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Chapter 152

They first appeared after the God-Slaying War, after every god had fallen, when one era had ended and a new one had begun.

Though all the deity pantheons had been destroyed, some of the groups that had worshipped and served the gods remained.

There were the valkyrie, Odin’s apostles who recruited Einherjar.

There were the jotun, the descendants of the giants who stood against the Aesir.

There were the nymphs, the faerie race who had the blood of Olympus’s gods flowing through their veins.

There were countless others who survived, and once the heavens were left empty when the gods disappeared, they gave themselves the lofty name “Celestials.” They combined all the razed and splintered realms, such as Asgard and Olympus, thus building a realm for Celestials, Eden.

“...So they’ve existed from the olden days, but they weren’t called Celestials until after the God-Slaying War,” Leonard muttered to himself, sorting out his thoughts. “A few of the more superior groups among worshippers survived and created a coalition. I don’t know about the valkyrie, but a significant number of jotun and nymphs became gods.”

He read every single day after joining the Order of the White Dragon, and he knew about the Celestials because he had studied a lot of history regarding the age of the gods.

While the valkyrie were female warriors and apostles of the Chief God Odin, jotun and nymphs were known to be either the direct descendants of gods or closely affiliated with them.

The nymph Daphne was the lover of the sun god Apollo. The king of giants, Utgard-Loki, survived after fighting Thor. No one could say they were the gods’ equals, but they were higher races who could be their lovers or rivals. They might even be stronger than Void Deities, who were only made of fragments.

Leonard found himself growing very curious about the Order of the Blue Dragon. He turned to the next chapter.

“Demoniacs.”

Naturally, Demian’s words came back to him. Celestials were beings who looked down upon people from the sky, while Demoniacs were beings that crawled up from below the earth. If Celestials were reminiscent of birds, Demoniacs were reminiscent of insects and snakes. The Demoniacs were a foul lot and naturally inspired feelings of disgust.

Leonard skimmed the passage about their origins.

As mentioned earlier, Demoniacs began to run rampant after the God-Slaying War, just as the Celestials had. However, unlike their counterparts, who have existed since long ago, Demoniacs only appeared once the age of the gods came to an end.

The book asserted that there were no Demoniacs prior to the God-Slaying War breaking out. The next paragraph was the beginning of the author’s attempt to theorize their advent.

Gods are incarnations of the laws of the world. These laws adhere to fixed rules and balances. If there is up, there is down. If there is a god of the sky, there is a god of the underground. An example is the relationship between Zeus, the god of the heavens, and Hades, the god of the Underworld. Gods are bound to the symbols and authorities under their jurisdiction, and though they can temporarily break away from their position, it is not possible for them to do so permanently.

Gods were the very manifestations of natural laws, so even after they died, they returned to an area they were affiliated with. When they were on the brink of death, Zeus returned to his palace in the sky and perished, and Hades returned to his palace in the Underworld and passed away.

But something strange happened during that time.

The ocean and the sky are constantly flowing and changing, but the underground can remain static for centuries, even millennia. The gods associated with the laws of death, darkness, and descendence went under the ground and either quickly dispersed or gradually settled.

The corpses of the gods, which physically could not decompose, continued to pile up, and the power spilling from the bodies of the evil and demonic gods accumulated, bringing about a catastrophe that should not have occurred.

That was how the Demoniacs were born.

They were a great evil species spawned from Crom Dubh, one of the dead, rotting gods.

The Underworld should have collapsed after its gods died, but it instead became the hideous Demonic Realm.

It also marked the creation of the ruling groups of the Nine Hells.

The Demonic Realm is called the Nine Hells because nine types of Demoniacs were born from Crom Dubh’s corpse, not because there are nine pathways between the Demonic Realm and the Middle Realm.

That was how their hierarchy was structured. It was said that countless Demoniacs had spilled from nine parts of Crom Dubh’s body: blood, flesh, hide, bones, claws, teeth, tongue, brain, and heart.

Those born from his blood and flesh were treated as slaves. They were the most common type of Demoniac in the Nine Hells. Their intelligence and physiques were substandard, so they inevitably made up the lowest class. Some of them occasionally emerged as Rank A, but they were hard to find in the Middle Realm.

“And the ones born from his hide, bones, and claws are commoners, while the ones born from his teeth and tongue are considered aristocrats,” Leonard muttered to himself.

Most of the Demoniacs that the Black Dragon Knights hunted on an everyday basis fell into these categories. The supreme Demoniacs from Crom Dubh’s heart and brain were very few in number, and when they appeared, they would cause disasters that could only be mitigated by a team of knights who were all strong enough to be Commanders.

The Demon King, which broke through the Black Dragon Knights’ defenses and destroyed several kingdoms a few generations ago, had been a heart Demoniac.

Very interesting. These beings were very different from the demons of the Central Plains.

It was surprising that the Demoniacs were born from the accumulated corpses of evil and demonic gods. They had been mere remains of the dead, but they were not only troublesome for the Cardenas’ Seven Orders but also so strong that multiple Commander-level knights were needed to defeat them. It was hard to believe.

Leonard continued to the next paragraph. His jaw dropped when he read about their appearances and abilities.

1. Flesh Demoniacs: They are masses of flesh with no bones, organs, or blood and have outstanding healing abilities. They can shape their bodies however they wish, so they tend to make themselves thin to enter the crevices in armor and their target’s body. Once inside, they will rapidly expand and make their opponent explode.

