"This is that fellow's manor. Right now, he's probably still lying in bed, completely unaware that his end is near."

The noble male glared viciously toward the courtyard.

Every light inside was out. Clearly everyone within had already gone to sleep.

"Let's hope so." The female demon Gael's expression didn't change.

The more it was a moment like this, the less one could afford to relax.

"Everyone's ready, right? Remember — make it quick. If the people of the inner city get the grand guardian barrier up, we all die here."

"Mm." The demons nodded.

They had drawn up a meticulous plan before coming. Even if the youth still retained strength comparable to Geist's, under a strike this precise, there was no chance of survival.

"Contract Magic." Mana surged through Gael's body, and every demon except for that human male vanished into the night.

This was another use of Contract Magic:

Forge a pact with nature spirits, pay a price, and receive short-term invisibility to the naked eye.

It was a considerably advanced technique. Only by cultivating Contract Magic to perfection could one establish even the faintest communication with the nature spirits drifting through the unseen world.

For pure-blooded humans with lifespans barely reaching a century, this was a domain of magic almost entirely out of reach.

Contract Magic had originally been useless in combat. Now that Gael could commune with nature spirits, it had become something close to an all-purpose tool.

The demons' eyes narrowed slightly.

Centuries had passed since anyone had seen Gael. That path in magic had perhaps grown to rival Lord Geist's at the height of his power.

"Move quickly." Schell lifted the greatsword, gaze locked coldly on the depths of the manor.

Already impatient to taste that human's flesh and blood.

Humans had always loved to exaggerate, but this one had defeated Lord Geist, a master of both magic and martial combat. Schell had to assume the human had put real work into tempering the body as well.

Even if the rumors of obliterating Geist with a few punches were overblown, the human should at least be strong enough to wrestle a giant dragon.

"Let me go first." A short figure stepped forward from among the demons.

Curse magic, capable of silently weakening and killing targets from a distance.

Right now, clutching the broken sword fragment Banxia had used the previous year, the curse demon began to cast in silence.

"Hmm?" A moment later, they stopped abruptly and looked back in confusion.

"What's wrong?" Schell, who had stayed on high alert, felt something drop in the chest.

"Nothing, it's just..." The curse demon frowned.

"The curse's feedback is showing the target somewhere behind us, not far away.

Maybe because others used that broken sword too. Let me try again—"

"Forget it. Delays breed trouble." Gael made the call without hesitation. "Go straight in. Kill him, take the body, and pull out immediately."

Even as Gael said it, an unease had already settled in.

The very first step of the plan had gone wrong. An inauspicious start, by any measure.

But was this really just an error?

The unease sharpened into something closer to dread.

Gael's mind went back to the doubt Schell had raised before they set out: what if all of this, from beginning to end, was a trap laid specifically for them?

Gael had looked into this human who had risen like a shooting star. Every description amounted to the same thing: great, gentle, eager to help others. Empty praise. No different, in essence, from any of the past heroes who had long since rotted into corruption.

Well, there was one other thing. The title of "demon-slayer, protector of the people."

Word had it that even after killing the Great Demon Geist, he had demanded nothing in return. Just a few magic books and combat techniques, then walked away.

Even the most elite knight orders praised him for it. The Hero, they said, was a true knight.

Many others claimed it was precisely that purity, that lack of ambition, that had allowed Banxia, a pure-blooded human, to reach such terrifying combat strength at his age.

At first, Gael had thought the same.

But now, for no reason at all, Gael's heart began to pound.

The curse demon's words echoed back,

"It's a trap!"

The demons followed Gael's gaze to the street behind them.

A human youth was strolling toward them, moving at an unhurried, swaying pace.

...

"Ugh... drank way too much milk. My stomach's absolutely stuffed." Banxia ambled home through the cool spring night, letting the breeze wash over him.

The pleasure houses got crowded at night, too many eyes. Getting spotted would be a headache. Better to stick to mornings going forward.

"Still, I really didn't expect the cow-girl's milk-production magic to work on dog-eared girls too.

Volume was a bit lower, but the flavor was actually sweeter.

Maybe I should drop by and try it on the Forest Elf lady sometime..."

He was happily turning this over in his head when he reached the front of his manor and stopped.

A warrior's instinct, sharp and automatic. Besides humans, something else was lurking in the dark nearby. Watching him. A handful of insignificant little creatures.

"I truly didn't expect it, human — that you could actually reach this level!" The demon warrior Schell broke the invisibility pact first, stepping into the open and swinging the greatsword up into the opening strike.

"...Who are you."

Banxia gave the figure a puzzled look, clocked the large demon horns on the forehead, and said nothing more.

"Slash."

A casual wave of his hand. A massive arc of force screamed toward Schell.

