[Light That Shines Upon the Mortal World]—activated...

A magic circle spread over the clouds like a second sky, and mana pooled at its heart until it looked like poured glass.

Warmth rose first, soft as sunlight through leaves; Wang Xiaoming glanced up at the spinning core, its glow soaking into his bones like a hot spring.

So this is an S-class mage’s real bite? First time I’ve seen it. Strong, surprisingly. With a little training… he could be one of my soldiers.

S-class mages sit just under the second-rate gods; most days they never get to bare their fangs.

Today, with Daemons swarming like locusts, the elder had to cast heavy; no wonder it’s my first real look at S-class steel.

He wasn’t a fire-and-ruin type; his mana smelled of light, clear as dawn.

[Light That Shines Upon the Mortal World] belonged to the Holy Light’s gentler path, so there were no mushroom clouds and no craters, just a calm radiance.

To the eye, it was only a circular array pouring down beams, a giant bulb that wouldn’t burn out, a tame sun hung low.

But if you looked with a hunter’s patience, faint blades shimmered inside the glow, like fish under clear water; so that’s the “sword that cuts all things.”

A sword exists to strike.

Light hardened into edges that sank into fallen Daemons, no blood blooming, only a clean swallow, like light merging with flesh.

But Wang Xiaoming’s battle-sense drew a map under the skin; he “saw” the blades scissoring in flesh like a mill, fast as a blender.

Makes you wonder—anyone out there into fresh daemon juice?

“Hey, old man, you think those cuts are clean?”

The elder knew exactly what he meant; he worried only about whether the kill would be absolute.

But his craft was his backbone; he knew his magic like a farmer knows his field, and his confidence was iron.

Holy Light is poison to Daemons: it rots the body and drains the will, even when spread thin across a crowd.

Focus it on the Demon King, and no matter how hard his shell, he’d come away crushed, bleeding, staggering.

So spare me talk about lesser Daemons; they’re a dozen ladders below that peak, ants under a boot.

Numbers pile like sand, but sand can’t dam a flood; quantity only flips to quality when the “many” have weight.

“Trust [Light That Shines Upon the Mortal World]. It’ll wipe every Daemon out.”

He puffed out his chest and thumped it, bright as a genki heroine on a poster, and the sight scraped Wang Xiaoming the wrong way.

A greasy kind of wrongness…

“Ding—” (like a microwave)

“What the hell was that sound?!”

Disgust cooled into instinct; his hand snapped to his hilt, and if a stranger showed, the blade would open a red door in their skull.

“General Wang, no need to panic. That’s the chime when [Light That Shines Upon the Mortal World] finishes erasing the Daemons.”

“It comes with a chime?”

“Of course. High-tier spells come with more bells and whistles than village tricks!”

Wang Xiaoming went quiet for two heartbeats, then deleted the whole exchange from his brain to rescue the spell’s dignity.

“Then… General Wang, the battle’s over. Shouldn’t we check on the troops?”

His mouth stayed shut, but a thorn of warning stayed in his chest, cold as a nail in winter wood.

“General Wang, why the frown?”

“Maybe it’s just me… feels like something’s off about those Daemons.”

“Don’t overthink it. The Daemons are absolutely gone. Don’t you trust an S-class mage? I don’t sense danger at all. You’re just tired.”

Tch. A support-heavy caster won’t smell a knife in the dark. But… am I just tired? Please let it be that…

“All units, hear me!”

He buried his unrest under a smile, like a lantern hidden in the sleeve, because soldiers need warmth more than worry.

“The battle’s done! We won! We lost people, and all we can do is honor them and wish them rest.”

“So stop flogging yourselves with ‘I failed to protect them.’ Put memorials aside for now. Tonight, we celebrate victory, so…”

Wang Xiaoming pulled his gaze from the bodies like lifting it from ice, and looked at the restless ranks; a cold face cracked into a thin spring thaw.

“Tonight, we eat barbecue!”

“Whoooo!”

The roar hit like thunder off cliffs, and for a moment they set comrades and scars on the shelf; the only order now was simple—go eat meat.

Hope I’m just tired…

He told himself that one last time, set the unease down like a stone, and let it sink out of sight.