In the Demon King Academy’s library, four students sat in a tight ring, a quiet table like a small campfire in a pond-still hush.

They were here to survive the summer assignment; before any mission, you map the terrain, like tracing rivers before you sail. Baiyat thought the trio looked as unreliable as windblown cattails, yet they were graduating, which meant a mountain of missions and packs full of scars.

“This assignment spans two worlds,” Xia Zuo said, pages rustling like dry leaves. “One is called Ladosgal, a world under the Panworld Alliance. The other is nameless, unregistered, a shadow with no entry on the rolls.”

“Ladosgal is low-tier, a place without even a Demigod, a vassal at the Alliance’s edge,” he went on, voice flat as a blade. “Not the focus. Recently, creatures called Devourers appeared. They wear human silhouettes, but their heads are a single gaping maw.”

“Devourers swallow everything,” he read, each word a pebble dropping in still water. “Dirt or steel, poison or fire and water. They’re dim-witted; the locals, weak as they are, still managed to kill them with every trick under the sun.”

Xia Zuo—handsomest in the Demon King Academy—flipped another page, eyes as cool as moonlight on glass.

“But time passed, their numbers swelled like locust clouds. Only when a whole mountain was eaten down to bare ribs did people wake up to the crisis. They asked the Panworld Alliance for aid. Investigators went and found a rift in Ladosgal, a wound in space leading to that nameless world. The Devourers’ birthplace.”

Devourers poured through that scar, black rain crossing worlds. That was the source of the disaster.

“So we just close the spatial tear?” Baiyat asked, hope rising like a paper lantern.

Xia Zuo tossed his hair like a flicked knife, checked himself in a mirror that caught the light like a narrow moon, fixed a strand, and said, “No. Our summer homework is… to destroy that nameless world.”

“Huh?”

Baiyat’s gasp popped like a kettle; he glanced at Jast and Chloe, and both were calm as winter stones. So he was the only one who didn’t know.

“But… that’s… world destruction!”

He’d only heard such things in old men’s wine-warm tales; soon he’d be one of the hands on the lever.

Chloe smacked his head with a thud like a judge’s gavel. “Relax, junior. The Alliance’s investigators already found that nameless world is seven or eight parts eaten. Besides Devourers, nothing lives there. It used to be a big world, gnawed down to a small one by endless mouths.”

“The only treatment now is destruction,” she said, breath sharp as frost. “If we don’t, and the Devourers run into other worlds, disaster will spread like a prairie fire.”

Devourers were locusts; that nameless world was their nest. To save the fields, you burn the nest.

Baiyat only half understood, but the key settled like a stone: no innocents remained, no need to flinch at the blade.

“Since we’ve got the lay of it, next we find a method to end a world,” Jast said, pulling a book from nowhere like a magician fishing a koi from a sleeve. It read: 999 Ways to End a World, by Agas Francis.

Baiyat’s mind reeled, thoughts scattering like startled sparrows. What kind of school shelved a book like this?

In his home world, this would be a banned text, enemy of the world.

Chloe flipped it casually, this would-be forbidden fruit in other worlds ripe here for anyone to pick. Then she slammed it down, a clap of thunder on the table.

“I’m furious. That damned professor wants a five-thousand-word ‘Reflections on World Destruction,’ a ten-thousand-word summer field report, and a thirty-thousand-word thesis. Ugh… my fate’s bitter; I don’t wanna live…”

She slumped over the desk like wilted grass, face full of storm-grey despair.

Even Baiyat felt a chill; he whispered, “Senior, that professor’s that cruel… what’s his name?”

Xia Zuo and Jast pricked their ears like cats at night. They were curious too.

Chloe gave a thin smile, teeth bared like a knife-edge. She didn’t speak the name. “The Tenth Seat…”

Baiyat blinked, lost in fog. Xia Zuo and Jast clapped once, palms cracking like firecrackers. “It’s him!?” they said in unison, as if the answer had always been etched in stone.

Seeing Baiyat’s empty stare, Xia Zuo looked at him like a doctor at a hopeless case. “The Tenth Seat. Memorize the Demon King Order List. That’s freshman stuff for you lower-years. And don’t say the name. A Creator God–level being will sense it if you call him.”

Baiyat rifled through a year of lessons, memories fluttering like pages in a wind. Reciting the Demon King roster had been the first week’s drill. Coming from a low-tier world, he’d memorized it hard. The Tenth Seat Demon King was the Gourmet—Dufei.

The puzzle clicked into place like a lock. A professor, divine-class, shaking down students for food? If it was that bottomless stomach, everything made sense.

“My condolences, senior.”

It took him forever to find that one dry reed of comfort; once he said it, Chloe cried harder, tears pattering like summer rain.

Her wails finally drew the librarian. Under that killing glare, Chloe shut her mouth like a snapped fan.

“Phew. Crying helps,” she muttered, then pulled out beef jerky and chewed, grief ground into meat like pepper on a board. Xia Zuo stayed unhurried, mirror-glance, page-turn, mirror-glance, page-turn, like tides. As for Jast… he was already snoring on the desk, a fallen log in a quiet stream.

After watching a long while, Baiyat finally understood. The only one who’d actually get things done was the so-called perfect pretty boy, even if the mirror habit shaved points off his legend.

As a lower-year, Baiyat had weak knowledge and thin strength, a twig in a forest of older trees. He kept quiet and watched. This was a team mission; he had to come along, learn a little, store light for later nights.

He watched Xia Zuo turn pages for what felt like a season. At last he couldn’t hold it. “Senior Xia Zuo, what method are we using? We’re destroying a world.”

He was only at the Star Ring Level. In his mind, not even one hundred thousand at Star Ring Level could guarantee such a task.

“Meh. You wouldn’t get it,” Xia Zuo said, waving it off like smoke. “Those methods are too deep for you right now.”

Baiyat scratched his head, not offended; the truth landed like snow, cold but clean. A first-year sharing a table with seniors had a mountain’s gap to climb.

By dusk, Jast wiped drool and yawned wide, like a lion waking late. Chloe finally emptied her bag of snacks and, with nothing left to chew, focused on the summer assignment.

“So… narcissist, you’re going with Extreme Compression Theory? Then we need to drill a hole. Such a hassle,” Chloe said, skimming Xia Zuo’s draft plan. She called him a narcissist; he didn’t object, which said enough.

“Extreme Compression Theory? Drill a hole?” Baiyat echoed, fog thick in his chest. The knowledge gap was a canyon.

“Yeah. Extreme Compression is our best option so far,” Xia Zuo said, words steady as a metronome. “Even if that world’s mostly eaten, destroying it isn’t easy. Brute force from the surface, absolute power hammering down, costs too much fuel and time.”

“With Extreme Compression, we compress a forbidden spell to the limit, plant it in the planetary core, and detonate from within. The world blossoms to dust from the inside. Much lighter on us.”

“But either way, there’s one thorn we can’t dodge. We have to face the Devourers. They swallow matter and non-matter. Physical strikes, magic, even spirit attacks—they eat it all.”

Chloe and Jast fell silent, thoughts sinking like anchors. They did have serious gears, sometimes.

Just as Baiyat thought that, Chloe slapped the table, sound sharp as flint. “Whatever the problem, we should eat first and deepen our friendship!”

As expected…

Hearing her shout while wiping drool, Baiyat knew. Relying on that senior was like asking a common pig to climb a tree.