Stepping from the wreckage of that chaotic world into the Eerie Tree’s hollow, I felt an instant lift, like dropping a pack of stones.

Even the Demon King’s world beats pure chaos—at least it has borders and rules. To most, that’s just swapping death by aqua regia for death by sulfuric acid. In chaos, you don’t so much live as dissolve. Unless you’re someone like Maki, who can rebuild order with myth-tier sorcery, no one survives there.

Walking the abyss, stepping on nothing—such feats don’t belong to humans. We exist by rules, iron rails and bedrock. You can raise a palace, but you can’t change the foundation without leveling it to dust.

Put simply: unless you say, “I’m done being human,” what a human can’t do stays out of reach.

Outside, the concept of Abhorrence washes you away; a world without rules means instant death, your soul hauled off by Death himself. Inside the Eerie Tree, that “instant kill” drops to bleeding, heavy poison, frostbite, curses. Still hell, but it’s like switching from rage-quitting to a limited-time mode you can barely play.

If I had to rate it: a drop of red ink in a glass of water—stay still, and it won’t cloud too fast. It hurts, but it’s bearable.

I set my congealed Shadow-body on the scabbed platform we’d carved into the trunk. From a crack, molten fire—half liquid, half vapor—squeezed out like a breath from a wound.

Dear gods, real life has no friendly-fire immunity. Kinda heartbreaking.

I rebuild my calves and feet from Shadow, step light, skirt the spots that might erupt, and slip deeper inside.

Dragon Exorcist. Dragon Slayer Rifle. Forward-Strike Cannon mode. Stack those words, and the picture’s clear enough.

Only one note: the Dragon Slayer Rifle runs on her blood.

Ask the Creator what dragon blood truly is. Materially, it’s flame compressed to an extreme, strangely kept mild and stable. Most of Dragon Exorcist’s mechanisms draw her blood and activate it into energy.

Even half-dragon, she inherits the Creator’s final design—built for “warrior,” built for solo combat.

She treats dragon blood as fuel. But is dragon blood just fuel? It’s like refining crude for gasoline, then dumping the rest for lack of tech. Whether crude is “just fuel” is up to the beholder.

If we make it back alive, Colonna’s Arcane Engineers will keep upgrading her. Right now, no time.

Crude application, rough strokes—yet that’s the afterglow of real talent.

As one of the armor’s designers, I’ve seen the original rig. The grip had spikes to punch through your palm, pinning your hand while it siphoned blood.

Now, blood-channeling metal chains link wrist-cuffs to the rifle—ten times more elegant.

For the Dragon Slayer Rifle, blood is fire. In the game, Dragon Exorcist shares one bar for stamina and mana. Slash-sword and pierce-gun modes burn blood to thrust; Forward-Strike Cannon gulps the most.

Flood the blood, activate it, let it burn and detonate in one breath. The intended use: jam the rifle into a dragon, switch to Forward-Strike, let blood seep in and explode. With luck, you blow out half its body and settle the fight—one of Dragon Exorcist’s few hard-offense options.

Now we use it to blast a solidified trunk—overkill, misapplied. I’m used to that; when raiding a Demon King, you rarely get the perfect counters.

In the middle of a “true hole-opening,” Dragon Exorcist glances back as I approach. Blood loss paints dim shadows at her eyes, fatigue like ash at the corners.

“…You made it. Ah—where’s Maki?”

“Hm… you asked a question I can’t answer without being rude.”

She mutters curses, voice frayed. “Oh hell, Maki, Maki—fine, I get it, Maki. So what now? Just—one—more—shot. Like this. I think we’ve reached the heartwood.”

Crimson radiance pours through the Dragon Slayer Rifle, races along the grain like a miniature sun. In a breath it erupts—flames billow and roar, thunder cracks in the bark. The Demon King’s domain burns to cinders.

Above, below, all around: searing fire. The glare declares to any who come—this is a scorched hell.

