Chapter 11: Varkos

Varkos came down from the ridge like he owned the crater.

He simply stepped off the edge and dropped thirty feet, landing in a crouch that cracked the black stone beneath his feet and sent debris flying around. When he stood up, the fighting nearby faltered for a moment.

He was a Demonspawn, tall and heavily muscled, with dark crimson skin and a pair of curved horns wreathed in flickering flames. The fire wasn’t for show. Koda could feel the heat rolling off them from forty feet away.

"Listen carefully," Varkos announced, spreading his arms. "Anything you’ve pulled off those carcasses belongs to me now. Drop it on the ground and walk away. I’m feeling generous today."

The three registered Scavenger Teams working the main carcass didn’t even look up or acknowledged his presence. They kept their perimeter and their blades pointed outward, minding their own business.

Koda understood why immediately.

Teams like that didn’t waste strength on disputes between low-tier scavengers. Whatever happened out here wasn’t their problem unless it reached the core where they were farming resources.

’They’re letting him take from the weak... An unwritten rule in this ’dog-eat-dog’ world. The strong grows stronger and the weak becomes weaker.’

A few of the smaller demons tried to run.

It was a reasonable instinct. Three of them broke away from the crowd and sprinted for the crater’s edge, clutching whatever scraps they’d managed to grab. Varkos watched them go with a bored expression.

Then he moved.

He crossed the distance in two strides and hit the first one with a single punch. The demon’s upper body burst into pieces of blood and gore, the other half went down without a sound. The second and third demons turned around, saw what had happened, and froze. Varkos finished them all just as quickly.

Nobody else ran after that.

One by one, the remaining low-tier scavengers dropped their loot on the ground and backed away with their hands raised. Claws, hide strips, small cores, fragments of bone, all sorts of resources. A small pile formed in front of Varkos, and he looked pleased with himself.

Koda didn’t move.

Serah had already stepped back beside him, the beast cores tucked out of sight against her side. She didn’t say anything, but he could feel her tension. She was waiting to see how they could escape this situation unscathed.

’I could drop it all and walk away. That would be the smart choice.’

But the cores Serah had dug out from the beasts was the first resource he had earned in this town. Giving it up would mean bowing in the face of Varkos’ ruthless bullying, and Koda didn’t like what that lesson would teach him. If it happened now, it would happen every time they encountered each other

So he stayed where he was.

Varkos noticed almost immediately.

His eyes swept over the crowd, passed over Serah, and settled on Koda. He tilted his head, frowning slightly, as if trying to work out why one demon in the pile of surrendering scavengers hadn’t understood the instructions.

"You." Varkos pointed at him. "Deaf, or stupid?"

"...Neither," Koda said, a slight frown forming.

"Then drop it."

"No."

For a second, nobody in the crater made a sound. Koda was close enough to see Varkos’s expression shift from confusion to something closer to amusement. Then the Demonspawn threw back his head and laughed, loud and unbothered, the sound echoing off the walls of the crater.

"Did you hear that?" Varkos asked the crowd, still grinning. "A nobody, saying no to me." He looked back at Koda, and the grin sharpened. "I’m going to make an example of you. Try not to die too quickly. I want them to remember it."

Koda studied him as he approached.

He could feel Varkos’s strength as he got closer now, pressing against him like pressure in the air. It wasn’t the same as the other demons he’d fought. It was denser, more complete.

From his observations, he noticed Varkos had a half-formed Demon Core already in his chest; meaning he was at the very edge of entering the Demon Core Realm, after completing the core formation.

Something Koda’s own seed core wouldn’t match for a long time. He hadn’t even begun forming his core more than a few days ago.

’He’s a full small realm above me. Maybe not a complete step, but close.’

He also noticed something else. Varkos hadn’t unsheathed anything yet. He had no weapons on him. He was walking toward Koda like a man strolling toward a door he already knew would open.

Varkos decided to attack first, leveraging the common advantage. Despite acting like an unbridled demon youth, he was quite perceptive and knew his opponent wasn’t an easy one. So he attacked with all the strength he could muster.

His punch came in fast, a heavy overhand swing aimed at Koda’s head, and Koda slipped aside at the last moment. The fist brushed past his ear and hit the ground behind him. The ground burst in a wide spiral, cracks spreading, and a wave of heat washed over his neck.

Koda’s body turned cold, knowing with a grim realisation that, ’He could have taken my head off with that punch.’

Varkos recovered instantly and swung again. Koda stepped back, then to the side, keeping his weight light on his feet. He didn’t try to block, since Varkos was stronger physically. The first rule he’d learned in the wasteland was to avoid taking hits from anyone stronger than him physically, and Varkos was clearly stronger.

