Volume One: The Devil's Nature Never Changes, and a Dead Devil's Heart Regrets Nothing
The devil walked away from the old man's ruined house after absorbing his blood.
He felt the blood coursing through his veins, while his thoughts flowed as clearly as a river.
(Hah… that miserable old man. Begging for mercy despite being weak and undeserving of it. The souls of living beings are the cheapest things in this world, and his blood was disgusting… saturated with nicotine and alcohol. They corrupted his blood and made me slightly weaker.)
(There is no place for the weak in a world filled with the strong… like a rabbit trapped inside a cage of heavenly dragons.)
The surroundings lay still beneath dull, unpleasant colors.
The silence irritated the devil, for he had never grown accustomed to it.
Every one of his lives had been filled with screams and battles, without a single moment of rest…
He had known nothing but pain, suffering, and darkness.
Even so, his expression did not change beneath the cloth hanging from his bamboo hat.
An emotionless face.
Dead eyes.
And a stillness resembling death.
He spoke in a voice so cold that even the Shadow trembled.
"Is there anyone near us, Shadow?"
The Shadow shook its head.
There was no one nearby.
The devil did not wait any longer.
He moved immediately, venturing deeper into the village.
After traveling nearly two hundred meters, he spotted several villagers working in the fields.
Yellow stalks of wheat filled the land, while the farmers spoke among themselves as they worked.
A boy said to an older man with a mustache and faint beard:
"Good… this year's harvest will last us a year and a half."
The older man replied:
"Yes. We'll sell half of it and live on the rest."
Suddenly—
overwhelming pain consumed them.
Two enormous blades surged from within their shadows and pierced their bodies from below.
The blades expanded and swelled inside them, growing like bamboo stalks.
They became sharper…
and longer…
until they tore the boy and the man apart from within.
Blood poured from their bodies in a horrifying torrent.
It flowed from their eyes, mouths, ears…
and every other opening in their bodies.
The older man watched the boy release a muffled, strangled scream as a black blade burst from his mouth.
The blade continued growing…
more…
and more…
until—
Crack!
The boy's jaw shattered.
His ruined lower jaw fell to the ground.
The stalks of wheat absorbed the blood and turned a blazing red before withering and dying.
The devil watched with cold indifference.
He sighed and said:
"Hah… weak and worthless humans. Their souls are nothing but garbage."
"No resistance, no will, and no perseverance."
"In truth… they are merely pawns for my goal, and pawns are always sacrificed."
"Everyone is a pawn in someone else's hands."
The Shadow surged out from beneath the older man.
It seized him by the shoulders, sank its sharp teeth into his neck, and tore away a massive chunk of flesh.
His throat, windpipe, and tongue were exposed as the Shadow began devouring its "food" in a frenzy.
The area was deserted.
No one heard the muffled screams of the boy and the man except the devil and his Shadow.
Several ghairlihas—several minutes—later, the two corpses had disappeared completely.
The Shadow had devoured them, while the devil had absorbed their blood.
The devil rubbed the palm of his left hand and said calmly:
"Hah… the boy's blood was better than the older man's."
"My current strength is enough to destroy a house, but the entire village still remains… I wonder how much stronger I'll become after absorbing them all."
The Shadow slid back beneath the devil's feet.
The devil began walking toward the heart of the village to begin the massacre.
He crossed several kilometers in only a few seconds, arriving at the main gate, where he found a single guard.
The devil moved without hesitation.
With one punch, he tore through the guard's abdomen.
A gaping cavity opened where his stomach had been, exposing his rib cage, his slowing heart, and his motionless lungs.
The devil absorbed the guard's blood more quickly this time, thanks to the development of his blood ability.
He then struck the main wall again.
The wall shattered, along with roughly one and a half houses behind it.
The peaceful, beautiful village was transformed into suffocating dust, rubble, and corpses.
Before the villagers' horrified eyes, the devil emerged from the wreckage, holding the guard's severed head in one hand.
Without saying a word—
he crushed the head in his fist.
Dark blood splattered across the right side of his body.
The devil's smile twisted into one of madness.
His mismatched eyes widened savagely.
At a speed invisible to the naked eye, he blew apart the heads of five villagers.
He felt nothing.
There was nothing within him except a hunger for power and a desire to reach his goal.
Everyone was merely a pawn to him…
but some pawns were useful.
Others were worthless.
As the ground drowned in blood, several villagers attempted to flee—
but the Shadow appeared before them.
It transformed into enormous black blades, each as sharp as a razor.
Its insane smile exposed pointed teeth, while its eyes widened terrifyingly.
Then it began slicing the villagers apart and devouring them.
One was split in half, his entrails spilling across the ground.
The Shadow bit the head off another person in a single bite, turning his neck into a fountain of blood.
As for the third…
it devoured him alive.
Piece…
by piece.
[One Week Later…]
The village had been completely destroyed.
No one had survived.
At the center of the village, the devil sat atop a pile of the villagers' skulls, his long black-and-white hair flowing around his body.
He held a human head in one hand and stared at it with a cold smile.
Below him, the Shadow devoured every corpse it could find.
At last, the devil spoke in a calm voice, as though he had not committed a massacre only moments ago.
"Killing three thousand villagers was boring… but it was useful."
"And it seems someone new has arrived."
He raised his gaze toward the black night sky filled with stars.
He saw something resembling a meteor falling toward the ground roughly two hundred meters away.
It was a man with long blue hair, pale skin, yellow eyes, and a handsome face with stern features.
The young man spoke in a powerful, serious voice, seemingly unaffected by the massacre surrounding him.
"I am Lin Yuan, one of the heroes… and protectors of Earth."
"State your name, you who stand there."
The devil smiled mockingly.
He descended from the pile of skulls, picked one up, and crushed it in his hand.
He pulled the cloth hanging from his bamboo hat back over his face, then spoke calmly.
"You may call me…"
"Scarlet King."
End of Chapter.