Under Sareth’s suggestion, Nero seemed to have opened the door to a new world…
From that day onward, a strange group of four appeared in Red Grave City-V, Nero, Sareth, and of course Nico came as logistical support. Over the coming days, Nero planned to hunt demons in Red Grave City to increase his strength.
Although Urizen had utterly defeated them, Nero and V realized that Urizen did not seem to be willing to leave the Qliphoth. He appeared to be assisting the tree to absorb blood and souls in order to get the fruit to ripen faster. Since Urizen never came out, Nero and V could deal with the demons who left the tree to hunt.
The human military was still arguing fiercely about whether to use powerful nuclear weapons to attack the Qliphoth. However, human civilian organizations had already begun to take action. Demon-hunting organizations like that of Dante and Nero kept appearing in Red Grave City to hunt demons and monsters. Although these demon hunters were not like Dante and Nero, who had a demon bloodline and could use magic power, they could rely on their firearms, crossbows, and swords to achieve good hunting results. After all, the ones responsible for hunting humans were basically low-rank demons and monsters. Facing these low-level demons and monsters, human weapons were still very useful.
However, the purpose of these demon-hunting organizations might not necessarily be simple. They might have the lofty purpose of protecting humans, but it was more to obtain the organs and objects of demons. The materials on these demons could often fetch a high price on the black market…
Nero and the others had also encountered several demon-hunting organizations along the way, but they usually chose to avoid coming into contact with them… In fact, whether it was Dante or Nero, they generally tried their best to avoid showing their demonic power in front of ordinary people. So when Sareth noticed this thought, he felt that it was strange and asked Nero, “Why is that?’
“I just don’t want to be regarded as a monster…” Nero replied casually.
“But you’re clearly stronger than those people, yet the strong fear the opinions of the weak. What kind of logic is this?” Sareth was very puzzled.
“Humans are social creatures, but when they discover that there are people that they can’t understand in their group, they will treat them as anomalies and exclude them…” V explained. “Nero just doesn’t want to be excluded by humans.”
“What strange behavior…” Sareth scratched his head and frowned. “I can’t understand at all.”
This concept was completely different from the concept that Sareth had come into contact with in the Abyss. The idea of demons was that the stronger an existence, the more worthy of respect and awe. It was precisely this concept that Sareth had accepted since he was young. Therefore, when he approached Dante and Nero, apart from the fact that they had the same half-demon bloodline as him, it was also because they were stronger than him. After obtaining an opportunity, he would unconsciously approach the strong. Therefore, he could not understand Nero’s current behavior…
There was a generation gap between him and Nero, and Nero felt that there was a generation gap between him and Sareth. Because in the recent days of hunting demons, Sareth had also taken action and attacked those demons mercilessly, swinging Executioner agilely to kill them.
“Sareth, aren’t you also from the Abyss? Why do you have no psychological burden when killing demons?” Nero finally could not help but ask during the break after a hunt.
“Huh? What psychological burden?” Sareth was stunned by this question. “Isn’t this normal? Demons also fight each other!”
“Nero means, is there no concept of the same kind between demons?” Nico interjected.
“I don’t think so…” Sareth tilted his head and thought for a while. “Although there is cooperation between demons, Foster Father said that the relationship is more between superiors and subordinates. It’s only a matter of course for powerful demons to rule over weak demons… Speaking of which, don’t humans fight one another?” “Uh…” Both Nico and Nero had something stuck in their throats. They did not know how to answer this.
Yes, although they had the concept of the same kind, it was not uncommon for humans to fight one another. In fact, this kind of fighting seemed to be even morally worse than demons killing one another… Similar conversations happened between Nero and Sareth every day, making both of them realize that their ideologies conflicted with each other. However, this did not stop them from hunting demons.
Half a month passed. During this time, the four-member team had hunted nearly a thousand demons, but the number of demons in Red Grave City did not decrease but instead faintly increased.
This might have been due to Urizen constantly summoning demons from the Demon World in the Qliphoth. The increasing number of demons did not have much of an effect on Nero and the others, but it had an enormous impact on the demon-hunting organizations. Although these demon hunters could hunt low-level demons and monsters, their numbers were too few compared to the demons. Once they accidentally provoked more demons than they could handle, it often led to heavy casualties.
