Chapter 425

Chapter 425
## Chapter 425

Masquerade (3)

“Man… I’m going to end up in an early grave if this keeps up…”

Ken groaned as he hauled himself out from the remains of the shattered wall, his entire frame aching and covered in bruises.

The boundless energy that had previously coursed through his veins had completely vanished.

‘*…If I really push my limits, I could probably hold out for a bit longer.*’

However, there was absolutely no reason to overexert himself anymore.

He no longer had a purpose to do so.

“Whew, so those guys are actually part of the Masquerade?”

Brushing the thick dust off his garments, his eyes locked onto the absolute epicenter of the tempest that had violently broken out a short distance away.

Four individuals, each possessing a highly distinct and incompatible appearance, had abruptly materialized by tearing directly through the fabric of space.

They were the reinforcement squad dispatched by his master.

“I honestly didn’t anticipate them being quite this… terrifying.”

Their numbers were few.

Yet, their sheer power levels were staggering, and the pressure radiating from them was completely suffocating.

‘*…I can’t even read the depth of three of them, just like that Executioner. As for the remaining one… he’s definitely a step above me.*’

To think that such absolute monsters belonged to the exact same syndicate…

What kind of entity was this Masquerade, anyway?

He wouldn’t find it shocking at all if their ultimate goal was covert global domination.

After all, his master—the very being who had pulled him out of the Demon World—possessed the ability to gather global data with a mere thought.

He couldn’t shake a deep sense of caution regarding them, especially since he had essentially been forced to become their newest recruit against his own wishes.

‘*…And is that a Saint? Don’t tell me… could it be the Saint of Auterica…?*’

Because of his demonic physiology, the individual radiating a blinding, holy luminescence and overwhelming divine pressure felt exceptionally grating to be around.

He seriously doubted the figure would try to exorcise him on the spot, but it was still incredibly uncomfortable.

“Breeehahaha! You better relish every single second of this!”

A thunderous laugh boomed across the war zone, followed by a sudden wave of immensely concentrated energy.

A massive shockwave, trailing a deafening explosion, rippled across the terrain.

Ken twisted his torso to absorb the brunt of the kinetic force, his brow furrowing deeply.

‘*…That laughter… it sounds bizarrely familiar.*’

It wasn’t just the boisterous laugh either.

The specific inflection, the manner of speaking—it resonated with something deep in his memory.

It felt almost identical to his triple-headed companion back in the Demon World.

‘*…No way, I’m just seeing things.*’

He gave a slow shake of his head, keeping his eyes glued to the towering, muscular brute who had just thrown that punch.

There was no way that was Davidson. That adorable, fluffy pup could never transform into such a monstrous savage.

With his perceptions heavily skewed by two decades of surviving in the Demon World and his demonic instincts altering his views, Ken redirected his attention toward the massive crater where the Executioner, his opponent from just moments ago, had been standing.

—

The four distinct incarnations had been sent out under the banner of the ‘Masquerade’.

There was a precise logic behind deploying such an overwhelmingly powerful strike force.

This entire situation was an ambush orchestrated by the Heaven’s Turn Society.

It was far wiser to utterly crush them with sheer, undeniable might rather than risk playing into whatever hidden aces they might be harboring.

‘*…Besides, their presence has already been partially compromised on Earth.*’

Since the stage was already grandly set, it served as the perfect stage to flex their absolute supremacy.

Doing so would make the process of absorbing the Burning Torch much smoother.

‘*…Even though their overall worth has plummeted now that their leader is out of the picture…*’

They still remained a highly functional tool.

He required a vast web of organizations and powerful individuals to systematically dismantle the Heaven’s Turn Society on a global scale.

Despite their current state of decline, the Burning Torch still retained a massive roster of personnel, including multiple transcendent powerhouses.

“Huh?”

One of the active incarnations, Harley—a grizzled mercenary accustomed to hopping across dimensions to meddle in wars and slaughter demons—tilted his head in mild perplexity.

He had been thoroughly thrilled to finally let loose with his unrestricted strength and hadn’t thought twice about striking first, but something was off.

[“You are… absurdly durable. No, this goes far beyond standard resilience. What exactly are you? Can you even be classified as a living creature?”]

Minute punctures, roughly the diameter of a fingertip, had materialized across his shoulders.

Had his reflexes not caused him to twist away, those punctures would have driven straight through his heart.

Naturally, minor wounds of this caliber meant nothing to him, but the alarming part was that his honed senses hadn’t even registered the incoming trajectory.

“Well, this is a first. You completely evaded my perception, slipped past my strike, and managed a counter?”

[“I ought to repeat those exact words to you. You successfully avoided a lethal strike and walked away with mere scratches. Truly commendable!”]

“Wait, a lethal strike? Scratches?”

Harley, whose perception was pushed to the absolute limit by 「Bio-Aura」, 「Fighting King’s Mark」, and the modified version of 「Mad Control Heart Technique」, blinked his eyes.

