Gonna Be a Demon King!
Chapter 85: Ambush and Annihilation

Chapter 85: Ambush and Annihilation

"You... how are you this strong?!"

Xaren raised an eyebrow at the question.

"You said I killed your brother. Wouldn’t you expect me to be at least as strong as him? Maybe stronger?"

Without waiting for a reply, Xaren used Repulsion to send the angel flying backwards.

As he landed smoothly on his feet, Xaren glanced at the angel— barely managed to stay upright by stabbing his sword into the ground to keep himself from falling backwards—and thought to himself.

’He looks like that half-giant Ilya and I fought. Maybe that guy was his brother. But how did he know I was the one who killed him? Some kind of shared memory?’

Xaren had many questions, but he didn’t forget he was on a battlefield. Answers could come later...or never.

He stepped forward, and his dark red aura erupted from his body, sweeping across the ground and crushing stones and small rocks around him with the pressure.

After realizing he had been able to infuse his flames into his aura earlier, Xaren decided to try the same with gravity and he succeeded, at least to a degree.

Now, his aura carried the ’weight’ of gravity. Maintaining it, however, was taxing, so he’d have to turn it off for now.

’I’ll train it later,’ he decided.

Meanwhile, the angel who had attacked him was frozen in shock, staring at Xaren with disbelief.

"Y-You can use aura?! But... you’re just a lowly demon child!"

The angel tried to stand, but his body staggered to the left and he nearly fell again. Xaren’s gravity-enhanced punch had done more damage than the angel’s hasty healing spell could patch.

As for Xaren, he continued approaching the angel slowly, raising a brow as he asked.

"The fuck is you on about? Because I’m young

And seriously... ’lowly demon’? That’s the best you could come up with?

You angels really are the same in every world—Different faces, but the same arrogant crap."

"How dare you?!"

The angel roared in fury and lunged forward, bringing his massive great sword down with all his might. But Xaren calmly raised his aura-infused blade and blocked the strike without flinching.

"Given your size, I’m guessing you’re a halfling with a giant?

Not even full-blooded angel, yet your ego is as bloated as the rest of them."

"SHUT UP!!"

The half-angel unleashed an aura slash, but Xaren evaded with ease and struck back, landing a series of quick counterattacks that left shallow wounds scattered across his opponent’s body.

"Well, since you’re part giant, I guess there is one reason your ego’s so ’large’..."

"GRAH!! DIE! DIE!! DIE!!!"

The half-angel screamed and unleashed a flurry of slashes, in response to Xaren’s taunt. But in his rage, his strikes were sloppy, giving Xaren an opening to deliver a precise stab to his torso.

The aura-infused Neuro-Machina pierced right through the half-angel’s armour and stabbed right into the gap between his ribs.

"GUH!"

Groaning in pain, the half-angel attempted to unleash a burst of light magic, but Xaren’s Danger Sense activated, warning him of the threat beforehand. Reacting quickly, Xaren used Repulsion to send the half-angel flying, his body hurtling through the air.

Quickly unfurling his wings, the half-angel managed to regain balance, halting his momentum and hovering above. Without hesitation, he converted the magic he’d gathered into a spell which he immediately fired at Xaren, sending murky gold beams of light converging on him from every direction.

But despite the attack coming his way, Xaren only raised an eyebrow and remarked.

"Oh? Wings, huh? Unlike the last guy. Guess you’ve got more angel in you than giant after all."

Xaren leapt aside to dodge the oncoming barrage, swinging his sword to deflect the beams he couldn’t avoid in time.

Then, unfurling his own wings, he kicked off the ground and launched himself into the air, dashing toward the half-angel while conjuring a gravity shield to shield himself from the incoming blasts.

’Still surprises me every time I see it. Light magic getting wobbly around my gravity shield, that is.’

Mid-flight, another angel flew in from the side, attempting to ambush him, but Xaren just snapped his fingers and amplified gravity around him.

"?!"

"wh-gah!"

The abrupt surge in gravity sent both the half-angel and the new attacker plummeting uncontrollably toward the ground.

