Chapter 494: An Old Enemy

The tailed man tried to pull his gaze away from the stranger, but his head barely moved. His tail had gone rigid behind him, and the fingers he had used to release the dark-crimson slash remained curled beside his body.

He gathered his willforce around his consciousness, trying to push back against the presence settling over him, but the pressure continued to deepen. Mana stirred within his body, yet he could not guide it into another attack. Each attempt lost its shape before he could finish, leaving him staring at the blade still held in the stranger's hand.

Beside him, the horned man struggled to raise an arm. A faint crimson glow appeared between his fingers and scattered almost immediately. They had both reached Anchor, and neither was holding back their consciousness. Even so, neither could push the stranger's presence away.

The fingers holding the blade tightened. Cracks spread from his grip toward its edges, breaking the dark-crimson light into pieces like shattered glass. The fragments hung around his hand for a moment before their remaining essence dissolved into the void.

The tailed man watched the last piece disappear. He had released that attack to kill Nerion, and the stranger had destroyed it with the same ease he might have closed an empty hand. If he turned that strength against them, neither of them would be able to stop him.

"Do you know who we are?" the horned man demanded, forcing the words through his stiff jaw. His voice shook despite the anger he tried to put into it. "We belong to the Bloodfang Sovereign Sect, an Upper Major Sec—"

His voice broke off as the stranger disappeared. The tailed man blinked and turned toward his companion, only to find the crimson-robed figure already beside him. One arm had passed through the horned man's chest, and blood was spreading across the stranger's wrist.

As the stranger withdrew his hand, an Astral Core emerged between his fingers, its light falling across the horned man's lowered face. Dark-crimson essence wrapped around it, and the core vanished into his palm before the tailed man could force his mouth open.

His companion's body began drifting away. The stranger let it pass his shoulder and turned toward him, his eyes settling upon his face. The tailed man tried to retreat, but his legs did not obey, and the mana within him remained beyond his control. Even the words he wanted to say would not leave his throat.

The stranger moved closer. Before he crossed the remaining distance, a powerful will suddenly rose from within the tailed man, spreading through the space between them.

Adrian's advance stopped. The consciousness he had pressed over the pursuer was forced back, and the intent he was forming scattered before he could act upon it. He tried to call upon his willforce, but he could not complete even the intent to summon it.

He recognized the interference immediately. At Providence Hub, a foreign will had emerged from Androxus and crushed his ability to act, leaving him unable to summon even the Source. A similar kind of presence was now rising before him and was stronger than himself.

Despite that, Adrian forced his hand forward. His arm moved to attack the tailed man, but it was too slow. He could still think and direct his body, but when his body actually acted, it was too slow. The intent needed to maintain enough speed did not hold.

At Providence Hub, every effort to think had driven pain through his head. Now his consciousness remained steady enough to understand what was happening, and his arm continued moving despite the pressure, yet he was still weaker against the foreign will that bore down upon him.

Behind him, Nerion's eyes closed, and his arms fell loosely beside his body. The same pressure swept through the nearby vessels, sending passengers and crew members collapsing across their seats and walkways. A reporter slumped over a recording artifact as its projection continued showing the two figures above the moon.

Hestia had followed the reported coordinates and reached the outer edge of the scattered ships. A chill passed through her as the will reached that distance, leaving her suspended beside a departing vessel with one hand half raised. Her consciousness strained beneath the pressure. She remained awake, but the effort to gather a defense failed before she could form it.

The tailed man lifted his hand. Space opened beside him, and he threw himself into the narrow passage while Adrian was still forcing his arm forward. Hestia watched his tail disappear through the opening. The passage closed, and the foreign presence vanished with him.

Adrian's hand moved freely again. He steadied himself and looked toward the place where the man had escaped, but the passage had closed and the pressure was already gone.

"Damn it!" Adrian cursed.

"I need to know who is behind them," Adrian thought as his gaze shifted toward the horned man's body. "If that man returns, he may bring someone I cannot stop."

Only a few seconds had passed since he removed the core, yet the remaining consciousness was already coming apart. He could sense it fading as the body turned slowly in the void.

Adrian had taken only the core because consuming the body would also draw in the man's consciousness and memories. When he consumed Tenyz, those memories had left him unable to defend himself for several minutes. He could not risk the same thing while another opponent remained in front of him.

But now he had the time to do it. The foreign will had made the danger behind these men clear. Someone powerful enough to interfere with his intent was protecting the survivor, and Adrian knew almost nothing about either of them. The fading consciousness before him might hold the information he needed, if he acted before it disappeared.

Hestia was approaching from the ships. Adrian turned toward her and raised his hand toward the body. "Cover me," he said. Her gaze moved from his hand to the dead man, and she looked sharply back at him. She caught Nerion's uninjured arm to halt his drifting body, then held him beside her as she turned to watch the surrounding void.

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He remembered her warning. Memories carried a person's cruelty, desires, and habits along with useful knowledge, and she had told him to find a proper way to extract them before attempting this again. He had managed to separate Tenyz's memories only after they flooded his mind. This time, he prepared to contain the incoming memories from the beginning, keeping them apart from his own.

Dark-crimson essence spread from his palm and wrapped around the horned man. It closed over his chest, limbs, and head, consuming the body before the last of his consciousness could disperse. A weak pulse of resistance moved through the essence as the damaged mind was drawn inward.

