I am become death, Hunter thought to himself as he sped through the city.

  He didn’t know where he was. Dazel had given his teleportation spell what were basically coordinates, dropping him in the middle of a strange, old-looking city with a lot of ugly apartment buildings.

  He knew he was only the other side of the world, because it was night, but otherwise it didn’t matter to him. Dazel had also loaded his compass with targets, and now he sped toward them, flying and teleporting through the city and launching darts of shadowflame at every demon he saw, not slowing or stopping for anything.

  His wings were out, of course. He’d gained the ability to have them permanently conjured as he’d levelled in the scenarios.

  He had two illusions on. One made him meld into darkness, granting him invisibility in low-light conditions. This illusion he’d made weak: most devils and fiends, even the low levels, should have been able to see through it once he got close enough.

  The second illusion was much, much stronger. It made him appear as a level 60, not a level 300. That way, enemies would stop and fight long enough for him to kill them with a single blow from one of his draconic blades.

  He soared across a city intersection, releasing a dozen homing darts of shadowflame to seek out the demons he saw in the street below. At the same time, he glanced down at his compass, adjusting his course.

  It wouldn’t be long now before he sent another soul down to… wherever it was infernals went when they died.

  He burst through an upper-story window of an office building to find a collection of half a dozen devils standing around on the upper floor.

  The central devil turned toward Hunter as shattered glass fell to the floor around him.

  {Archdevil Vashkar — Level 65 Boss}

  “So,” Vashkar said, hefting a spiked maul in one hand. “A challenger at—”

  He screamed in pain as Hunter teleported behind him and sheared off his legs at the knees. The rest of the devils fell in upon Hunter, and he dispatched them easily within the space of the a few seconds, burning them to ash with shadowflame or simply cutting them to ribbons with sword-strokes that came too fast be seen.

  Vashkar was still screaming when he was done, clawing his way toward the stairs.

  Hunter looked down on the archdevil, then reached into their telepathic bond and called Dazel. At the same time, he pulled his stele out of his pouch and began to magically inscribe a runic circle on the floor of the office building.

  Got him, he said. Ready to warp out.

  Making good time, said Dazel. I got your next one lined up. Same drill as before.

  He sheathed his sword. At this sound, Vashkar flipped onto his back, his screams subsiding into ragged breaths. “You…” he said. “You must know that no matter what you accomplish, Hell will take this world. I can offer you much. I can—”

  Hunter knelt down and drove his fist through Vashkar’s face, bursting his head like a rotten fruit. He stretched his wings as he rose, taking a few steps back into his circle as it finished.

  He had said nothing to the devils. He would say nothing.

  He was the silent bringer of death.

  He was a single drop of dragon’s blood brought forward across countless generations… to bring their quiet, inescapable doom.

  His spell warped him to a new location, another city, this one bathed in the pinkish light of what was either dusk, or sunrise.

  His compass arrow clicked forward, indicating another soul that belonged to him… but just didn’t know it yet.

  They would soon.

  He sped through the city, fast as a falling shadow, dealing out endings to every infernal he saw. He killed a demonic commander much like he had Vashkar, then rushed toward his second target… but stopped halfway.

  Hunter had infernal-sensing armwraps that granted [Defense] penetration… and they were sensing a powerful infernal close by. He rose above the buildings and soared over the city, hoping to take a look.

  Soon he landed on a rooftop, looked down at the intersection below, and saw her.

  {Archfiend Freyr — Level 71 Elite}

  She had a tangle of wet, green hair that hung down to her ankles, with several tendrils long enough that they were barely touching the ground. She was wearing a plain, white sundress that clung to her figure in the breeze, and one hand held a spear that was a full head taller than she was.

  She stood in the middle of a clean circle of pavement, but gore streaked outward from her beyond that, so that she seemed to be at the center of a grotesque flower or sunburst that had been painted with the innards of more than a dozen people.

  Hunter frowned down at her. It was a bit of an unexpected hitch, finding one of Ashtoreth’s sisters.

  I found Freyr, he said into their telepathic bond. She’s here instead of the other guy, Gashnak.

  Oooh! Ashtoreth said back. She’s fun, but get her!

  “Isn’t it lovely?” Freyr asked in an airy, distracted voice as she seemingly stared at a building across the street from Hunter. In a singsong tone, she added, “All come undone….”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  What the boss means is ‘distract her’, said Dazel. We need Kylie to bind her, remember? You’re only two thousand or so kilometers from Kylie for this exact reason, now keep Freyr busy until she can get there. Can you do that?

  Hunter looked across the wreckage at the devil and smiled. Of course, Hunter told him. There’s a little technique that I happen to have learned from every anime ever called ‘hiding your true power level.’

  Hunter couldn’t see anyone else on the street with Freyr. Everything was eerily quiet. Who was she speaking to? He could see even more streaks of gore further along the street, most of them more than twenty feet long, trailing away from her.

  “So lovely,” she continued, her gaze drifting across the world around her. “The way the spilt gasoline makes rainbows on the surface of the water. The way the fire reflects in the tinted windows of their little cars. The smell of dust, and blood, and fear, and burning—oh, so many things are burning.”

  She turned and looked directly at Hunter, and he realized that she’d been speaking to him the whole time. “You’ll come undone, too.”

