The dark knight and his hero doll companion parted ways with the magical girl. He sensed the vile presence of more demons further innd. Instead of an awkward parting he decided to slip away when the battle looked to be finalized. His path led him to the highnds. The pair journeyed along the rutted trade route that led up from the coastal town. After a couple days he arrived at another small vilge that was just as infested with mostly imps and a single tier 2 demon who was the ring leader.

  After a gruesome bit of ground teeth and greatsword work the town was clear. The locals all hid from him in terror but he didn’t care. He left the town and headed to the next, and the next.

  Demons fell by the thousand. The towns got bigger, becoming cities and he leveled ever closer to 20. When he finally started heading south, following the biggest stench of demons he came across a rge walled city. It likely was the abode of some high noble.

  Humans and imps swarmed him, pouring out from the gate but he defeated them all. Crowds were his speciality after all. The humans he didn’t finish off, maybe someone would collect them ter.

  He busted through the gate and started sughtering demons wholesale from inside the city.

  The hero doll kept firing the repeated crossbow on demons that attacked from range. Eventually he ran out of bolts but the dark knight took a skill that allowed bolts of magic to be created for the pint-sized hero doll. So as long as he took damage, and dealt it out with the cultivation crippling siphon strike to replenish his body the cycle could continue.

  Day and night. No rest.

  The purging of the city of demons took a week. It climaxed with a greed cultivating demon that wouldn’t leave the hoard in the keep. The demon was tier 3 but emotional powers like that couldn’t affect the dark knight. He knew only the grudge of the people who even now cry out from beyond the grave.

  Like the st town, he silently left and headed further south, a relentless march to the capitol city. Where he pnned to face his arch nemesis yet again, that giant mountain of an earth cultivator, the tier 4 demon that kept the demons in the kingdom from tearing each other apart by his presence alone.

  Power leveling against demons demanded a relentless approach. The hellspawn in the west showed a clear weakness, primarily consisting of low-level imps and Tier 2 demons. This likely meant a significant force of higher-tier demons had been deployed elsewhere in the kingdom, leaving behind only the weaker muscle. The remaining Tier 3 demons were of the mental variety, which ironically made the undead knight the most formidable opposition against them.

  The dark knight’s gear showed the damage that constant battling for weeks non-stop would expect. His gear was bckened with fire, dinged with earth magic, and brittle in spots from the rare ice cultivator. However, the doll’s fancy outfit remained in good condition. If there was one thing that the revenant could do well it was tank attacks.

  He looted what he could, but it was almost always mundane gear. The demonic cultivators had this irresistible urge to use magical items as a cultivation resource.

  Another day, another vilge purged of demons. He followed the main road and came to the outskirts of the capitol. There the true battle would begin.

  Waves of imps with ranged tier 2 demons tried to soften him up.

  But he tanked the hits, used the damage to unleash magical attacks back on them and the attacks healed him.

  It left the demons with cripplied cultivation. They kept falling back vowing vengeance.

  The dark knight waded through the horde of demons, stupid imps kept charging him and he kept sending ground teeth to tear into them, sending them back to their home pne, critically weakened.

  "Hmph. It is you again," sneered a demonic voice, echoing from the wall. "How very persistent, yet how utterly foolish. Do you truly believe this attempt will be any different from the countless failures before? You waste your effort, little pest. The only outcome is your humiliation and confinement."

  The revenant’s cold determination sounded out. “Your fragile existence in this cesspit of a world is but a fleeting, pathetic mockery of peace. I am the unending shadow, the bde of malice, and I shall cw my way back from the bckest depths of oblivion countless times, until the very essence of your kind is extinguished by this burning hatred that fuels my cursed existence.”

  A stream of fire came from the tier 3 demon’s hand that caused extra damage, because of his weakness to fire. He kept spamming ground teeth to heal with the imps, but they eventually got out of range and the hellfire threatened to send him back into torpor.

  He protected the doll, using a skill to mitigate the damage to his allies and plunged, sword raised overhead onto the wall, smming the greatsword into him and sending him into the city below.

  “Persistent pest.” The firedemon spat.

  Jumping down, the dark knight leveled his sword at the demon again. “I am your inevitable undoing.”

  The demon’s arms had a deep cut on the forearm from the ssh. Mist flowed from the wound, a sign of his cultivation being damaged and the progress towards the next tier being lost by the second.

  “Predictable dead thing.” The fire demon scoffed, rubbing his wounded arms. “You will be brought back to level 1 and sealed away again. Just like st time. Do not presume this minor setback means anything. A mere insect sting to a true immortal.”

  Other tier 3 and tier 2 demons appeared from the rooftops, and channeled streams of hellfire from all directions.

  The dark knight activated an invulnerability cooldown but it would only st 30 seconds. He plunged again into a demon on the roof, defeated it, then hopped back down to finish the injured one, spinning his greatsword by doing several flips and cleaving the fire demon in two. However, it wasn’t enough. Another minute and torpor cimed him.

  He awoke seconds ter.

  A group of humans dressed in rags surrounded him and the doll was firing the little autocrossbow as rapidly as it would go, forcing the demons to hide behind cover.

  “Hmph! Why have you worthless ants paused your pathetic efforts?” A Tier 3 demon sneered, his voice dripping with disdain. “Exterminate them all now, or the bastard will undoubtedly crawl back to life.”

  A human shouted. “Free Tibet!”

  Others shouted several other things that didn’t make any sense. They ran from the allies and pced themselves between the demons and the dark knight, more gibberish came out, along with praises of something called Taiwan.

  “Hmph, observe the nonsensical rantings of those weaklings.” A lower-tiered demon ranted. “They are mere Martyrs. I shall not stoop to sy them and invite their insignificant curse upon my cultivation.”

