Demian screamed in desperation as he watched Ren approach him.

He was a respected expert even among the swordsmen.

Yet even he could not counterattack that demon and only lost his innocent leg.

No matter who came, they would not be able to defeat that demon.

However, the man ignored his warning and entered. Demian cried out urgently once more.

“Run… away!”

His figure, screaming even as his entire body was being consumed by pain, was truly miserable. However, to the demon, that sound was merely annoying.

To shut that noisily moving mouth, Siegfried swung his hand that had transformed into a sword towards Demian.

Demian tightly shut his eyes. But contrary to his expectation that pain would soon find him, what enveloped his body was an unfamiliar sensation.

What protected him was none other than Ren’s shadow. It had rescued Demian from the demon’s claws.

“Ho……”

Siegfried, who had been watching this series of events, let out an exclamation that was hard to distinguish between admiration or ridicule.

It was an ability that he had forcibly sealed for a lifetime so that it would never dare rebel against him.

But to think it had bloomed to this level in just around 2 years. As expected, a tough one was a tough one.

Of course, that could not be called good fortune for Callys. Now that his existence had been discovered, that body would become his anyway.

Siegfried attacked Callys without allowing him a moment to catch his breath.

Dozens of pens rolling on the floor of what happened to be a warehouse at the moment caught the demon’s eye.

He lightly gestured after lifting all of them with an invisible force.

Then, like meteors, the objects rushed towards their target at a fierce speed.

The demon’s sole target was Callys von Agrian.

Demian, who had lost a leg and could not even walk, was already outside his interest.

The sharp tips of the pen nibs shone silver all at once, exuding a threatening aura like swords.

One would normally be startled by that brutal sight attacking from all directions, but Ren showed no agitation at all.

He merely calmly spread his shadow like a shield to block the attacks.

There were moments when the shadow, unable to withstand the attacks, was torn and the pens flew towards Ren’s face.

But he lightly turned his head to avoid the attacks.

And the moment the pouring attacks finally ceased, he immediately sought a counterattack.

The shadow that emerged from Ren’s body and instantly separated menacingly swelled and pounced on Siegfried.

The shadow began to take the form of thorns and tried to mercilessly pierce the demon.

Siegfried split the shadow in half to face this, but it quickly reattached and attacked again.

Demian, who was watching this sight with both eyes, felt like he must be dreaming due to the excessive pain.

The black figure that freely changed its appearance according to the user’s will.

The bizarre characteristic of immediately reattaching no matter how much it was cut and split, as if it were an immortal being.

Demian, who had read countless legends related to the first emperor of the Agrian Empire since childhood.

That appearance perfectly matched the expressions used when describing the emperor’s ability in the legends.

If he was not going crazy, that was…

‘Clearly the Shadow Ability that only an extremely small number of royals are born with.’

But as far as he knew, there was currently no one who officially possessed that ability. Demian immediately realized.

‘There was a hidden royal.’

Truly shocking news. If that man’s power really matched the Shadow Ability as he expected…

Perhaps it would be possible to face that demon.

The moment he thought that.

Slash!

Along with the sound of flesh being sliced by a blade, sticky blood splattered everywhere.

The shadow had succeeded in cutting the demon’s body diagonally.

‘Can we really defeat that demon?’

Demian harbored hope for a moment, but soon instinctively sensed that something was amiss.

The demon’s white pupils, which had been facing only the shadow, flashed for a moment.

At the same time, as if teleporting, he abruptly approached right in front of Ren.

Ren drew his body back, and the demon’s hand that had transformed into a spear aimed at Ren’s body, exuding a brutal energy. The speed was too fast to catch with the eyes.

Even with the suddenly changed attack pattern, Ren was not startled. It was because he already knew.

The fact that at close range, Siegfried uses his unique ability to increase the power and speed of his attacks.

It was also sufficiently predictable what kind of attack Siegfried, who had narrowed the distance, would launch.

So it would not have been impossible to avoid… But Ren’s choice was not evasion, but attack.

Boldly, he stopped moving and willingly offered his shoulder to the demon’s spear.

His defenseless body was instantly pierced by the spear, but he paid no heed.

For a moment, Siegfried thought his attack must have been a hallucination.

His hand that had turned into a weapon definitely had sensations. His hand had clearly pierced Callys’ shoulder.

In a situation where it would be natural for a human to writhe in pain, strangely, there was no expression on Callys’ face.

