"Seriously, JB? Out of all the songs you could've picked, you went with that one?"
Desmon rolled swiftly to the side, narrowly dodging Kagenra's charge. The demon's claws tore a deep groove into the lab's metal floor.
Of all the tracks in existence, the one blaring through the speakers now was "Gee" by Girls' Generation—an oddly cheerful choice for what was essentially a fight to the death with a demon.
"You didn't specify the song. I'm busy now." JB's voice faded from the speakers as she returned to her work.
"I'll never understand women..." Desmon muttered with a sigh. No matter how many girls he met, they were always either trouble or just plain crazy. But with any luck, that number wouldn't increase, right? "You feel the same, Smoke-chan? Got any gorgeous succubi you could introduce me to?"
"DIE!"
"Yeah, yeah... Die this, die that. Want a dictionary for Christmas?"
Without missing a beat, Desmon lifted his leg and shattered the debris Kagenra had hurled at him with a spinning kick, breaking it apart before it could hit him.
"Someone's lacking holiday spirit..."
"Just DIE already!"
"I doubt Santa would approve of that attitude." He muttered, shaking his head lightly.
Frustrated, Kagenra unleashed a flurry of slashes from its claws. The razor-sharp shockwaves tore through the ground like massive blades, slicing through pillars and ceilings with brutal ease.
Desmon, however, danced through the cuts—sidestepping, spinning, his body moving with a grin that was both arrogant and mocking.
"♫Gee gee gee baby baby baby♫ ... Gotta admit, it's catchy."
Between the two, only one was taking the fight seriously. The other was just dodging.
"GRRRRAAAAAHHH!" Kagenra's roar rocked the room like an explosion. It charged full speed, smashing through structures in its path.
"Catch me if you can!" Desmon shouted, spinning around and sprinting down the lab's corridors.
Kagenra chased him relentlessly, destroying everything in its way. Desmon evaded just in time—sliding, scaling walls, leaping through windows—his movements straight out of an action movie.
His only mission for now was to buy time until JB finished her task. And though it wasn't his first time facing the demon, this time his body was fully synced with its movements.
-Hmm... Wonder if there's anything useful around here...
He moved through different rooms, darting past windows and navigating with ease. He vaulted over a railing, twisted in midair, and landed in front of a set of double doors. As he pushed through, he stopped abruptly.
"The cafeteria? Huh... it's like fate wanted me to be here."
He stepped in without much thought. On the counter, steaming plates of freshly prepared food still sat. Apparently, the evacuation was so rushed no one bothered to grab lunch.
"Never say no to a fresh onigiri."
Just as he took the first bite, a barrage of black stakes tore through the walls like flying blades, headed straight for him.
"Tch!"
He reacted instantly—tossing the onigiri into the air and dropping backward, palms to the ground, his body spinning with force. His legs lashed out in a whirlwind of destructive kicks, striking and breaking the projectiles mid-air. Without losing rhythm or flow, he let his back touch the floor and continued spinning across it, as if the playing song was fueling every move. His deadly dance was sharp and fluid.
With a final push, he flipped back up, landed on his feet, and caught the onigiri in his mouth just before it hit the ground.
"Delicious... Those scientists live well."
Desmon could easily win a breakdancing contest. Apparently, his time in New York taught him more than just that lawyers are idiots.
"Didn't anyone teach you manners? Interrupting someone's meal should be a crime. Not that I'm the best guy to talk about crime—I mean, I am wanted by the police, hahaha."
But when he turned toward the source of the stakes, there was nothing.
-Playing hide and seek now?
Without warning, multiple arms of smoke dropped from the ceiling. Desmon dodged to the sides, but the dark limbs multiplied, coiling through the air like serpents. The stakes had been just a distraction.
His reflexes, sharpened by countless brushes with death throughout the day, kept him from being caught. He leapt over tables, skidded across trays, and used a food cart as an improvised skateboard to gain distance.
"This is starting to get annoying…"
Kagenra's laughter echoed throughout the complex, like a warning that things were only going to get worse.
Desmon kept rolling to the sides, flipping and dodging the relentless attacks, but every move seemed just a fraction too slow to escape unscathed. His body was beginning to show signs of wear—cuts and bruises appearing one after another.
"How the hell am I supposed to drag that idiot down from there…?" He growled through gritted teeth, his brow furrowed as he barely managed to dodge without suffering a fatal blow.
Kagenra remained hidden somewhere in the ceiling, shielded by a web of smoke-like arms falling like living projectiles. Getting close was impossible. Attacking each arm would only leave him wide open. If he was already getting wounded just by dodging, taking those hits head-on would be a death sentence.