  “Where are the cannon fodder imps?” The highest fire demon sneered. “Hurry and dispatch those weaklings to swarm the insignificant mortals. We shall conclude this farce.”

  “But those paltry imps are instructed to hold their position,” another demon compined, his voice ced with annoyance. “Their pitiful presence only serves to strengthen that upstart. Have you forgotten this basic truth?”

  Everyone knew this. The fact that someone let the martyrs come in here was likely sabotage to weaken the fire cn. No one wanted to kill a martyr because the curse would lead them to a fitting end.

  A martyr could not level, they gave up their potential in the system to deliver a fate that would follow their killer for the justice they were denied. It didn’t happen right away, but at a time where the impact would be the most impactful.

  The dark knight didn’t hesitate. Though his armor was glowing red from the heat of the hellfire, he plunged straight at the other tier 3 cultivator. Severing an arm that didn’t block as well as the st one.

  The demon defended itself, but the first attack crippled it, and the others scattered.

  With the trap sprung, and failed, the knight and doll prowled through the city, metal boots stomping in beat with the music coming from the doll. He went from building to building, street to street clearing out any demon that wasn’t fast enough to flee.

  The martyrs kept following him, trying to block any attack with their bodies from demons that were trying to snipe from a distance.

  A tier 2 demon led a group of human adventurers to confront them. It ordered the humans to attack, but kept itself away, trying to use them as a shield.

  The humans wouldn’t attack the martyrs either.

  Eventually, the doll was able to arc a crossbow shot over their heads and strike the demon.

  It cried out in pain and redoubled the command to protect him.

  The humans, seeing who was on the winning side, decided this would be a good opportunity to get an easy level advancement and killed the demon before running away towards the gates leading out of town.

  The day dragged on, constant fighting, slowly advancing towards where a big mountain, that was not actually a mountain stood. The revenant readied his sword when he approached the range of his plunge ability, hoping to get an early cheap shot on the behemoth of a demon.

  With the cracking of stone, the pile of rocks ascended towards the heavens. It formed into a yellow-skinned demon covered in rocks and dirt. It towered several hundred feet high. Two huge glowing yellow-slitted eyes opened and looked down on the undead with disdain.

  “We meet again, revenant.” The tier 4 demon rumbled. “I see the demons tasked with keeping my meditation from being disturbed have failed in their task. They will have to be repced. Just like st time.”

  Seeing no reason to respond, the knight activated the plunge ability and flew in an arcing trajectory at the demon’s foot. The sword that he got from the magical girl and her friends pointed to peirce right into the demon’s rocky flesh.

  The earth cultivator kicked him like a football. sending him flying back outside the city, a distance of many kilometers.

  His weapon, sunk to the hilt into the demon and was wrenched free from his grasp from the mighty strike.

  That attack would have normally instantly killed anyone else, but during the flight, the dark knight activated an ability that no matter how much damage he took he’d still be left with a sliver of unlife left.

  The ground underneath him started to rumble.

  The dark knight realized his mistake. That in his haste to get an attack he had let the general get an attack that would remove him from the city and the martyrs that he’d also have to avoid killing. Getting stuck with the curse would have eventually defeated him, and bring this decades long back and forth to an early end. Not having time to realize his mistake, he rose to his feet, broken bones cracking and got out of the way from the pilr of rock that erupted from the ground a second ter.

  That is when he saw it: A bzing star of blinding light coming down from the far northeast. Whatever it was, it gave off more magic energy than the giant earth demon who he was currently facing. But he didn’t care. His grudge did not react to it.

  His bones slowly started knitting back together. He felt satisfied that even disarmed he was still doing damage to that monster. Good, that giant jagged obsidian-serrated bde would do even more when he pulled it out, even if it was the size of a nail for that humungous demon.

  That was all the attacks he was going to get in on the demon though. The sky darkened shortly after that.

  A barrage of fist sized rocks pelted the area relentlessly. No matter how many damage mitigation abilities he had, there was not getting rid of it all. Eventually he stopped regenerating, a sign that the demon had dislodged the greatsword. Then he fell into torpor again for the second time that day. This time, he expected to be sealed and for the demons to start the process of defeating him again and again to reduce him back to level 1.

  However, he awoke to an epic battle. He had indeed been stripped of gear and pced in a box. But the building they put him in had taken some devastating hit and a whole wall was crashed in, breaking the sealing talismans.

  The skeleton crawled out of the broken coffin and looked around. There was a crate nearby. He broke the lock off and looked inside, sensing a familiar spirit also trapped within. The hero doll was there, luckily not destroyed. Also sbs of metal that was his armor. The sword wasn’t around though.

  He collected the doll and started donning the armor, and there was another giant explosion outside.

  What could only be described as an Angel battled the giant rock demon.

  The ground tore apart and flung itself at the glowing winged humanoid.

  The angle dodged, it was holding a bowl and poured it out. A stream of light nced into the demon.

  “I will not be dismissed by some failure of a goddess’s construct.” The tier 4 demon roared, but was forced back.

  “A mere failure of a goddess's trifling construct dares to speak of dismissing me?” The demon raged. ”You should be groveling at my feet, insignificant speck! I shall scatter your pathetic form and prove that I can challenge even the gods.”

  “Advanced threat detected.” A cold, emotionless voice sounded out from the angle. “Requesting permission to break second seal”

  The demon kept attacking with earthly projectiles and the flying foe but nothing struck.

  The angel kept pouring more of the bowl out. Wide rays of light shot to various points in the city.

  It took the dark knight a moment to recognize what was happening. Whenever one of those beams of light struck nearby, his undead sense of detecting demons, which worked even between walls, showed the ck of a presence there. The angel was dismissing all the demons in the city.

  He looked around the room for a weapon rge enough to rejoin the fight and do more damage to the demonic general.