Aeron let out a quiet breath as he looked down at the corpse of the Demon Lord. He lingered there for only a moment before lifting his gaze to the battlefield around him.
The effect was immediate.
The demons felt the death before they fully processed what they were seeing. Then they saw the body. Whatever resolve they had left collapsed entirely. Fear rippled through them in a wave as they broke formation and ran, screaming, trampling over one another in their desperation to flee. It did nothing to save them. The automatons pursued without hesitation, cutting them down methodically as they tried to escape.
"We are too late."
The voice was calm, almost detached, cutting through the chaos of panicked shrieks.
Aeron turned his head and saw two demon knights standing not far from him. One wore indigo armor, the other lapis. When fleeing demons stumbled toward them, they stopped dead, skidding to a halt as if they had hit an invisible wall. The two knights looked down at them through the narrow slits of their helms. Their eyes were hidden, but the intent was unmistakable.
There would be no retreat.
Forced by sheer presence alone, the demons turned back around, terror-stricken, and staggered toward the automatons once more.
Aeron tilted his head slightly as he began walking toward the two knights. "Letting your people retreat when their morale is broken is usually better than forcing them to fight anyway," he said evenly. "You know that, don't you?"
"So you are the one this world calls the Strongest," the indigo knight said, studying Aeron with an unbroken stare.
"And the one who killed Lord Redgrave," the lapis knight added. "Judging by the body, with little difficulty."
"I suppose both are accurate," Aeron replied, his tone unchanged.
The Demon Knights shifted. The indigo knight drew a bo staff, planting one end against the ground as he took his stance. The lapis knight rolled his shoulders and produced a pair of tonfas, gripping them with practiced familiarity.
Before either side moved to attack, both Demon Knights suddenly stiffened.
They felt it at the same time.
Without a word, they dropped to one knee. Their weapons plunged into the ground as they bowed their heads deeply.
Aeron paused.
He looked at them, expression unreadable, then lifted a hand to his chin. "Are you… bowing to me?" he asked, genuinely uncertain.
His thoughts drifted, unguarded and unfocused. *I think in their culture, they follow the strongest. That Demon Lord was strong, and I defeated him, so that would make me stronger. So they would follow me. But do I even want demons under my command? How would that even work? And would I—*
He was still lost in thought when demonic energy surged outward.
The two Demon Knights rose in unison, power flaring around them as they ripped their weapons free from the ground. Without hesitation, they charged straight at Aeron, the force of their movement tearing up the stone behind them as they closed the distance.
Aeron, still lost in his own thoughts, did not react in time.
The indigo Demon Knight was already there.
The bo staff slammed into the side of Aeron's right temple with crushing force, snapping his head sideways before the follow-up strike cracked across his left temple just as hard. The staff never stopped moving. It flowed seamlessly into the next blows—downward into Aeron's elbow joint, then across the opposite elbow, each hit precisely placed to break structure rather than knock him away. The Demon Knight stepped in with every strike, transferring his full weight and momentum through the staff as it drove into Aeron's knee, then the other, then straight into his sternum. Each impact landed with catastrophic force, as if the mass of a falling meteor had been compressed into the narrow span of the weapon.
The only reason he was not launched outright was the lapis Demon Knight positioned directly behind him.
The lapis knight's tonfas were already in motion, his arms a blur as he drove rapid, compact strikes into Aeron's back. Short, sharp jabs hammered into precise points along the spine, ribs, and shoulder blades, each one delivered with full-body power despite the minimal range. The blows stacked on top of one another in a relentless rhythm, cracking against bone and muscle with the weight of a collapsing tide, the strikes designed to fold a body inward and shatter it from the inside.
Then they moved together.
The indigo knight pivoted sharply, snapping the bo staff upward into Aeron's jaw with a brutal, upward-driving strike meant to tear his head back and break his neck. At the exact same instant, the lapis knight stepped in from behind and drove a tonfa hard into Aeron's side, the blow landing cleanly against his liver with crushing, focused force.
The timing was perfect.
They did not stop there.
The two Demon Knights moved as one, not in sequence but in perfect overlap, their coordination so absolute it collapsed multiple actions into a single moment. The indigo knight surged forward first, the bo staff whipping around Aeron's shoulder and neck in a tight, crushing bind as he dropped his center of gravity and wrenched downward with mountain-rending force, the motion driven by a full rotation of his hips and spine rather than his arms alone. The pull was violent enough to crater the ground beneath Aeron's feet as his upper body was forced sharply out of alignment.
At the same instant, the lapis knight vanished low.
He slid in beneath Aeron's shifting frame, both tonfas striking in rapid succession—not sweeping blows, but compact, annihilating impacts driven straight into Aeron's legs. One tonfa smashed into the back of the knee with bone-shattering precision while the other crashed into the opposite thigh, the force of each hit detonating outward through the ground in shockwaves that split stone and hurled debris skyward. The intent was absolute collapse—structure destroyed, balance erased, the body forced into freefall.
Before gravity could even begin to take effect, the indigo knight released the bind and spun.
The bo staff became a blur of compressed violence, its arc tearing the air apart as he delivered a full-bodied strike straight into Aeron's torso. The blow carried enough force to flatten a mountainside, the impact erupting outward in a concussive burst that tore trenches into the battlefield. In the same heartbeat, the lapis knight crossed through the blast zone, driving both tonfas into the strike as it landed, reinforcing it from a second vector, their combined power stacking catastrophically into a single point.
The result was not just a hit—it was an execution-level impact, the kind meant to erase even a Demon Lord outright.
Aeron was launched.
He tore across the battlefield, skidding on the muddy ground before finally coming to a stop. The two Demon Knights straightened, resetting their stances as dust and broken rock settled around them.
"Brother," the lapis knight said quietly, eyes fixed ahead. "Did you feel that?"
"I did," the indigo knight replied, tightening his grip on the bo staff. "And it felt wrong."
Aeron rose to his feet.
He brushed dust from his clothing with an unhurried motion. There was no blood. No damage. Not even the faintest mark left behind. As the Demon Knights watched, an unsettling realization set in. They had felt their weapons connect. They had felt resistance. But it had not felt like flesh, bone, or anything living.
It had felt… off.
"I see," Aeron said calmly, tilting his head as he looked at them. "I made a mistake. You two do not wish to serve me." His gaze sharpened slightly. "I will kill you as well. But you are powerful." A brief pause. "So I will use that to defeat you."
The One Feared By Death was ready to go all out.