DEMON SUMMONER: DESCENDANT OF THE CELESTIAL SOVEREIGN

Chapter 9: Killing Aura from the Shadows

The impact produced a deafening explosion.

The air around them shattered. The shockwave swept up dust and asphalt gravel, forcing Siti to cover her pale face with both hands. In front of her, Eka stood in a crossed blocking stance. The God-Slaying Sword was wedged perfectly between the wide-open jaws of the centipede-wolf Demon General.

The forward momentum of the Peak C-Rank Demon was brutal.

Eka's boots dragged backward across the asphalt, carving two shallow trenches for two meters. His already torn left calf muscle now screamed under the pressure, spilling fresh blood that soaked right through his cargo pants. The bones in both of Eka's arms creaked loudly, groaning under pure physical pressure that was thousands of times heavier than his human body could bear.

The red blade of the ancient sword was stuck between the demon's rows of sharp fangs. Thick green saliva dripped from the demon's jaw, landing on the sleeve of Eka's shirt. The fabric hissed and burned. The deadly acid melted through the cloth, blistering the skin on Eka's arm until raw red flesh was exposed.

Eka did not scream. His jaw was locked tight. Fresh blood dripped from his nose and the corners of his lips. As an E-Rank Hunter, his physical strength was clearly outmatched. He did not yet possess the ability to channel Qi to form a shield around his arms. He was holding back the weight of a van-sized demon purely using his skeletal structure.

"Eka." Siti's voice trembled violently behind him. The woman's legs gave out. She fell to her knees on the cold asphalt.

The C-Rank Demon snorted in anger. Its glowing red eyes glared at Eka with pure hatred. The creature increased the pressure of its jaw, intending to snap the God-Slaying Sword and the wretched human holding it into two pieces.

Soft cracking sounds echoed from the bones in Eka's forearms. His radius and ulna began to bow under extreme pressure. Eka's vision flashed white. Blinding pain hammered his nervous system, warning him that his body would shatter in two seconds.

However, in the midst of agony that nearly stripped away his sanity, Eka's brain operated with absolute coldness. An insane calculation formed inside his head.

In his subconscious, the blood contract seal pulsed wildly. The two A-Rank existences residing in his shadow felt the imminent threat of death alongside him.

"You'll be ripped in half, you trash vessel." The Hellhound's voice echoed with panic inside Eka's skull.

"Weak human. Do not dare break apart before you release our seals." Kuro-Oni cursed with equally panicked urgency.

Eka smirked faintly in the real world. Blood coated his teeth. He had found a loophole in the contract Sabeni had forced upon these two demons. These two arrogant demons never cared about him. They refused to help Eka slaughter the hundreds of low-level demons on the toll road.

But this situation was different. If Eka's head was bitten off by the C-Rank demon in front of him right this second, Sabeni's seal would not break. The seal would detonate, taking the souls of the Oni and the Hellhound into absolute nothingness with it.

"Did you think," Eka spoke through their mental link, his voice sounding incredibly flat and deadly. "I care about my own life?"

Eka stared straight into the glowing red eyes of the demon in front of him. Without a single shred of hesitation, Eka intentionally loosened his grip on the hilt of the God-Slaying Sword.

He relaxed his shoulder muscles. The sword blade holding back the demon's jaw instantly dropped two inches, moving directly toward Eka's neck.

The C-Rank Demon's venomous fangs touched Eka's collar. Death was less than a hair's breadth away.

In the soul dimension, panic exploded into absolute terror. The mystical black chains binding Kuro-Oni and the Hellhound flared brightly, burning their souls as a warning that their vessel's heart was about to stop beating.

"Crazy human. What are you doing?!" the Hellhound roared.

"He really intends to commit suicide." Kuro-Oni cursed harshly, realizing the human in the real world was not bluffing. "Open his Qi seals. Channel our power, you stupid dog, or we all perish together with this foolish hunter."

That curse broke through the limits of their egos. The fear of death forced the two A-Rank Demons to throw away their pride. From within Eka's shadow, the floodgates of high-level spiritual energy were forcefully ripped open.

Two streams of pure Qi, one thick red and one pitch-black, shot out from the soul dimension, crashing directly into Eka's physical circulatory system.

