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{Chapter: 248 The Siege of The Library Has Begun}
His hand clenched tightly. His gaze swept over the others. There were only five or six individuals in the entire city with the authority to override the defensive formations. The implications made his stomach churn.
But there was no time for suspicion.
The president of the Professionals' Union, blood trailing from his mouth, didn't hesitate. He reached into his space ring and pulled out a small case of crystalline vials. "No time to play the blame game," he barked, tossing the potions to the others. "We need to break through their encirclement and regroup with the surviving forces—if any are left. These will amplify your potential. Take them."
Each vial contained liquid with a faint red glow, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Essence of Berserk Flame.
Soulburn Elixir.
Vita Surge.
Potions that triggered latent strength at the cost of life, sanity, or future potential.
There was no hesitation.
The injured drank first. The liquid burned like molten steel in their throats, and the weaker ones screamed as their veins turned black and steam poured from their bodies. But the transformation was immediate—speed, strength, and vitality surged back into their limbs.
Even those uninjured pocketed a vial for later. They would need every edge they could get.
Unnoticed by most, the head of the Professionals' Union turned his head slightly. His eyes met the gaze of one of the demons—Gewa, a hulking beast with four arms and crimson horns curling behind his head.
Their eyes locked for a fraction of a second.
Recognition.
The moment passed.
Then the sky exploded again.
One of the demons had grown bored and lunged—its arm became a spear of bone and flame, and it drove it into one of the survivors. The man didn't even scream before his body was hurled fifty meters back, shattered, torn in half, and burned to ash.
The battle had begun.
Steel clashed with claws.
Magic tore through shadows.
Blood splattered against broken marble.
And the city burned.
---
Within the Heart of Augustus...
Beneath the smog-choked sky of the corrupted city, not all monsters arrived from the outside.
Far from the ruined City Lord's Mansion, hidden in the shadowy quarters of the upper district, a far more insidious presence stirred—a presence that had slumbered, waiting patiently for chaos to ripen.
Zanele, a foreign evil god cloaked in mortal skin, had taken residence in Augustus under false pretenses, masquerading as a mysterious scholar and gathering curious followers in secret. His goal had never been conquest through brute force—he sought devotion, submission, and worship. His plan was to slowly seduce the minds of mortals, erode their faith in higher orders, and twist their hope into fanatical servitude.
Yet tonight, chaos struck faster than even he had anticipated.
As soon as the city's divine barrier began to shift, Zanele's sharp eyes caught the flickering runes collapsing. His senses—far sharper than any mortal's—detected an invasive magic worming through the city's core. An ancient energy, abyssal in nature, rooted in blood and fire, radiated through the shifting air like a stormfront.
His body shimmered.
His reaction was instantaneous.
Without so much as a glance at the mortals gathered around him—Sarah and her fellow initiates—Zanele's vessel detonated into light and launched skyward with a boom that shattered nearby windows. His divine form tore through the air like a comet, aiming to escape before the rewritten barrier solidified completely.
But it was already too late.
He hit the altered barrier head-on—a wall of invisible force that rejected him without mercy. There was no explosion, no burst of resistance. The air simply stopped him, as if the sky had turned to steel. Zanele hovered mid-air, floating like a trapped insect, his face hardening into a rare expression of frustration.
Even spatial teleportation failed.
The entire city had become a prison.
Worse still, the power sealing the city was no ordinary magic. It had the stench of abyssal rewriting—something raw and vile that denied divine authority and twisted planar laws. Zanele's demigod-level avatar wasn't strong enough to crack it from inside—not with his current vessel.
Grinding his teeth, the evil god turned and flew back down, descending once more into the decaying streets of Augustus.
When he returned to the confused faces of Sarah and the others, their eyes wide and panicked, he didn't sugarcoat the situation.
His tone was grim, clipped. "Demons from the Abyss have invaded. The city's protective array has been overridden and corrupted. The barrier is fully sealed—no one is getting in or out."
They stared, frozen, horror slowly dawning in their eyes.
"They're not here to conquer," Zanele added coldly. "They're here to slaughter. They'll reduce this entire city to a breeding pit of rot, reshape it into a polluted stronghold—a permanent foothold for the Abyss."
