Azid swung his iron spear in a vicious arc, the tip punching clean through a demon's chest and pinning the creature against the stone wall of the rooftop. He ripped the weapon free without pause, the body sliding down the wall as he stepped off the edge.
He landed hard.
His centaur form—panther haunches coiled with muscle beneath a broad, blue-skinned torso—came down like a falling boulder. His weight crushed several imps outright, the impact snapping limbs and ribs, and one unlucky drakorath found itself trapped beneath his forelegs. Azid drove one paw down, claws splitting bone as he severed its head.
Three sharaykthuns lunged at him at once.
He caught all three strikes on the shaft of his iron spear, bracing it with both hands while his panther half dug its claws into the cobblestone. One sharaykthun hissed, "Traaaaitor!"
Azid only laughed, the sound booming across the street. "You're not wrong," he said, shoving the trio back a step. "But I just like fighting. And you lot put up a good one."
Before the demon could retort, Azid slipped in, drove his spear straight through its torso, then wrenched the weapon upward. The blade tore the demon in half, spraying hot blood across his blue skin as its body collapsed in two folding pieces at his paws.
*How are the others doing?* he wondered, flicking the blood from his spear.
He was only holding a single section of the city. They had all agreed to split up, each helping a different segment of the city's defenses. And from what he saw around him, the people here were holding their own: heavily armored infantry pushing the demons back with disciplined formation fighting, while crossbowmen fired from rooftops and broken windows above, dropping targets before they could break through the lines.
If they had a few mages mixed in, the scene would've reminded him of the border he once fought at.
His thoughts snapped away as a horned demon burst from the alley ahead, reinforcements pouring behind it in a tight cluster.
Azid grinned—wide, eager, thrilled—and charged straight at them, ready to have the time of his life.
---
Mark rolled as the demon knight's warhammer slammed down, stone exploding outward in a spray of shattered cobblestone. Using the momentum, Mark flipped backward—barely clearing the next swing as the knight's greataxe carved through the space his torso had occupied a heartbeat earlier.
"Why did I have to be the one fighting you!?" Mark barked as he landed in a crouch.
The demon knight loomed over him, a towering brute encased in sand-colored plate armor. He wielded both a massive greataxe and a warhammer, each one so absurdly large they could flatten a horse with a single hit. Rage radiated off him like heat.
"Where is your demon friend!?" the knight roared, voice cracking with fury. "I will crush that traitor!"
"Oh no, trust me, I don't want to deal with you," Mark said, backing up a step. "But since I'm stuck with you now, there's no way I'm letting you walk away from me… unless you're retreating."
He flicked his wrist, pulling out a polished d20 and tossing it into the air.
The demon knight surged forward instantly, both weapons raised to obliterate him.
The die clattered onto the cobblestone—14. With his modifier, a clean 22.
Mark slipped under the greataxe, felt the wind of the warhammer graze past his ribs, then leapt through the open window of a nearby building. He landed inside and vanished into the shadows.
The demon knight spun toward the window—
Then froze.
"What is this…?" he hissed, voice lowering to a confused whisper-yell. "I know he's in there somewhere. I should know where—but I don't! Why don't I!?"
His agitation spiked. With no clear target, he turned instead toward the cluster of human defenders—mages with a few light infantry holding the street. He stomped forward, greataxe dragging sparks as he prepared to carve through them.
A sharp, crushing pain detonated in his spine.
The knight buckled to one knee, the force nearly driving him face-first into the street. He snarled, realizing—too late—that Mark had struck him from behind.
A critical. The die had landed on a 20.
No kick should hurt him this badly, plate armor or not. Yet something in his back felt wrenched, bruised, broken.
"You cheating bastard!" he roared, whipping around with both weapons raised—only to see Mark already disengaged, already several paces away.
"I will rip out your spine!" the knight bellowed.
"Yeah, yeah," Mark said, waving a hand dismissively as he tossed his d20 again. "But I'm lucky, so I doubt you will."
The die bounced twice.
Stopped on a 4.
"Oh shit," Mark muttered, staring at the number.
He looked up.
The demon knight was already charging.
"Oh shit!!!"
---
Hoshikang carved through demons with an unbroken rhythm, each motion flowing into the next with cold precision. His glaive dragged a constant ribbon of blood through the air—evidence of how little time it ever spent still. A downward cleave split two imps cleanly; a tight spin severed the torso of a lunging sharaykthun; a single thrust skewered a drakorath, and a sharp twist ended its thrashing instantly. All of it executed without hesitation, yet his mind wandered far from the battlefield.
*I hope the Emperor remains safe in Arcadicia,* he thought, turning his wrist to catch the wrist blades of another drakorath. The impact barely shifted his stance. He slid forward and cut its throat in one smooth line. *I hope the others are doing well.*
He shifted to an underhand grip and stabbed backward without looking, impaling an imp that had leapt for his back. *I hope Yuna is doing okay… she cannot handle situations like these very well. That poor girl.*
A shadow dropped toward him from above, but before he needed to react, a crossbow bolt punched through the demon's skull. The corpse hit the dirt beside him. He exhaled through his nose.
"I just hope she does not face anything too deadly," he muttered, before stepping back into the storm of slaughter without missing a beat.
---
If only Hoshikang knew that Yuna was, at that very moment, trembling so badly that her katana felt less like a weapon and more like a lifeline. Though blind, she faced the presence before her with every sense screaming—pressure, heat, that suffocating weight of absolute malice—everything about the being advancing toward her made her stomach knot.
*Why…?* she thought, fear gripping her chest. The being chuckled, the sound dragging along her nerves like claws, and its footsteps drew closer—slow, deliberate, savoring her dread. She stepped back, then back again, boots scraping against broken stone, and heard the other defenders behind her do the same, their fear so palpable she could almost taste it.
*Why does it have to be like this?* Her hands tightened around the hilt, knuckles aching. The presence loomed larger.
"Why do I have to be the one who has to fight the Demon Lord!?"