The knight materialized in the skies directly above the capital of the Bayoka clan, deep within the Makeke jungle. Below, the people stared upward in petrified silence at the massive demon horde nest suspended above them — a blade hanging over every neck in the clan. The knight smiled down at them.
"It doesn't have to end this way," he said. "Even my king keeps a close eye on your clan. I have no wish to erase it from existence. Where is your king?"
The king stepped forward, bowing low. "You are welcome in our humble clan."
The knight's smile widened. He waved a hand, and the demon horde nest folded neatly into a pocket of self-created space. Descending from the sky, he said, "At last — people with manners. People who understand how to show courtesy to the strong, unlike the others, who threw themselves at death like mindless pets of mine." He settled himself before the assembled Bayoka clansmen, unhurried.
The king gathered his courage. "What brings a being as great as yourself here?"
"Straight to the point — good," the knight said. "I've heard your clan received a visit from a powerful being. Is it true?"
The king nodded and tapped his quantum wristband. In the air above them, an image flickered to life — Elena, rendered in her humanoid form. The knight studied the projection, and the simulated aura of a dimensional god shimmered faintly around it.
"Good," the knight murmured. "No wonder that traitor from your clan couldn't produce anything usable about her."
Murmurs rippled through the crowd — whispers debating who the traitor might be. The knight sighed.
"I won't keep you all in suspense."
He raised a hand. The head of the fifth elder struck the ground and rolled to a stop. Gasps and stifled curses rose from the crowd. The knight tilted his head.
"Manners," he chided. "Where did they go?"
The king dropped to his knees. "Sir knight, please — quell your anger. The fifth elder was someone the younger generation once looked up to, despite his pride. He was disciplined by our grand elder and simply couldn't bear it."
"Then he deserved every second of that torturous death," the knight said with a shrug. "Which reminds me — where is this grand elder you speak of? I believe he has something I've been looking for."
The king hesitated before answering. "He ascended to the god realm not long ago."
The knight's eyes darkened. Could he have found the supreme divine artifact our king lost during the war between the gods of creation and the devils of destruction?
He rose from where he sat and drifted upward, hovering above the capital. With a gesture, he summoned the devil horde nest to suspend beside him, then called forth five billion forsaken beings — their combined presence swallowing the light from the sky above the entire Makeke jungle.
"Though he isn't here," the knight said, "I still hope to find what I seek. You call it the clan's supreme divine secret artifact — a name not so different from what we devils call the same thing."
The king understood, in that instant, that his people were finished. Still, he kept his composure, quietly arming every defense and offense array they possessed.
"That is knowledge reserved for beings who've reached the level of our ancestors," the king said. "We have not yet earned the right to know it." He shook his head, something like grief passing over his face.
"I already know all this," the knight said. "I only wanted to see whether you'd lie to me. Now I understand why they made you king." He paused. "I'll spare the rest of the clans across these lands, for your honesty. But your clan — I cannot spare."
Across the lands of Sabiru, the other clans began a desperate, mass evacuation, fleeing the planet entirely. The knight lifted his hands. The forsaken hanging in the sky like a bank of dark clouds opened eyes that burned bright red, and their wings began to beat.
"Charge," the knight said.
Five billion forsaken plunged downward at terrifying speed. But the moment they closed to within a hundred meters of the ground, the king of the Bayoka clan roared, "Now!" — and the grand elder's ship, quietly upgraded by Elena, tore into existence from nowhere, unleashing more than five billion cicada-winged blades that streaked toward every one of the descending forsaken.
"You know this is useless," the devil knight began — before he froze. Something about those blades wasn't ordinary. Faint, mysterious engravings shimmered along their edges. The blades punched through all five billion forsaken in an instant, and the beings let out a piercing shriek before crumbling to ash — not a trace of them left behind. Each blade carried the faintest thread of Elena's power, more than sufficient to erase such lowly creatures.
The knight staggered backward, disbelief written across his face. His consciousness had been linked to every forsaken in the hive, and the instant those blades struck home, he felt the seals he'd placed on them shatter — felt the negative energy inside them purified and scattered at a speed that defied comprehension.
Fury replaced his shock. He drew the spear from his back and surged toward the grand elder's ship at a staggering 90,000 meters per second, driving the weapon straight through its hull. The ship detonated in a thunderous boom. The knight smiled and summoned another five billion forsaken from the nest.
These were far stronger than the first wave — having fed on the power of everyone they'd already slaughtered, and on the terror radiating from the survivors below. The first of them emerged from the nest carrying an aura comparable to a god emperor. The knight's expression lit with delight, while the Bayoka clan looked on in horror, knowing their one true trump card had just been destroyed.
The remaining horde descended and tore through what was left of the clan on the surface. The king could only watch, powerless, as his people were slaughtered like insects beneath an unstoppable tide.
