Morning in the new world greeted Izayoi not with the hum of the city, but with dampness and the screeching of an unknown bird that, judging by the volume, was trying to compete with an air raid siren.
"Ten points for volume, zero for musical ear," Izayoi commented, squeamishly shaking the dew off his blazer sleeve.
He had been walking northeast for several hours. The forest was gradually changing: the giant trees were retreating, giving way to rocky hills and waist-high grass. And the further he advanced, the more distinct the sensation of war became.
It wasn't anything explicit. No banners on the horizon. But the wind carried a heavy, greasy scent of burning. The ground was scarred with traces: deep gouges, as if from explosions, and ruts from heavy wheels.
"Civilization is somewhere nearby," Izayoi concluded, kicking a broken blade out of the dirt with the toe of his boot. The sword was crude, jagged. "And judging by the quality of this scrap metal, technological progress here is stuck in a deep ditch."
Suddenly, the wind shifted, bringing a new sound with it. Not the cry of a beast, but the rhythmic clang of metal and desperate, choking screams.
Izayoi stopped. He tilted his head slightly, and his cat-ear headphones shifted a bit on his neck. For him, it was a habitual accessory, but for any observer in this world, they would look like an outlandish, perhaps magical instrument.
"About two kilometers," he estimated, analyzing the acoustics. "Sounds like a brawl. I hope I find someone there who won't fall apart from a single hit."
The earth beneath his feet exploded in a fountain of mud—he launched himself forward. The youth's silhouette blurred, vanishing faster than the eye could track the movement.
The village, the name of which no longer mattered, was living out its final minutes.
It was a small settlement on the border: the palisade was smashed to splinters, and half the houses were blazing merrily, throwing pillars of black smoke into the sky.
In the center of the square, surrounded by a ring of fire and bodies, the survivors huddled together. They were defended by three knights in dented, bloody plate armor. They could barely stand, but they continued to hold their shields, shielding the women and children.
And around them, savoring the moment, stood them.
Demons.
There were five of them. Humanoid figures with pale skin and horns growing straight from their foreheads. They were dressed in long, exquisite robes that looked grotesquely clean against the backdrop of the surrounding filth and blood.
"What a senseless waste of energy," said the one standing in front. A tall demon with a cane topped with a large crimson stone. "You humans cling to life so desperately. Why?"
He spoke the human language clearly, but there was no life in his voice. It was an imitation of emotion, cold and hollow.
"Leave us alone!" rasped one of the knights, spitting blood. "We gave you the livestock! We did not resist!"
The demon tilted his head to the side. His face expressed the polite bewilderment of a being looking at a talking piece of meat.
"Need? We need nothing," he smiled, and that smile was more terrifying than any snarl. "We are simply... clearing space. You burn weeds in your fields, do you not? We are doing the same. It is not malice. It is simply the order of things."
He lazily raised his cane. The crimson stone flared, and the air around it began to melt from the heat.
"Ignis Vermis."
It was high-tier fire magic. A stream of plasma, twisted into the shape of a fire serpent, burst from the tip of the cane. In this era, when human magic was still in its infancy under the guidance of Flamme's apprentices, such a spell was an absolute death sentence. It melted steel and evaporated stone.
The knight squeezed his eyes shut, realizing his shield would last less than a second.
KA-BOOM!
A shockwave shook the square. The fire on the rooftops was flattened to the ground. But the scream of pain the demons were expecting did not follow.
When the dust and smoke cleared, the knight opened his eyes. He was whole.
In front of him, in the center of a smoking crater, stood a stranger.
It was a young man. He wore clothes the knight had never seen: a strange dark blue blazer with gold buttons, dense fabric unlike linen or wool. Around his neck hung an incomprehensible device.
The youth stood with his back to the humans, one hand fastidiously brushing off a smoking sleeve.
"Hey, Horns," the stranger's voice sounded not bored, but rather disappointed, with notes of irritation. "Do you seriously call that magic?"
The demon with the cane froze. His cold eyes went wide.
