Chapter 173
173 The Horde
Somewhere on the main continent of the first demon realm, one humanoid demon with a scrawny-looking body that showed the bones on some parts of his body was currently standing on a seemingly vast endless plain where there was nothing but grass or tall grass everywhere the eyes looked to.
The scrawny humanoid demon was in the middle of doing something else when he suddenly stopped whatever he was doing and froze in place. There was this sudden tugging feeling in his chest as if telling the scrawny demon that something had happened.
And for a humanoid demon that had actually lived long enough and had a lot of experience living as a demon, the scrawny humanoid demon knew that the tugging feeling that he felt wasn’t actually coming from his heart but was actually his soul.
The tugging feeling that he felt was exactly as described, it had told him that something major and very significant had happened. He had made contracts with the other humanoid demons that came to the first demon realm, and the contracts that he made with all of them had made it so that he would know if they had perished from this realm.
And that tugging feeling was the sign that one of them, a human from the deeper realms, did really die in the first demon realm where the native demons hadn’t even evolved once.
‘Who and what had killed that guy?’ The scrawny demon thought to himself as he checked the other contracts with the other humanoid demons to identify which one of the contracts had disappeared, signaling the contractee that signed the contract had died.
Out of the few of them that had come to the first demon realm by paying a very great price in order to achieve the greater goal of their organization in the deeper realm, the humanoid demon that had just died was not the strength-wise weakest out of them.
However, the humanoid demon in question was the one who wasn’t too bright on the brains and lacked the ability to back that weakness up.
There was someone who was weaker than him in terms of strength, but the other’s mind was more brilliant, making it slightly harder to defeat the other one instead of the demon that had just died.
.....
‘His affinity and spells were only the darkness elemental, which was a huge disadvantage, but with his evolved physic and the ability to fly, he should be able to run away anywhere he wanted to unless there was a speed-type variant demon or a bird-type demonic beast chasing after him...’
‘But he wasn’t that dumb. He wouldn’t cause any problems with any demons that would be a great danger to himself. Let alone a calamity-type variant, even he had cleared out the demonic beasts that lived beside his base that had even the slightest potential to be able to become a danger to his life.’
‘I just can’t imagine what had caused him to...’
As the scrawny humanoid demon was thinking about the possibilities and the reasons why one of them could die in the first demon realm even with their current strength, a thought then crossed his mind.
‘Don’t say that they had noticed what we were doing and also sent people here to stop us!?’
“No.” The scrawny demon muttered out loud after giving his earlier assumption a little thought.
‘They didn’t care about anything else other than the happenings in that realm and the deeper realms. The chance of them realizing us doing this is very minuscule. And they wouldn’t give a single care about some demons going back to ascend the realm instead of descending it...’
‘But then again... Who had caused this? A calamity-type variant is the most likely candidate, but there weren’t so many of them in the first place and most of them had been identified and marked as a danger zone. That fool wouldn’t go into a danger zone even if he was ordered to.’
‘Does this realm really have that many calamity-type variants? There was even one on an island in the middle of nowhere, and now another had suddenly just popped out of the ground and killed one of us?’
‘Well, I guess I will just go to his base and see things for myself.’
‘But it would be later though. For now...’
*rumble*
When the scrawny demon wanted to continue his train of thought, the earth beneath his feet began to tremble slightly and it caught his attention, making him cease his thought about the death of the humanoid demon. And as more time passed, the slight tremble had become stronger, now becoming very noticeable that you could feel the vibration running up his feet, up to his body.
However, even with the sudden unknown occurrence, the scrawny humanoid demon didn’t say anything nor did he look surprised. Instead, it seemed like the scrawny humanoid demon had been waiting for it as he began looking around everywhere, searching for the source of the vibration.
The scrawny humanoid demon then opened up his wings and sent his nether through them before flapping it, pushing his body up to the sky and keeping his body floating up there.
With his body floating up in the sky and the plain that he was in being relatively flat, it didn’t take him too long to find out the source that had caused the earth to tremble.
From the horizon, several demons of all kinds, humanoid demons, demonic beasts, and even a few variant types here and there appeared and made their way onto the vast plain.
However, it didn’t stop at only a few demons. More and more demons of all kinds appeared from the horizon, seemingly there was no end to them as now literal hundreds or maybe even a thousand of them had stepped their foot into the vast plain that the scrawny humanoid demon was currently floating above.
A horde of demons of all kinds had made their appearance.
A horde of demons that was not a combination of all kinds of demons was already weird and unusual in the first place, and if the horde was made out of demons of all kinds, it would be impossible to happen – at least normally.
