{Chapter: 148: Orc}
"Sizzle…"
The corrosive hiss of flesh dissolving under divine power echoed through the chaotic battlefield, mingling with the screeches of dying demons and the tense cries of soldiers holding the line. Arrows and crossbow bolts rained down like a deadly storm, embedding themselves deep into the bodies of the fiendish creatures who dared approach the city's sacred walls.
One of those demons fell beside Dex, its skin bubbling and melting into dark, foul-smelling slush. Its limbs convulsed in agony, muscles twitching violently before collapsing into a formless heap of rot. The holy power infused into the weapons didn't merely pierce flesh—it consumed it, turning sinew and bone to blackened muck in mere seconds.
Dex stood still amid the storm of metal, unbothered. The chaotic noise, the screams, the pounding of hooves and the crackling of divine energies—it was all background music to him, a dissonant song of war he had heard countless times before.
Then it happened—thunk.
A crossbow bolt came whistling toward him and, with practiced nonchalance, Dex raised his hand and caught it mid-air, his claws closing around the shaft like a steel trap. His gaze narrowed in amusement as he applied the slightest pressure. Crack. The arrowhead shattered between his fingers, revealing the fine white powder within, faintly shimmering with latent energy.
"Sizzle…"
The sacred powder reacted violently upon contact with his demonic essence. Waves of holy power erupted from the crushed head, like a dying saint's curse fighting against the very embodiment of corruption. But to Dex, it felt no different than being splashed with lukewarm water.
The divine energy struggled against him, clawing, scraping, gnawing at his aura. It was not enough. Not nearly enough.
He observed it with detached curiosity, even wonder.
"So this is their latest attempt… clever," he muttered. The powder's composition bore a faint resemblance to a substance from his previous world—a legendary reagent known as Saintess Maya's Ashes, forged from the sanctified remains of a revered martyr whose purity transcended even death. In comparison, this powder was a pale imitation—less potent, more artificial. It lacked the sheer concentrated divinity needed to threaten a being like Dex.
Still, he mused, they've made strides.
By carefully embedding divine runes into the shaft, the defenders had amplified the effect of the powder far beyond what its purity should have allowed. An ingenious workaround. Dex acknowledged that much. Instead of relying on raw strength, they had chosen subtlety, optimization, and clever craftsmanship.
This, more than anything else, marked the terrifying foundation of a high-level world. It was not just brute force they wielded—it was knowledge, refined over centuries, allowing them to get tenfold results from meager resources. A low-level realm might waste holy relics in desperation, hurling them as firewood into the furnace of war. But this world… this world knew how to make every mote of divine energy count.
A ripple of dark magic spread across Dex's palm as he activated a simple corrosion spell. The powder screamed in protest as its holiness was unmade atom by atom, until nothing remained but a few grains of inert dust.
Dex shook his head in mock disappointment. "You truly don't honor your dead," he whispered, letting the wind carry his voice. "To desecrate the remains of believers and weaponize them like this… it's sacrilege, even by my standards."
Despite their ingenuity, these weapons posed no real threat to Dex. The divine energy, while impressive to common soldiers and lesser demons, disintegrated on contact with his dense aura of abyssal magic. The bolts lacked the momentum, the spiritual force, or even the physical sharpness to break through his chitinous exoskeleton. They snapped like brittle twigs on stone.
If this was their strongest method of attack, he could stand still and let them fire all day. At worst, it would leave a scuff on his hide. At best, it would bore him.
His crimson eyes scanned the battlefield.
And yet, it wasn't just him. Far from it.
Across the war-torn field, hundreds of elite demons advanced with impunity. Each of them was a monster in their own right—some covered in plated bone, others with tendrils of darkness flickering like fire, and some who glowed with a sickly light from within, feeding off the corrupted ley lines beneath their feet.
Like Dex, they were nearly immune to the defenders' standard attacks. The bolts bounced off, or stuck uselessly in outer carapaces. Some of them laughed as they pulled arrows from their eyes and throats, regenerating flesh faster than it could be destroyed. A few even devoured the projectiles, absorbing the divine power like a drug to fuel their madness.
These were not the swarming fodder that made up the front lines—those low-level beasts whose bodies were designed for sacrifice. No, these were the shock troops of the abyss. Rare. Refined. Devastating.
Each one of them could break through a section of a low level world. And Dex knew that was what terrified the defenders most.
If even one of them reached the top of the wall…
If even one breached the inner defense lines…
Entire squads would be slaughtered in seconds. Thousands of precious lives would be lost.
And unlike demons, humans and their kin could not replenish numbers so easily.
Suddenly, Dex paused.
His sharp senses twitched.
There.
A subtle change in the airflow. Barely perceptible, but to a creature of his caliber, it might as well have been a trumpet blast.
Someone was approaching.
He tilted his head slightly, as if listening to the wind.
Yes. There it was again. A whisper of motion—a thread of mana—a displacement in space itself. Something, or someone, had appeared behind him without a sound.
An ambush.
His grin widened.
"Finally..." he murmured.
The defenders weren't just relying on weapons and magic anymore. They were sending champions.
Dex instinctively sensed a shift in the air—a subtle, almost imperceptible tremor in the stillness. It was a sensation honed through countless battles, an echo of danger rippling across his supernatural senses. Without fully understanding why, his body moved on its own. With a slight tilt of his head to the right, he avoided a blow by less than a hair's breadth.
A flash of silver.
A scimitar—gleaming, curved, and longer than a man's arm—sliced silently through the air, passing just above his horns. The blade's edge shimmered with deadly precision, designed not just to cut, but to kill with one swift motion. Had Dex hesitated even for a fraction of a second, the strike would have split his skull cleanly down the center, right between the two obsidian-black horns that jutted from his crown like jagged crescents.
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