In the real world, Eka screamed at the top of his lungs.

It wasn't because of the demon's bite, but because of the inhuman physical torture. Receiving A-Rank Qi into an E-Rank vessel was like pouring thousands of gallons of boiling water into a thin glass pipe.

The capillaries all over Eka's arms, neck, and face ruptured simultaneously. His skin turned violently red as if burning from the inside out. A fine mist of blood sprayed from his pores. Both of his eyeballs instantly filled with blood, turning the whites of his eyes as crimson as rubies. Eka's heart beat at a speed that nearly shattered his ribs, pumping the foreign internal energy throughout every tissue.

"Argh." Eka vomited thick black blood right into the face of the Demon General.

But that suffering brought forth a power that defied mortal laws.

Eka's hands, which were previously trembling and on the verge of snapping, suddenly went dead still. The muscles in his arms hardened like carbon steel. Bulging black and red veins pulsed violently beneath his skin. The God-Slaying Sword that had nearly slit his throat instantly stopped moving, locked firmly in place by an absurd new grip.

The centipede-wolf Demon General flinched. Its animalistic instincts sensed a drastic shift right before its eyes. The demon tried to clamp its jaw down harder, putting all of its multi-ton body weight into the bite, but its jaw couldn't close even a single millimeter. An entirely illogical opposing force was rejecting its bite.

Eka raised his head slowly. Blood dripped from his eyes, trailing down past his nose and his cruel, smirking lips.

"You two," Eka whispered coldly, his voice now overlapping with the heavy echoes of his two demon servants. "Are just dogs forced to obey."

Eka pushed the God-Slaying Sword forward.

The force of that push defied all logic. The van-sized Demon General was lifted off the ground. The Peak C-Rank creature let out a muffled howl, trying to pull its jaw back, but Eka's sword now radiated an ancient aura of death that locked down the air currents around it.

Eka stomped his foot onto the asphalt, twisted his shoulders, and threw the multi-ton creature aside as easily as tossing a bag of trash.

BOOM.

The Demon General crashed violently into a row of burning cars on the side of the highway. Metal debris flew everywhere. The creature shrieked in pain, struggling to stand on its partially broken bone pincers.

Aris, who was still sprawled out dozens of meters away with a crushed chest, widened his eyes. Blood poured from Aris's mouth, but his pain was completely overshadowed by the horror he had just witnessed. The B-Rank Hunter could not believe his own eyes. A ragged young man with absolutely zero elemental Qi had just tossed a Peak C-Rank Demon General using nothing but pure physical strength.

Siti was still kneeling in place. The woman held her breath. The temperature around her plummeted suddenly, but not because of her ice magic. This freezing chill was the physical manifestation of terror.

Eka's shadow cast upon the afternoon asphalt slowly began to lengthen.

The shape of the shadow morphed, widening unnaturally, no longer obeying the laws of light. Darkness crept out from the tips of Eka's boots. Thick red and black smoke began to billow from the back of the heavily panting young man.

The Demon General that had just risen from the car wreckage suddenly froze.

The glowing red eyes of the centipede-wolf demon widened in terror. The creature could see what ordinary humans could not comprehend. The suffocating A-Rank Demon Qi pressure began to seep and thicken from Eka's broken body.

The General's predatory instincts shattered entirely. The savage beast that only seconds ago was ready to swallow a B-Rank Hunter alive was now trembling violently. The joints of the demon's exoskeleton chattered uncontrollably. The sharp pincers on its arms dropped limply to the asphalt. The creature instinctively lowered its posture, not daring to lift its face to look at the blood-soaked young man in front of it.

Aris and Siti stood frozen like statues, their faces as pale as corpses.

From behind the billowing red and black smoke at Eka's back, two giant silhouettes began to manifest. The first silhouette took the form of a towering samurai knight with rising horns and a bloodthirsty serrated katana. The second silhouette took the form of a giant hound with a jaw dripping liquid magma, radiating an intense heat that scorched the highway.

Those two giant monsters from another dimension towered behind Eka. Their shadows covered half of the highway, glaring down at the Demon General now trembling pitifully on the asphalt.