Bang!

My revolver bucked, and a single round spun out like a tiny cyclone, drilling straight for the daemon’s skull like a storm-bitten seed.

The sigils etched on its jacket flared blue like cold lightning, and the light speared the daemon, which unraveled into purple dust like evening gnats on the wind.

Damn it!

I cursed under my breath, slid in a fresh six, and the muzzle flicked a blue arc like a shy serpent of summer thunder.

You daemon bastards! Come at me!!!!

A soldier roared at my side, a man wrapped in explosives like a desperate torch, and he rushed beneath a daemon like a moth to flame.

But the daemon moved like a shadow-cutting gale, and before his thumb could find the switch, his arm fell like a severed branch to the dirt.

Even a quick commander can’t conjure a fatal shot in a blink; aim takes sand from the hourglass, the squeeze takes sand, the flight takes sand, and fate freezes like black ice before the scream is done.

I raised my pistol, my aiming hand trembling like a leaf in late autumn wind.

Regret hit first, a cold tide before motion: my soldiers only trust machines, not muscle; if they trained bodies like the Moser Empire, they wouldn’t snap like dry reeds.

Bang!

The revolver spat fire like a foxfire spark, the daemon went to ash like burned paper in a draft, yet a round bead dropped with a dull moonlit thud.

Call it vengeance for you…

I thought that, then slammed a fist into the ground like a drumbeat from a buried volcano, not calm at all, not one bit.

What kind of revenge is this?! Their death is a tide-foam, and my soldier’s death is a carved stone, and the river won’t return either.

The foe will revive soon, stronger like a storm after the lull, while my soldier’s already boarded the underworld’s ferry on that black-water night.

What a sick joke of revenge, like catching smoke with a net while the house burns like dry pine.

It wasn’t just him who died; many fell like cut wheat when these raiding daemons burst in like wolves through a sheepfold.

A few went mad and charged with knives or bombs like sparks in a gale, and they either got cut down or bloomed into fire and were gone.

I was a useless commander, a reed in a flood; my orders drowned under the daemons’ roars like pebbles under surf.

From the corner of my eye, I caught the Demon King at the field’s edge, a porcelain-lovely little girl with a wolf’s moon-smile and skin like ice untouched by our fiercest fire.

We’d lost, down to the bone, like a boat with its keel broken on a hidden reef in winter seas.

No bridge can span this gulf, and that “quantity becomes quality” line is a lullaby for five-year-olds chasing fireflies.

It’s like a man trying to hug the skyful of stars, arms around frost and nothing, a dream even a fool would swallow back.

Enough—what a boring war game; why wasn’t I born to walk alone through enemy gates like a storm? Why can’t I duel the Demon King like a lone mountain against the sea?

Muttering like wind in a gutter, I stood, and the daemons noticed like crows scenting blood, jaws wide as a red tide rushed in.

I didn’t spare them a glance, but my revolver’s mouth found one mid-pounce like a hawk’s beak finding a fleeing hare.

My finger pressed without a doubt, and the round slipped through its left eye like a cold star into a pond, snuffing it like a candle.

I kept walking through smoke without a map, my gun-hand resting on the back of my neck like a weary branch, and I pressed again, dropping another daemon like a second star falling.

The shot rang my skull like a bell in a storm, and my eardrum tore like wet paper, a sealed thunder roaring in a jar.

I didn’t react; the blood on my neck felt like someone else’s rain, and my body stood like a statue in winter sleet.

I lowered the pistol from my neck and drew a bead on three daemons ahead like lining up crows on a frozen fence, and my feet didn’t stop their riverward step.

“‘Just keep walking and the road will appear ahead’… heh, lies in a lacquer bowl; I don’t even know which idiot tossed out that dead leaf of a proverb.”

Bang, bang, bang—!!!

Three shots, and three daemon skulls bloomed holes like night poppies, their bodies drifting to dust, and behind them a machine gun crouched like an iron beast in tall grass.

I didn’t ask why; I sat by it like a craftsman at his bench, hands quick as rain, and I fed the belt like a river of brass.

One hand gripped iron, one finger kissed the trigger, blue flame danced at the muzzle like foxfire, and bullets stitched daemons like hail sewing a field.

But these weren’t daemon-killers; these were ordinary rounds, human-on-human teeth of steel, a city’s sin cast in lead.

They bit only flesh and barked loud, yet they tugged every daemon’s gaze like stones rippling a silent lake, hornets roused from a dark nest.

Dozens turned to me and closed like a storm-front, their bodies cutting the distance like wolves on packed snow.

Then something bent: my eyes sharpened like a hunter at dawn, and their claws stabbing for my head crawled like turtles in thick syrup.

Is this the last flare before a candle dies? But who knew the last light could sharpen reflex like frost sharpening air?

It changed nothing; my nerves flashed like lightning, and my limbs slogged like boots in mud.

So I’ll watch my death, a sunset I can finally sit and see, a lonely shore and the tide coming in.

Their claws slid into my skull like ice through melon, yet I stayed clear as winter stars, no pain, just the strange hush of witnessing my own end like incense curling to a beam.

Emmm… my name is Commander—surname Zhi, given name Huiguan—age twenty-four, height one hundred seventy centimeters, weight seventy-four kilograms, occupation: commander, like an epitaph carved on wet stone.

Lastly—

Goodbye, you rotten Ulu Empire, a torn banner snapping in a cold wind.