Around the time that Abel was finishing his work at the orphanage, a mysterious entity was hurtling through the sky above the western gate some ways from the Royal Capital of Midgard. It was a demon, crashing through the clouds and plummeting to the ground at unbelievably fast speeds, sparkling in the night sky like a shooting star. He landed just like an asteroid would, gouging a deep crater in the earth.
“Hm? What is that...?”
The first person who noticed that something was wrong was one of the guards stationed at the western gate. “Captain, I think something crashed around the gate, but I’m not sure if I was just seeing things...”
“Huh? Something suspicious? What was it?” the captain asked.
“I’m...not sure. But I could feel some kind of evil mana.”
The demon’s dark presence was so immense and strong that even this guard—a new recruit—could sense it, enough to know it was bad.
“It might be a demon...” the new recruit said.
“A ha ha ha! A demon?!” the captain guffawed. “There’s no way somethin’ that dangerous would pop up now, in these peaceful times!”
“Y-Yeah. That’s true.”
For these guards, their biggest disturbance was from the occasional violent drunk. It was hard to even imagine anything remotely dangerous, let alone fatal, happening to them. But as they conversed with one another, something unexpected happened.
There was a loud explosion and, in the next moment, a hole appeared in the wall, sending dust flying everywhere.
“Weak... So weak.” An evil dragon—named Zeke, and over three meters tall in height—had broken through the wall. “Why are the mages of this age so frail? They won’t even serve as a warm-up for my fight with the black cat,” Zeke said, dragging along the guards that had been stationed in front of the gate and were now beaten to a pulp.
“Eek!”
The other guards froze, paralyzed by fear. The usual protocol for emergency situations such as this was to immediately alert higher command, but the monster in front of them was so fearsome that they couldn’t even take a single step.
“Hmph... This form is too unwieldy. How unbearable.” His evil dragon form made it hard to move indoors without becoming smaller. Decision made, Zeke morphed into his human form. “It’s been quite some time since I’ve returned to this form.”
After transforming, he’d become a human male, about a hundred seventy centimeters tall. Aside from his wings and tail, he looked like a regular young man. Demons were a combination between humans and monsters, but Zeke was the kind of demon who preferred his monster form.
“Damn you! You’ll pay for this, monster!”
“For our fallen comrades!”
The fear of the guards lessened after seeing him shrink in size, so they picked up their arms and tried to launch a counterattack.
“Hm. Like this?” Zeke muttered, bored.
He swung his tail and in a flash, it flew out and sliced the guards’ heads from their shoulders.
“Gah!”
Before any of the guards could even pull the trigger on their guns, his tail had killed them all, sending them flying before they could do a single thing against him.
“Just you wait, black cat. It’s your turn to die next,” Zeke declared, alone in the room now drenched in blood, holding the severed heads of the guards.