Schell's instincts screamed to dodge. But the plan came to mind. If the other demons were worn down to cover for Schell's evasion, their overall fighting strength would crumble fast.

No way out. Schell set teeth and took it head-on.

"HAAAAH—!"

The roar tore through the night as Schell held the blow.

The greatsword that had been at Schell's side for centuries shattered on the spot. Both hands were slick with blood. The whole body shook and wouldn't stop.

"As expected of a warrior who once dared to challenge Geist alone." Gael moved instantly, struck a new contract with the nature spirits, mana pouring out in a torrent.

"Contract Magic."

An emerald glow bloomed from Gael's palm and flowed into Schell's body like a gentle current.

The violent trembling slowly, gradually, stilled.

"Astonishing," Schell thought.

That slash, unfathomable, without warning, had to be the human's killing blow. Had Schell held anything back at the start, that single instant would have been the end.

Lord Geist must have made the same mistake. Underestimated the opponent, and paid for it with everything.

Schell glanced at the snapped sword and discarded it. Weapons had never been the real preference anyway. Close-quarters brawling, that was where Schell belonged.

And that blow had already given Schell a rough read on this human's limits.

"More or less what the plan predicted. If we work together, even if this is a trap, the chance of killing him is not zero."

The fire that had been guttering out in the other demons' eyes reignited.

The Contract Magic binding them left no room for retreat, anyone who tried to flee would simply die. But that same inescapable pact also left no room for half-measures. No betrayal. No infighting. Only the all-out strike that desperation forces out of people backed into a corner.

An assembly like this, even against the Great Demon Geist, might have had a real chance.

"Curse Magic!" "Amplification Magic!" "Contract Magic!"

Three spells detonated at once.

The dark shredded open. A sickly green curse light hit Banxia first. Then blood-red amplification power flooded across every demon's body like living armor. Gael's Contract Magic threaded into all of them simultaneously, always ready to seal wounds and hold them together.

"Victory is ours!"

The last demon warrior roared and fell in behind Schell, both of them hurling toward the youth like arrows off a bowstring.

Banxia yawned.

Then raised his hand again, calm as ever.

"Slash."

This was nothing like the first one. That had been a test.

This was boundless.

Slash after slash poured down like a storm, like a breaking wave, burying the entire street in white. The demons had barely had time to let the hope register on their faces before the light swallowed them whole.

BOOM,

The thunderclap faded. The long street went silent.

One figure still stood in the settling dust.

Banxia lowered his hand and swept his gaze over the shattered street and the bodies strewn across it.

"How boring," he said flatly. "Weak demons."

The noise had woken the neighborhood. Lights flickered on in house after house. Doors opened. People leaned out.

The three women from Banxia's manor were among them.

The dust thinned and cleared. In the center of the street, a deep crater had been gouged out of the earth. Five demons lay at the bottom of it, all four limbs severed, collapsed like puppets with their strings cut, no fight left in any of them.

"Banxia!" Roxy ran forward, face tight with worry.

That morning, Rurikawa had mentioned the master had important business and wouldn't be back until night. She hadn't known then what that meant. Now she understood, he had anticipated the night raid long before it happened and had been ready for it.

Even so. Five humanoid demons had walked straight into the inner city and made it all the way to their doorstep.

That thought sent a cold crawl up Roxy's spine.

"Is that... Lord Hero Banxia?!"

"Those things on the ground — those are demons, aren't they? There are so many of them!"

"Damn it all! How did demons get inside the inner city?!"

The battle was over, and the onlookers had already shed most of their fear. They spoke over each other in excited clusters. With Lord Hero Banxia standing right there, even a pack of demons seemed like something manageable.

"..."

The elf lady stood apart from the crowd and said nothing.

Over these past few days, the elf lady had pieced together a complete picture of the adventurer's history.

A human summoned from another world. Two months from an ordinary mortal to the killer of Geist, the south's most powerful demon. After that, a march north, no Frozen Divine Sword, no assistance of any kind. Xiaoyan, the legendary creature, slain by those hands alone. Then an effortless conquest of a myth-tier labyrinth, and the defeat of the strongest warrior ever recorded.

Once the elf lady had taken in the whole of it, there was nothing left to do but exhale and accept the truth: the youth had learned a secret art passed down through the royal line with a single glance.

Against a record that brilliant, that almost absurd, what did one royal secret art amount to?

"Master..."

The young maid stared at the youth, eyes full of something that could only be called reverence.

Every story from the tea parties, every ballad the traveling bards had sung in the taverns, none of it had prepared the maid for this. Seeing it directly was something else entirely.

These were humanoid demons. Every single one of them required a Platinum-rank adventurer party just for a fighting chance.

Five of them lay scattered on the ground like broken things.

