{Chapter: 156: Getting Out And Teammates Died}
This wasn't working.
She had hoped to grind down his stamina, bleed him dry of magic. But this demon—no, this aberration—fought with boundless energy. He did not falter, did not tire. His magic was as endless as the Abyss, and the fire in his eyes burned brighter with every moment.
In contrast, even with her divine weapon, she began to feel the fatigue biting at her joints. Her bow, once a symbol of death from afar, had become a melee weapon—wings of carved yew hardened into crescent blades. With a spin, she lunged forward like a tempest, carving arcs of searing light into the air.
Dex welcomed her.
The flames in his hands twisted together, hardening into a titanic sword nearly four meters long. Its edges roared with infernal energy. Each swing met hers in a contest of strength and skill, sparks flying, shockwaves cracking the earth beneath their feet.
He was no brute. Despite his monstrous form, Dex moved with precision, like a dancer in a crimson ballet. To him, Allison was more dangerous than Emerson—a whirlwind of radiant fury. She struck with divine rhythm and instinctual grace, and her presence nullified his plague-infested aura.
But Allison too began to realize a bitter truth: this wasn't just a fight. This was a performance. Dex enjoyed this.
Despite being outnumbered, he toyed with them both—matching them blow for blow, pressuring a demigod with his tail while trading sword strikes with another Demigod in a storm of fire and light. It was humiliating. Emerson—proud and strong—had been reduced to a mere distraction.
---
Minutes turned into an hour, and the battlefield bore the scars of their unrelenting war. Forests had been turned to ash. The ground was pockmarked with craters, gouges, and shattered stone. From above, it looked as if a god had waged wrath upon the land.
Everything within a five-kilometer radius had been torn asunder. Trees were stripped of bark and limb. Hills were leveled. Pools of corrupted blood and divine ichor steamed under the pale sky.
And yet—Dex still stood.
Stronger. Grinning.
But then, a flicker.
He saw it in their eyes—that familiar glint of retreat, the subtle shift in posture. They were preparing to call for reinforcements.
Dex's expression shifted. Not fear—calculation.
He had no intention of dealing with more enemies. Two was a challenge. More would become annoying.
Without a word, he raised one clawed hand and tore through the fabric of reality. Space itself bent and cracked like glass, revealing a shimmering void beyond. A gate to a parallel plane.
In the next instant, he was gone—vanished into that dark rift with a gust of heat and a whisper of sulfur.
Allison and Emerson were left standing alone amidst the ruin, battered and tense, still gripping their weapons.
Neither spoke.
They didn't dare.
The silence said enough.
The monster had chosen to leave… not because he lost—but because he allowed them to live.
And that was far more terrifying.
---
After slipping into the dimensional rift tethered to the main material plane, Dex finally found a moment of stillness.
Following several attempts to reenter the battlefield, Dex came to a sobering realization—each time a demon of his caliber made a move, there was always a prepared response waiting on the other side. Their coordination was swift, their resistance was calculated. Clearly, returning to the battlefield served no further purpose, so he decided to retreat entirely.
He began retracing his steps, following the same obscure route he had originally used to come to this place.
Unlike many of his kin—those erratic, swollen-headed demons who only knew how to indulge their urges and senselessly turn on each other—Dex was different. He was methodical. While most of his kind were driven by chaos, he preferred observation and reason. Among them, alliances were a joke, and cooperation was a myth. They played their own twisted games and viewed even their allies as expendable pawns.
By contrast, the natives of this world had evolved a sophisticated defense system. Their civilizations had spent countless generations preparing for the threat of interdimensional invaders. Every position on the battlefield had a defined role; orders flowed cleanly through their chain of command. When overwhelmed, they could call for reinforcements in the blink of an eye.
Under such organized resistance, even the strongest demons would find it difficult to score a decisive kill without overwhelming force.
