No magic circle ringed the field, yet the sky split open into a blank seam—nothing there... no, nothing but light.

It looked like a miracle but wasn’t. From that blank, white radiance sheeted over the earth, combing back the dark like a descending god—beautiful, and dangerous.

Light that claimed absolute justice began to fall upon the land.

Daemons already sprawled on the ground sizzled like acid on a hot pan. The burn ate skin, then muscle, then bone, as if every inch were sin to be consumed.

The ones not yet dead still had a thread of fight; with bones showing, they pressed on. Wang Xiaoming fell like a meteor and cut them down with a single stroke. Then the light took them, and they vanished to steam.

At this rate, the Daemons would fall. But the reek of evaporating corpses would poison the Empire’s outskirts first. It would be a lose-lose no one wanted.

The elder who cast “Light that Scours the Remnant Wicked” seemed to realize it, and he hurriedly cut off his mana feed to the spell.

The white scar in the sky flickered, let out a cry like a lament, then turned into snow and fell. The sky lost its lamp again.

The wide-area purge on the Daemons ceased as well.

Thankfully, those who died earlier had fully evaporated, and only a handful remained that Wang Xiaoming hadn’t killed.

It would be a hassle later to haul these corpses somewhere else...

Relief came first when the stinging light winked out. Wang Xiaoming wasn’t surprised. He was glad the thing hindering his fight was gone.

The few grunts left were work for a few heartbeats. Even if they’d been Daemons once, now they were only beasts to be culled.

His longsword bloomed into a flower of steel, and the pouncing Daemon became sixty-four neat slices.

Maybe by coincidence, another Daemon crouched behind it and copied the same leap. Its bulk had blocked his view, which was the only reason he hadn’t seen it. That kind of coordinated strike shouldn’t exist in mindless beasts.

So what?!

Ants can scheme all they want; they can’t drag an eagle from the high blue. Right now, he was that eagle.

“Rugal Scissor Kick!”

He slung the sword behind him and jumped in place. His straight right leg traced a circle from the pivot of his hips. It met the lunging Daemon’s jaw.

The contact felt familiar—too familiar.

He trusted his memory and his feel. Every cut sends a distinct note through the hilt, and he never forgets it. Steel, air, flesh—each sings a different song to him.

If that’s true for dead matter, how much more for the living?

Even within a single species, the texture of a cut never matches.

It’s what he’s proudest of. Blindfold him and let him strike, and he’ll still name what he hit. It’s sharper than any mage’s “mana sense.”

If it’s that clear with a blade, what about a kick through a thin scrap of cloth? The “Rugal Scissor Kick” fed him a déjà vu taste, as if he’d used this very move on this very one before.

All that flashed through him in the span of a single breath, which was exactly how long the kick took.

The Daemon lifted cleanly into the air, then hit the ground, and its head was no longer with its body. The force in Wang Xiaoming’s leg wasn’t something a mana-starved Daemon could endure.

“Holy Light Arrows: One-Sixty!”

The elder’s shout rolled across the field, and the air’s loose elements knit into a tight swarm of glowing arrows that hovered above his crown.

As an S-class mage, he couldn’t throw top-tier spells now, but simple ones were his bread and butter. If he only knew the flashy high tiers, what kind of S-class would that be?

“Fire!!!”

His absolute control over magic let him send the uncountable arrows with full confidence. He split their aim across the last Daemons, burying each under its own barrage. They lay on the ground like hedgehogs and slept their last.

“General Wang, my apologies.”

With the field cleared, the elder drifted to Wang Xiaoming’s side and bowed, a rare bend of the spine. For one of the few S-class mages, that was already the biggest concession; here, a general didn’t outrank S-class. His apology was sincere.

Wang Xiaoming didn’t answer him; he kept looking around, as if searching.

To the elder’s eye, it felt like mockery. Heat climbed his chest; who would enjoy being snubbed by a kid after bowing this low?

Wang Xiaoming caught the fire in his eyes and put a finger to his lips.

“Shh... listen.”

The elder stilled, closed his eyes, and poured every drop of attention into his ears.

Whooo— Wind, but a wind with grievance in it, came from behind his back.

“Now smell.”

The elder obeyed and sniffed the air. The stench hit hard, the same reek that rose when Daemon corpses were being steamed away.