Chapter 123 Is Something Behind Me?

POV ???:

A human wearing chainmail and tightly gripping a sword with both of his hands stood in the forest, heavily panting, sweat running down his temple from under his metallic helmet, reflecting the red light filling the whole forest.

Tall trees covered everything with their large shadows, hiding the starry sky, allowing only the red demonic light to enter.

Suddenly a sound of cracking wood came from a distance. The soldier quickly turned his head, his eyes growing in panic with his whole body trembling.

A huge humanoid demon a size of a grisly bear standing on its hind legs sprinted through the forest. Its whole body was hunched and covered in shiny black carapace with red lustre. Two massive, bull-like horns, radiating red light, grew out of its head. Its crimson red eyes were looking at the soldier, its monstrous, insectoid face immediately curling up in a grin. The long sharp pointed tail made out of red flesh without any skin covering it, slowly waved behind its huge body.

"Grrrr!" the demon opened its mouth, sulfuric smell escaping out as it growled, the human soldier freezing in fear.

"O great light, please protect me!"

The demon rushed forward, its armoured body smashing through the trees, splinters flying in all directions as it moved towards the frozen soldier in a blur.

It's two long arms that went all the way to its knees moved in tandem, and a pair of pitch black claws with blood slowly dripping from them swished through the air, heading towards the soldier's body. The claws easily cleaved through the armour, skin, flesh and bones. The soldier's body, separated into multiple strips of flesh fell to the ground, blood splashing through the forest and covering the surrounding trees.

A small orb of light left the human body, levitating above it. The demon's eyes shone in bright light as it opened its large mouth, filled with sharp pointy teeth. A vortex of crimson red energy formed in it, sucking the tiny flickering light orb into it.

The demon's body suddenly started to vibrate, flashing in crimson red light and in an instant later, a transparent apparition of the demon flew out of it, quickly shrinking until it reached half of its original size. The apparition started to pulse in red light, slowly turning material and forming a smaller version of the demon.

Suddenly a blue light flashed through the forest, a sphere of pure mana hitting the small demon. The blue explosion shook the forest, surrounding trees crackling under the pressure as the small demon dissipated into black motes.

Three hooded figures, all in black, appeared from the shadows of the trees, quickly circling around the large demon, their metallic masks that looked like heads of dragons reflecting the red light. Their black mantles rustled in the draft as they slowly pointed their weapons at the demon.

"It's just a lesser demon. Let's turn it into points!", A masked figure holding a blue, glowing sphere in its arm pointed at the demon.

Immediately the spearmen burst into laughter, "Hahaha, this event is fun!"

Still, one player stood further away, nervously looking at the demon, holding a sabre in his sweaty hands. "I still think that it was a bad idea to go so deep into the forest. We were supposed to guard the hideout."

"Haha, why are you scared? We will gain more points this way, quickly getting ahead of our competition."

Shudders of rage passed through the demon's body covered in chitin for the first time, feeling that the newly arrived humans had no fear of it. Pulses of rage kept passing down its spine at the arrogant mortals. It even felt confused, its small child-like mind trying to understand why the mortal around him looked like their own mortal slaves but acted antagonistically against it, their demonic master.

"Graaah!" soon, the rage to punish these rebellious slaves pushed back the confusion as the demon jumped two stories high. Its huge body launched like a frog towards the green canopies, breaking all of the branches before falling like a bomb towards the nearest rebel holding a spear.

The masked rebel suddenly jumped backwards, the demon's claw hitting harmlessly, clawing deep into the ground as its heavy body impacted with a thud back on the ground, dirt and dry leaves exploding out.

Immediately, the remaining rebels moved forwards, attacking the demon. The sabre man widely swung his silver gilded sabre in a wide arc, wind swishing around its blade before it harmlessly clanged against the hard carapace, sliding off its smooth surface.

The spearmen that jumped backwards already got into position, stabbing with his spear that duplicated in the midair, punching two holes through the demon's carapace, the black and thick blood erupted out of the holes, staining the forest's soil as he pulled back his spear.

Loudly growling, the demon swung its claws around, trying to swap away annoying mortals, but all of the masked mortals quickly jumped backwards, getting out of their reach. The sharp claws kept swinging around, leaving behind red trials in the air, forming storms of swings and cuts.

The blue sphere in the hand of the player behind the demon glowed, the blue energy spiralling around it, quickly condensing into a small blue, glowing orb.

The orb kept burning in mana, quickly growing in size. Finally, the player swung his hand, and the orb flew out, shrieking.

The large blue projectile of pure mana exploded on the demon's back, cracks spreading through its carapace. The demon fell to its knees, the pain surging through its back and black blood oozing everywhere. The suffocating smell of sulphur quickly spread around.

"Graaah!" the demon's painful shriek echoed through the forest before the rebel holding the spear stabbed forwards, the tip growing as it closed towards the demon's face. Its crimson red eyes looked with hatred at the incoming doom.

With an audible crack, the spear pierced through the demon's carapace, entering the demon's brain. Its red eyes flickered as the large demon fell to the ground.

"Told you guys! There is nothing to fear here!" the player, still holding the blood-covered spear, laughed, his friends facing him with widely open eyes and mouths, tightly gripping their weapons.

"I guess that something is standing behind me?" he slowly turned, his danger alert quickly growing through the roof.

A demon looking as if made of pure crimson red magma towered above the trees, its whole magmatic body covered in grinning mouths filled with unnaturally red flames. Its body was roughly humanoid, looking like a twisted form of a human, with a crown of burning red horns growing all around its cow-shaped head. The heat radiated out of its body, quickly turning everything around it into ash.

The massive two-handed axe made of black metal with red glowing runes on its blades, held by the demon, hung above the player's head, ready to strike them down.

"Ohhh fuck! This is definitely not a lesser demon. How the heck have we missed this? There is no way that something so big and glowing could sneak on us."