The veins in Arlosse’s body throbbed on his skin.

No.

They twitched on his temples, a testament to the lethal confusion that struck him initially. For some reason, his was a lot more potent than that, which hammered the enemies about to kill Castor. While they gaped and searched the air eagerly, Arlosse gritted his teeth.

No, no, no!

Arlosse’s red-skinned face became redder, and his Spirit Essence leaked out with a fury. After his confusion, realization finally set in. His pupils constricted as rage built up within him. His own set of enemies was forced to halt and reevaluate the nature of their opponent.

‘Why didn’t I piece together?’ Arlosse asked himself. His eyes raced, lancing at the invisible air for an answer. It had become obvious after a point. ‘It was that brat!’

Arlosse’s Spirit Essence flared, rising in a torrent.

The invisible assailant that stabbed and poisoned him earlier.

That enemy he couldn’t sense even a shred of a trace of… was Castor Von Hide!

Arlosse harkened back to when he first met the young man. His reaction now made sense. His surprise had gone beyond the shock of seeing any odd demon enemy. The brat had almost slipped up, outing himself at one point:

What about it? I’m not soft. I was able to heavily injure even a…

The fire in the Hollow Demonling’s being was stoked infinitely as he remembered the sentence. Castor had held himself from finishing it earlier, but Arlosse knew the rest of what he meant to say now.

I was able to injure even a Hybrid like you!

‘I see now,’ Arlosse rushed past a few demons, knocking into them as he searched for any trace of Castor. ‘No wonder I didn’t sense any Spirit Essence when he used it on me earlier. It must be some Far Ji that completely erases his presence. While using it, he resorts to stabbing his enemies with a poisoned blade so he won’t have to alarm them to his presence with a special ability like a Kanva.’

Arlosse grabbed at the air rapidly. He felt nothing. He caught nothing. He cursed and chastised himself while striking away the enemies who kept buzzing around him, calling him all sorts of ugly names.

‘I should have guessed it when he pulled out that poisoned dagger, but I imagined there were more than a few hundred experts – at least – who use poisoned weapons on this battlefield. But then again, what were the chances that I’d just run into the elusive assailant I had been itching to kill!’

He groped and swiped.

Nothing.

That brat!

Why had he stopped his Far Ji? Was it because of its Limits? Or…

‘Right! The Boorish Frenzy makes demons tolerant to pain of any kind. Using poison would be ineffective! He must have been hiding, waiting for the effect of the Boorish Frenzy to end!’

Arlosse remembered the demons he had forced Castor to fight. The ones the young human warrior stabbed weren’t affected by the poison, much like Arlosse himself at the moment.

But couldn’t have Castor used his Far Ji to escape from Arlosse then?

‘I suppose the Limits of the Far Ji factor in as well. He must have been unable to use it this entire time.’

Arlosse clicked his tongue. It was no use. The brat was gone.

‘What do I do now? Should I just—’

The abrupt halt wasn’t intentional. Arlosse’s tongue might have twisted into a knot right then.

Only about twenty humans and demons remained in the area, excluding Arlosse himself. They were all in a frenzy of one kind or another, fighting each other and heading for Arlosse.

At that moment, however, they were all forced to a complete stop.

For the humans, it was gripping fear that slid through them, freezing their muscles.

For the demons, it was their blood that enforced a vicious halting command.

Superior blood had just appeared… right in front of Arlosse. It was stowed away in a large familiar body. It was Royal Blood.

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Arlosse’s eyes nearly burst out of their sockets. He was frozen stiff. His blood turned cold; he could have sworn it stopped flowing. His hearts struggled. Nothing they pumped passed anywhere. Even the Hollow Demonling’s breath was stalled.

“I found you at last, Hybrid,” a familiar voice, sharp and drenched in lethality spoke.

Arlosse recognized not just the voice, but also the face.

Prevron Garldo was quite distinct as a Demon General, after all. Arlosse couldn’t have forgotten that handsome face of pale-yellow skin, with the two extra eyes on either side of it, and the dark hair that cast shadows all the way to his nose. He also couldn’t have forgotten the long scarf of braided human hair that wound around the demon’s neck, and the great bloody battle axe the Royal Blood had used to cleave into Tenet Commander Ryland – the former rider of the white horse.

‘This bastard is still alive?’ Arlosse tried to breathe, choking on the realization. He failed.

Had Ryland’s sacrifice been a waste? It seemed so, and unfortunately, that bore many problems for Arlosse.

Prevron had mistaken him for a traitor earlier when all he (Arlosse) wanted to do was gain the white horse’s favor, and—

“Lord General!” a demon managed to scream with a wheezy voice. “Kill him! He’s a traitor! He was moving around with a human!”

“He must be that traitor, General Garldo! The Hybrid has been feeding the enemy our secrets! Flay him!” another shrieked before collapsing to its death, its breath all but lost.

