on the battlefield.”  

If the prince weren’t bound by his duty to support the empire, Frey would have actively tried to recruit him.

He was that talented.  

Suppressing his regrets, Frey looked at the colossal Imperial Palace writhing against the backlight of the rising sun.  

“All cleared here. I wonder how much is left on the other side.”  

***

“Ah… ugh…”  

A thick groan came from the floor.

Black liquid, thick and sticky like rotten mud, had pooled at Zion’s feet.

He stepped back several paces to avoid touching it.  

The lust was at the center of that black pool.

Whether it was right to even call it ‘lust’ was questionable.  

Now that all three hidden cores scattered throughout the Imperial Palace had been destroyed, the lust was reduced to a grotesquely shrunken mass of flesh no bigger than a head, with barely recognizable facial features.  

“Cough, cough… ah, no, not like this… kehek…”  

With every cough, thick black liquid dripped out.

Dark tears streamed down from its barely functioning eyes.

Zion looked on with conflicted feelings.  

When the first core was destroyed and a third of its body disappeared, the lust collapsed weakly, and black liquid began pouring out from its entire body.  

It was as if it was vomiting up all the negative emotions it had fed on from humans until now.  

There was no way to approach without stepping into the black liquid on the floor.

Arcs warned it was best not to touch it either.  

A strange standoff ensued as the lust writhed in pain, spewing the black liquid.

Meanwhile, Yuria and Soares smoothly destroyed the other two cores.  

The grotesque mass of flesh was all that remained.  

It was not fully dead yet.

But it looked so weak and pitiful that finishing it off didn’t seem necessary.  

“Zion, don’t let your guard down. Don’t pity it.”  

“I’m not pitying it. But I might have been careless…”  

Zion closed his eyes tightly and steadied himself.  

At that moment, a sharp gunshot rang out.

Without hesitation, Arcs fired one of her weapons she’d been aiming since she finished speaking.  

“Damn.”  

Arcs frowned with a dull expression as she observed the result.

Just before the heavy-caliber armor-piercing round could tear the flesh apart, the black liquid from the floor surged up, swallowed the bullet, and sank back down as if nothing happened.  

After several more attempts, Arcs grimaced faintly.  

“It looks like it’ll lose power and die on its own if left alone…”  

As Arcs shook her head, an unexpected event occurred.

The black liquid pooled on the floor began to be sucked back into the lust’s remaining flesh.  

Zion sensed it instinctively—the brief moment when the lust absorbed all the liquid was the perfect opportunity to strike its death blow.  

“Hoo…”  

Zion lowered his stance and aimed the tip of his sword straight.  

‘A stab piercing through the shortest distance at the highest speed.’  

He calmed his mind and waited for the right timing.

It didn’t take long.

Zion’s eyes flashed sharply.

His body shot through space like an arrow.  

The speed was so fast even sound lagged behind.

Just as he was certain the silent stab had pierced the lust’s body—  

“Kang!”  

A sharp metallic clang rang out as the blade missed its target and plunged deeply into the stone floor.  

Zion scowled fiercely, staring at the now spotless floor.  

The lust must have squeezed out its last strength.

He could smell the demon’s scent staggering away from the Imperial Palace.  

The enemy was retreating.  

***

“This can’t be. This can’t be. This can’t happen.”  

The lust no longer had any real reason or consciousness.

What drove it now was an extremely simple yet overwhelmingly strong survival instinct.  

“I can’t die like this. Not here. I don’t want to die…!”  

The only fortunate thing was that the Soul Fusion Power instinctively absorbed at the last moment was rapidly regenerating her lost flesh.  

It was closer to rebirth than regeneration.  

Whether the lust reborn this way could still be called the same being was questionable.

But she, who only had instinct left, didn’t care about such complicated matters.  

“Ha. I don’t know whether to call this lucky or just damn unlucky.”  

A voice came from above her.

A being with power as vast as the difference between a firefly and the sun was nearby compared to her current state.  

She writhed desperately, trying to flee on the spot.  

“Where do you think you’re going?”  

For Frey, it was as if she were standing still.  

Lightning chains shot from his fingertips, binding the repulsively mutated mass that had barely regenerated into an unrecognizable abomination.  

Frey dragged the lust down to the surface, where the prince stood waiting.  

“That grotesque creature… creature? What the hell is it? Is it even alive?”  

“That’s the one you’ve been searching for so desperately.”  

With a squelch, Frey threw the chained mass onto the floor carelessly.  

The prince looked down at it with a confused expression, then, realizing what it was, his eyes widened.  

“Damn it. This is Nadja… the witch? Please tell me I heard wrong.”  

“Of course, your highness understands quickly, as expected.”  

“Damn it!”  

The prince swore violently again, trembling as he glared at the lust.  

The demon who had ruled the empire at will for forty years, leaving countless victims through all sorts of brutal means—was this really what she was?  

His anger instantly surged past the breaking point, replaced not by fury but by utter emptiness.  

“You’re mistaken if you think this is what demons are really like. This is just like a lizard that cuts off its tail to escape a predator. Zion came at the very last moment and caught it off guard. Arcs too, even though she was right next to Zion. How long has it been since she retired? She’s too out of practice.”  

“Yeah. Anyway, this is Nadja, right?”  

Drawing a practical-looking but more self-defense than combat longsword from his waist, the prince spoke in a dark tone.  

Frey shrugged and took a few steps back, silently acknowledging the prince’s effort after all they’d been through.  

The prince glared at the lust with burning eyes, raised his sword high, and the next moment—”crack.”

“It’s over.”  

Frey muttered indifferently, then suddenly raised his head and stared intently at the distant northern sky.  

The prince looked exhausted as if all his energy had been drained by just a single sword strike.  

He gazed blankly at the flesh that had started turning pitch black, then, noticing Frey looking toward the north, gave a puzzled expression.  

“Is there something over there?”  

“…Nothing. I must have been mistaken.”  

Frey replied calmly, then turned to look east.  

The sky was clearly brightening, shining down on Jedo.  

“Let’s head back. We need to clean up Jedo. Prince, it’s a task only you can do.”