Start to finish, the whole fight had taken only a few minutes.

For the first time, the maid understood with perfect clarity why the father and all those haughty nobles held this man in such awe. Strength like that, matched with that character, and the sight of him cutting down monsters for the sake of humanity's future, it was impossible not to be moved.

The maid watched the youth's back and felt the heart pound hard.

He stood at the boundary where moonlight and lamplight blurred into each other, motionless, without a speck of dust on him, like a statue of a god that had just finished its killing and felt nothing about it at all.

The night wind moved through. His robes shifted faintly. He didn't spare a single glance at the broken bodies around him.

The clamor built: guards arriving at a run, guild members barking orders, citizens talking over each other in astonishment.

The youth just stood where he was, still and unhurried, as though none of it could touch him.

Before long, the knight order arrived. Lord Thorn came rushing in behind them.

"Lord Banxia! Are you unharmed?!"

"Do I look like I'm not?" Banxia stared at Thorn flatly.

Thorn couldn't be blind. The full account had already been passed along. Yet here was the city lord performing the role of someone who had only just arrived.

"Ahem, I was simply concerned for your wellbeing, Lord Hero..." Thorn cleared the throat quickly, then wheeled on the knight order with a sharp voice.

"Throw all these demons in the dungeon! Find out who's behind this!"

Banxia watched the demons about to be hauled off and spoke up. "Hold on. I kept them alive for a reason."

Thorn blinked. "This..."

The youth's tone was light. The eyes were not. Thorn looked at both and decided not to push it.

"Th-then we will defer to Lord Banxia's judgment. Knight order, cordon off the scene. No one comes near!"

"That won't be necessary." Banxia waved it off and walked past Thorn's puzzled stare to the human noble standing nearby, the one who had been frozen in terror since the fighting started.

"This won't take long... Magic to Show Fond Memories."

Mana flowed. A vast screen of light bloomed in the air before everyone present.

"That damned man actually dared to touch our profits!"

"Does he think killing one Great Demon puts him beyond our reach?!"

"What a gift. The fool apparently got himself wrecked conquering that labyrinth."

"I looked into it personally. The injuries are severe. He won't be back on his feet for some time."

"It doesn't matter. Once he recovers, he'll threaten our interests all over again. We use the old method."

"You mean..."

"Let the demons handle it. Afterward, we pick a few children from the orphanage and send them over as the fee."

The image cut off.

Several faces on that screen were recognizable to the people watching.

"That's Lord Galien — and the president of the Rien Chamber of Commerce..."

Lord Thorn drew a slow breath. "No wonder those people have always made a habit of obstructing Lord Hero's chamber of commerce. Now it makes sense. Demons were pulling the strings all along."

Thorn turned and bowed to Banxia, a full, deliberate bow.

"Lord Banxia, rest assured. Colluding with demons is the gravest capital offense in all of human law. Every last one of them will face execution by bisection."

"Oh."

Banxia answered with a single syllable, face unreadable, and turned his gaze back to the demons lying in the crater.

...

➤ Next: Massive Harvest

Chapter 98 - Massive Harvest

The bustling street quieted fast.

Under the guards' "harmonious" gazes, the residents went home like good little citizens.

Anyone who refused would learn what six baton strikes a second felt like.

"Lord Banxia, the crowd has been dispersed." The guard captain stepped up and reported, eyes full of awe.

Because of Geist, the Southern Continent had lived by one rule for the past century: strength is everything.

As the strongest person around, Banxia had naturally collected a small army of devoted fans, and the guard captain was one of them. Word was that among the inner-city nobles, someone had even founded a cult in the Hero's name.

"Mm." Banxia's gaze stayed calm. He gave a small nod. "You may leave as well. I have some questions for these demons."

"Understood!"

The guard captain didn't ask a thing. Before leaving, Thorn had already made it clear that supreme command here belonged entirely to the Hero. No point poking a nose in.

Once the guards withdrew, Banxia swept his senses across the area. No one around. He turned to the three women waiting at his mansion's entrance.

"I'll be right back."

They caught his meaning without a word and retreated inside.

"Now that it's finally quiet, I can properly 'deal' with all of you." Banxia put on a pleasant expression and looked at the five demons, who had already been reduced to helpless sticks.

"Why..." The demon Gael still couldn't understand what had just happened.

"Nothing to explain. You were simply too weak."

"...Weak."

"Mm... though that's not entirely accurate either. Being weak isn't your original sin. Greed is the real reason you're in this situation." Banxia was in a good mood. He was willing to chat a little.

"Greed, is it..." Gael murmured, then closed both eyes in resignation and said nothing more.

"Lord Hero! I'll tell you everything! I can get Gael to enter a contract too! Just spare me and I'll do whatever you say from now on—"

Another demon started begging.

