Chapter 228
Neo stood still in the quiet that followed the last fight. He forced his breathing to slow. The calm was thin and short, but he needed every second of it. He closed his eyes and turned his senses inward the way the system had taught him. Pain lived in more places than he liked to admit. A deep bruise ran along his left ribs where a earlier strike had landed. Something sharp still sat under the skin of his right thigh. Smaller cuts crossed both forearms. None of them bled hard, but each one whispered that it would keep growing if he ignored it. He catalogued every injury the way a man checks a leaking roof before a storm. One day the hidden wounds would stack high enough to break him for good. He had to find them all now.
The system chimed.
Ding.
A demon called the Lost Horn, level 22 stars, is attacking the forest and trying to destroy it. Host is required to stop him or he will reach the Nyx tribe in less than two hours.
Reward: time-freezing ability. You will be able to freeze time on your enemy for a split of 1/20 of a second. To make it stronger you will need to upgrade the skill with time stones.
Failure: your death and the death of everyone you love and the death of the whole forest.
Time remaining: 2 hours.
Neo’s throat went dry. He read the reward twice. Time freeze. Even a twentieth of a second could decide a fight. He did not need to warn anyone. Two hours of absence would not raise alarm. He opened the system map. The demon’s marker burned red deep in the western trees. Teleport was greyed out. He had never set foot in that stretch of forest. The system would not open a door he had not walked through before.
He shifted into Torch Man mode. Heat rolled across his skin. Flame wings unfolded from his back and lifted him clear of the ground. He climbed fast, scanning the canopy for a clear path. While he flew he began the sealing work. One box. Then another. He shaped the barriers out of pure mana, layered them tight, and packed each one with the same binding runes he had practiced until his fingers remembered them without thought. By the time the western ridge came into view he held nearly a hundred sealed boxes. He compressed them all into a single small cube no larger than his fist and tied a thin mana thread to it so it would answer his will.
The demon stood in a clearing of broken trunks. His body was thick with muscle, every line cut sharp under dark skin. One long horn rose from the left side of his forehead, black as burned bone. His eyes glowed pure purple. He spoke to the empty air as if the forest itself listened.
"Princess thinks too highly of a spot of primitive people. I alone am enough to clear this forest a hundred times."
Then the demon looked up. Neo hovered high above, bright as a second sun against the afternoon sky. The demon tilted his head.
"What is that?"
Neo stayed where he was. Distance was safer. He drew the weapon Veya had made for him. Days earlier he had told her about Einstein’s wormhole ideas, about bending space and time so a strike could land before it was thrown. She had laughed until she had to lean against him, then kissed him hard and said she wanted his children. After that she locked herself in her workshop and came out with a sleek gun the colour of polished steel. The device could fold a moment backward or forward and plant a hit in either place.
Neo raised the gun and locked the targeting circle on the demon’s chest. A green light bloomed on the weapon’s face. He set the sealed cube on that light and fired. The cube vanished, sent one full hour into the past, aimed at the exact spot the demon now occupied.
The clearing emptied. The demon was simply gone.
Quest complete.
Rewards waiting in inventory.
Neo’s shoulders dropped a fraction. Then a laugh rolled across the sky, rich and familiar and wrong. Lilith’s voice, the same goddess who had dropped him into this world, filled the air.
"I can’t have you making tricks around the system."
The demon rebuilt itself in the same place, horn, muscle, purple eyes and all. The gun in Neo’s hand cracked and fell apart into useless scrap. The demon clutched his own chest as if something cold had passed through it. When he lifted his head again the purple eyes burned with a hatred that had no clear reason, only pure, sudden force.
Neo swore under his breath.
The demon launched. One kick took Neo full in the ribs and hurled him backward. He tore through a line of trees, bark and branches exploding around him, and slammed into the earth hard enough to leave a long scar in the dirt. He pushed up just as the next kick came. This time he rolled aside. The demon’s foot cratered the ground where his head had been.
Neo switched. Lord of the End mode flooded him. Power thickened his limbs. He met the demon in the air and the two of them became a storm of fists, elbows, knees, and kicks. Purple light and bright yellow light crashed against each other again and again. Every impact cracked the air like thunder. The sky itself seemed to flash between the two colours.
Neo remembered a move from a film in his first life. He waited until the demon’s neck came into range, then formed a sharp V with his thumb and first finger and drove it into the soft place under the jaw. The strike crushed the breathing tubes. The demon choked, eyes wide. Neo followed without pause—ribs, face, the same spots over and over. Each hit landed clean.
The demon’s eyes turned red. Power exploded outward. He locked both fists together and smashed Neo downward. Neo fell toward the trees. Before he hit the ground he blitzed, reversed, and drove the demon the other way. The body tore through another line of trunks, splinters flying. Neo stayed on him, still striking, still pressing.
The demon kept coming. Neo’s eyes sharpened. He dropped into a stance, both feet planted, and tightened his grip on the sword until the hilt bit into his palm. Memory rose—Nara’s sword forms, the ones he had copied note for note. Before the thought finished forming, his body already moved the way she moved.