The man who stepped through the portal was not someone anyone would associate with sloth—or even with the title of Demon Lord. He looked to be somewhere in his thirties, he looked tall though his permanently hunched posture made it impossible to tell his true height. His skin was pale in a sickly, unhealthy way, stretched thin over sharp bones. Heavy, sunken eyebags carved shadows under his half-lidded yellow eyes, like he hadn't slept in days. Weeks. Months. Maybe even years.
His black hair was a messy, uneven tangle, dry and coarse like sandpaper. His body was rail-thin—alarmingly so—which only made the casual confusion on his face stranger as he blinked around with slow, tired motions.
"What's this?" Lazgor muttered, scratching his scruffy beard as though waking up mid-dream. "I thought I was lazy, but you're all still standing right in front of the portal."
His gaze drifted, unfocused, until it landed on Dash. The shift in expression was minimal, but even Dash could feel Lazgor's confusion sharpen.
"Who's that? Are you all struggling against one guy?" Lazgor asked, pointing with a limp, barely-interested gesture.
"Lord Lazgor! It is good that you finally arrived—please lend us your aid, because we cannot best this monster!" Valrog bellowed, desperate.
Lazgor physically flinched. "Why are you talking like that?" he asked flatly, then shook his head as if the effort of caring was too much. "Whatever. If you all need my help dealing with even one guy, I guess I have to do even more work than usual…"
He sighed—a long, exhausted, theatrical exhale—and finally turned fully toward Dash.
Only for his eyes to widen.
Dash was already sprinting at him, grin blazing, golden light sparking off the ground behind him.
*It doesn't matter what he looks like—he feels strong, so I have to go all out!* Dash thought, bracing as he cocked his fist back and shouted, "Super Pu—!"
The shout cut off in a burst of raw pain.
A hard, brutal impact smashed into his stomach. Not from Lazgor—but from the demon knight who blurred past him in a streak of motion. The kick folded Dash's body around the strike before hurling him backward like a fired cannonball.
He crashed through tree after tree—dozens—splintering trunks in rapid succession before finally slamming into a massive boulder hard enough to shake the earth. Dust plumed. Stone cracked. Dash hit the ground in a heap and coughed out blood in a wet spray.
"What the…?" he rasped, staring at the blood on his hand. "Why did that hurt so much? Was he hiding his strength? And wasn't he way faster than before…?"
Back by the portal, the demons stared in collective shock—then rising confidence. A wave of relieved chatter washed through them as Lazgor let out a soft groan of pure relief.
"By Michael… did that guy actually think I was going to personally fight him?" Lazgor muttered, baffled.
The demon knight dropped to one knee before him. "T-thank you for this gift of power, Lord Lazgor. I will use it to rid us of that monster."
Then he vanished—simply gone—leaving only a violent burst of wind blasting in the direction he was sprinting.
Straight at Dash.
The Wandering Calamity could barely get his feet under him before he saw the demon knight tearing across the shattered clearing toward him. Dash tried to shift aside, but his limbs felt heavy, delayed, as if someone had dragged invisible weights across his body.
"Why do I feel so slow…?" he muttered—right as a brutal straight punch slammed into his solar plexus.
The impact blasted him backward, shattering the boulder behind him into gravel. Before he could finish flying, the demon knight was already there—catching up mid-air in a blur of motion. His dagger flashed, and the blade plunged into Dash's forearm. Dash let out a raw cry as the knight twisted the knife, then yanked him inward by the embedded hilt.
He used the blunt edge deliberately—hurting Dash without severing the arm—just before releasing him. A knee drove into Dash's stomach. An elbow crashed against his temple. The dagger shifted in the knight's grip and he wrenched Dash's pinned arm upward, torquing the joint, then drove an uppercut into Dash's jaw so hard the impact cracked like thunder.
The blade ripped free a moment before the demon knight spun through a full rotation and launched Dash with a whipping kick.
Dash's body slammed into a nearby mountain with enough force to make the entire slope tremble. Rocks split. Dust cascaded. Buried in rubble, he hacked up blood as his stabbed arm convulsed uncontrollably.
But it wasn't just the arm. His entire body trembled.
He was panting—shaking—in fear.
He clenched his teeth, horrified by the feeling crawling up his spine. *No… what's happening? I like this. I always like this. So why am I getting scared?*
He didn't have time to wrestle with it. The demon knight was already sprinting toward him again.
Dash threw his arms up just as the first punch smashed into his guard. Then a second. A third. Four. Five. The blows poured in relentlessly, each one heavier than the last, the knight's fists blurring into a storm of impacts. Every strike rattled Dash to the bone. The mountain behind him groaned, fissures spreading like spiderwebs with every hit.
Dash's arms shook violently as he kept blocking—pain lancing up to his shoulders, fear tightening his throat. *This doesn't make sense!* he thought, panic rising. *I've fought the other Strongest—they're stronger than him. So why? Why am I—*
Then it hit him.
He knew this feeling—this wrongness in his body, this unnatural fear. He'd felt something just like it before.
Back when he fought Aeron.
The memory snapped through him—
—and golden light erupted off his skin in a sudden burst.
The demon knight's eyes widened, but before he could leap back, Dash's hand shot out and clamped around his wrist. The terror in Dash's expression evaporated, replaced by a wild, relieved grin as laughter tore out of him, genuine and ecstatic.
"That was a good trick!" he shouted. "But I've had something similar happen to me before!"
He reeled his fist back, golden aura roaring around his arm, and the demon knight could do nothing but watch as Dash bellowed:
"Super Duper Punch!!!"