His eyes darted around wildly, scanning the environment in a frenzy. What he needed was something—anything—that could bring that demon down from above. Highly unlikely… until suddenly:
"Bingo!"
Amid the rubble, an object caught his eye: an industrial gas tank, the kind used in kitchens.
Without hesitation, he sprang forward, moving fast—but the smoke arms still struck with pinpoint accuracy, as if predicting his every move. He pivoted left… and another arm was waiting. Jumped right… and one came crashing down.
"Tsk… too slow…"
For a moment, even giving it his all, he was overwhelmed. The attack was all-encompassing. A swarm of arms descended from every angle, leaving him completely exposed. Not even his inhuman reflexes seemed enough. When the black claws grazed his skin and started digging in to tear him apart...
...he vanished.
In a blink, he reappeared a short distance from his original position.
"Huh?"
Even he paused for a second. He had no idea what he'd just done. Pure speed? Some kind of instinctive teleportation? Demonic inheritance? Did those 'learn-to-teleport-in-5-minutes' videos finally pay off? No time to think. Kagenra wasn't letting up.
Desmon began to move in bursts of light. His figure flickered, appearing and vanishing as he dodged every crushing blow. It was as if his body had taken over—his mind struggling to keep up with whatever was happening.
-What the hell's happening to me…?
But now wasn't the time to question how he was breaking the laws of physics. With that new speed, far beyond what Kagenra could predict, he reached the gas tank. He popped it up with his foot like it was just a soccer ball.
"Here! You can have it!"
He spun on his heel and unleashed a brutal kick. The tank shot through the air like a missile, slamming into the ceiling with force. The shell cracked on impact, sparked...
Boom.
The explosion was immediate, triggering a chain reaction. More tanks began detonating one after another, filling the lab with fire and debris as the massive blast rocked the entire space.
Desmon landed with a roll, shielding his eyes from the flare and letting out a low whistle.
"Now that's fireworks…!"
From the fire, Kagenra's figure dropped to the floor… but, of course, unscathed. No surprise to the demon hunter, who was already getting tired of not being able to punch that damn face.
Now face-to-face again, Desmon braced for his next move.
"THAT WAS USELE..."
Kagenra's voice cut off. Its body went completely still. Silence filled the room like a suffocating mist.
"Cat got your tongue? Actually… do you even have a tongue?"
Desmon's taunt hung in the air, unanswered. Just more silence.
Until something broke it.
A voice.
But not Kagenra's—the one he'd heard plenty of times before.
"Accept your fate, demon hunter."
The voice was heavier. Colder. As if it came from within the void itself. The tone was so sharp, it seemed to slice through the atmosphere.
"Let me guess… you're the one who sent me this thing as a gift?"
A demon made of smoke, tailor-made to fight someone like Desmon? That couldn't be a coincidence.
"Insightful. I'm impressed." The voice replied with heavy sarcasm.
"So, you're going to introduce yourself, tell me your plans, and then I assassinate you just in time for dinner?"
Desmon tilted his head, wearing that insolent grin that had become his trademark.
"You can call me Inmetsu."
"Nice name. I'm Desmon."
"I know. You're the pebble in my shoe that needs to be crushed."
"Scared?" Desmon shot back, still mocking—but his eyes were sharp as blades.
If Inmetsu truly wanted to kill him, it could've done it already. But it hadn't. And that said a lot.
Desmon was unpredictable. He survived his first encounter with Kagenra. And now, even wounded and exhausted, he was still standing. Still fighting. He had this unnerving ability to thrive the more dangerous things became.
You couldn't account for someone like that.
"You're a variable I didn't foresee…" Inmetsu said, its tone deep. "But it doesn't matter. Sooner or later, you'll die."
And in that moment, for the first time… the air grew truly heavy. This wasn't an empty threat. Sooner or later, Inmetsu would come for the demon hunter's head.
"You know… you sound less like a demon and more like a human."
Inmetsu's voice was strangely cautious, measured. A far cry from the visceral arrogance or madness that usually defined the demons Desmon had faced before. Then again… not many demons could even speak.
"Your sense of humor is… peculiar."
"Yeah? I get that a lot, actually. Hahaha."
Desmon was anything but ordinary in the way he dealt with others.
For a moment, their eyes met. This wasn't just a confrontation. It was the beginning of something far bigger. A war just beginning to stir.
"One last thing, demon hunter… This country is far more vast than you realize. You might prefer to die today."
Inmetsu's words weren't a threat. They were a statement—a prediction that things wouldn't go as expected today.
