"But remember, you must stay away from the Death Sinks. Do not engage any devil. And if your trick works, make sure you rejoin your friends immediately, at any cost." Those were the last warnings he heard before William took to the sky.

The vial didn't actually contain blood.

It held a potion Emma prepared for him in her spare time. She claimed it had healing properties and boosted focus. Herbs, caffeine, and who knew what else.

Instead of drinking it, he planned to use it as a pretense to lure out the ranked ones.

"I believe," a voice spoke close by in midair, "that should be your aim."

Someone who can sneak up to him mid-air? Yeah, it was Lamb.

The bloodied creature only he could see was pointing toward a specific location below.

William narrowed his eyes at the pattern forming on the ground. Several red marks overlapped one another, blending together until they looked like a single massive stain.

"That's the only spot where all the Death Sinks are linked."

William hummed. "Understood." He didn't ask why. It hardly mattered. He intended to invite all of them, equally.

He drifted closer to the point.

Devils were still crawling out of the cracks, shrieking and scrambling forward, yet none of them paid him any attention.

Good.

William closed his eyes and focused.

To sell the act, he began uncorking the vial.

At the same time, deep within his body, two energies started to circulate. At first, they moved slowly, then gradually merged like twin streams meeting at a single point.

Aether and Nyx, two opposing forces that should repel and destroy each other.

Yet this singular anomaly, Delimore William, could fuse them as if they were never oil and water. He channeled them as cleanly as any devil or human ever could.

The two shades became one. His presence grew louder, deeper, and impossible to ignore.

The vial came free, and the liquid began to drip toward the ground.

Talec and several soldiers watched in tense anticipation as the young man levitated a few feet above the surface, attempting something born from slim odds, but heavy with hope.

What William failed to notice were the intrigued eyes of the very being that had guided him here.

He was far too absorbed to care.

The world, the chaos, the hopeful gazes, the praying minds, none of it reached him.

Attaining such a pure state of magic was not a blessing. It was the result of discipline.

And in this moment, William was displaying exactly what made him a great mage.

"Huuu…" His lips parted, a slow breath escaping, mirroring the flow of his merged energy as it spread outward like a tidal wave, washing over every devil and forcing them to halt.

It was uncanny, even to the most seasoned eyes, to see every menacing devil abruptly stop and turn toward him.

A golden-haired youth hung suspended in the air, like an angel, holding both sides of the battlefield transfixed by his presence.

And then it happened. Something shifted.

The air thickened, turning viscous, saturated with malice and death. Breathing felt wrong, as if the world itself recoiled.

The cracks began to widen, not splitting but being forced apart from the other side. The ground groaned, stretched, and screamed as something pushed through with deliberate intent.

Slowly, William opened his eyes.

Several pairs of eyes stared back at him.

They were not merely glowing or red. They were layered, stacked within torn sockets, some blinking out of sync, others locked wide open as if afraid to miss a single detail of him. Hunger radiated from them, raw and intelligent, stripping him bare in an instant.

They wanted him.

They wanted him torn, broken, devoured down to the last shred of aether.

For a fraction of a heartbeat, William felt his heart stall.

Then his lips curved upward.

"Finally showing up, eh?"

The ground ruptured.

A ranked devil erupted from the Death Sink, its body dragging itself free as if the earth itself resisted birthing it. Its frame was grotesquely asymmetrical, one arm swollen and overgrown, veins pulsing like living cords beneath cracked, obsidian skin. Its face was a mess of fused bone and flesh, a mouth split too wide, teeth grinding against one another as black saliva spilled freely.

"GRAAAH!"

It lunged, its massive fist tearing the air apart as it swung straight for William's head.

But then,

BOOOOOM

A flaming cannonball smashed into the creature's side, detonating against its ribcage and sending it skidding away in a spray of fire and shredded flesh.

William laughed.

More cracks tore open.

Another ranked devil emerged, this one crawling out on too many limbs, joints bending the wrong way as its spine twisted like a coiled serpent. Its body was riddled with half-formed faces that screamed in unison, their mouths opening and closing as if begging to be released.

Then a third.

This one rose slowly, upright and deliberate. Its body was tall and lean, wrapped in flayed skin that still twitched, as if freshly torn. No eyes marked its face, only a vertical slit that opened gradually, revealing a void so deep it swallowed the light around it.

One by one, the devils abandoned their dens and charged, the earth collapsing behind them as if eager to erase the path they took.

William was not foolish enough to face three ranked devils alone.

But before retreating, he made sure to leave them a gift.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

The droplet was released just before thorned vines lashed out, narrowly missing his toe.

The explosion that followed was violent enough to warp the air itself. A shockwave tore outward, fire and aether colliding in a blinding surge that even Brutus, far from the frontlines, felt in his bones.

William retreated without a single burn, telekinetic arms shielding him flawlessly as he shot back toward Talec.

The first thing he heard was, "You are reckless! Who told you to stay there for so long?"

William grinned. "It felt bad leaving them without a greeting."

Talec huffed. "You've done your job, cadet. There's no need to risk your life needlessly."

William nodded, then turned his gaze back to the battlefield.

As the flames died down, the ranked devil came back into view, unscathed.

William sighed. "Are you sure your men can handle them?"

Talec grinned. "They're trained for this. And with the promise of ending it early, even a dying man would lose one last arrow."

William hummed, "Well, let's see about that."

Soon, he would be stunned.

°°°°°°°°°

A/N:- Thanks for reading. If you have been enjoying the story…then, you know what you have to do.

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