Chapter 262: Morals
Elion waited in the foliage while holding his breath.
For the moment, everything would explode.
The very first line of humanity’s forces burst into view behind him, crashing through the flaming forest and trees with unstoppable momentum as they charged forward.
Each person moved in tight formation with others beside and behind them, forming a rushing wave of bodies and steel that shook the ground with every step, and right at the front, leading the charge, was a wolfkin beastwoman running on all fours.
Her movements were wild and powerful. A savage, smiling expression stretched across her face like she had been waiting for this moment her whole life.
"Hahahahaha, I’m going to tear these bastards limb from limb!" She laughed like a maniac while she ran.
’Yeah... that one’s a battle maniac,’ Elion thought as he watched her tear ahead of the others, completely unrestrained.
He stayed hidden for a bit, letting the first line pass.
They all rushed past him without slowing, their attention locked forward on the enemy, and the second line followed just as quickly, weapons drawn, spells already forming in their hands as they prepared for the inevitable clash.
No one noticed him.
’Good.’
When the third line approached, Elion did not hesitate any longer, pushing himself up from his crouched position and slipping into their formation smoothly, blending in with their momentum as if he had always been part of the charge.
He gripped his sword tightly and ran.
He charged forward with them as the distance between the two armies vanished rapidly, the air thick with tension, the ground trembling beneath their feet, and ahead of them, the demon forces grew clearer with every step.
The collision was seconds away.
More and more coalition mages and soldiers flooded in behind Elion’s line as the charge continued.
The forest shook under the sheer number of bodies pushing forward, and somewhere in the middle of that momentum, his thoughts began to drift to something he had not really allowed himself to think about until now.
The trial had given him a clear objective.
Aid humanity’s forces, which could be translated as having to win the battle.
And that meant one thing.
He had to kill countless demons to achieve that.
He frowned slightly as that thought settled in his mind.
Up until now, he had never actually taken a life, and even though he had wanted to kill William desperately, that had been anger, personal, targeted, something he could justify in the moment, but this... this was different, this was killing strangers, people he did not know, beings he had never interacted with.
Had they wronged him?
Certainly not.
Were they even real? Probably not, considering that this was very likely just some sort of illusion. But the question still lingered in his mind for a moment. Regardless, it did not change anything.
At the core of it, it came down to one thing.
Morals.
What were his morals?
He had been raised as a human, and some of the things he had been taught growing up was that all demons were evil, and by all accounts, that meant he should hate demons, fear them, see them as enemies without question, but the moment that thought formed, it brought him right back to Esme and Ophelia.
They were demons too.
And yet, he did not feel any sort of evil within them as he had been told; to him, they were just... people, it was just absurd that he was told he had to hate demons.
He had always been told demons were evil.
That they were monsters.
But...
Maybe that was not entirely true.
Maybe lust demons were different.
Or maybe, things were not as simple as he had been taught. He could have kept thinking about it.
He probably would have.
But he did not get the chance because the first line had already collided with the enemy.
Everywhere he looked, steel met flesh and magical spells tore through bodies. Screams and roars filled the air.
The battlefield erupted.
And just like that, there was no time to think.
Elion’s eyes hardened as he pushed everything else aside, forcing his mind into focus. Hesitation here would get him wounded badly, or worse, killed. The last thing he needed was to be distracted by his own thoughts in the middle of a battlefield.
He activated Enhanced Cognition instantly, and his mind sharpened. Everything slowed as he entered a state of absolute focus.
His focus narrowed as he scanned the chaos around him, picking out targets, movements, and openings, and within seconds, he chose his first one.
A hulking, massive demon who was more beast-like than the rest. It looked like a hybrid between a minotaur and a lizard because of its scaly lower body.
It wielded a large halberd, and right as Elion locked onto it, he watched as it cleaved a human mage clean in two, the woman’s body splitting apart as crimson blood sprayed into the air in a gruesome arc.
Elion’s eyes did not waver; they remained cold and detached as his feet moved faster and faster until his lower body became a blur of movement.
He closed the distance in an instant. Step by step.
Tap!
Tap!
Tap!
