Second Genesis

Maybe Grey had just gotten too used to the Producers trying to paint him like some sort of villain, but when the halo said Demons, he hadn’t actually expected real fucking demons to appear out of nowhere.

He was wrong. What emerged from the darkness was about as demonic as something could possibly be, each standing somewhere between eight and ten feet tall, their skin blackened like they had been rolled through ash, their teeth stained with fresh blood, and their eyes carrying nothing but murder.

Grey’s expression slowly tightened. There was something else about them too, something his mind couldn’t quite classify properly at first. Their very existence made the Holy Energy wrapped around his body recoil. It wasn’t poison, corruption, chaos, or anything else he had experienced before, it was simply the direct antithesis of everything Holy Energy represented.

Evil.

That was the only word Grey could think of.

His heart felt uncomfortable just looking at them, almost like he was staring directly into the maw of the afterlife, and for the first time he realized just how fucking holy Holy Energy actually felt. It had always just been power to him, useful power, annoyingly bright power, power that came with a bunch of stupid baggage he didn’t care about, but faced with its direct opposite, the difference became impossible to ignore.

’Is it really supposed to be this simple? Holy versus evil?’

Grey didn’t like it.

Maybe he was being paranoid, but every time the world handed him something that fit together this neatly, there was usually someone behind the curtain with a knife waiting to stab him in the ass.

Three more Demons appeared until their number perfectly matched the participants of the Region that had been selected. Each had dark-gold etchings burned into their faces, branching lines that looked disturbingly similar to circuits carved directly into flesh, and Grey’s attention locked onto them the moment they moved.

The first Demon slashed down in a brutal overhead arc, but halfway through the motion its body folded forward instead. The back of its hand struck the ground, the slash became a roll, and the rotation flowed seamlessly into an axe kick falling from above. Before that heel could land, another Demon came sprinting in from behind and leapt directly over the rolling body, one palm extending downward.

A wall of wind crashed into the first Demon and its heel accelerated downward.

At the same time, the recoil launched the second Demon higher into the air, where it twisted violently and caught a third Demon that had already jumped to meet it. Its hands wrapped around the third Demon’s legs, their bodies spun together, and then the third was hurled downward like a living spear.

"Holy shit," Grey breathed.

The battle hadn’t even properly started yet, but he had already realized something.

Those dark-gold markings weren’t decorative. The Demons were using something frighteningly similar to Last Paladin Spirit, except theirs talked to one another.

Their wills were connected in some sort of network mesh, one feeding into another, overlaying movements, reinforcing attacks, and passing momentum between bodies like they weren’t four separate people at all. The more Grey watched, the more it felt like every Demon was both itself and one piece of a much larger creature.

Then Grey noticed something even more absurd. None of them were Proving Class.

Not one.

His eyes narrowed. They were mortals, actual mortals, in the purest sense Grey had learned to understand since entering the Genesis Games, and yet every instinct in his body screamed that these things were dangerous.

The clash erupted.

Laser beams tore through the air, weapons rang against claws and hardened flesh, while the Demons poured forward like some chaotic machine formed of wild kicks and meteoric punches. One would duck before another even attacked over its shoulder, a third would take the momentum from that strike and turn it into a throw, and every time it looked like one was about to be isolated, another appeared in exactly the right place.

It was closer to a hive mind than just good coordination.

Grey watched in silence for several seconds, then his face twisted.

"...These guys stink."

Mauve blinked.

Elowen turned toward him. "What?"

Grey didn’t answer.

Across the way, the Orlith Holy Empire had already killed one Demon, and a second was barely holding itself together. From the outside, they looked dominant, and Mauve and Elowen clearly assumed Grey was insulting the Demons.

He wasn’t. The Demons were powerful. Really fucking powerful.

That was the problem.

Grey could feel it in the way they moved, the way their wills linked together, how much technique was buried underneath what looked like wild violence. Their stats weren’t overwhelming, their bodies weren’t absurd, and they didn’t have bloodlines that made the laws of physics bend over and spread their cheeks for them.

They were just good. Really fucking good. And yet the Orlith talents were cutting through them.

Grey’s eyes narrowed as he watched another Demon get forced backward by a beam of violet light.

That should have been impressive.

Instead, Grey felt disappointed.

’These are supposed to be the elites?’

The Demons were fighting like people who had spent their whole lives learning how to kill. The talents opposing them were fighting like fucking toddlers. Watching their lack of coordination, piss poor skills, and their general smugness about it all made him sick to his stomach. At some point, he started rooting for evil even though it wasn’t working out.

That difference between the two was strikingly obvious, so much so that Grey finally realized this was probably the first time the changes to his now evolved Last Paladin Spirit were manifesting themselves. Could he have felt this so clearly before? It felt like he could wipe the floor with the Orlith hopping on one foot with a hand tied behind his back.

One Orlith warrior overextended three separate times in less than ten seconds and survived every mistake because his armor was too strong for the Demon’s claws to pierce. Another got baited into exposing her back, only for some protective treasure to flare automatically and save her.

They weren’t outplaying the Demons, they were just overwhelming them.

Grey’s lips curled in disgust.

’Trash.’

The Orlith had power, bloodlines, treasures, Abilities, everything someone could possibly ask for, and somehow they just felt... inadequate.

Grey looked toward Xerchen, then toward the Elemental, then toward the massive Dormaji.

His expression slowly became more serious.

If the Demons were the baseline for what came next, then raw power wasn’t going to be enough forever. And something told Grey the halo knew exactly that.

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