The silence after Damian's speech was thicker than blood. The chief's face went from rage to a kind of stunned, heartbroken understanding. His people were not victims of a madman's rage, but resources in a cold man's equation.
The fragile hope in the villagers' eyes shattered, replaced by a deeper, more final terror.
"You…" the chief whispered, his voice trembling. "You are a demon."
"Flatterer," Damian purred, his smirk never slipping. "But we're wasting time. I have a schedule to keep."
That was the trigger.
"FOR OUR HOME! KILL THE MONSTER!" the chief roared, his grief solidifying into a commander's fury. His 3rd Order aura exploded outwards, a visible ripple of brown earth energy that hardened the ground around his feet into solid rock.
The forty guards charged as one. They weren't untrained villagers. They moved with discipline. The front line, ten men and women of mid-2nd Order, had physical-strengthening affinities. Their muscles bulged, their speed doubled. They wielded heavy axes and hammers, aiming to crush and overwhelm.
Behind them, others manifested their rarer abilities. A woman's fingers elongated into stone claws. A man's skin took on the rough, grey texture of granite. Two others spat globs of acidic phlegm—a gross but effective biological affinity. And finally, among the higher ranks, Damian saw his first water user—a lean, focused man at the back who began weaving his hands, pulling moisture from the air to form shimmering, razor-edged disks of water.
Interesting.
But not enough.
As the first wave of strengthened brutes closed in, Damian didn't retreat. He clapped his hands together, a sharp, final sound.
[Activating: Shadow God Technique - First Form: Fiend.]
The change was instant and horrific.
Shadow erupted from his skin, not as a mist, but as a living, hungry darkness. It coiled around his limbs, solidifying into an incomplete, jagged armor of pure black that covered his chest, shoulders, and arms like the carapace of a demonic insect. From his forehead, two curved, wicked horns of shadow spiraled out. His fingers elongated into vicious black claws that dripped with drops of liquid night.
His aura didn't just change; it inverted. The pressure of the chief's earth affinity was suddenly pushed back by a chilling, devouring void. The temperature in the square plummeted.
The eyes of the charging guards widened in pure, instinctual horror. They weren't looking at a man anymore.
The village chief's furious expression froze. His eyes locked on Damian's transformed silhouette—the horns, the clawed hands, the aura of primordial shadow. His jaw went slack. Memories, stories passed down in hushed tones around secret fires, flared in his mind. The crude carving on the ancient stone in the elders' hut.
"Y-You…" he stammered, the color draining from his face. "The Forbidden Form… the Progenitor's Curse… it's you he seeks…"
Damian didn't hear him. The world narrowed to movement and threat.
The first brute swung a hammer the size of a boulder. In his Fiend form, Damian didn't dodge. He caught the hammerhead in his clawed hand. The impact cracked the stone ground beneath his feet, but his arm didn't buckle. The shadow-claws sank into the metal with a screech. He ripped the hammer from the man's grip and, in the same motion, backhanded him with the weapon. The brute's head vanished in a spray of red mist.
He was a blur of horns, claws, and darkness. The second wave of guards, those with stone claws and granite skin, met him. Their claws scraped harmlessly against his shadow-armor. His own claws tore through their hardened skin like it was parchment. He moved through them like a scythe through wheat.
"Don't let him touch you! Ranged attacks!" the water-affinity adept shouted from the back. He flung his water disks. They shot through the air, sharp enough to cut stone.
Damian didn't bother to avoid them. He raised an armored forearm. The water disks struck the shadow-substance and… dissolved, absorbed into the darkness, making his armor gleam for a second.
He pointed a claw at the water adept. "Shadow's Chill."
A lance of pure, concentrated cold, darker than midnight, shot from his fingertip. It wasn't ice. It was the absence of heat, given form. It pierced the water adept's chest before he could form a shield. He looked down at the black frost spreading from the hole, then crumpled, frozen from the inside out.
Chaos. Pure, screaming chaos.
Damian unleashed everything. He wasn't just a physical terror now. He was a force of nature.
He stomped the ground, channeling his SS-Grade Earth affinity through the Fiend form. Spikes of black, crystal-veined rock erupted in a circle around him, impaling three guards who had gotten too close.
He breathed out, and a wave of Piercing Shadowflame—black fire that burned cold and ate light—washed over a group of five. They didn't just burn; they withered, their vitality and mana sucked dry before they fell as husks.
But the real weapon was his presence. His Killing Intent, supercharged by the Fiend form and the ongoing slaughter, finally broke through.
[Killing Intent (Faint) is evolving…]
[Killing Intent (Manifest) Activated!]
A visible wave of dark-red psychic energy pulsed out from him. It wasn't just fear. It was a tangible weight of impending doom.
The weaker guards—those at the lower end of 2nd Order—froze in their tracks. Their eyes glazed over with terror. Their weapons fell from numb fingers. They saw their own deaths reflected in Damian's shadow-clad form. For a precious three seconds, they were statues of fear.
Three seconds was all Damian needed.
He became a whirlwind of ending. His claws tore out throats. His shadow-armored elbows shattered ribs. He moved among the frozen guards with leisurely, brutal efficiency. Snap. Tear. Crunch. The sounds were wet and final.
In less than five minutes, the forty guards were reduced to fifteen. The ground was a slaughterhouse. The air was a fog of blood-mist and shadow.
The remaining fifteen were the strongest—the early 3rd Order lieutenants and the few high-rank 2nd Orders who had resisted the Killing Intent. They were battered, bleeding, their eyes wide with a horror that had replaced all courage. They formed a tight, trembling circle around their chief.
Damian stood amidst the carnage, panting slightly. The Fiend form was glorious, but he could feel it—a familiar, dreadful gnawing at the edges of his soul. The cost. He was burning through his remaining 55% integrity at a terrifying rate.
He needed to finish this. Now.
He focused on a lieutenant on the edge of the group, a woman with arms of living, flexible stone. She was looking at her fallen comrades, her resolve cracking.
Target. Isolate. Eliminate.
He blurred forward, claws aiming to rip her spine out.
A roar of pure earth power shook the square. "LOOK OUT!"
The village chief, who had been standing in stunned horror, finally moved. He hadn't just been watching. He'd been gathering his power, his grief and rage fueling his mana to a peak.
He didn't run. He stomped.
The ground between Damian and the stone-armed lieutenant didn't just rise. It exploded upwards in a spear of razor-sharp, condensed earth, moving with the chief's 3rd Order, Rank 6 will.
Damian was fast, but he was committed to the kill. He twisted in mid-air, but the earthen spear grazed his side. It didn't cut through the shadow-armor, but the sheer concussive force of the Rank 6 attack was immense.
CRACK.
A rib broke. The impact sent him spinning off course. He hit the ground and rolled, coming up in a crouch, a sharp, hot pain flaring in his side. The shadow-armor over his ribs was cracked, oozing darkness.
The stone-armed lieutenant stared, her face white. She had been a heartbeat from death.
The village chief stepped forward, placing himself between Damian and his remaining people. His face was no longer tear-streaked. It was a mask of hard, unforgiving granite. The earth mana around him was so dense it made the air waver. His eyes blazed with a fury that was colder than Damian's shadows.
"You," the chief hissed, his voice trembling not with fear, but with a rage so deep it had become calm. "You will go no further. This ends here."