Therefore, in the past half a month, the demon-hunting groups that they had encountered became fewer and fewer, but the military troops had become more numerous.
It was easy to raze a city with nuclear bombs. But once Red Grave City was destroyed, it was equivalent to hundreds of thousands or even millions of civilians becoming homeless. At that time, how to settle so many refugees was the most troublesome thing. Moreover, the entire world was now paying attention to the demon tree that appeared in Red Grave City. Countless people would see any drastic action of the military, and the consequences of a single instance of carelessness might lead to the military being scolded to the point of never being able to rise again… So after an argument, the military still felt that it was best to avoid using nuclear bombs as much as possible.
Fortunately, after so many days of observation, humans had discovered that the gigantic demon tree had not changed at all. Although demons were continuously appearing from the tree to hunt humans, the danger seemed to be… just that?
So, in the end, the military sent a large number of troops into Red Grave City to eliminate the demons. This method was quite effective, and they reduced the range of the demons’ hunting
However, the closer they were to the Qliphoth, the more demons they encountered, so the advancement of the military was gradually hindered. There were a lot of gunshots every day, and similarly, there were a lot of casualties every day. It seemed like the military had made some progress, but both Nero and Nico realized that this might be deliberate by the demons. After all, many civilians had already escaped, and these human soldiers who kept entering became the main targets for the demons to provide blood to the Qliphoth. Simply put, this was a trap to lure humans into constantly sending people to their deaths…
However, even though Nero and the others knew that it was a trap, they were helpless in the face of this situation. It was impossible for them to find the military commander and get him to evacuate, right? The other party did not know them at all, so why would he listen to them?
“So… We still have to solve the root of the problem as soon as possible!” Nero looked at the gigantic Qliphoth and sighed. “But I’m not strong enough… I don’t know what happened to Dante, Lady, and Trish. If they’re really dead, then I…”
“Don’t worry!” Nico patted Nero’s shoulder. “You have to believe that man won’t die so easily. He’s holding weapons my grandmother made for him… Let’s not talk about this so much. Come and help me adjust this.”
In addition to hunting demons and devouring their souls to strengthen their magic power, Nico had been using the materials they obtained from the dead demons to create weapons for Nero. She planned to create a prosthetic arm for him so that his right arm could recover its combat strength. But pure technological materials could not accommodate magic power, so she could only replace them with materials like demon horns or demon bones.
Now, the right prosthetic arm that Nico made was still in the adjustment phase, so it was not useful for the time being. Similarly, although Nero’s magic power had increased, he felt that it was still not enough.
“For you!” V returned, panting. There was a large black demon crow resting on his shoulder, and the corner of the crow’s beak still had purple bloodstains. After panting for a while, V reached out and handed two black balls of light to Nero. “Killed two…”
“Are you participating in the battle again?” Nero took the souls and frowned at V. “Is your body okay?”
“It’s okay. I can still hold on…” V closed his eyes and leaned against the car door to rest.
The black demon crow on his shoulder mocked, “Hehehe, is that so? This guy almost died just now…” “Shut up, Griffon!” V reprimanded.
The demon crow named Griffon laughed and stopped talking.
“Eat quickly!” V said to Nero. “Sareth is still hunting on the other side. He might be able to bring back more later.”
Nero held the two souls and looked at the black light. He sighed. “To be honest, I really don’t want to devour the souls of those demons. This black light makes me uncomfortable. Every time I swallow them, I feel the demon blood in my body moving restlessly… Speaking of which, if I eat too many of these souls, won’t I become a true demon?”
“Who knows? We don’t have a choice now,” V replied.
Thinking about Dante, whose life and death was unknown, Nero did not say anything else. He gritted his teeth and stuffed the two souls into his mouth. Then he felt the two souls transform into thin streams of magic power and fuse into his body…
The suggestion that Sareth gave Nero was of course good intentions. But he did not know much about souls and did not understand one thing: the souls of demons were ‘evil souls’. Such souls contained too much negative power. It might not be a problem for pure demons to eat them, but it was not necessarily a good thing for a half-demon like Nero to eat too many evil souls…