A face utterly devoid of emotion. It was absolutely not simply good acting.

Siegfried was a demon. He was more sensitive than anyone to human pain and fear.

But he could not read either from the man before his eyes at all.

It was impossible to believe it was a situation where he had been attacked.

And it was then, when the king of demons was in confusion.

Rather than pulling out Siegfried’s arm that was stuck in his body, Ren pulled it towards himself.

The spear dug even deeper, but he was paying no attention to his body at all.

He was aiming for only one thing.

The demon king’s neck.

Crack.

Ren, who had been firmly grasping the demon’s arm, sliced the demon’s neck with the dagger he held in his other hand.

A strike with all his might. But unfortunately, the movement of the dagger that had been cutting through the thick neck stopped.

The blade had dulled, unable to overcome the tough and tenacious demon’s hide.

Ren clicked his tongue as if dissatisfied. Then, as if uninterested in the hole in his shoulder, he nonchalantly discarded the now useless weapon.

Siegfried, realizing the situation had strangely turned around, instantly distanced himself from Ren.

It was strange. For his vision to suddenly be overturned. He flailed his hands and touched where his neck should have originally been.

But what greeted him was only air.

It was natural. His head, almost completely separated from his body, was dangling by relying on the skin of the incompletely severed neck.

Soon, the demon who grasped the situation placed his head on his neck with both hands.

The demon’s skin regenerated in an instant and the cut surface of the neck reconnected.

Siegfried burst into a grotesque laughter. That spine-chilling sound resonated and filled the space ominously.

Before long, Siegfried, who had erased the expression with traces of laughter in an instant, spoke in a truly spine-chilling tone.

“Now, playtime is over.”

Boom!

As soon as the demon’s words ended, the floor collapsed with a huge explosion.

Unlike Siegfried who was floating in the air, Demian and Ren instantly fell downwards.

Ren used his shadow to grab Demian who was falling in a defenseless state.

What appeared before the two men who had barely landed safely was Siegfried, smiling eerily from afar as if an audience, and several high-ranking demons.

The high-ranking demons attacked Ren without allowing a moment to breathe.

They viciously flaunted their respective techniques, trying to punish him who had somehow offended the king.

Of course, Ren did not just sit still and take it.

He focused solely on slaughtering the demons without even avoiding minor attacks in order to somehow end this fight quickly.

His target now was Siegfried, not these high-ranking demons. There was no time to waste on anything else.

The shadow moved violently and confronted the demons one by one.

Meanwhile, Demian, who had been watching that sight from afar in a daze, could not close his mouth from shock.

‘Is he… really human?’

He had found it strange even when pierced by the demon’s spear. To think he would not even scream once at such an attack and instead use it as an opportunity.

But now that he saw this, he could not help but be suspicious.

It was a battle method too bizarre for a human to carry out.

Whether he himself was injured by the enemy’s attacks or not, the man focused solely on slaughtering the enemies without blinking an eye.

Just looking at the wounds gradually accumulating all over his body, one could anticipate the pain, but the man acted as if it had nothing to do with him.

‘This is not normal….’

It was to the point of suspecting if he could not feel pain at all.

Naturally, Demian’s suspicion was wrong.

It was absolutely not that Ren could not feel pain.

Even now, the nerve tissues all over his body were screaming for their lives.

Nevertheless, Ren was not bothered by it at all. It was truly a strange thing.

Ren, who had been indifferently sweeping away the demons, suddenly fell into doubt. Since when had he become like this?

He could not remember exactly, but he had been growing increasingly stranger for the past few months.

Having lost both his purpose and will to live, he had immersed himself only in confronting the enemies before his eyes.

He felt like he had definitely not been like this in the past, as if he had become a machine that merely slaughtered enemies rather than a human.

He himself did not know the reason either.

As if fog had settled in his brain, his mind did not function well outside of combat.

It was then.

A high-ranking demon that he thought he had taken down suddenly woke up and tried to ambush him from behind.

An attack clearly aiming for his vital point. Ren intended to protect his body by using the demon blocking his front as a shield.

All that was left was action, but…

Ren suddenly stopped all movement without knowing why.

For a moment, vitality filled the hazy green eyes.

His violet hair fluttered in the wind, dizzying his vision.

“Ren!”

The face he had drawn every single day. That voice he could only hear in his dreams.

Vivian, who suddenly appeared in the air, called his name and reached out her hand.

As if entranced, Ren held her hand.