"Thanks for the heads-up, but I've got unfinished business. Like killing you, for instance." Desmon smirked with his usual arrogance. "Though, if you do me the favor of making this easy, I might just make it back home before New Year's. Then again… it's more comfortable living with Shizuka than at Dante's place. At least she pays the electricity."
"I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you. My plans are only just beginning… and they won't stop until this entire country becomes the new underworld." Inmetsu's reply came with such eerie calm it was terrifying.
Hundreds of thousands of demons invading a country. How do you fight that?
Armies? Missiles? Special forces?
In the depths of hell, there were demons who could level cities in seconds, and others whose skin couldn't be pierced—not even by explosions.
"Oi, oi… this goes way beyond stopping demons from invading a school. Guess I'll have to renegotiate my paycheck… Maybe ask for extra desserts on Sundays."
His face remained calm. Not because he underestimated the threat, but because as long as he was there… that nightmare wouldn't come true.
"No matter how hard you try, you won't be able to stop the Velz'ahar Noctuul."
Those final words were strange—spoken in a language no human could understand.
"I don't know what the hell that is… but I guess I'll find out when I face it." His voice had gone cold, his stare so intense it almost seemed to glow.
"That sounds interesting. I hope you survive until then."
With those final words, Kagenra's body began convulsing, twisting violently as though something inside was trying to break free.
"A parting gift from me."
And just like that, Inmetsu's presence vanished.
Desmon's instincts screamed that something bad was about to happen, so he stepped back.
-Not exactly the kind of gift I'd ask for…
In an instant, Kagenra's claws slammed into the ground with brutal force. From the earth erupted hundreds of black, monstrous spikes, shooting out like spears from the abyss.
The speed was overwhelming. There was no time to think. Not even to breathe.
The lab was obliterated. Nearby structures were flattened. The entire zone was swallowed in what looked like a graveyard of hellish spines.
"Hope this place has demon disaster insurance…"
From the sky, Desmon watched as everything was reduced to rubble—like a bomb had gone off. The only thing still partially standing was half of the hangar, where the giant fans are located.
Was it a stroke of luck, or just a mere coincidence?
Desmon landed nimbly and headed into the hangar.
Once inside, he was taken aback by what he found.
-So this is where the taxpayers' money goes…
Inside the hangar stretched a street—an actual, fully functional street, as if plucked straight out of a Japanese city.
Why would anyone need a miniature city inside a hangar? Not even he could guess.
"Desmon, what the hell was that?!"
JB's voice blared from the still-functioning speakers. For some reason, the hangar's system was still operational. Luckily, each lab functioned independently—otherwise, the whole place would've been obliterated.
Moments earlier, while she was analyzing data, her computer alarms had gone off. The cameras had captured the destruction in real time. She had no idea if Desmon had survived—until she heard his voice, completely unfazed.
"Nothing serious." He replied casually. "Just a demon wrecking everything. But hey, look on the bright side—those giant fans are still standing." He pointed to the massive fans on the wall.
JB wanted to yell, maybe even scream at him, but she knew there wasn't time. She hadn't expected that smoky thing to have the power to level everything in seconds. Now it all made sense—that wasn't just any demon. It was a goddamn catastrophe that could wipe out the country if left unchecked.
"I'll ask you what the hell happened later… for now, I haven't finished configuring the system." She muttered, focusing back on her screen.
A progress bar showed 70%. It was the interface for remotely accessing the ventilation system.
"So we just wait until it hits 100 and that's it?" Desmon asked, casually sitting on one of the benches in the city replica.
A break after nearly getting killed was always welcome.
The only thing Desmon understood clearly was that they'd need insane wind power to scatter the demon.
"The current power isn't enough.'' JB pointed out. "But I'm working on that too."
Meanwhile, the entire Shiga Prefecture was plunged into darkness. All its energy was being rerouted here.
The ventilation system wasn't designed to create a reverse tornado, but that was exactly the goal: to turn it into an artificial vortex strong enough to suck in even a demonic body. To pull it off, they had to overload it with a monstrous amount of energy. Those fans already consumed as much power as an entire city—now they were going to push them past their limit.
It's not that bad to run fans at 400% capacity… right?
And to make that happen, they needed time.
Unfortunately… time was the one thing they didn't have.
From the entrance of the hangar, footsteps echoed—not just any footsteps. They were heavy, thunderous, filled with murderous intent. Something worse, something deadly, was walking straight toward him.
Desmon turned his head. There it was. Kagenra.
"What are you, a Digimon? How many evolutions do you need?" He raised a brow, getting up from the bench. "Every form you take is more annoying than the last."
His frustration was valid—every time that demon mutated, it was a new nightmare.
Kagenra advanced with a presence so dense it warped the air around it. Its new form was monstrous, clad in abyssal black armor, walking like an executioner set on carrying out its verdict.
