DEMON SUMMONER: DESCENDANT OF THE CELESTIAL SOVEREIGN

Chapter 8: Hunter's Instinct

Thick smoke mixed with the smell of burning flesh choked the throat. The Jakarta provincial highway had turned into a pathway to hell. Hundreds of civilians ran with dragging footsteps. The cries of children and the screams of women echoed over each other, swallowed by the brutal roars of dozens of gray-scaled ape demons.

At the very front line, Aris swung his sword. Flames erupted from the blade, scorching the chests of two D-Rank Demons trying to pounce on an old man. Aris ground his teeth. Sweat the size of corn kernels poured down his temples.

"Tighten the formation." Aris shouted, the veins on his neck bulging. "No one steps outside my ring of fire."

Siti stood two meters to Aris's left. Both of her hands radiated freezing air that turned the asphalt to ice. A layer of frost spread rapidly, locking the legs of three demons trying to flank them from the side.

"Aris, the Qi in my body is running low." Siti's breathing was heavy. Her beautiful face was now covered in bloodstains and road dust. "We can't hold them back if their numbers keep growing."

"Hold on a little longer, Siti." Aris replied quickly, decapitating a partially frozen demon. "We are B-Rank Hunters. This D-Rank trash is no match for us. Focus on your ice shield."

On top of the rocky cliff on the right side of the highway, Eka watched the chaos with an expression as cold as a corpse. He did not care about the refugees screaming for help. He absolutely did not care about Aris's majestic-looking flames. Eka's brain was purely calculating the enemy's movements, searching for the blind spots of the gray-scaled ape pack.

Eka slid down the steep cliff. His boots scraped against the sharp rocks, creating a harsh screeching sound. Eka's clothes were no longer recognizable. His shirt was torn in many places, revealing fresh scar tissue on his stomach and left chest. Dried blood covered half of his face. He looked more like a walking corpse than a breathing human being.

The tip of the God-Slaying Sword dragged against the rocks, leaving a long trail of scratches. The weight of the sword tortured his right arm muscles, but Eka ignored the pain.

One D-Rank Demon managed to break through Siti's ice defense. The creature leaped wildly toward a woman hugging her baby in the back row of the refugee group.

The woman screamed hysterically. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the demon's jaws to tear out her throat.

The sound of flesh being cleaved was incredibly wet and loud.

Thick blood splattered, drenching the woman's face, but the pain she expected never came. The woman slowly opened her eyes.

The ape demon was sliced clean in two, right at the waist. Its intestines and internal organs spilled out, slapping the asphalt. Behind the collapsed carcass, Eka stood taking short breaths. He had just swung his sword from the demon's blind spot, cutting through the hip joint that was not covered by thick scales.

A small black crystal shot out from the corpse and phased into Eka's chest. A warm sensation immediately enveloped his lungs. The minor internal bleeding beneath his arm subsided for a moment.

"One," Eka muttered softly. His voice was hoarse and heavy. He pulled his sword from the asphalt and walked past the trembling woman without so much as a backward glance.

Aris, who had just burned a demon's head to a crisp, looked toward the back line. His eyes widened when he saw Eka's presence. Eka's ragged and blood-soaked appearance made Aris feel sick. To Aris, civilians or low-caste hunters who stepped out of his protective formation were troublemakers just asking to die and ruining his strategy.

"Hey, you filthy beggar." Aris snapped from the front line. His voice was filled with the pure arrogance belonging to a B-Rank Hunter. "What are you doing outside the formation? Get back inside the circle right now, or you'll be torn apart by that trash."

Eka stared at Aris for a moment. His face was completely flat. Eka's brain noted Aris's ragged breathing and the diminishing flames on his sword. Aris's arrogance did not align with the remaining internal energy the man possessed.

"Arrogant rat," the Hellhound sneered inside Eka's head. The hell dog's voice sounded incredibly satisfied. "A human with a few sparks of fire thinks he is a god. Just let him be chewed to death by the demons, kid."

"Silence," Eka replied coldly in his mind. "They are my bait gatherers."

Eka was completely unoffended by Aris's insult. Harsh words could not harm his body, and pride could not provide him with Spirit Runes. Eka went back to dragging his sword. He stepped toward two D-Rank Demons busy pounding on the ice wall created by Siti.

Eka took a flanking route, utilizing the shadows and thick smoke from a burning car on the side of the road. The moment he was perfectly positioned in the blind spot of the two demons, Eka forced his calf muscles to jump.

The God-Slaying Sword slashed the knee of the first demon. A sharp crack of bone rang out. The demon fell to its knees with a loud howl. Without wasting a single second, Eka used the hard pommel of his sword to smash into the temple of the second demon, caving its skull inward.

Two black crystals shot out and phased right into Eka's chest.

"Three," Eka whispered. Sweat mixed with blood dripped from his chin.

"Are you deaf?!" Aris yelled again. This time, his tone was much higher and full of anger. "Stop ruining my formation, you bastard. Your presence is luring more demons over here. Get out of the way or I'll burn you alive myself."