He cast Frost Edge, the blade in his hand instantly coating itself in a thin layer of ice, sharpening its edge further as a faint chill spread outward from it.
Then he moved.
Woosh!
He leapt forward, covering several meters in a single motion as his body flowed into the strike, his lower body driving forward first while his upper body lagged slightly behind, creating a strange, deceptive angle in his attack.
The demon never noticed.
One moment, it was charging toward its next target; the next, everything flipped.
"...Huh?"
It saw the world upside down.
Too late.
It never realized that its head had already been cut off until it was dead.
Thud!
The severed horned head hit the ground with a heavy sound as black blood sprayed outward in thick arcs, splattering across the forest floor.
Some of it stained Elion’s sword, and some of it splashed onto his legs.
He did not react, and he did not even look down. His eyes remained cold and detached. He was already moving toward the next target before the black blood from the first demon had even finished splashing onto the ground.
His feet cut across the battlefield with a strange smoothness that looked completely at odds with the chaos around him.
While men and demons alike were screaming, dying, casting, hacking, and being trampled underfoot, his body seemed to move through all of it with a cold and detached precision that made him look less like a young mage caught in a war and more like some sharpened blade that had been thrown straight into the middle of a living mass.
A horned demon to his right spotted him first, its red skin slick with sweat and soot as it bared rows of uneven teeth and swung a crude axe down toward his head with a guttural roar.
"Haaaaaaa!!! Die, human!" but Elion did not even properly look at it; he simply dipped his shoulder and let the axe pass over him by inches, the rush of air brushing past his hair as he stepped into the demon’s open side and drove his sword upward with one hand.
Shing!
The white blade slid under the demon’s ribcage and punched up through its chest, and for one frozen second, the creature just stood there staring at him in confusion with its mouth hanging open, then Elion twisted the blade and ripped it free sideways.
Half its torso opened like a split sack of meat, black steaming organs spilling out wetly with a splorch as the demon collapsed in two twitching halves.
He was already gone before the body hit the ground.
A wolf-headed beast demon lunged low from the front, trying to catch his legs with clawed hands, while another one, taller and carrying a jagged spear, came from behind.
Clearly, they thought they had him pinched, but Elion’s footwork changed at the last instant, one step short, one pivot, one slide, and his whole body seemed to glide between the two attacks as if he had already measured them before they happened.
Then his sword flashed in a flat horizontal line.
Shing!
The wolf-headed one’s forearms flew off at the elbows, spraying green blood in a pair of ugly fountains, and before its scream could even rise fully, Elion reversed the blade and thrust backward under his own arm without looking.
Crack!
The point punched straight through the other demon’s throat and out the back of its neck, and when he yanked the sword free, the demon’s attempt at a war cry turned into a bubbling wet gargle as it dropped to its knees, clutching at the hole and fell forward face-first into the dirt.
All around him, the battlefield was erupting into complete madness.
The first lines had already broken formation and devolved into clumps of small brutal skirmishes, mages hurling half-formed spells from behind panicked swordsmen, beastmen crashing bodily into larger demons with savage roars
Arrows and blood and severed limbs occasionally cutting through the air in no clear pattern at all, while fire spread along the underbrush and smoke rolled low between the trunks like something alive.
Someone screamed for help to his left. Someone else screamed for their mother to the right. A demon laughed with a wet choking sound before losing its jaw to a hammer blow.
A human spearman got his stomach ripped open and fell to the ground trying to hold his insides in with both hands. None of it slowed Elion, and better yet, none of it even seemed to touch him.
Another demon came barreling toward him. This one was thick-necked and broad-shouldered with four eyes and a rusted cleaver in each hand.
It shouted something in a language Elion did not understand before hacking both weapons downward in an X, but Elion stepped in instead of backing up.
His knees bent low as he slipped under the crossing blades, then drove his elbow into the demon’s stomach hard enough to fold its body over him.
In the same instant, his sword rose from below.
Crunch!
He sliced through jaw, tongue, skull, and horn in one rising arc that split the face open right down the center, and the two halves of the head peeled away grotesquely before the body toppled backward, still holding its cleavers in a death grip.
Elion’s presence was like that of a grim reaper.