Adrian's consciousness pressed down upon it. The resistance collapsed almost at once, unable to hold its shape beneath his control. He guided the incoming material into the part of his consciousness he had set aside, containing it before he could experience any of the memories.

The memories arrived unevenly. Tenyz had been unconscious but alive when Adrian consumed him, and his consciousness had remained whole. The horned man's mind had already begun to break apart. What remained came in disconnected pieces, with gaps where memories and the links between them had been lost.

Adrian held every recovered fragment within the separate part of his consciousness. No foreign experience forced its way into his thoughts, and none of the pain he remembered from Providence followed. He remained floating above the moon, his hand still extended, while the last crimson traces faded from the place the body had occupied.

He allowed a small part of the stored material to open beneath his awareness, keeping the rest contained. The fragments had no clear order, and several ended before he could understand what they showed. As he searched for a connection between them, a stretch of forest appeared, seen from close to the ground.

An animal was moving between thick roots, its body low and its attention fixed upon something ahead. It had a broad head, a rough dark hide, and claws that sank into the damp soil. When a smaller creature broke from the undergrowth, it sprang after it and caught it beneath a fallen branch.

The memory passed through feeding and the search for a sheltered place to rest. There were no words within it, no understanding of cultivation or the wider world. Hunger, scent, and movement guided the animal through its days on that unfamiliar planet.

Another fragment showed it waking beneath a cluster of roots. Something warm moved through its body, spreading into its limbs and gathering within its chest. The animal shifted uneasily, unable to understand the mana awakening inside it, before hunger drove it back into the forest.

Its body grew stronger. It could run farther, tear through thicker hides, and recover from wounds that had once left it hiding for days. But the creatures around it were changing as well. One that it had easily hunted before turned upon it, breaking through the skin of its shoulder and forcing it to flee.

The next surviving memories were filled with struggles over food and shelter. Animals that had once fled now turned to fight their predators, while larger creatures tore apart everything they could catch. Mana spread through their bodies as they grew, and the forest became crowded with beings far more dangerous than the animals they had been.

Adrian followed scattered pieces of that growth. He saw the creature return to a hunting ground where it had nearly died, kill the animal that had driven it away, and feed beside the remains. In later fragments, it continued attacking after its hunger had been satisfied. It learned to enjoy the struggle beneath its claws and began seeking it out.

Whole stretches of its life were missing, but each time the memories became clear again, its body had changed further, carrying fresh wounds and greater strength. As it grew more aware of itself and the creatures around it, the pleasure it took in killing became clearer as well. It began allowing injured prey to run before catching it again.

The sight brought back the way the horned man had chased Nerion between the ships and the moon. Adrian kept the memory separate from his own thoughts and continued through the remaining fragments until he reached another change.

The creature lay upon broken ground, its body trembling as the mana within it began to liquefy. Its limbs shifted, its back straightened, and the claws pressing into the soil shortened as its forelimbs took the shape of arms and hands. Dark-red skin covered the changing body, while two horns rose from its forehead.

It pushed itself upright and stared down at its hands. The face reflected in a nearby pool was the same one Adrian had seen above the moon. At S-rank, the animal had become a humanoid.

"Demons…" Adrian murmured as he drew back from the memory. The forest faded from his awareness, leaving the grey moon beneath him and the ships scattered farther away. He remembered Sentinel showing him how the monsters across the Milky Way had grown into the beings that threatened its civilizations.

Many intelligent races, including humanity, traced their beginnings through natural evolution over immense stretches of time. Intelligence, social structures, and the ability to build civilizations emerged gradually across generations.

But then, apart from naturally long evolution, Mana could create a very different path.

When mana awakened within an intelligent being, that person could learn to guide the changes it produced. They could cultivate deliberately, control their development, and understand the power transforming their body.

But animals or lesser intelligent beings did not possess that same understanding when the process began. Mana strengthened them long before their minds were ready for what that strength meant. Their bodies changed rapidly, their instincts became increasingly dangerous, and eventually their physical forms could be reshaped entirely even while their understanding of the world was still developing.

The demons that Sentinel described had gained intelligence without losing the appetite for slaughter they developed as monsters.

Beyond the Milky Way, beings of such origin were known more broadly as Beastborn, and there were many different types of Beastborn.

Animals or lesser intelligent beings protected by stronger beings, or raised where survival did not demand constant violence, could develop into very different types and become an alien race of their own.

Even within the Milky Way, races descended from monsters had lived within established empires. Some had formed their own clans and civilizations, with generations separating them from the animals their ancestors had been. The horned man's memories showed the violent path Adrian knew so well, and the pleasure he had taken in tormenting Nerion had survived every advancement since then.

Adrian looked toward Hestia. She remained nearby, watching the void beyond him, while Nerion floated unconscious under her care. The memory of Lara's call returned, along with the possible future in which Torvain and Maelis were dead, and Hestia would not wake.

For most of Adrian's childhood, the threat of demons had shaped the world around him. Protecting the people he loved from that danger had drawn him into a struggle that eventually extended throughout the Milky Way. When he finally killed the Demon Emperor, his family and everyone else he cared about had been able to live without that threat hanging over them.

Here, far beyond the galaxy where that struggle began, Adrian had found Hestia and built another home among people he had grown to care for. He knew new enemies would threaten them, but he had never expected the danger revealed by Fate to lead him back to demons.

Adrian had spent so much of his life protecting his family from them, and now, in another part of the universe, they were threatening the people he loved again.