They tried to recover mid-fall, wings flaring out for balance, but before they could steady themselves, Xaren reversed the gravitational pull, yanking them back into the sky—then immediately amplified the downforce once again, hurling them to the ground with 4x force.

Locking onto the second angel, Xaren activated Attraction to draw him in, then flung him with Repulsion straight toward the half-angel. The two collided mid-air and tumbled to the ground in a violent heap of tangled limbs.

Xaren followed up instantly, diving after them with his sword wreathed in his gravity-infused aura. He brought the blade down in an arc, releasing a crushing aura slash.

The half-angel managed to scramble to his feet and leap out of range just in time, but the second angel wasn’t as lucky. Xaren’s slash cleaved through his body cleanly, bisecting him on the spot.

The force of the attack split the ground open, fractured the earth beneath, and sent deep fissures ripping through the ruins of nearby collapsed buildings.

But even before the dust settled, Xaren steadied himself, kicked off the fractured ground, and shot into the sky once more, meeting the half-angel mid-air as he descended with his sword raised high.

◇　◇　◇

Ilya moved like a phantom, a blurry gust of wind that cut through the air with lethality.

The knight platoon barely had the time to register her presence before blood began spurting from severed heads like fountains.

By the time they realised the first soldier’s death, Ilya’s sword was already slicing through another soldier’s chest plate, the aura-coated blade rending flesh and armour alike.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she dashed off to her next target, her sword already halfway through his back before she was finally spotted.

Spells were hastily cast around her, magic circles glowing beneath the soldier’s feet and before their outstretched hands, but Ilya swung her sword lightly and unleashed a crescent-shaped blade of wind.

The air split with a sharp whistle as it cleaved through two of the circles mid-activation, not only disrupting the spells but bisecting the bodies of the ones casting them.

Spinning around, she parried the spear that pierced at her from behind, before unleashing a wind bomb in their face, the compressed wind blades shredding apart his skull before she finished him off by beheading him.

She stomped her foot into the ground, her aura erupting and shaking the earth beneath her, causing the charging knights to stumble and lose their balance.

Seizing the opportunity, she dashed forward at breakneck speed, her sword cutting through one of the knight’s raised shield—cleaving clean through both the weapon and the man behind it in a single stroke.

Another knight tried to thrust his spear with trembling hands, but her aura-drenched blade parried it effortlessly, the edge biting into the shaft and continuing into the man’s chest.

Two tried to use magic but she activated Darkstorm, the rapidly spinning blades of wind swirling around her and reducing all four of the remaining knights to sliced chunks of meat.

As for the fifth who was just barely out of Darkstorm’s range, she regarded him with momentary silence, before expanding Darkstorm’s range and shredding him to pieces too.

When the mass of flesh collapsed, Ilya silently flicked the blood off her sword. It looked like she would soon move on to the next fight, but instead, she wordlessly turned her gaze towards the crumbled ruins of a nearby building.

She just wordlessly stood there, staring at the building until a loud sigh echoed in the area, followed by the sound of boots crunching stone.

Stepping out from behind the ruins was a man with tousled hair, wearing a wry smile. He looked young, broad-shouldered, and was dressed in ornate silver armour without a helmet.

"You killed all those guys, huh? Well... they weren’t the best, but with a few more years, they might’ve made decent knights."

Ilya’s eyes shifted down to the emblem on his chest. It matched those worn by the corpses around her, except his had more stars, signifying he was higher ranked.

The knight glanced at the massacre behind Ilya while she studied his crest and sighed again.

"Too bad. Their lives have been cut short at your hands."

Ilya didn’t say a word in response, just silently narrowing her eyes. Seeing her silence, the man chuckled lightly.

"...You’re not the talkative type, are you?"

Still, Ilya said nothing, her eyes narrowing as she studied the man carefully.

’He’s human, right?’

Something about him felt off. Her Instinct was telling her he wasn’t just any ordinary human.

’It’s the same feeling I had around Xaren the first time...!’

And then it hit her.

’High-Human!’