Ishiki didn't take in much of the notifications... but the last one was very unexpected. He hadn't opened the Admin chat for some time now, to think that they would give him a personal quest on their own.

Well, it made him happy, he got 25,000 NC. That was almost as much as he had currently. Actually he had to check how much NC he had now and what he could afford from the shop.

He also needed to remove the [Hard Nub] from sale, he was currently alive... actually only barely alive. But he was only able to defeat the demon because of it.

'I... I need to -' suddenly he staggered back and fell unconsciousness in the rubble. Pool of red blood flowed from his side... slowly moving towards the center of the crater.

The Silver Moon's cold light washed over his broken form, as he lay beside the corpse of the Demon he'd killed.

Then—from the darkness beyond the crater's edge... something moved.

The movements were not the shambling gait of Withering Beasts, or the desperate flight of surviving players.

Three figures descended into the crater.

They didn't walk down the slope, instead they dropped from a very high altitude it seemed.

They landed thirty meters with the casual grace of stones thrown into water, without a sound that could be heard over the distant screams and roars of the ongoing chaos.

Through the haze of pain and approaching unconsciousness, Ishiki's eyes cracked open just enough to register shapes silhouetted against the pale moon.

'Holy... cow. They are so big.'

That was his first thought. These weren't human-sized. Even from his ground-level perspective, he could see they were either the size of the demon he had killed.

One of them even stood at least three meters tall, they were human... as far as the outline of the body suggested.

His vision swam, details bleeding together into an impressionist painting of horror.

But he saw the eyes.

The first one to land, had eyes that glowed with a bright, venomous green... a color that reminded Ishiki of poison, of things that grew in deep forests where sunlight feared to reach.

Then darkness claimed him completely, dragging him down into merciful oblivion.

The creature that landed first stood motionless for a moment, surveying the battlefield through his green eyes. His pupils were distinctive—each containing a single vertical mark that ran from top to bottom through the cornea like a crack in stained glass.

His physique defied natural law. Muscles layered upon muscles in configurations, each fiber designed for maximum efficiency in dealing death. His skin was the color of burnt copper, covered in the same intricate script-patterns that had adorned his fallen subordinate.

Behind him, the other two landed with heavier impacts that cracked the stone.

The second Demon—marked with two vertical scars through his deep violet eyes, immediately moved toward the demon's corpse. He kicked the body hard enough to send it rolling, as if expecting it to somehow wake up and explain itself.

It didn't, of course. Dead was dead, even for demons.

"How pathetic," the violet-eyed one laughed. "This loser lost to a human child."

The third demon said nothing at first. He knelt beside the corpse with an expression that might have been sorrow if such creatures were capable of the emotion.

His eyes held five vertical marks, making him the lowest-ranked of the three subordinates.

"Senior is really dead," he finally murmured, voice carrying a weight of disbelief. "The child must be a devil."

The leader—the one marked with a single scar and bright green eyes ignored them both. His attention had fixed on the small, broken form lying twenty meters away, half-submerged in its own blood.

He walked toward it slowly, each step deliberate and measured.

Ishiki's unconscious body looked even more pathetic up close. The boy couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen... or maybe older. It was hard to tell looking at the almost frail body.

His clothes were torn and bloody, revealing a patchwork of old and fresh wounds.

Yet this child had killed one of the five Tainted Demons.

The green-eyed demon crouched down, bringing his face level with Ishiki's, and smiled—a terrible expression that showed too many teeth, each one filed to a point.

"Interesting," he whispered to no one in particular. "Very interesting."

He reached out with one clawed hand, intending to lift the boy's chin, to examine the face of this impossible victor—

"I wouldn't do that."

The voice came from nowhere.

The green-eyed demon's hand stopped mid-reach. His smile didn't fade, but his eyes narrowed, scanning the crater for the source.

"Show yourself," he commanded, voice carrying effortless authority.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the ground at his feet began to glow.

Bright blue light erupted from the stone itself and the earth broke into several motes of light, but it still didn't loose its hardened property... it was as if it was breaking down internally at the fundamental level.

The demon's instincts screamed. He moved—throwing himself backward with inhuman speed just as massive stone spikes erupted from the ground where he had been crouching.

They burst upward like the teeth of some buried leviathan, each spike three meters tall and sharp enough to punch through steel. A dozen of them filled the space where Ishiki's body lay, creating a protective cage of stone that blocked direct access to the unconscious boy.

The demon landed in a crouch a few meters away, eyes blazing with sudden interest.

"A skill," he observed, almost appreciatively. "Who are you? Come out."

A figure materialized from the shadows at the crater's edge.

He walked down the slope with measured steps, one hand casually tucked in his pocket, the other bringing a cigarette to his lips. The ember glowed orange in the darkness.

Filch looked exactly as he always did with his disheveled hair and unimpressed expression, that said that he would rather be literally anywhere else.

Looking at the three inhumanly large figures, he gritted his teeth. 'Fuck there are three of them.'

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