Chapter 118: A Demon Prince Once More

The smoke hadn’t even settled yet. It still clung to the ruined street in heavy, choking sheets, drifting in slow, lazy curls that tried and failed to hide the damage I’d already done.

Chunks of concrete were still rolling and bouncing down the broken asphalt, clattering off twisted rebar and the skeletons of shattered cars. Somewhere, something metal creaked and gave way, collapsing with a tired groan.

Corvus stepped out of a shadow like he’d just taken a casual walk through a doorway.

Not a scratch on him.

Not even dust on his coat.

Well… other than the small cut I managed on his cheek that stubbornly refused to heal.

He looked like he’d simply strolled in from a different scene entirely, untouched by the destruction I’d just carved into the district. Like this was a minor detour in his evening, not the aftermath of a war crime.

“…You’re actually insane,” he repeated.

His voice wasn’t mocking this time.

It sounded… impressed.

That annoyed me more.

I’d taken buildings apart. I’d turned streets into trenches. I’d blackened the sky and hammered the world with cursed rain—and what I got in return was impressed.

Not worried. Not strained. Just… entertained.

My jaw clenched.

[Endless Fang]

Another blade formed in my hand.

Then another.

Then another.

Metallic violet light flickered and stacked around me like orbiting stars, each blade a perfect, hungry edge hanging in the air, humming with that familiar, wrong resonance that grated against the world.

I could feel the weight of each construct in my mind, pressure points hanging off invisible threads, all of them waiting for intent.

Corvus stared at the growing ring of weapons and exhaled slowly, as if I’d just dropped a stack of paperwork on his desk instead of conjured a small arsenal.

“…Right,” he murmured. “Definitely insane.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up.

FWOOSH!

I vanished.

[Light Manipulation]

I reappeared behind him, momentum already driving my arm forward.

SLASH!

My blade cut through where his spine should’ve been.

He was already gone.

[Dark Step]

My weapon carved through empty air, the resistance of his body replaced by nothing at all. Just the lingering echo of where he’d been an instant before.

“Tch.”

I pivoted, searching.

“Too slow,” his voice echoed from somewhere above, drifting down like an idle observation instead of a warning.

Then—

CRACK.

Something slammed into my ribs.

I didn’t even see him move.

No blur. No afterimage. Nothing to read or anticipate.

Just impact.

My body folded around his strike, spine bowing, lungs compressing, and then I was airborne, not in any controlled arc but skipping across the street like a stone skimming water.

Each bounce was another blunt, cracking impact.

I smashed through a storefront, glass detonating around me in a spray of glittering shards that caught the violet light still hanging in the air.

BOOM!

I crashed through the opposite wall an instant later, stone and plaster exploding outward before finally, finally, friction and rubble conspired to stop me.

My back hit something solid. Dust rained down. My ears rang.

“…You’ve got power,” Corvus called out casually, like we were in the middle of a training demonstration instead of a live fight. His footsteps crunched over rubble as he walked closer, unhurried, like he knew there was nowhere I could go that mattered.

“But your fundamentals are garbage.”

Another shadow flicker—

He was suddenly right in front of me.

No windup and no telegraph.

Just presence.

His knee drove into my stomach.

WHAM!

The air left my lungs in a violent, ugly rush.

Pain flared white for a heartbeat, hollowing out my chest.

“And you overcommit every swing.”

A backhand followed, faster than my eyes could fully track.

CRACK.

My head snapped sideways, stars bursting across my vision in a brief, disorienting constellation.

“And you rely way too much on raw output.”

His hand fisted in my collar. Then he threw me straight up.

There was no arc to it. No grace.

Just force.

BOOOOM!

I punched through two floors like they were made of wet cardboard, fragments of ceiling and steel and dust riding my ascent. The momentum didn’t even falter.

I burst out through the roof like a rocket, stone, and metal exploding outward in a ring.

Sky.

Smoke.

Black orbs still hanging overhead from my earlier rain, hovering like patient, malignant stars waiting for a reason to fall again.

For a split second, everything felt quiet.

Just the open air, the ruined skyline, the heavy weight of my own aura still staining the district.

Then—

[Dark Step]

Corvus appeared above me.

Foot already coming down.

BANG!

He spiked me back into the ground like a nail.

The world blurred into a violent tunnel of sound and color.

The street rushed up to meet me.

BOOM!

The ground cratered on contact.

Stone spiderwebbed for twenty meters in every direction, thick cracks racing outward like fleeing serpents.

Dust geysered upward, swallowing me in a choking cloud.

“…Ow…”

The word slipped out before I could stop it.

I lay there for a second, staring at the fractured slice of sky through the dust haze.

“…Okay. That kinda hurt.”

My bones were already knitting back together, each fracture pulling tight with sharp, needling heat. Regeneration crawled under my skin like ants, unpleasant and familiar, skin pulling taut as torn muscle rethreaded itself.

Annoying.

But not lethal.

Not even close.