The punctures on his shoulders had already vanished entirely, his flesh stitching back together instantly as the stray blood flowed back into his skin.

[“…? Your recovery rate is that instantaneous?”]

Not a single blemish was left behind.

The Executioner found himself genuinely astonished by this display.

Granted, the vast majority of adversaries he faced possessed some form of high-tier regeneration.

A few could even reconstruct their entire forms from a stray cell.

‘*…Yet none of them could ever endure my specific brand of offense.*’

Even when facing an opponent operating on his exact tier, preventing him from simply obliterating them with raw energy, he still possessed his specialized trait—a unique power obtained upon rising to a Greater Demon, capable of matching the authorities of the gods.

And yet, the man standing before him looked entirely unbothered.

“Man, that felt like a mild tickle. Your offensive output is honestly pathetic. I’m going to start losing muscle mass if you keep hitting like a wet noodle.”

The Executioner’s mouth twitched slightly at his foe’s dismissive remarks, delivered in a tone of pure boredom.

Right after, an intense, boiling urge for combat erupted within his chest, his presence flaring like an apocalyptic blaze that turned the immediate atmosphere to ash.

[“Hehehe… Splendid. Utterly magnificent!”]

This was precisely the kind of thrill he craved.

A brutal, unrestricted brawl where raw power clashed with ultimate technique, a desperate dance for survival where lives, souls, and core ideologies hung in the balance.

He typically avoided drawing upon his definitive unique attribute, relying instead on the dense demonic energy he had refined across countless eras.

He had utilized a mere fraction of it earlier as a subtle taunt, but he hadn’t been genuinely trying.

[“Breehahaha! At long last, an opponent worth my time!”]

In truth, the only entity capable of directly weathering his unrestrained unique trait at maximum output was the Grandmaster of the Heaven’s Turn Society.

He was genuinely exhilarated to encounter a foe capable of forcing his hand to this extent.

And then, the Executioner, his booming laughter slicing through the air as his dark aura flared like a star gone supernova, completely vanished from sight.

Simultaneously, Harley gasped, “Wait—”

*Whoosh!*

Harley’s chest cavity violently ruptured, painting the air with crimson as he desperately shifted his stance.

Four jagged, deep lacerations resembling the claws of a massive beast tore through his chest—a physique that should have easily shrugged off a direct nuclear detonation due to the traits of 「Ultimate Evolved Lifeform」.

That wasn’t the end of it.

*Sizzle! Rip! Snap!*

His incredibly dense outer hide was being systematically melted by a corroding, apocalyptic force. His muscle fibers were being torn to shreds by an invisible pressure, his fingers snapping off and his wrist shattering before his cellular regeneration could even attempt to trigger.

[“Oh? You can actually perceive that much? Then take this! And this! And this!”]

“Argh! This guy is having way too much fun!”

Harley found himself utterly incapable of dodging, let alone executing a proper counter-offensive.

However, he hadn’t come away empty-handed.

He had been meticulously calculating the mechanics behind the enemy’s strikes, focusing his awareness to its absolute peak as his mind operated at hypersonic speeds.

He finally deduced the underlying trick.

‘*…Could it really be…?*’

Naturally, this realization was heavily assisted by the data gathered by his fellow incarnations, who were safely monitoring the battlefield from a distance.

Heinz the Second was utilizing 「Insight」 to scrutinize the literal microscopic warps in local causality, his brow twitching in concentration.

Meanwhile, Harris applied 「Observer of the Milky Way」 alongside various elemental techniques to map out the cosmic flow of power, his expression turning equally grim.

“…A localized temporal freeze?” Heinrich murmured under his breath, his face darkening.

His newly unlocked angelic perception, heightened by his recent transcendence, had isolated a glaring anomaly in the environment.

A solitary entity was moving without restriction inside a completely stagnant reality—a realm where time itself had ground to a halt.

The figure came to a stop, his palm covered in Harley’s fresh blood as he casually twirled it between his fingers.

[“Ha! You actually managed a physical reaction in that literal microsecond? Splendid.”]

Given that Harley’s baseline metrics were exceptionally high, the ability wasn’t functioning flawlessly.

The Executioner’s temporal freeze wasn’t absolute, meaning his strikes merely clipped Harley during that microscopic window.

‘*…But that alone won’t be enough to bring him down.*’

He finally comprehended the source of the Executioner’s boundless arrogance.

He could utilize this specific domain to not only deal free damage but also smoothly extricate himself from any fatal predicament.

“Man, this is getting pretty boring. You talk all that big game about honor and battlefield glory, but you’re just playing dirty tricks…”

[“Oh, did I get a bit carried away? Cut me some slack. The Grandmaster is the only one capable of standing up to my full output. I’ve been incredibly stifled lately. On top of that, the Grandmaster explicitly banned the inner circle from fighting one another, so finding a proper sparring partner is next to impossible.”]