Crimson cracks streaked across its body, glowing like hellfire. Its chest pulsed with a demonic radiance. And in its hand, a colossal double-bladed axe vibrated with dark energy—as if it breathed with it.
You didn't need to be a genius to know what was hiding inside that armor.
"ARE YOU GOING TO HIDE?"
Kagenra's voice came out deep and booming—a vibration that made the air itself shiver.
"If this is your idea of a gift." Desmon sighed, a dumb grin stuck on his face. "I don't even want to know what happens when you're actually trying to kill me."
Even if the world came crashing down, that grin never left him. Because the moment it did… it meant he had already lost.
"Tell me, did you steal that armor from someone? Or did you sneak off to another world while I wasn't looking?"
Truth was, right after its last attack, a strange crimson butterfly had landed on Kagenra. When it was absorbed, its body transformed.
Now, it radiated a power eerily similar to what demons possess in the underworld itself.
And that was a problem.
Something far too troublesome and tedious to deal with.
In the underworld, demons aren't just stronger. They're purer versions of themselves—devastating, complete, lethal.
And now, Kagenra had become one of those versions.
"DO YOU REALLY WANT TO FIGHT ME? YOU'RE EVEN DUMBER THAN I THOUGHT."
Its words kicked up dust from the floor. The entire hangar shook—a clear display of the power it now possessed.
-Hmm… solid armor. That means…
Unfazed, Desmon nudged a small stone with his foot and flicked it toward the demon.
The projectile flew… and disintegrated on impact.
Unlike his previous fights, this time the armor was something solid—which meant it could be hit. But it also meant something else.
"If… if that thing became armor, then that means…"JB's voice trembled with disbelief over the speakers. As she watched the new form of the smoke demon, she instantly understood what it meant: the carefully planned strategy was now useless.
"It's just hiding. Don't lose your head." Desmon said, staring straight ahead, calm as ever. "It's still the same dumb mass of smoke, just with a new shell. Handle the prep. I'll handle tearing it out of it."
As he spoke, he cracked his knuckles with a grin of anticipation.
If Kagenra was hiding behind armor, there was no need to complicate things. Just break it. With punches.
"Alright… good luck." JB replied. This time, her voice wasn't sarcastic or annoyed. It was genuine—like, for the first time, she truly believed in him.
If Desmon had survived ridiculously dangerous situations that she herself had witnessed, then maybe it was time to trust him completely.
-Alright. Time to end this… I think it's gone on long enough.
"You do know your only advantage was that I couldn't hit you, right?" He said, giving the demon a crooked half-smile.
Because really, if Kagenra hadn't been intangible—if it hadn't been invulnerable to Desmon's attacks—it would've been beaten a long time ago.
But… how exactly did Kagenra's body work?
If the demon hunter had faced it back when it was still a yōkai, its demonic energy would've been enough to reduce him to ashes. It's almost ironic how effective demonic energy is against supernatural beings.
But in that first fight, even using it, Desmon didn't land a scratch.
The reason was simple: control.
Kagenra wasn't just made of demonic energy—it was pure demonic energy. Its control over it far surpassed Desmon's. That's why every attack Desmon threw had been useless.
If someone with better mastery of demonic energy tried to hit Kagenra, the result would be obvious.
In short, all the hell Desmon's gone through since that awkward chat with those troublesome girls is because he didn't care enough to train with his own demonic energy.
But now that the demon was wearing armor, it should be vulnerable to physical blows… right?
Not like a demonic armor held together by hellfire is insanely tough and can only be damaged by something made of the same stuff.
Not that Desmon cares. He just wants to vent by pounding that stupid armor into pieces.
"ARE YOU GOING TO BEG BEFORE YOU DIE?" Kagenra growled, its voice echoing like a bottomless abyss.
"We both know that's not happening." Desmon replied, stepping forward. "In fact, I'm about to give you the beating of your miserable life. And you'll remember it. Forever."
"INTERESTING."
Kagenra raised its massive double-bladed axe and slammed it into the ground with monstrous force.
But nothing happened.
No cracks. No tremor.
"That was it?" Desmon tilted his head, disappointed. Maybe he'd gotten his hopes up. "Should've asked for a refund. Looks like yours came defective…"
And then, without warning, the floor exploded beneath him.
A pillar of hellfire burst from the depths like the fury of an unleashed volcano—only a thousand times more violent.
The shockwave tore through everything around, and Desmon's figure was swallowed by the blazing inferno in the blink of an eye.
For a moment, everything was red. Everything was fire. Everything was death.
And even if its face couldn't be seen…
Kagenra was smiling.