  “You can see—”

  Freyr tapped her staff on the ground, and a bright green dart materialized in the air before Hunter, then launched toward him. He vanished, teleporting into the shadows at street level and and launching a [Shadowflame Arc] at her by slashing his sword through the air.

  He held back his true power, creating only a small arc. She’d seen through his weaker illusion, but she clearly hadn’t seen that he was level 300, or she’d have fled or tried to bargain for her life.

  Freyr sidestepped the arc of fire, frowning as it sped by her. Hunter saw her expression and had to wonder: did she suspect him, somehow?

  He needed to keep her distracted before she could figure him out. To get her talking.

  But he couldn’t just outright ask her question, because that would be obvious. He settle on reverse psychology instead.

  “Look at you,” he said, trying to sound contemptuous. “You probably don’t even have an interesting past that led you here.”

  But his attempt at getting her to reveal her backstory yielded nothing. In answer, Freyr only looked down at where his flaming arc had burned a path through her circle of gore, then looked up at him with tears in the corners of her eyes, her lips trembling. “You ruined my circle,” she accused.

  Then she beat her wings and lunged through the air, thrusting her spear toward him.

  Her spear met the Fang of Shadow, and she and Hunter exchanged a dozen blows in the space of a single heartbeat.

  He had to be careful. If she managed to get past his guard and strike what should have been a killing blow, she’d realize immediately that he was faking. And if he moved too quickly to block or evade her, that would reveal he was faking, too.

  Soon she pulled away, landing on top of a nearby car.

  “Hu-man,” she said with her sing-song voice, cocking her head as her sundress billowed about her. “You are a hairless monkey with a cluttered mind… yet your bladework is so very exquisite. Tell me, how did such silly beasts as you and yours produce such lovely swordsmanship? Where did you train?”

  Hunter eyed her warily. Now she wanted his backstory.

  But he wasn’t going to fall prey to such tricks.

  “Have my skills made an impression?” he asked. “Your style is… interesting. But it lacks substance.”

  “Rude boy,” she said, her face darkening. “Perhaps when I take you all apart I’ll see what makes you so sick, so silly. Perhaps when I put you back together I’ll give you a tail and soft, soft fur. She flashed him a grin. “Hold you close and make you purr.”

  “Uh… okay,” said Hunter. “That’s uh, a little weird.” Then, hoping to get her on her backstory, he added, “So, like, where’d you grow up and stuff? Hell, right?”

  Freyr snarled and lunged for him again, only now the movements of her spear felt faster, more precise. Hunter’s sword flashed, and he strained to keep her at bay without revealing that he was level 300.

  At last he stumbled, and Freyr put all her strength into her driving her spearpoint toward him as he teleported to the shadows on the other side of the street.

  Freyr turned, frowning at him. “Liar boy,” she said. “I see you. Your mistakes are no simple mistakes,” she said. “You lose your balance not because your stance is wrong, but because it’s right—and you just don’t have the tail to keep you upright.”

  Hunter’s eyes widened. Apparently he’d shown her a lot more than he meant to.

  “So the human fights with fiendish arts,” she said, gliding back toward the center of the intersection. “Wings and tail both accounted for. How strange.”

  She cocked her head. “Where did you train?” Then she blinked. “Or,” she said, tilting her head. “Who did you eat?”

  A shadow descended through the air behind Freyr, dark robes dangling beneath her feet.

  Kylie. She still had her illusion on, hiding her level the same way Hunter did.

  “Are you supposed to be Cousin It, or something?” Kylie asked, looking at Freyr’s hair.

  Freyr turned, then cocked her head. “So strangely does the lichling ask to be unmade.”

  “Or is this more of that manga bullshit?” asked Kylie. “Hey, try saying, ‘desu.’”

  “Hu-mans,” said Freyr, “really are such curious creatures.”

  She lunged, but Kylie didn’t bother with any kind of pretense when it came to hiding her capabilities. She raised a hand and pointed at Freyr, and a flash of green light brought the archfiend to the ground, where she writhed, seemingly held back by invisible chains.

  Kylie rummaged around her bag, then drew out a red crystal that pulsated with light as she held it. “Get in the rock,” she said.

  Freyr screeched. The pavement around her cracked as she thrashed against the ground.

  “Get in the rock!” Kylie commanded. “The power of my high-as-fuck [Magic] stat compells you, bitch!”

  Freyr screamed again, and the air around them seemed to grow hot and energized.

  “Hunter, kick her!”

  “Huh?”

  “Kick her, Hunter!” Kylie shouted frantically. “Quick!”

  He rushed forward and drove one foot into the thrashing archfiend’s side, feeling her ribs collapse under the strength of the blow.

  “Get in the rock!” Kylie howled.

  A set of runes flashed on the pavement around Freyr, and then, with a flash of green light, she was gone. Kylie held up the crystal she held, which now glowed green. “Got her,” she said.

  Hunter sighed with relief. “What was she doing?” he asked.

  “Hm?” Kylie asked. “Making a lot of noise. You saw.”

  “Yeah, but… that energy in the air. What was that?”

  “Oh,” said Kylie. She nodded. “That was my spell.”

  Hunter frowned. “Why did I kick her, then?”

  “Because I told you to,” Kylie said, stowing the crystal. “Listen, I gotta get back to handing out starter packs.”

  She pulled our her stele and began inscribing a circle on the ground, then paused and looked over at him as she was seemingly struck by a thought. “Actually,” she said. “You got any spare [Mana] before I go?”