Far below, in the underground bunkers, the queen and her mother watched the massacre unfold on a live broadcast — Elisa beside them. The queen and Elisa steadied themselves, their willpower far surpassing that of ordinary mortals who might have broken beneath the weight of such carnage. Elisa's mother had no such strength. She trembled, tears welling in her eyes.
The instant those tears fell, every forsaken being on the surface turned as one toward the bunkers.
Over two billion of them descended, landing and clawing at the earth until the bunker's structure was laid bare. They surged toward it — but the moment they came within ten meters of its walls, Elena's protective barrier flared to life, hurling them back into the distance.
"Interesting," the knight mused. "A protective barrier. Who exactly are you hiding down there?" He teleported to the barrier's edge and pressed a hand against it, frowning. "That powerful dimensional goddess must think highly of this clan. No matter — I'll simply need time to break it. Three hours, I'd estimate." He turned to address the horde. "Until then — take it slow. Torture them to death before you feed."
The knight began his relentless assault on the barrier while the forsaken eased their pace of slaughter, drawing it out. Two hours passed. Less than half the Bayoka clan remained alive, most tortured so thoroughly they'd gone numb to the pain. The king was no exception — kept deliberately, agonizingly conscious throughout. When the third hour arrived, the barrier finally gave way, and five hundred forsaken slipped into the bunker.
The knight surveyed the surface. Every member of the Bayoka clan lay dead, save the king, whose consciousness clung to life by a single fraying thread.
The devil knight allowed himself a satisfied smile. "I haven't invoked a single dimensional law throughout any of this," he said. "Wouldn't want to draw the attention of the god realm's stronger beings."
Inside the bunker, the queen urged Elisa to flee with her mother toward the escape pod. As they ran, Elisa's mother stumbled and fell. The forsaken who'd breached the bunker cut down the queen without hesitation, then surged toward the fallen woman. Elisa spun back — too late. The creature was already above her mother, claws sinking into her abdomen, tearing at her while it fed on her agony.
"No!" Elisa screamed.
In that instant, the dragon seal Elena had placed on her ignited. Her aura surged violently, climbing all the way to the level of a dimensional god.
Elisa understood exactly what this meant — Elena had warned her. Activating the seal to its fullest would grant her another chance at life, but only by forfeiting the one she currently held and she would become an avatar of her in a different world and distant timeline. She rose into the air, pointed toward the five hundred forsaken below, and the space around them began to compress — collapsing rapidly inward. The hundred-meter hallway shrank to mere inches in seconds, crushing every forsaken creature into a single writhing mass, which finally condensed into a ball no larger than five inches across.
The knight felt the pressure shift, heavy and wrong, radiating from the bunker below. He reached for his connection to the five hundred forsaken he'd sent inside — and found nothing. All dead. Compressed into that impossibly small space. His heart lurched. He tried to teleport away from the planet entirely, only to discover that the space within five hundred light-years of the planet had been sealed shut.
He shot into the air and turned toward the bunker. There, hovering where the entrance had been, stood a humanoid figure — one that resembled the female elites of the very clan his horde had just annihilated. But something was different. Where they bore two horns, this figure bore four. And her tail stretched twice as long.
Elisa raised her hand. All five billion cicada-blade fragments streaked toward her, converging and reforming into a single sword. She vanished, reappearing above the horde nest, and swung the blade down with merciless precision. The engravings along its edge flared to life, and everywhere the blade passed, space itself collapsed and shuddered apart. The devil teleported in front of the nest, raising his spear to block — but the blade sheared straight through it, splitting the weapon into two clean halves before slicing through the knight's right arm. The strike lost power after that, but not enough to stop it from cutting clean through the nest itself, splitting it in two. The purifying energy unleashed in that instant annihilated 2.5 billion of the remaining forsaken.
Elisa teleported beside the knight and drove her hand into his chest, tearing free the internally created world-space he carried within him. The knight's eyes went wide with terror. Elisa's expression didn't change. She crushed the world-space in her grip — crippling him, severing his access to his bloodline power for good.
Sensing the space-lockdown shatter around him, the knight pulled a spaceship from his storage band and fled the planet Sabiru, dragging his half-destroyed horde nest with him.
Yondi — still reeling, still trying to process the scale of what had just happened — realized too late that he remained trapped within the collapsing space. His life force began draining away at an alarming rate, his cultivation crumbling alongside it. Forty seconds later, his power had fallen all the way to mortal level, his life span nearly spent.
In the distance, he watched Elisa's hand fall limp. She collapsed, unconscious, her own life force bleeding away even as it poured into the king, mending his broken body, lifting his cultivation to that of a high-level god. The king caught her as she fell, cradling her in his arms — only to find she'd slipped entirely from consciousness.
He looked around at the devastation, and understood, finally, that he was the only one left alive.