The Villain's Story

A massive dome covered the entire city of Aror, A dome that one couldn't see through no matter what. A dome that consisted of Spirals of mana and other anomalies. A Barrier that couldn't be broken if specific conditions were not met.

Inside this dome, however, was Chaos. An entire city isolated from all Help from outside... The entire sky was red, pierced by crimson beacons of pure demonic energy. Each Pillar erupted from a sector of the city controlled by one of the Beast Guild Alliance. Each beacon erected into the sky formed a barrier within the larger barrier that isolated Aror, and so multiple districts were sealed off. Only a few areas of the city were safe. Twilights districts and those small ones of the Smaller guilds.

With each passing second, white balls would rise and go to the beacons, and these white balls would increase the intensity and size of the Beacon...But the biggest beacon of all was the one in the District of White Tiger.

That beacon itself was larger than all the other ones combined, it pierced the sky and illuminated the entire city of Aror...a bloody hue of red, One which represented the Apocalypse.

"..."

Alan looked up at all the beacons and approached a barrier. The Barrier to the Silver Wolf Guild District.

He touched it, but his hand was immediately repelled.

"..."

He was annoyed, severely annoyed. And worried. Small traces of Chaos Energy were seeping from the sealed districts onto the other safe ones. Furthermore, He couldn't even see what was happening inside the districts as well.

Alan dismissed the idea of forcefully penetrating the barrier and returned to Twilight's base. The base itself was in chaos. Multiple awakened of Twilight were trying to calm down the populace, and some were busy running around carrying files and items to ward off the Chaos energy. However, most made way for him. He was the Void predator after all.

"What's happening?!"

"Oh god!"

"It's the same as before...THE SAME!"

Some questioned it, and some prayed. And Some relived another incident similar to this one.

But they were all afraid, The innocent children had fallen ill due to the Chaos energy spreading throughout the city, They would have died if not For Twilight using various Items and Barriers of holy power to ward off the Malicious energy...Alan too could feel it. He could feel something within him...yet he couldn't explain what it was. The adults outside of the protective zone were also not doing well. Only the Awakened seemed fine.

He entered a conference room, a room filled with the guild leaders of multiple small guilds that Twilight had allied with and Twilight's executives, including Maxwell, Sabrina, Alice, and Kazikato. The room quietened down immediately after he returned. Everyone inside could feel it, Alan was the strongest one there without exception.

'...So that is Alan peccator?'

'Such power...at that young age?'

'...Amazing...'

Such were the thoughts of the guild leaders present, They all combined couldn't even dream of defeating Alan. Maxwell knew this, he only allied with them to secure more territory.

"How did it go?"

Maxwell asked Alan. He had sent Alan to survey the Barriers after He returned. He had gathered all the guild leaders immediately after the Quest had come.

"I was repelled when I tried to enter."

"...Only Repelled?"

"Yeah...Why?"

Maxwell showed relief when he heard that Alan was only repelled.

"One of my men went to check but his entire arm was blown away when he touched the barrier."

An old man sitting beside Maxwell said, Alan looked at him with confusion.

"..."

'But I was only repelled?'

Well, he was stronger than literally everyone in this room combined. So it made sense that he would be affected less due to his body strength and other factors.

"The Barriers are a special form of Demonic magic, ritual magic more specifically. It's where a demon of a higher rank, mostly count or above can do mind-shattering things if enough sacrifices are offered. This type of magic is made to allow the descent of a demon. All of you have seen the quest...So you should know how urgent this is... A Marquis is preparing to descend." Explained Sabrina.

An SS-ranked demon...A Demon on par with Humanity's currently known Strongest.

Demons were classified into different Noble ranks based on their strength. A B- rank demon was a baron, A rank was Viscount, S rank was a count, SS rank was Marquis, and SSS Rank was a duke.

There were no instances of a marquis-ranked demon descending alone recorded. The only one was the Invasion of Japan, In which a few marquis-ranked demons came along with the Extremely powerful Duke-ranked demon General Azlan. It was only due to the efforts of the Three Legends, Arken Miller the Sword Saint, Oliver Olsfer the Sage, and Hiroto Mitsuki the Spear Saint. The Spear saint had also died in the incident and Humanity had suffered big losses.

However, due to the number of people present here and their strength, the Marquis ranked demon's descent was even more dangerous. An SS-ranked being was about to descend.

This wasn't good...this was not good.

Nearly everyone had that thought.

"We need everyone to do their best in stopping the descent of the demon. The White orbs that we saw going into the beacons are souls, the Souls of innocent civilians that have been killed by the Beast guild Alliance. We need to hurry and stop it now. we don't know how many souls need to be sacrificed to summon the Marquis...Time is of the essence."

"But we can't even enter the barriers!"

"We can find a way!"

"We need to yeah, but what about reinforcements?"

Sabrina became silent when she heard the argument of one of the guild leaders. She had tried to examine the barriers but with no luck. She didnt know this type of magic...She now regretted not studying more about demons back in Shield.

She had tried to contact her family as well, Maxwell had also tried to contact the Headquarters...But all was lost. No connection should be made.

[...Can you?]

Sabrina sent a message to him, she begged him with her pleading eyes...To say yes.

To say that he could open a portal and get them all out of this mess...

But all she got was Alan failing to meet her eyes, he closed his eyes and just shook his head.

She sighed and her head dropped down.

This was a catastrophe...Everything seemed bad.

Everyone in the room remained quiet when they heard it...they knew now. It was all for naught. Everything was gone. They couldn't destroy the barrier nor could they hope of defeating the Marquis ranked demon if it descended

A deafening silence enveloped the room.

But this silence, however...was broken by someone no one expected to speak.

"I...have an idea."

It was Kazikato. All eyes turned to him.