However, in some cases, such a thing was not impossible to happen since that was what the scrawny humanoid demon was looking at with his own eyes.
Although the scrawny humanoid demon was already almost certain that the horde of demons was the one that he was looking for, he flew in a little bit closer to see the horde better.
Then when he finally got close enough to see the demons’ bodies that could be said to be ravaged beyond belief and had injuries that were supposed to ‘unalive’ them, yet they were still running strong, the scrawny humanoid demon then confirmed that the horde was indeed the one that he was waiting for.
The blank and lifeless eyes of the demons inside the horde looked dead but the vigor they showed in their body couldn’t be more contrasting to their eyes.
As if the muscles in their bodies were still complete and there weren’t large chunks of them missing from their body, the horde of demons was running forward at full speed, seemingly having infinite stamina.
And when the horde finally noticed the scrawny humanoid demon’s existence, they all had their eyes on him as if the scrawny demon had insulted their whole families down to their great great grandfather and they started launching attacks towards him.
But since the scrawny humanoid demon was flying high and none of the demons, be it the humanoid ones, the demonic beasts, or even the variant types seemed to have the ability to use spells, bloodline powers, or any innate traits that they supposed to have, the attempt of attacks were limited to them throwing each other’s limbs or anything they could find on the ground near them like rocks towards the scrawny humanoid demon’s body.
And as if already knowing what would happen, the scrawny humanoid demon just stayed in place, flying high enough to not be hit by any of the attacks and just let the horde do their fruitless attempts to attack him.
It continued like that for a while until the demons that were at the back of the horde started pushing through the demons in front and now the scrawny humanoid demon could finally see the back of the horde.
One humanoid-like demon with jet black skin, and a body even scrawnier than the flying scrawny humanoid demon that was seemingly only made of bones and skin, was riding on top of a huge wolf that was half as big as Robus.
The humanoid demon in question was situated in the backmost of the humanoid demon’s horde. And it took some time for the scrawny jet black humanoid demon to notice the flying scrawny humanoid demon.
However, it didn’t take that long as before even the jet black humanoid demon could see the flying humanoid demon, the scrawny humanoid demon had already started drawing two sets of runes with his two hands, aiming them towards the jet black humanoid demon.
The two sets of runes then flashed and disappeared before the spells manifested themselves, conjuring two arrows, both of them black and red in color, to fly directly into the face of the jet black humanoid demon.
The arrow was seemingly made of darkness element in the middle, yet there was a layer of red flame encasing the darkness arrow.
The arrow of darkness and fire elements shot through the sky with an incredible speed that it only took it slightly more than a whole second to travel the distance between the flying humanoid demon and the jet black humanoid demon below.
The attack might have been too fast for the jet black humanoid demon to react to. However, it wasn’t the same case with the huge wolf that the jet black humanoid demon was riding on.
The moment the wolf felt bundles of nether coming from above and his eyes landed on the two glowing fire arrows, the huge wolf kicked off the ground and dodged sideways.
And with the wolf’s huge strength and fast reaction speed, the wolf was able to completely move its body in under a second, making the fire arrows completely miss their target.
But the wolf didn’t stop there. Right after dodging, a visible set of glowing runes appeared on the wolf’s forehead before a small bolt of lightning came out of the wolf’s forehead and shot towards the flying humanoid demon in the sky with a speed that was even faster than the fire arrow that it had dodged.
The flying humanoid demon didn’t have any time to cast a spell to block the attack due to how fast the lightning was traveling. But it didn’t seem to be a problem for him as one of the rings that the scrawny humanoid demon was wearing suddenly glowed as a darkness barrier suddenly appeared right in front of him, blocking the bolt of lightning from reaching him.
The short exchange between the two sides only lasted for two seconds. It was a quick one, but it was more than enough for the jet-black humanoid demon to realize the threat that the flying humanoid demon poses to him.
Then with the jet black humanoid demon’s eyes locked on the flying humanoid demon, the jet black humanoid demon gave his command to his horde and now the whole horde of demons looked at the flying humanoid demon as if they had a blood debt to pay from him.
Seeing that he finally got their attention, the flying humanoid demon didn’t continue his attacks. Rather, the flying humanoid demon turned his body and started running away, flying fast with his wings.
However, he didn’t fly too fast as if intentionally wanting the horde to not lose track of him.
‘Well, now that I think about it. Having one of us die is convenient as it would not be too irregular if another one of us would mysteriously die again.’ The scrawny humanoid demon thought as he led the horde of undead demons and the demon that had raised them to a certain location in the main continent.