I flexed my fingers, feeling strength pouring back in, the ache fading as quickly as it had come.

“…You done?” I muttered, pushing myself up on one elbow.

Did he seriously have the right to criticise how I was doing!?

Well, excuse me for having to battle one of the novel’s strongest characters while being terribly sexually frustrated!

That isn’t even a problem I thought I’d have to encounter in my entire life.

Fundamentals, my ass…

Corvus tilted his head slightly, expression unreadable.

“…Done?”

Like the thought honestly hadn’t occurred to him.

My lips twitched.

“Yeah.”

[Profaned Prince]

BOOM.

Pressure exploded outward.

The air thickened in an instant, turning heavy and viscous, like I’d suddenly dragged the atmosphere through a black hole and forced it back into place.

Gravity twisted.

Corvus’s shoulders jerked.

Just for a fraction of a second.

Just enough.

That’s all I needed.

Even he wasn’t strong enough to be immune to a modifier that used divine and chaos power at the same time.

[Echo]

I swung.

Once.

My body moved with practiced certainty, blade cutting a clean, diagonal line through the charged air.

But the sound hit three times.

SLASH!

SLASH!

SLASH!

Reality stuttered.

Corvus blocked the first, arm moving with precise, almost lazy efficiency.

Even with his daggers now broken, it seemed he was still holding back slightly. He wasn’t moving like this a minute ago!

He slipped past the second by less than a hair’s breadth, torso turning just enough for the blade to whisper by.

But did he really think I’d let Echo do all the work?

Hell no.

I kept slashing at him with hundreds of swords while he was already busy dodging and trying to predict when the next echo would strike.

SLASH!

The sheer unpredictability alone allowed me to tear through his coat and bite into his side.

The resistance was real.

Flesh.

Blood sprayed in a clean arc.

Real blood.

No shadow decoy. No intangible dodge.

He slid back across the rubble from the force of it, boots carving trenches through dust and broken stone.

“…Hah,” I laughed breathlessly, chest still tight from the earlier hits. “Got you.”

He looked down at the wound.

Touched it.

Stared at the blood on his fingers for a long, assessing second. He couldn’t heal it, just like the wound on his cheek.

He knew that if he got reckless again, he surely would die.

He looked beyond the battlefield, the entire area just outside his darkness now surrounded by observers.

But none of them were strong enough to enter. Anyone who tried would immediately collapse under the crushing pressure from all the fighting.

Then he looked back at me and smiled.

It wasn’t the tired smile he usually wore.

Nor the casual one he had when he was teaching.

This smile was sharp.

Like a blade finally drawn from its sheath.

“…Good.”

The shadows around the district shuddered.

Not like mine.

Not chaotic.

My darkness roared and clawed and scraped against its own boundaries, a storm constantly trying to escape its cage.

His darkness was smooth.

Controlled.

Like an ocean instead of a storm—vast, deep, indifferent, and perfectly willing to drown everything without needing to raise its voice.

Every shadow from every broken building began stretching toward him.

Streetlight silhouettes.

Collapsed walls.

The jagged gaps under flipped cars.

Even my own shadow, which had been twisted and warped by my aura, unpeeled itself from where it clung and began to slide toward him.

All of it flowed back to his feet, like ink running downhill.

“…I underestimated you,” he said quietly. “And to think, I actually thought I was already overestimating you.”

His tone had changed.

“Guess I should too.”

CRRRRRRR—

The ground darkened.

Not visually.

Physically.

Like the concept of “light” just lost permission to exist there. The air itself felt like it had been put under a blackout order.

My instincts screamed.

[Eye of the Profaned (Unique)]

Warning pulses flooded my vision.

DANGER DANGER DANGER

My instincts flared up, like they always did when a bullet was close to hitting a vital organ.

“…Oh.”

For the first time since this fight started…

I felt it.

Not excitement, not frustration, and certainly not casualness.

Actual danger.

The kind that didn’t care how many titles I had or how many times I’d already crawled out of something I should’ve died from.

Corvus raised one hand lazily, like he was just testing the air.

[Shadow Domain]

The world went silent.

Not metaphorically.

Sound literally died.

No wind.

No rubble shifting.

No distant sirens or crumbling structures.

Not even the faint rasp of my own breathing.

Just pressure.

Like being submerged miles underwater, the weight of an invisible ocean pressing in from every direction, trying to crush thought itself.

My heartbeat sounded too loud in my own skull.

THUMP.

THUMP.

THUMP.

Every shadow within sight connected.

Merged.

Became his.

The sheer density of the darkness that had now surrounded the entire battlefield was thick, thick enough to prevent sound from travelling through the air.

But…

[Succubic Host]

[Temporary Transformation Activated]

[Human -> Half-Demon]

[Profaned Prince]

[ERROR]

[INCOMPATIBLE MODIFIER -FIXING-]

[DING]

[Demon Prince]

’I’m here for you, don’t give up yet~.’

Evelina…

You’re a goddamn lifesaver!

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