Essentially, there were only two options in such an environment: either eliminate the target with swift and brutal precision before reinforcements arrive, or be prepared to take on multiple opponents and force your will through sheer dominance. The second strategy wasn't entirely hopeless—after all, the natives' resources weren't infinite, and much of their attention would inevitably be diverted by other demon incursions.
---
Deep beneath the Poisonfang Marsh, hidden below the rotting waters and clouds of venomous gas, lay a shadowed cavern system.
Drips of acidic venom echoed through the space like a slow, toxic heartbeat.
"Baji… baji…"
The wet, grotesque sound of meat being torn and chewed filled the air. Mixed with it was the squelch of blood, the crunch of bone, and the hiss of steaming acid droplets falling from above.
In the middle of this cave squatted a bloated, multi-armed demon, gnawing voraciously on a pile of flesh still glistening with blood. His jagged teeth shredded sinew and muscle like parchment, and the flesh—still twitching—was shoveled into his maw with unrelenting hunger.
Each chunk he devoured was immediately converted into raw energy, helping to slowly mend the vast gashes and molten wounds that laced his swollen body.
These injuries hadn't come from any ordinary confrontation—they were the result of a demigod's wrath, inflicted by a [Divine Weapon] that had seared through flesh and soul alike.
Had it not been for his nearly monstrous vitality, far surpassing that of his peers, he wouldn't have made it out of that confrontation alive.
"Bzzzz…"
A strange hum broke through the sounds of his feast, a vibration in the air that didn't belong to this cave.
The demon paused, bloody fingers halfway to his mouth, and turned his multiple eyes toward the disturbance.
From thin air, an oval-shaped dimensional ripple shimmered into existence. It pulsed once… then split open like a gateway.
Out stepped a familiar figure—Dex, calm as ever, his posture loose, his gaze indifferent.
He didn't even glance at the mutilated demon glaring at him from the center of the chamber, eyes full of suspicion and tension. Dex's focus was instead on the object his tail had brought with him—impaled neatly on the barbed tip like meat on a skewer.
With an effortless flick, the corpse was dropped at Dex's feet.
He stared at the lifeless head, its expression frozen in an eternal grimace of surprise and regret.
Dex's brow creased slightly. He sighed with a mixture of annoyance and resignation. "Hart... how did you end up like this?"
Hart had been a [Middle-level Demon], recruited almost casually to pad out the invasion forces. Dex had always suspected him of harboring secret schemes, whispering poison behind his back and planning some elaborate betrayal. But that was fine—Dex had intended to let him play out his little drama and crush him later, when it would be more amusing.
Instead, it seemed someone else had devoured the fool before the curtain even rose.
Disappointing.
With a flick of his clawed hand, he rolled the head to one side. "So much for your big plans," Dex muttered, shaking his head.
Born in chaos, and snuffed out like a candle—such was the destiny of most demons. No ceremony. No meaning. Just another chunk of meat in an endless feast.
He didn't mourn. He didn't rage. If anything, he felt mildly irritated that he had been robbed of the chance to personally eliminate Hart.
Waste not, want not—that had always been Dex's philosophy. Even in death, Hart might've been useful. Now, he was just garbage.
As Dex turned away without another word, the demon across the chamber tensed. He had been watching from the moment Dex arrived—watching how casually he treated a fallen comrade, how easily he dismissed the corpse of someone once considered a fellow invader.
When Dex's tail casually punted the head across the floor like a discarded toy, the bloated demon flinched.
His body bristled with energy. Muscles coiled like ropes, limbs bracing to spring. Every instinct screamed that this visitor was dangerous. Perhaps even more dangerous than the demigod who had wounded him earlier.
He didn't know if he should prepare to fight… or run.
But one thing was certain: Dex hadn't come here to chat.
Unlike those bottom-feeders who tried to seize the opportunity while he was injured—only to be crushed and killed without effort—this particular demon could sense something different. Though the figure before him, Dex, was technically just a [Middle-level Demon], the oppressive aura surrounding him made it abundantly clear: he was not someone to be underestimated.
*****
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