"What..." he whispered, looking at his cane, and then at the boy. "Where did the flame go?"
"I blew it away," Izayoi snorted, demonstrating complete disregard for the threat. "Literally. Waved my hand, and your little light went out. Seriously, is this your limit? I expected to see power capable of shaking mountains. And this is just a cheap trick."
"Blew it away?.." the demon didn't understand the meaning of the words, but he understood the fact. His spell had vanished. "A human cannot disperse magic with his hands! That is impossible! You don't even have mana!"
"Mana, laws, impossible..." Izayoi smirked. The smile was hard, predatory. "You guys are so limited. Always repeating the same thing, hiding behind your pathetic logic."
He took a step forward. The demons instinctively recoiled. Their senses told them that before them stood an ordinary human, devoid of magical power. Empty space. But their eyes saw someone who had just destroyed a high-ranking spell with his bare hands. This dissonance caused a glitch in their perception of reality.
"Flamme promised me a world full of dangers. A Demon Lord," Izayoi cracked his knuckles. "But I see a bunch of costumed weaklings bullying the defenseless to stroke their egos. It's..." he grimaced, as if at a bad smell, "...aesthetically repulsive."
"Kill him!" shrieked the leader, feeling fear seep through his arrogance. "Tear him apart! All at once!"
The four henchmen lunged. They moved with inhuman speed. To the knights, they turned into blurred streaks. Claws, globs of acid, air blades—everything flew at the insolent brat in the strange clothes.
Izayoi didn't even take his left hand out of his pocket. There was no laziness in his movements, only frightening efficiency.
A dodge. An air blade sheared a lock of his blonde hair but didn't touch the skin. A sidestep. Acid burned the ground where his shadow had been a second ago. A pivot. The demon trying to reach him with claws fell into empty space.
"Slow. Primitive. Ineffective."
He ended up right in front of one of the attackers. The demon, panicking, threw up a magical barrier—a shining hexagon.
"Disappear."
A simple kick. No wind-up. The toe of the strange boot slammed into the center of the shining shield.
The shield didn't crack—it exploded. Along with the demon's ribcage.
The monster's body didn't fly back. It simply ceased to exist as a coherent object. The shockwave generated by pure kinetic force turned the flesh into a red mist and carved a clearing through the forest behind the village for half a kilometer. Trees toppled like mown grass.
BA-DOOM.
The sound of the impact reached the spectators' ears with a delay.
The three remaining henchmen froze. They stared at the cloud of red mist their comrade had turned into and couldn't understand what had happened. The human kicked. There was no magic. Why did their kin evaporate?
"One down," Izayoi turned to the leader. He was trembling now. Not from cold, but from the realization that the food chain had just flipped. "You're wasting my time. Who's next to demonstrate their uselessness?"
"You... you are a monster!" squealed the leader, backing away. His aristocratic mask slipped, revealing bestial fear. "What are you?!"
"Me?" Izayoi looked down at him, and cold calculation burned in his violet eyes. "I am the one who is disappointed in your 'greatness'."
He vanished.
In the next second, he was standing behind the leader. The three remaining demons fell to the ground simultaneously. Their heads separated from their bodies. No one saw the strike. Izayoi had simply run past them, and the air pressure from his movement acted like an invisible guillotine.
"And now," Izayoi placed a hand on the shoulder of the shaking leader. A heavy hand that felt like a death sentence. "You will become useful. Tell me where to find someone who is actually worth something. Or I will take you apart to see how you're built. And believe me, I am very curious to know what's inside you."
The knights and peasants watched the scene, forgetting how to breathe. They saw the terror of their lives, the demons feared by entire armies, destroyed in moments.
"Who... who is that?" whispered a woman, clutching a child to her chest, staring at the strange youth in the outlandish clothes.
The old knight, leaning on his sword, shook his head. In his eyes, accustomed to death, a faint, almost painful hope flickered.
"I do not know," he answered hoarsely. "But pray to the Goddess that we do not disappoint him the way these demons did."