—Their swift healing abilities rely on the consumption of organic matter, so they consume the corpses of both enemies and allies.

—The older and stronger they are, the greater their build and resilience will be. Their power can be estimated based on appearance.

—They are immune to acid and poison but are weak to heat and cold.

—Slashes and jabs will almost never land, so they must be crushed or pummeled.

The weakest, the slave class of the nine Demoniacs, had such ridiculously powerful abilities. If a group of tens of External Force Tier martial artists fought a flesh demon without knowing their weaknesses, it wouldn’t be surprising if they were instantly massacred. And a fighter who only knew slashing and thrusting attacks would never even stand a chance of winning.

Demoniacs were supposed to become weaker when they came up to the Middle Realm, so this meant that flesh Demoniacs were still powerful in their weakest state.

And it’s not one or two of them coming up. Thousands of Demoniacs are advancing as an army. If the Arcadian Empire and the Three Noble Houses fail their mission, it will only be a matter of time until the world is annihilated.

Demoniacs alone were already very formidable, but if other groups, such as the Celestials and the Void Deities, joined forces, a calamity rivaling the God-Slaying War would fall upon the Middle Realm.

Leonard couldn’t even imagine what would happen if Spriggan or Outer Gods got involved.

He stopped himself there and pushed those distracting thoughts aside.

This was not something for him to concern himself with. He wasn’t even in the Demigod Tier yet. There was something else he should be worrying about.

“The Demoniacs come first...”

In less than two weeks, he would face them for the first time.

Should he perhaps use martial arts designed for felling and subjugating demons? He considered it, but as it turned out, Demoniacs were very different from what he’d expected, so he wasn’t confident. The refined version of Shaolin martial arts could do little more than interrupt the flow of demonic and heretic qi. Did he really think the effects of a Demon-Slaying Sword, which he would merely be imitating, would translate over to a Demoniac born from the corpse of a god?

This was not a problem that could be solved by just sitting in a room and thinking.

If I were to fight a Demoniac, my first measure would be to use the Northern God Style to stop its healing, followed by using the Southern God Style to cause damage that its regenerative abilities wouldn’t be able to restore in time.

Leonard had been able to kill Moby Dick, the monstrous whale that had been transformed by an Outer God, using the Calamity Extinguishing Flame, so he was confident that he had a good chance of also being able to burn a Demoniac to ash.

But the Calamity Extinguishing Flame required the power of the Demigod Tier, and he couldn’t use such a huge technique in every battle when he might need to use it multiple times, perhaps even tens of times.

He needed a technique or strategy that would let him defeat a Demoniac more efficiently.

I don’t think the Eastern God Style will have that big of an effect. Demoniacs aren’t a completely unintelligent species, and if they can heal every part of their body, I won’t be able to incapacitate them as I had Pollux, who instead had immortality.

Leonard hadn’t even finished conceptualizing the Western God Style, so that was that. He had a hunch that the Southern God Style would be the most efficient and that the Northern God Style would be the second best.

However, he couldn’t completely shake off the lingering thoughts about martial arts designed to fell and subjugate demons.

“It would be nice if I could just kill a few to test things out.” But he would never find a Demoniac in the Middle Realm when the Order of the Black Dragon was guarding it like an iron wall. Even Leonard heard how ridiculous he sounded, and he burst into laughter.

“...Wait. What about someone from the Wickelines, not the Cardenas?”

At that moment, he felt like he was getting closer to an answer.

The Wickeline family is already working with the Order of the White Dragon to research Divine Territories and Void Deities. High-ranking mages are needed in plenty of other places, and considering how these two are incompatible and don’t get along, there’s a high likelihood that they have a closer relationship with other Orders.

Compared to a martial artist, a mage would be better equipped to fight a Demoniac that was weak to temperature fluctuations. While a martial artist couldn’t create ice without a special ability or through the manipulation of Aura, mages could efficiently target that weakness.

There could even be Wickeline mages stationed with the Black Dragon Knights.

The next question was how he could contact them.

I would feel bad if I asked Commander Demian. n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Even though the Cardenas family was overflowing with powerful fighters, even someone as strong as a Commander couldn’t dare waste time. In fact, it wasn’t rare for Leonard to find Commander Demian’s office empty when he went to seek him out. He’d also seen his commander go on several missions in a single day. Leonard didn’t want to add to his burden when he wasn’t even sure about his idea.

He fell into thought for a few minutes.

“...I’ll have to find Calantha.”

He didn’t know why, but the Wickeline Archmage had been kind to him. If he met with him, he might be able to come up with something.

Of course, Leonard didn’t know how to contact him, but he could simply ask Isaac.

Leonard left his residence and disappeared like the wind.

* * *

“Calantha? There’s something you want to ask him?”

Isaac was staying at the infirmary, as he hadn’t finished recovering from his injuries. For a moment, he gave Leonard a strange look, but then he told him how to contact Calantha as if it wasn’t a big deal. If Leonard left his name and message at the administrative office in the Ivory Forest, the Wickeline family would send a reply. It would take four days if they were fast, but it could also take over a week, so when Leonard left the message, those at the administrative office told him not to get his hopes up.

However, in less than a day, Calantha showed up at his doorstep.

“Hello. You wished to speak with me?” Calantha absentmindedly tilted his head, his eyes as wide as always.

His gaze made Leonard feel a little unsettled.