The Special Grade A demon rolled its neck with a wet, cracking sound, regenerated flesh still steaming faintly in the cold hallway air.
Its remaining arm twitched, then split down the middle with a sickening tear — bone and sinew reshaping themselves into something new.
Where a hand had been, five curved blades now extended like grotesque claws, each one edged and gleaming black as obsidian.
”You’ve seen my fire,” it said, voice smooth and almost delighted.
“Now let me show you what I actually enjoy.”
Damien’s goggles flared, lines of calculation scrawling rapidly across his vision.
“Akira — get her out of the blast radius.
Now.”
Akira didn’t argue.
He scooped Saki up, one arm under her knees, the other behind her back, and staggered toward the collapsed doorway.
The demon moved.
”Thousand Cuts.”
It didn’t dash so much as unravel — its body blurring into a dozen overlapping afterimages, each one swinging those blade-hands in wide, singing arcs. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
Damien barely got his cleaver up in time.
The first strike shrieked off his blade in a shower of sparks.
The second came from a different angle entirely, as if the demon had already been standing there before it finished the first swing.
Damien twisted, taking the cut across his shoulder instead of his throat.
Blood sprayed the wall.
”Tch—”
He didn’t have time to assess the wound.
A third arc came low, aimed at his knees.
He leapt back, boots skidding across debris, cleaver raised in a defensive guard that barely held against the fourth and fifth strikes.
The demon was cleaving through the air itself, each pass leaving thin, glowing fracture lines in the atmosphere that lingered for half a second before snapping shut with a sound like breaking glass.
Akira, still carrying Saki, looked back just in time to see Damien get clipped across the ribs.
The exorcist grunted, staggering, cigarette smoke curling from between his teeth even as blood soaked through his coat.
“Move.”
The demon’s blades kept coming, faster now, weaving a lattice of cuts through the ruined classroom.
Desks were sliced into ribbons mid-air.
A support beam groaned, then split cleanly in half and crashed down in two pieces.
The creature laughed, low and delighted, clearly savoring the rhythm of its own technique.
”Your friend is fast,” it crooned, “but fast isn’t the same as efficient.
I could do this for hours.”
Damien’s jaw tightened.
He flicked his half-smoked cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his heel.
Spiritual energy surged — another fifty percent, another slice off whatever was left of his lifespan.
His goggles darkened further, pitch black now, and the glow off his cleaver turned blinding white.
”Then let’s see,” Damien said quietly, “how long you last against someone actually trying.”
He vanished from where he stood.
Behind Akira, Saki’s eyes fluttered weakly open, catching only a blur of white light and the sound of steel meeting steel — over, and over, and over again.