The color drained from Sarah's face.
The others didn't need further explanation. Everyone who lived in Mi Ling World knew what that meant. Entire cities had been consumed this way before—once proud civilizations turned into festering realms of chaos and pain. The inhabitants were always the first sacrifices.
Nobles. Warriors. Children. No one was spared.
Before they could fully process the horror, Zanele continued, his voice like snapping glass. "Gather your weapons. Pack anything useful. We're heading to the battlefield."
"Battlefield?" Sarah blinked. "Who... are we supporting?"
Zanele narrowed his eyes. The black fog around the city was thickening by the second. He could feel nearly two hundred distinct demonic signatures now. Many were powerful. A few were ancient.
He growled. "We back the strongest defenders in the city. If we don't work with them, we won't live long enough to regret it."
Without waiting, he turned and began walking toward the flames on the horizon—toward the shattered ruins of the City Lord's Mansion.
---
Meanwhile...
The square in front of the Great Library—once a symbol of peace and intellect—was now a battlefield of twisted proportions.
There, four true demons had landed like fallen stars. Each one had dropped their mortal disguise, now revealing their actual bodies—massive, deformed, and soaked in ancient evil. The air around them warped. Light itself seemed to retreat.
Their presence was oppressive, suffocating, and unnatural.
But none stood taller, hotter, or more terrifying than Dex.
He was a walking furnace, a mountain of flame and molten muscle standing fifteen meters tall. Lava bled from the cracks in his obsidian-like exoskeleton, and four jagged wings jutted from his back like blades of burning glass. Even doing nothing, his presence was enough to ignite the very stones he stood on. Each breath from his molten lungs was a gust of incinerating heat.
The temperature around him exceeded ten thousand degrees.
The cobblestone beneath him hissed and liquefied.
Within 100 meters, human bodies would combust instantly. Even trained professionals suffered third-degree burns from half a kilometer away. Armored knights collapsed, their armor fusing to their skin, their screams muffled by the roar of fire.
Worse still, just looking at Dex—his vast demonic form—was a mental assault. Mortals within sight of him began bleeding from the eyes and ears. Weak minds cracked under the pressure, falling into madness as their sanity snapped like brittle glass.
Even the three other demons who stood with him—veterans of hundreds of massacres—were visibly uneasy. Though bound by the Abyss Contract, they instinctively kept their distance, wary of provoking the monster among them.
Dex didn't care.
He grinned, his voice like volcanic rumble. Stretching his wings with a sound like splitting earth, he looked toward the trembling city guards stationed near the library gates. They were trying to stand firm, braving the heat and pressure with enchanted gear and sheer discipline—but their fear was obvious.
"Hmm... Still standing?" Dex mused aloud.
Then, with a savage laugh, he flapped one of his massive wings.
It was like the detonation of a small warhead.
BOOOOM!!
A hurricane of scorching wind and raw force exploded outward, catching the guards like leaves in a storm. Bodies were launched into the air, their armor igniting mid-flight. Limbs detached. Blood rained down like mist. Nearby buildings shattered as the gale struck them, walls collapsing, roofs peeling away like paper.
The ground itself split open, forming a long trench hundreds of meters deep. Molten stone bubbled to the surface.
Smoke, blood, fire. Screams echoed. And Dex laughed.
"You stood your ground… admirable," he chuckled, licking ash from his lips. "I'll make sure your deaths are... quick."
Then, turning to his fellow demons, he motioned toward the towering structure of the Grand Library, its outer shield still flickering with a protective enchantment.
"Let's tear down the outer barrier," Dex growled. "That building holds knowledge we can't allow the mortals to use."
"Agreed," said one of the others—a floating demon cloaked in shadow, eyes burning red.
The others—though still tense—nodded. The terms of their contract ensured temporary cooperation. And for now, Dex was still their ally… technically.
They spread out, forming a wide circle around the Grand Library. Magic surged, their claws carving symbols into the ground, preparing a combined ritual of destruction.
Above them, thunder rumbled unnaturally—black lightning arcing across a blood-red sky.
The siege of the Library had begun.
And across Augustus, the screams of the dying were drowned by fire, steel, and the demonic chorus of war.