World: Origin

Scavengers live off the dead, like crows settling on a battlefield at dusk.

They don’t kill; they simply wait, patient as frost on grave stones.

He looked at the people around him and felt that chill—they were scavengers all the same.

And he was the corpse, a warm silence laid out for them like a feast.

Their eyes gave them away, the way reeds tremble over a hidden current.

Concern and “love” draped over their gaze like thin gauze, but hunger glimmered beneath.

They were yearning, and they were afraid, two wolves pacing in the same cage.

He knew what they wanted to hear, the line that would salve them like warm tea.

“Outside is dangerous,” he said, face empty as a winter sky.

Eyes lit up like lanterns.

Then ripples raced through them, a pond shattered by a thrown stone—fear, desire, and a trembling hope tangled like briars.

It was a complex look, like layered clouds before rain.

Yet he saw through it at a glance, like a blade through silk.

“What’s outside?” she asked for all of them, her voice a soft flute in a cold hall.

She was beautiful—hair coiled high like a midnight crown, white neck bare, figure willow-soft, expression gentle as spring rain.

She was his wife, a name like a warm lamp in a long corridor.

“What’s outside?”

He didn’t turn his head; only his eyes shifted, like a hawk gliding.

He held her gaze until hers skittered away like startled fish, until a tremor rose, until shame and anger climbed her cheeks like a slow fire.

He shut his eyes, disappointed, and let out a long breath, a tide dragging pebbles.

It sounded like he exhaled a lifetime of despair into winter wind.

Right before their impatience cracked like ice, he spoke.

“There—”

He blinked, and the storm took him, a night of roaring waves and splitting sky.

Wind howled; rain hammered; lightning laced the clouds like shattered bones.

The boat flipped; water and darkness swallowed him like a bottomless well.

He sank and sank, colder than iron in snow.

Then he saw a black light, a shadow like ink poured into glass.

It was—

“The Demon King.”

The first Hero King said it like a bell tolling.

“Outside—there’s the Demon King.”

“How—” Augustine’s voice broke, disbelief dragging the word like a torn flag.

His snow-white hair flashed black, night flooding a frosted field.

His aged face rewound, time unspooled like silk from a reel—back to thirty.

Thirty—the summit of a man, sharp as a mountain peak under sunrise.

His eyes widened, and in them swam an ink-dark figure, the Demon King, a silhouette like a midnight blade.

The next instant, that knee loomed like a falling cliff and crashed into his belly.

Blood burst from his mouth, bright as poppies in snow.

He fell like a meteor; the earth boomed; petals whirled up like startled butterflies.

Pain roared through him, a forge set to white heat.

The moment his body kissed the ground, he slipped away like silt in a river.

His form blurred to brown light and melted into the soil, as if his flesh became earth’s own element, elusive as burrowing sand.

The black-haired youth hovered, calm as a moon on still water.

His right hand opened, five fingers splayed like a fan.

He traced a glowing circle in the air, a halo like frost on glass, then cut it in two with a raised forefinger.

Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.

The ground groaned, a breaking bow under too much draw.

An invisible hand skimmed the land like a comb through tangled hair, prying out different magic elements and flinging them skyward.

Green, yellow, black, white—colors rose with his gesture, a fountain of sparks.

It looked like seven-colored fireworks, a festival under midnight.

“Element Separation?!” a voice cried, the shock sharp as a snapped string.

Augustine’s buried body was yanked out, earth clinging like torn roots.

Without the shelter of the soil element, his true form was thrown bare and dragged toward Ye Weibai like a leaf in a gale.

“Damn it!”

His whole frame shuddered, tendons bowstring-tight.

He tore free of Ye Weibai’s pull with brute will, landed rough, and staggered.

He lifted his head, blood at his lip like a crimson thread, and stared across the air at the black-haired youth.

Augustine’s pupils shook, a lantern in wind.

“How is this possible— That’s the 6520th Hero King’s power!”

His fists clenched, knuckles pale as bone.

“As a Demon King, how could you inherit it?! No—more than that: earlier, Spatial Shear, Origin Analysis, Particle Dissipation… Where did you learn these?! Was it Aerin?!”

His voice rasped low, anger and fear braided like thorn and vine.

He had expected a swift battle, a brief storm, gather what he needed from the 9679th Demon King, then end it like a guillotine.

But he was wrong.

The battle was swift, yes, but the roles had reversed like a tide.