With friendly fire on, I don’t dare push forward…

“You made it here. So—how do you plan to beat the Demon King? Fair warning: It doesn’t care what we do. I can keep a hole open by burning off tissue that surges to patch it. But that’s just the King’s reflex—like a wound knitting itself.”

The shadows at her eyes deepen, dark tides pooling.

“…Even so, I’m giving it everything.”

This is better than I’d hoped.

We’re like walkers on glowing coals, saved by a skin of ash cushioning our soles.

Only here, flame and ash trade places.

“Give me a gap. A small patch. I need to touch her—her, not charcoal.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’d rather you don’t grasp the mechanism; it’ll weaken the Immunity Privilege. In short: when the Demon King appears, kill her—me included, both of us.”

“You always ask the impossible, Andor, you piece of—” She thumps my shoulder. “Over to you.”

“No. It’s on you.”

My first reflex in fire is to hold my breath. But flame born of dragon blood isn’t ordinary flame—blood is fire, and it burns without a host. The air here stays clean.

Wait… does the Abhorrence domain even have air?

I’m a humanoid assembly of the Shadow concept. I don’t need to breathe. But Dragon Exorcist—her armor’s too thick. Can’t tell if she’s breathing.

Forget it. Just a stray curiosity.

The flames go out—more like they retreat. The red ground dims fast. I crouch and trace the tree’s veins.

A hand drills up from the floor, clamps my elbow like lightning.

“Andor!”

“Normal. Don’t mind it.”

More hands. Men’s, women’s, children’s, elders’. They clutch me and drag me down, dripping Abhorrence, eager to tear flesh for a meal.

“Keep the flames sealing the perimeter. Remember: once the Demon King appears, kill her. Use a sword—use a sword. Take her head—”

The Shadow forming my body is torn and ground by proliferating meat. Its shards scatter across Abhorrence—exactly what I need.

Detonate!

Self-destruction has schools of art. Named finishers like “Heaven-Demon Disassembly,” “Scarlet Saint,” or “Stella.” Or the nameless kind—ram together, fall off a cliff, blow the reactor.

The skill I’m priming—“Night Watcher Farewell”—is the crafted kind. A studied self-detonation, tuned for elegance—well, for maximum effect.

Rip past the limits of a concept, then ignite the Shadow woven into Abhorrence, bit by bit. To the Demon King, it’s a gut cramp—no real damage, but real pain.

I only need the shock.

Sylvia was sealed right after ascending to Demon King. She hasn’t touched her authority domain yet.

The Grand Seal cuts her off from her scepter and authority domain, keeping her from becoming true “Infinity.” But even the tightest seal only stalls a rightful Demon King. In the next minute, the next heartbeat, Abhorrence could rupture or taint the seal, letting Sylvia merge fully with her authority—and end the human world.

Not yet. There’s still a window!

Go inward. Dive deeper. Catch a hand—any hand. Trace it back: arm, shoulder, chest, belly, head, limbs. Now—at the instant I recognize and fix a human shape, I detonate every Shadow dissolved in Sylvia’s domain.

Same principle as a stomachache yanking a sleeper awake at midnight.

I carve a complete body from the Shadow concept—not a fake, but precise and ruthless, built to a Demon King’s standard. By a Demon King’s metric, I rebuild Sylvia’s human form. Not kidding: chats with Lady Light Jade get boring, so I teased Sylvia a lot. I might know that body’s structure better than she does.

So—

As long as the mighty use human thought, they pull in human thought as a concept, human language. So if Sylvia jolts awake for one instant—

She’ll wake inside this body.

A taboo move usable only when three gates align: the user can build a body the Demon King functions with; a Divine Being’s seal keeps her power incomplete; and the King favors human thought and shape.

I tear free of the hands and draw a girl’s smooth body out of the trunk, like lifting moonlight from bark.

She opens her eyes midair. What greets her isn’t flowers and cake—it’s a Greatsword, wet with blood that hasn’t yet dried.