Siti looked at Eka with mixed feelings. She saw how efficiently the dirty young man was killing the demons. The young man wasn't using any Qi protection at all. He relied purely on blind spots and the sheer weight of his weapon.

"Aris, just let him be," Siti said, panting. Her left hand trembled, struggling to maintain the ice layer starting to crack under the demons' assault. "He's helping reduce their numbers from the rear."

"Helping? He's just the lowest caste of hunter trying to show off." Aris spat on the asphalt. "Reckless fools like him will only become a burden when things get worse."

Eka turned a deaf ear. He didn't care about the couple's argument. Eka's gaze began to shift toward the ground right beneath Aris's feet.

A subtle vibration traveled through the soles of Eka's boots. That vibration wasn't coming from the footsteps of the scaled apes around them. Something much heavier, much larger, and incredibly dense was moving at terrifying speed from beneath the earth.

Kuro-Oni laughed mockingly inside Eka's mind.

"Kid. It looks like your little fire god is about to meet his end."

Eka focused his vision. The asphalt beneath Aris's feet began to form hairline cracks. The cracks spread in a matter of seconds. The smell of sulfur and scorched earth suddenly exploded in the air, overpowering the stench of blood on the street.

"Fall back." Eka's voice was soft and raspy, yet loud enough to reach Aris's ears.

Aris turned his head, glaring at Eka with a condescending look. "You dare give me orders, you filthy beggar?"

That was the last arrogant sentence to leave Aris's mouth before the ground beneath him erupted.

A chunk of asphalt the size of a car was hurled high into the air. A deafening roar instantly silenced the cries of the refugees. A giant demon shot out of the newly formed crater. The creature was a hybrid between a giant centipede and a wolf, coated in incredibly thick pitch-black bone armor. It stood three meters tall. Pure killing intent swept across the entire area, snuffing out the flames on Aris's sword in the blink of an eye.

That was no low-level grunt monster. That was a local Demon General. Peak C-Rank.

Aris widened his eyes. Panic gripped his heart. He tried to cross his sword to block the deadly strike coming from below, but the creature's speed completely outclassed the reflexes of an exhausted Aris.

The demon's giant bone pincer slammed squarely into Aris's chest.

The sound of cracking ribs was sickeningly clear. Aris vomited a mouthful of fresh blood. His body was launched backward over ten meters through the air like a broken ragdoll. His proud sword slipped from his grasp and spun away, crashing onto the distant asphalt. Aris landed with a heavy thud. His body rolled several times before coming to a stop face down, no longer moving.

"ARIS."

Siti's scream tore through the air. The woman's face was as pale as a corpse. Her sanity shattered seeing the man she loved lying in a pool of blood. She abandoned her ice defense formation entirely, running blindly past the refugees toward her lover's body.

The Demon General landed on the asphalt with a heavy thud that shook the earth. The glowing red eyes on its wolf face locked onto Siti as she ran closer. The creature let out a sharp hiss. The air around it vibrated due to the density of its Qi.

The demon lowered its posture, using its many legs as springs, and leaped straight at Siti. The creature's jaw opened incredibly wide, revealing rows of serrated teeth dripping with deadly acid. It intended to swallow Siti's body whole from above.

Siti realized the shadow of death was covering her body. She looked up. The woman's legs suddenly went weak. All of her joints froze from pure terror. She couldn't even raise her hands to cast her ice elemental magic. Siti could only close her eyes, waiting for the agonizing pain of her body being ripped in two.

From a spot ten meters away, Eka ground his teeth. He knew his body's limits perfectly well. He was just a hunter on the verge of breaking into D-Rank, completely incapable of using Qi as a shield. Fighting a C-Rank Demon head-on was absolute suicide. Eka knew that if Siti and Aris had been in prime condition, this pack of D-Rank and C-Rank Demons could never have touched them. However, after observing their fighting patterns, Eka realized these two B-Rank Hunters relied solely on their Qi.

But, if Siti died here, there would be no one left to hold back the rest of the demon horde from eating the remaining refugees. And Eka absolutely hated losing a pawn that could still be used to distract the demons.

"No. No. Don't do it, you foolish human." the Hellhound roared inside his head in a panicked tone. "Your bones will be crushed to dust if you do."

Eka ignored the hell dog's warning. He forced his left calf and thigh muscles to pump out power far beyond their safe limits. The muscle fibers in his leg tore instantly, leaking warm fresh blood down into his boot. Blinding pain exploded in his nervous system, but his body shot through the air at full speed.

Eka's footsteps created small sonic booms against the asphalt. A fierce wind blew behind him.

Right as the C-Rank Demon's jaw was merely inches from Siti's deathly pale face, Eka positioned himself between the giant monster and Siti. Eka dug his heels into the ground, raised the God-Slaying Sword with both of his violently shaking hands, and crossed the red blade directly into the path of the demon's wide-open mouth.

**

Author's Note:

If you like this novel, please leave a 5-star rating and drop your comments! You might also enjoy my two other novels published on MegaNovel:

Demon Emperor

God of Lust and War System