Devour

Xia Lun naturally had no intention of simply standing by and watching the Chaos Demon God regenerate.

Before the arm formed from writhing flesh had fully taken shape, he was already making his next move.

The flames along the sword guard surged once more, their dancing tongues of fire illuminating his figure in shifting light and shadow. The scorching heat distorted the surrounding space. Then the flames transformed into a three-meter-long greatsword, which Xia Lun raised high above his head before bringing it down toward the Chaos Demon God.

The Chaos Demon God remained standing in the void, as motionless as a frozen statue. It made no attempt to dodge. Its blurred face did not even turn toward the attack. It simply allowed the greatsword, imbued with destructive power, to descend upon its head, as though it had not seen Xia Lun’s attack at all.

“Shhk!”

A dazzling flash of fire burst forth.

Yet the scene Xia Lun had expected—his foe cleaved cleanly in two—did not occur. The scorching blade had only managed to cut halfway in before becoming firmly lodged in the Chaos Demon God’s head, as though it had struck a mass of sticky clay.

The flames along the blade flickered violently, letting out unwilling sizzling sounds, but they could advance no farther. Just as before, Xia Lun found himself unable to pull the sword free.

Almost at the same instant, he abandoned the blade. New flames erupted wildly from the sword guard, solidifying once more into a blood-red arc that swept horizontally toward the Chaos Demon God’s neck.

Another muffled impact rang out. This time, the flaming blade sank into the flesh of the Chaos Demon God’s neck. It likewise failed to sever it and was just as firmly trapped.

Xia Lun let out an incredulous growl. He swiftly retreated several steps, putting some distance between himself and the demon, while his hands moved with blinding speed. The flaming greatsword whirled in his grasp, becoming a dazzling expanse of scarlet afterimages.

Accompanied by a dense series of wet impacts, dozens of fiery blades had been driven into the Chaos Demon God’s head in the span of a single instant, forming a crown of crimson thorns.

Just as he was preparing to launch another assault, a faint sense of danger suddenly flashed through his heart. Xia Lun hurriedly fell back.

The flesh within the Chaos Demon God began to swell wildly. Countless thick tendrils of flesh poured from every opening across its body, wrapping around all the flaming blades embedded in its skull before abruptly retracting into its body and restoring its original form.

“This thing… it actually devoured the flames?” Xia Lun murmured in disbelief.

The Chaos Demon God could even devour the power of attacks!

Still, Xia Lun had achieved his objective. He had bought Aina enough time.

Behind him, Aina was already prepared. Several dark-red beams of blood flickered at the tip of her crimson staff, flowing with a dangerous and intoxicating radiance.

The beams were no larger than a palm. They floated silently in the air, slowly revolving. There was no earth-shaking fluctuation of energy, nor any storm of magic sweeping through the surroundings.

Yet those few beams of blood radiated an aura of terrifying power that made Xia Lun feel a fatal threat. It was as though cold, invisible blades had already been pressed against his throat, making every hair on his body stand on end.

The Aina of the past had seemed to favor magic capable of annihilating heaven and earth.

In the world they had once inhabited, this was practically a universal belief among spellcasters—the wider a spell’s area of effect and the more devastating its destruction, the higher its rank was considered to be.

But now, Aina was clearly no longer constrained by such a narrow understanding.

Many large-scale spells… merely appeared impressive. Most of their magic and energy was wasted for no reason, making it impossible to inflict effective damage on a specific target with precision. This was especially true when facing an existence on the level of the Chaos Demon God; their effects were minimal.

Over the past thousand years, Aina had forged a new kind of magic: ultimate compression, ultimate concentration, and ultimate control. What she was casting now was one of the fruits of that effort, though she had never used it against another person in actual combat before.

“Crimson Judgment.”

The instant Aina finished speaking, the several beams of blood crossed the distance between them and attached themselves around the Chaos Demon God.

The Chaos Demon God seemed to sense the threat as well. Its twisted head turned toward the blood beams surrounding it, and it let out a low, hoarse growl filled with both rage and warning.

“He doesn’t seem… very intelligent,” Xia Lun remarked softly beside Aina.

In his eyes, the Chaos Demon God’s behavior resembled that of a beast with little reason.

“That’s because he isn’t,” Aina replied. She gripped her staff tightly, not daring to lower her guard in the slightest. “His intelligence isn’t low, but most of the time, he’s controlled by his urges to kill and devour. There’s little difference between him and a wild beast.”

Under Aina’s control, the several beams of blood sank directly into the Chaos Demon God’s body.

Almost instantly, the Chaos Demon God’s flesh displayed an obvious rejection reaction. The areas where the blood beams had entered swelled like tumors, ballooning outward before rapidly bursting and releasing billowing waves of heat.

Boom, boom, boom—

Multiple blossoms of blood erupted across the Chaos Demon God’s body in rapid succession, like countless tiny bombs had been buried inside it.

A moment later, the Chaos Demon God stood suspended in the void with countless holes of varying sizes covering its body. The scarlet flesh within them writhed slowly, yet it seemed to be obstructed by some force and was completely unable to heal.

A cold smile appeared at the corners of Aina’s lips.

Those beams of blood had all been refined from her own vital essence. Each possessed an instinct almost akin to independent consciousness, and the power contained within them was tens of thousands of times greater than that of the few blood bats. Once swallowed into the body, they would continuously launch destructive attacks from within. They were by no means easy to digest.

It was only thanks to the creature’s lack of reason that she had been able to land the attack so easily.

At that moment, the Chaos Demon God’s appearance could no longer be described as merely wretched. Across the form it was barely managing to maintain, the number of hollows nearly exceeded the intact portions. It resembled a rotten piece of wood gnawed through by countless insects, standing rigidly in the void without moving.

“Is it over?” Xia Lun asked in a low voice.

Aina sighed. “Xia Lun, the fact that you’re asking that question usually means the matter definitely isn’t over.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The Mechanical Prophet told us that there seems to be a rule like that in their homeland.”

Aina did not merely stand around talking with Xia Lun. She raised her hand slowly, and several more dark-red beams of blood sank into the Chaos Demon God’s body.

The creature still did not move. It appeared to have truly lost all signs of life, passively enduring Aina’s attacks.

But Aina’s expression suddenly became extremely grim.

“What is it?” Xia Lun noticed the change in her expression and asked.

Suddenly, the flesh within the hollows across the Chaos Demon God’s body began to grow wildly once more. In no time at all, it had restored its original form.

“Vast power…” the Chaos Demon God rasped in a hoarse whisper. “Delicious…”