He was the one pinned, pressed like paper under a stone—Augustine, the strongest Hero King in all records.

He’d been forced to undo the Seals of Time one by one, like locks on a temple door.

Those seals kept him hidden from [It], a cloak of years and dust.

He never opened more than two, not unless the sky was falling—each seal broken made his strength surge by folds, a furnace stoked to roaring.

That had always been enough.

In past battles, no matter how fearsome the foe, two seals sufficed; he would show his fifty-year body like granite under cloud.

But this Demon King was absurd, a riddle carved into stone and then set on fire.

No matter how high he climbed, the other stood one step above, a lone figure on a higher ridge.

He had reached his peak; the youth still pressed him down, steady as a hand on a lid.

One step higher, and that step felt like a cliff.

The strangest thing was the perfect answers.

Every power he cast met its counter like lock and key.

He dissolved into [Aqueous Dissolution]; the youth split him with [Element Separation].

He leapt with [Spatial Jump]; the black-haired boy sliced the world with [Spatial Shear], forcing him out of the Void like a fish from a net.

It had happened again and again, in the span of a few magic-beats, a rain of counters like arrows from a disciplined line.

Their bodies touched rarely, brushes of steel and shadow.

Yet the special abilities flowed like a library thrown open—rare, bewildering, needle-fine, impossible to guard.

Their fight was an encyclopedia set on a spinning table.

If anyone had watched every battle between Hero Kings and Demon Kings, they would see a mosaic of thousands here.

Gestures, flicking sleeves, a storm of layered powers poured out like waves breaking on a reef.

“But how—how could a mere Demon King carry so many powers?!”

Augustine clenched his hands, bone and fury grinding.

“And why do they cut straight through mine?!”

“Why?” Ye Weibai floated, voice quiet as midnight snow.

“You’ve already felt it, haven’t you?”

“Mm—?!”

Augustine’s body locked, a stag hearing a hunter’s foot.

A shadow crossed his eyes, a cloud eating the moon.

He let his gaze drop, unable to lift it, the No.1 Hero King shrinking from a boy’s night-black eyes.

“Augustine,” the Demon King said, his tone a black river in winter.

“You are, at heart, a very timid man.”

“You—what are you saying?!”

It hit like lightning, and he looked up, rage flaring like dry grass on a spark.

As if a hidden wound had been struck, his face twisted with fury.

“Timid—me?! How dare you say that?! No one has the right to say that about me!”

Hum—!

He moved in a burst of anger, like a storm tearing open the sky.

“A mere Demon King—you don’t know what I’ve paid!”

The heavens sharpened; the Void hummed.

A blade without form drifted toward Ye Weibai, slow as falling ash.

A silk thread of fate ran from it to Ye Weibai’s heart, unseen as spider line at dawn.

The 8760th Hero King’s power—[Causality Kill].

First set the effect—your heart will be pierced in 0.5 seconds.

Then anchor the cause—therefore this white blade must pierce your heart.

It burned a mountain of energy, the price steep as blood on marble.

It tugged at [cause-and-effect] itself, a top-ten power among the wild array—because it offered no escape, a net thrown over tomorrow.

Ye Weibai didn’t dodge; he didn’t even shift.

He touched two fingers to his left heart, a tap like a pebble on a lake.

A [Void Tunnel] opened through his chest, a clean ring of nothing from front to back.

The 9320th Demon King’s power—[Void Tunnel]—to sculpt tunnels of Void that don’t harm the body, a hole cut in shadow.

The white blade slid in and out, a swan through fog—front chest, back chest—and flew into the sky, dissolving like salt in rain.

“What—?!”

Augustine’s mouth hung open, shock a hammer to the temple.

The “unavoidable” [Causality Kill] had been broken like a clay cup—no, sidestepped by sheer audacity.

“This is causality,” Ye Weibai said, shaking his head, mild as a teacher with chalk dust on his fingers.

“It looks strong, but it’s foolish.”

“Like you.”

“You—!”

Augustine tried to roar, but [Causality Kill] had eaten too much of him.

His strength felt hollow, a drum with the skin split.

“Augustine!” Ye Weibai cut him off, voice rising like a bell through fog.

He stared down at the ragged man, breath hot and broken.

“Do you truly think that pretty violet domain can hide your trail?”

“What—”

Augustine froze where he stood, a statue in the snow.

“Do you really think—”

Ye Weibai paused, and a thin smile curved his mouth like a blade’s edge.

“That [It] never found you?”