Well, if the demon had managed to climb to such a tier in an alternate reality, he must have amassed an unimaginable quantity of cosmic Karma.

After all, definitive traits like his own 「Avatar」 technique possessed limitless scaling capabilities.

If that power had successfully manifested as a literal divine authority after integrating true godhood…

‘*…So there really are other viable contenders out there…*’

The mere fact that this demon could move within a frozen timeline proved he was no ordinary powerhouse.

He would need to run a much deeper analysis on him later.

As these thoughts settled, the Executioner finished stretching his limbs, turned his gaze toward the remaining incarnations watching from afar, and spoke with absolute nonchalance.

[“If you lot are done spectating, let’s get this show on the road. Hmm, it feels slightly unsporting to take you all on simultaneously… but opportunities like this don’t come around often. Look at it as a masterclass to discover your absolute limitations!”]

His confidence was so absolute that he was genuinely eager to engage all of them at once.

Harley, observing that smug posture, felt a hot flash of irritation.

He fully respected the demon’s absurd power level, but that didn’t mean he was just going to sit back and be looked down upon.

‘*…Then again, he’s not entirely wrong. This serves as an exceptional training exercise. It’s an incredibly rare privilege to test oneself against a reality-bending authority of this caliber.*’

Their ultimate target remained the Grandmaster of the Heaven’s Turn Society, an individual vastly superior to this single demon commander.

Therefore, this encounter was an ideal chance to harvest combat data and level up his parameters, rather than a sequence he should hastily skip past.

‘*…Practical combat experience is an irreplaceable asset. And it would look incredibly pathetic if I just let myself get steamrolled here.*’

His mind was made up.

He would handle this duel entirely on his own, at least until he managed to land a solid, clean hit on the guy.

*Hiss!*

His massive, muscular frame began to emit a blinding radiance as superheated steam billowed from his skin.

A heavy, metallic screech echoed from within his body as his skeletal structure twisted and reinforced itself.

His physical proportions expanded dramatically until his height practically mirrored that of his giant adversary.

“Alright, let’s go! I’m finally firing on all cylinders!”

[“Oh? You intend to face me in a single combat? Suit yourself.”]

The Executioner kept one eye on Harley while tracking the remaining avatars out of the corner of his eye.

He was clearly maintaining a level of vigilance against the others.

To Harley, however, that divided attention felt like a direct slight.

“Hehehe… Let me impart a fundamental rule of life to you, pal.”

A deep, crimson aura—a corrupted, foul energy that seemed to actively rot the surrounding space—erupted violently from his pores.

The raw, unfiltered insanity of the bottomless void, extracted directly from the 「Seed of Madness」 which he had kept sealed deep within himself until now, cascaded outward into the environment.

“There is absolutely nothing more humiliating than running your mouth only to get completely flattened right after!”

*Boom!*

Harley transformed into a massive blur of motion, accelerating forward with explosive velocity.

[“That particular rule has never applied to me.”]

In that exact instant, the Executioner triggered his ultimate trait once more.

The entirety of reality instantly slowed to a crawl, resembling a heavily lagging projection.

Then, everything locked into total stasis.

Within this completely frozen domain, absolutely no one could move except for him—the Eternal Greater Demon.

‘*…Hmm, I likely wouldn’t have secured an easy victory in a direct clash of raw muscle without using my unique trait. That absurd anatomy completely breaks the laws of biology… that must be where his divine energy originates.*’

The warrior wearing the beast mask stood completely motionless directly ahead of him, entirely defenseless.

His opponent was utterly incapable of mounting an defense within this stopped timeline.

‘*…It’s an admirable physique, but it’s ultimately futile against me. The conceptual match-up favors me entirely.*’

He had genuinely never encountered a body this ridiculously sturdy before.

To think the guy could take attacks capable of cleaving through the dimensions of space and walk away with minor damage…

Furthermore, those injuries mended themselves almost immediately.

Even his absolute peak offensive outputs had only succeeded in severing a single hand. He couldn’t even calculate how many consecutive strikes it would take to inflict permanent, terminal damage on this freak.

‘*…Fortunately, inside this domain, my time is infinite. He will eventually break down under continuous pressure.*’

A highly volatile, crackling demonic flame began to pool heavily into his palm.

Maintaining this temporal stasis put an immense tax on both his mental focus and physical vessel, but he had no choice.

He wouldn’t be able to bypass the man’s defenses otherwise.

With his ultimate strike fully materialized, he stepped directly into the frozen warrior’s personal space.

Right then, his pupils constricted violently under his mask.

‘*…What?!*’

Peering straight through the narrow eye slots of the lion mask, he found two distinct eyes—one burning crimson, the other a deep green—staring directly back into his own.

‘*How is this possible?!*’

The man’s gaze was angled slightly upward, completely locked onto him, dripping with an incredibly mocking, freezing amusement.