Two more demons screamed the same accusations before the rest of them were released from the choking hold of a Royal Blood’s presence. Prevron had relieved them all… except for Arlosse.

The Hollow Demonling knew at once that Prevron wouldn’t kindly ask for his opinion. The Royal Blood’s blood-red eyes lanced him with all the bloodlust of a conscious wildfire… and then a wild burst of Spirit Essence, far darker than silvery-blue, exploded out of him.

It was like a bonfire mere inches from Arlosse’s skin. Prevron Garldo, Arlosse remembered, had more than double his own reserves of Spirit Essence, and the quality was leagues beyond his. It was Refined!

There was nothing he could do but die.

Yet Arlosse met the Royal Blood demon’s glare with his own.

‘Not here!’ Arlosse thought.

He wouldn’t suffer death while frozen like an icicle. Not again.

A shadow of the singular attack that would take his life had flashed from the General, but he attacked before it could reach him. The Hollow Demonling didn’t need to be able to move to open his Hermetic Vault and unleash hell.

Prevron Garldo was in range, and there was no better time to slay him than when he was in the middle of launching a lethal strike.

An Immaterial Slash was set loose right then, shy of an inch from Prevron’s neck. In a blink, it had invited death on the General, swifter than an arrow and quieter than a breeze. It was a fierce attack that had yet to fail Arlosse.

…And it was for this reason that the Incarnate was bewildered when the intangible slash was swatted away by a horrific blur that might have been Prevron’s arm swiping across the air at a freakish speed.

The Immaterial Slash was course-corrected, traveling a great distance to the battlefield Prevron had just left and slaughtering a few dozen enemies in a flash!

As the blood of the cleaved enemies too far to see properly stained the land, Prevron Garldo’s Spirit Essence reserves soared by a margin!

The saliva dried from Arlosse’s mouth right as his mind staggered.

“Your phantom blade is best saved for slaying pigs!” Prevron roared and then his battle axe streaked like black lightning towards the Hollow Demonling. It was swung to cleave him from the midriff.

And indeed, Arlosse couldn’t have reacted to the staggering speed, nor the resolve the General fed into his axe. He was still reeling from what he had just seen. Alabas’ powers paled in comparison to Prevron’s!

Yet the Hollow Demonling was a warrior before he was a demon. A man like him who had survived countless battles through experience and caution rather than prodigious skill knew to not underestimate death’s appetite.

A large red blob, taller and thicker than Arlosse, appeared right in front of him before the axe could blow through his flesh. It met the force of the blow before the Incarnate.

Prevron’s axe sank into it, sending ripples rushing through its innards and exterior. Nearly half the power behind the strike was lost through the blob by the time the axe touched Arlosse’s body.

But of course, the red blob exploded like a balloon and Arlosse was sent flying off. He plowed through the hard ground, rolled, ate dirt, and crashed into one of the erect stone protrusions before his momentum finally died down.

The world was darkness and then it was red in his vision. The Incarnate could breathe again, but it hurt tremendously. He was a mess of blood from the chest to the abdomen and his muscles refused to stop twitching.

‘Curse it…’ Arlosse thought. His heartbeats were shaking the world, and with each one, he could feel his life slipping away. His mind was likely to fail before he met his second death, he imagined. ‘That… monster… Curse this!’

Arlosse had summoned one of the red blobs he’d found in Marar’bel’s tomb – where he acquired the Hermetic Vault – to absorb the force of Prevron’s attack. The red blobs had an unnatural sturdiness to them. Lucky for him, they were sturdy enough to absorb a great portion of Prevron’s power.

Yet still…

‘I don’t… have time to heal,’ Arlosse thought. Blood was pooling in his mouth, choking him. More than just his chest and abdomen had been opened up. The intense force from the attack had caused more than a few of his organs to burst on contact.

Arlosse was doomed to die, but perhaps in a more gruesome fashion than this.

“You are a marvel. I had every intent to kill you in one blow, but here you are, breathing.”

Prevron was upon him. His Spirit Essence was easy to sense.

“I’m almost tempted to let you leave this world as a pretty mess. But I think not. I will hack off your limbs one by one, and then your tongue. I will have Malfree torture your soul after you pass on, and parade your naked corpse before the Scatter Bloods. They would love to feast upon Hybrid flesh.”

The General meant it. As he drew closer, Arlosse felt his blood’s flow slow again. Fear set in, but so did a nigh-palpable fire.

‘Come closer then, bastard! I will unleash everything I have on you! One of them will scar your face at least!’ he thought, but he was fading. The world was becoming dark again.

Arlosse opened the Hermetic Vault as Prevron’s steps reached within range. The demon raised his battle axe.

He would do it before he faded.

He would unleash it all!

“Stop.”

A calm, feminine voice was the last thing Arlosse heard before the darkness grew too strong to resist. He attempted to wrestle it one last time, but he succumbed in the end, cursing himself as his thoughts were devoured.