Chapter 102

102 Variant? (2)

‘Variant...? Where is the variant?’ Blake thought to himself as he heard the humanoid demon’s last word that it screamed with every strength that it had left.

But then Blake remembered the last look the humanoid demon gave him.

The fear, horror, and panic were written in the humanoid demon’s eyes when it stared at Blake and shouted the word, ‘Variant’.

The realization then dawned on him.

‘Did it mean me?’

‘Am I the Variant?’

It raised a huge question in Blake’s mind about what the humanoid demon meant by calling him a variant.

He knew from Vera that variant type demons were demons that were ‘unique’ in the sense that they couldn’t simply be categorized into humanoid demons or demonic beasts.

And Vera even told him that he would know whether a demon was a variant or not just from a simple look.

.....

He knew how his body looked. And Blake was confident that he was 100% a humanoid demon despite his jet-black skin that he hadn’t seen any humanoid demons have, not even in the mass of 25 humanoid demons.

Saying the humanoid demon had given Blake a little existential crisis wasn’t wrong. And he even spent an entire two whole seconds thinking whether he was really a humanoid demon or not.

However, Blake quickly shook off his head and saved the thought for another time as he had guessed that the humanoid demon’s scream earlier was most likely heard by the other humanoid demons that surely didn’t just sit on their butts and patiently waited for the four humanoid demons’ return on the beach.

And Blake’s guess turned out to be correct as the moment the four humanoid demons started chasing after him and the bat-like humanoid demons followed closely behind those four humanoid demons, the others had also moved their feet from the beach and started going into the forest.

Albeit they weren’t in any hurry as they only followed the directions that the bat-like humanoid gave them through its scream.

Although the bat-like humanoid demon had found a creature with its echolocation, the leader of the group thought that sending four of the humanoid demons with wings was more than enough to chase a single creature.

The case would be different if what they found was a strong enemy as they would have hurried their steps and used their advantage in numbers to circle around the enemy and overwhelm it.

However, when the bat-like humanoid creature signaled that the creature was running away from them, they directly assumed that the creature that the bat-like humanoid found wasn’t anything dangerous that needed all their strength to be fought.

And knowing how skillful the four humanoid demons were at chasing after enemies, they were confident that it was only a matter of time before the single creature would be caught.

So they just followed the chase leisurely at their own pace, with the leader figure of the group walking on the frontmost of the group.

They thought that the chase would soon end as they didn’t hear the bat-like humanoid demon giving the four humanoid demons instructions again as it most likely means that the four humanoid demons had finally caught up to the fleeing creature.

But they certainly didn’t expect that the next sound instruction that they would be hearing from the bat-like humanoid demon was an alert for extreme danger.

And just from the specific tone of it, the tone that had been drilled into their brains so that they would recognize it the moment they heard it, they knew that they were currently faced against a certain type of demon that was the most unpredictable and dangerous of any kinds of demons out there.

Variants.

Not all variant type demons were dangerous. But the demons that were most dangerous, on the level that could take tens, dozens of demons, or even almost unbeatable by other ordinary demons were most likely a variant type demon.

The skills and abilities that they carried ever since the beginning of their existence were different from any spells or unique physical traits.

They were very unpredictable, and they needed to be assessed so that others would know how dangerous they really were.

And right after hearing the tone that indicates that they had run into a variant type demon, the 20 remaining humanoid demons quickly changed their mindset as they prepared themselves for a fight.

The leader of the group quickly gave its command before all 20 humanoid demons started running and moving towards the bat-like humanoid demon’s direction.

There might be variant-type demons that were so dangerous that even the humanoid demons labeled certain areas as danger zones that they shouldn’t come close to in order to avoid contact with the said variant.

However, there were also other variants that were albeit dangerous, not so dangerous that they could kill all dozens of them and could still be contained by the humanoid demons.

And if the variant type turns out to have a very useful ability such as leveling grounds with a swipe of their hands, scouting places from a thousand meters away, or other abilities that the humanoid demons could use for their own advantage and use, of course, they would want the variant type demon to be under their control.

Hence why despite the danger alert that the bat-like humanoid demon had given the group, the group leader still had to assess what type of variant type demon and see whether it has any use for them or it was just plain danger that they should avoid.

The leader then heard the bat-like demon signaling that the variant-type demon had once again continued running away, so the leader quickly gave a command.

With four of the humanoid demon that was proficient in chasing had been incapacitated, the leader now sent the last remaining one, also with a deformed wing that couldn’t be used to fly as its body was two humanoid demons wide while the wings were only as big as its forearm.

But instead of chasing it alone, the leader told one other demon, one with greenish skin to go on top of the huge demon with the unusable wings before the two took off and ran in the direction that the bat-like humanoid demon gave.