Chapter 35: Demon Bathin Arrives

It was 2 a.m., yet there was no moon in the sky, no stars, no clouds. Just blissful darkness. But that was exactly what made Damian feel unsettled.

His eyes flipped open in the dead of night and he immediately noticed something strange. There was a power outage, plunging everything into darkness.

Gently, he moved Clara aside and sat up, only to realize the room was filled with a strange fog carrying an unnatural glow, seeping in through the window. Everything ten to twenty inches above ground level was swallowed by the mist, and that same fog now served as the only source of light in the room.

’This fog is strange.’ Damian frowned.

He did not feel fear, but he felt on edge, as if his body was preparing for something inevitable. It was telling him he could not run. His only chance of survival was to fight.

Damian zipped up his pants and walked over to the open window. Just like Clara’s home, everywhere was dark, and the same glowing fog filled the city. The entire Chicago was eerily quiet. Only then did Damian’s pupils dilate in realization.

He stared at his hand and remembered he was not wearing his ring. When Clara had told him about it, he had still been pissed, so he slipped it into the breast pocket of his blazer and continued flirting with her.

That meant…

“They found me.” His voice was strangely calm, just like his mind.

Damian slowly processed the situation and weighed his options. He could run to the living room, put on the ring, and escape. But that would only mean his trail ended here, and it would all fall on Clara. She would become a victim.

“Or I can go out there and beat the shit out of whatever came to get me. I am the sin of lust, after all. I’m not someone normal demons can mess with.” Damian was not trying to sound cocky. He simply believed it.

With all the skills he had unlocked so far, a few demons should not be difficult to handle. Right?

Thud!

In one swift motion, he jumped out of Clara’s second floor window. In a powerful leap, he shot over the wooden fence surrounding the building and landed in the open street.

The landing was smooth and perfect, but he did not bask in it. Standing bare chested in the middle of the street, he glanced toward the source of the disturbance.

In the distance, a lone figure rode a horse. Damian could barely make out the silhouette, but the galloping echoed far louder than it should have. As the rider moved, he saw the same transparent glaze trailing around him. It felt as if the isolation barrier itself shifted with the rider’s presence.

“Okay… I’m beginning to think staying was a bad idea,” Damian muttered.

He had expected such a bizarre pressure to come from multiple demons, not a single entity. Clearly, this was not a typical demon.

“To think the sin of lust would be lost in a backwater realm. That explains why you have been so difficult to locate.”

The voice was lifeless, blank, empty. It carried no emotion, no tone, no intent. It felt as though the speaker was talking simply for the sake of speaking. Damian felt perplexed and uncomfortable, but not afraid. Strangely, he felt irritated instead. The kind of irritation one would feel from a subordinate daring to talk back.

“What Lord do you serve?” Damian asked directly, and the horse came to a halt.

An eerie silence followed, as if the rider was deciding whether to answer or ignore him. Several seconds later, a response came.

“The Lord of Greed… your elder brother.”

Damian’s eyes narrowed. His heart throbbed at an unnatural pace. His instincts screamed danger like never before, as if his life depended on it. Yet against his better judgment, he did not run.

“What are his orders?”

“Incapacitate and retrieve. My Lord will decide what to do with you when we return.”

Damian nodded slowly. His pupils shrank into slits while his purple irises burned with a threatening light.

“Do you plan to carry out this order?”

“Of course.”

“Do you believe you have what it takes to carry out those orders?” Damian’s voice turned vile and threatening.

At the same time, the isolation barrier spread past him and expanded further back. He did not mind. If this demon had not set it up, he would have done so himself.

“Certainly.”

Boom!

The reply came with a sudden charge that shattered the ground beneath the horse’s hooves.

[Infernal Transformation activated]

Damian wasted no time unleashing his power, but he was a fraction too late. The enemy who had seemed so distant reached him in less than a breath.

It was an elderly woman in janitor clothes, riding a pale horse, wielding a broom shrouded in dark red demonic energy shaped like a jousting lance.

’Wasn’t I speaking to a man earlier?’

Boom!

Damian was hurled back like a cannonball, shooting down the street uncontrollably. He only hit the ground after covering over thirty meters, bouncing hard across the asphalt several times before finally coming to a limp stop.

“Don’t you dare look down on Bathin simply because of this stolen inheritance you filthy mortal!” Bathin hissed, her face burning with rage.

Then, as if bipolar, the rage vanished in an instant and was replaced by emptiness once more. She stared at Damian’s unresponsive body for a moment before patting her pale horse.

“Our assignment is over. Let us go home.”

At that moment, the temperature dropped even further, and a strange yet familiar presence surfaced. Goosebumps spread across Bathin’s skin. Her gaze snapped back to Damian, eyes widening at the sight of a familiar white haired figure dressed in flowing purple Hanfu robes flashing across her vision for a split second before fading.

Damian rose slowly to his knees. He wiped the blood from his lips with the back of his hand while his fox tails swayed behind him, dancing in the heavy mist.

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