Banxia ignored it. Monsters felt no pain.

Whatever they mimicked of human emotion, it was all just a tool for hunting humans. Their pleas were worth exactly as much as hot air.

That said, after hunting monsters for so long, Banxia had noticed one thing: a monster's fear of death actually ran several notches deeper than a human's.

"Rejuvenation."

He raised his hand and pressed it to the begging demon's head.

An immortal strokes my crown, binding my hair to grant long life.

At that moment, Banxia really did seem like something out of legend.

Beneath his palm, the demon warrior's face grew gradually younger, features softening, a faint regression creeping toward childhood.

That reversal of yin and yang snapped the remaining demons out of their resignation. Their eyes went wide.

Unfortunate for them, all they saw was someone "getting younger." They had none of the perception that the Great Demon from the Lova Labyrinth had, the ability to sense that this was a life-reversing longevity art working against the laws of the world itself.

Because they were weak, they couldn't feel the bone-deep terror that had gripped that Great Demon.

After three applications of Rejuvenation, the demon in front of him had become a drooling, vacant child.

The Rejuvenation spell itself carried no side effects.

What was happening here was something else entirely: the curse of the Life Spirit, brought on by defying the world's laws of life.

The first cast — nearly a month of diarrhea. A warning.

The second — total bodily exhaustion, duration unknown, but likely far longer than a month.

The third, direct regression into a mentally disabled child. Well outside any range a person could ever use on themselves.

The fourth would fully enrage the Life Spirit and reduce the recipient to raw primordial essence.

On that note, was a monster's primordial essence the same kind of thing as a human's?

Banxia was a little curious. Not curious enough to waste at least fifteen hundred years of monster time finding out.

"Sever."

[Ding. Demon Schell slain. Total lifespan: 5,500 years. Remaining lifespan: 4,360 years. Absorbed.]

[Held Monster Time: 6,660 years (Mergeable)]

"Oh? Schell had four thousand years left in him. Not bad at all." Banxia looked satisfied.

Three hundred years of mana spent, but at least fifteen hundred years of monster time gained on top. And with the lv.3 Advanced Meditation Method as his foundation, his mana recovery was absurdly fast. Drain himself completely and he'd be back to full in about half a month.

Mana came back on its own. Lifespan didn't grow out of nowhere. Anyone with half a brain knew which one to prioritize.

Four demons left. He had nearly a thousand years of mana remaining. Three casts of Rejuvenation per demon, he was a bit short.

Didn't matter. Banxia was rich right now.

"System, load another thousand years of mana."

[Year One: You begin meditating, accumulating mana.]

[Year One Thousand: Mana accumulation complete.]

The total mana inside him swelled past two thousand years in an instant.

"How is that possible!"

Gael had lost count of how many shocks tonight had delivered. This human had barely scraped together a few centuries of mana before, how had it exploded to something as brilliant and crushing as a sun breaking over the horizon?

Had Banxia been hiding his strength from the very beginning...?

Amid the demons' despairing stares, the young man smiled, warm and unhurried, and began the harvest.

[Ding. Demon Gael slain. Total lifespan: 6,000 years. Remaining lifespan: 3,745 years. Absorbed.]

...

[Held Monster Time: 24,500 years (Mergeable) (Enhanceable)]

Banxia went back inside, thoroughly satisfied.

Burning through that much mana at once had left his head a little light. But compared to what he'd just hauled in, a bit of dizziness was nothing.

This was, without question, the most bountiful harvest he'd had since getting his cheat.

Not all good news, though.

His experimentation had shown that not every life could survive three casts of Rejuvenation. One of the weaker demons had only made it through two before nearly dissolving into primordial essence. Banxia had cut it down fast enough to salvage the situation, but had still missed out on five hundred years.

So the Life Spirit's curse wasn't just tied to the number of uses. It was also tied to the recipient's strength, or more precisely, the essence of their life itself.

If even a weaker humanoid demon could only hold out through two casts, then among ordinary monsters, anything capable of surviving a single Rejuvenation would have to be considered exceptional, the pride of its species, the kind of elite monster that left novice adventurers in the dirt.

"Banxia..." "Adventurer." "Master."

The moment he stepped through the door, all three women turned worried eyes on him.

They had heard every one of those earth-shattering wails outside.

None of them could quite imagine what had happened out there.

"Don't worry." Banxia smiled easily. "I just interrogated them about whether any other monsters were in the area."

Which was technically true. He really had used the Magic to Show Fond Memories to check.

The bad news: according to those demons' memories, every demon in the southern territory who'd once built any kind of reputation was either already dead by his hand or had long since fled at the sound of his name.

➤ Next: Soaring Combat Power