But Varkos was also predictable.

Every strike he threw was powerful, direct, and aimed at a spot Koda was already leaving. He fought like someone who had never had to adjust mid-fight, because nobody had ever lasted long enough to make him.

Koda dodged a left hook, ducked under a right, and slid to the side as Varkos’s knee came up. He clenched his fists.

KRRSHK.

The talons slid free, and he caught the next punch on the flat of his blades. The impact rattled up his arm and into his shoulder, and a bruise bloomed instantly under his scales, but the blow didn’t land cleanly. He turned Varkos’s momentum aside and drove a short strike into the Demonspawn’s ribs.

His talons scraped across Varkos’s skin, drawing three thin lines of black blood.

Varkos looked down at them as the separated.

"Huh," he said.

The grin was still on his face, but it had changed. It was thinner now, more focused. Koda realized that for the first time since he’d stepped off the ridge, Varkos was actually paying attention.

"Not bad," Varkos admitted. "For a nobody."

He attacked again, faster this time, and the flames on his horns flared brighter. Koda gave ground, using the footwork he’d been forced to learn over the last few days, circling the ruins of the crater and staying just outside Varkos’s reach.

Each time the Demonspawn lunged, Koda answered with a short, precise strike against the arm or shoulder, nothing flashy, nothing that overextended him.

He wasn’t trying to win. He was trying to make the fight cost more than Varkos wanted to pay.

’He’s got real talent. And all of it is buried under a disgusting personality. Whether intentional or not.’

It was the strangest thing about him. Varkos wasn’t weak, and he wasn’t reckless in the way low-tier demons were reckless. Every move he made was clean and calculated. His stance, his timing, his instincts for pressure. The vanity was real, but so was the skill underneath it.

Koda decided that killing someone like that needlessly would be a waste.

He also decided he wouldn’t back down if Varkos pushed it too far.

The final exchange happened in a single heartbeat.

Varkos swung a massive, flame-wrapped fist straight at Koda’s chest. Koda crossed both talon-hands in front of him and met it head-on.

The collision sent a ring of dust and loose stone blasting outward across the crater. Both of them were driven backward, boots dragging long furrows through the ground, and neither fell. Koda’s forearms screamed from the impact. His bruise from earlier had spread across half his arm.

But when the dust settled, Varkos was the one standing with his weight on his back foot and his fist trembling slightly at his side. The flames on his horns had dimmed, just a little.

Koda held his stance, talons still raised, breathing hard.

A long silence stretched between them. The entire crater had gone quiet. Even the scavenger teams had turned to watch.

Varkos snorted.

"Fine," he said. He didn’t sound angry at all. He sounded like someone who had just recalculated something important. "You can keep whatever you have. I’ve got enough from the rest of them."

He turned his back, walked over to the pile of surrendered loot, and scooped up everything the weaker demons had dropped. Nobody tried to stop him.

"What’s your name?" Varkos asked, without turning around.

"Koda."

"Remember mine." He started toward the ridge. "Varkos. You’ll be hearing it a lot."

The crowd stirred slowly as he left. Whispers started in the back, then spread. Koda could hear fragments of it.

"A peak Demon Awakening Realm fighting to a standstill against a half-step Demon Core Realm!"

"He held him off. Did you see that?"

A few of the scavenger team members were exchanging looks that hadn’t been there before.

Serah stepped up beside him, quiet for once.

"You realize what you just did," she said, excitement brimming."You fought against a half-formed Core cultivator and walked away unscathed." She shook her head slowly. "Half this town will know your name by tomorrow... But that isn’t always a good thing."

Koda flexed his bruised arm, wincing. He understood what she meant. In a place where strength was the only currency that mattered, being noticed meant being measured. And being measured meant someone would eventually want to test the result.

A shadow suddenly passed over the crater.

Every head turned upward. A small, winged figure dropped out of the smoke, an Imp in dark lacquered armor, its chest plate stamped with a crimson crest Koda didn’t recognize. The crowd parted around it instantly. Even the scavenger teams stepped back.

The messenger landed in the center of the crater, unrolled a heavy black scroll, and slammed it into the ground. It stuck there, quivering, the seal at its base glowing a dull red.

"By order of Lord Vaelric, Keeper of the Maw," the Imp announced, voice raspy and sharp. "All able-bodied demons within Grevall Town’s boundaries are hereby conscripted into the service of the Lord’s expansion. Failure to report within three days will be treated as treason."