Dragon Heart: Land of Demons. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 7

by Kirill Klevanski

  “Damn it all!” Hadjar swore.

  Instantly turning into a plume of black fog once again, he ran forward a little, then showed himself to the enraged demon. The scarlet arc of destruction rushed toward him and a dozen bone spears followed behind it. Nothing could save him from such a monstrous attack. However, Hadjar wasn’t afraid.

  “Hey, bat boy!” He shouted, “Your Princess’ blood is still-”

  Hadjar didn’t get to finish this taunt either. The monster’s eyes were smoldering with fury, and the scarlet energy was so close that its heat burnt his body.

  Hadjar used the ‘Falling Leaf’ stance, aiming not at the demon’s attack, but at his own feet. The shattered roof instantly engulfed Hadjar. It was just in time, too: a split second later, the scarlet energy and bone spears flew over Hadjar’s head. Then came the explosions and the hiss of lava running down the roof.

  Hadjar, shaking off the stone fragments and dust, looked around. Although he didn’t have the perfect memory of a Spirit Knight, he still remembered part of the Palace’s layout. According to what he could recall, he was in the southern part of it.

  “Hey, monst-”

  Directly in front of him, the King landed on the floor, his wings smashing through the roof. Up close, he looked even larger than he had while hovering in the air.

  “HUMAN!”

  The King spread his wings, but they couldn’t even fully open in the tight confines. The maddened demon didn’t care. He simply broke through the walls and the Palace started shaking. He fired another bone spear. It came at Hadjar faster than a crossbow bolt, but just a few inches from his face, it suddenly ran into an obstacle.

  “Fifth stance: ‘Rustle in the Treetops!’”

  The dragon-sword that appeared in the air wasn’t able to stop or deflect the demon’s spear, only redirect it. As a result, the bone weapon brought down another section of the wall. Not wasting any time, Hadjar channeled energy from his Core and, turning into black fog once more, raced toward the exposed staircases.

  “AHRRRR!” The King’s roar followed him.

  As he ran, Hadjar turned and suddenly struck with lightning speed. His simple attack contained so much raw power, mysteries of the Sword, and rage that it would have killed a mortal if one had been nearby. A black cloud formed in front of Hadjar.

  “Azure Cloud!”

  Out of it, surging through the air with a deep roar, a dragon-sword appeared. Hadjar’s attack struck the King. It was so powerful that Hadjar could’ve probably hurt even Arkemeya with it.

  “YOU MISERABLE WRETCH!”

  The demon King held out an open hand. The attack sank into it, but couldn’t even scratch it.

  The demon clenched his fist and the ‘Azure Cloud’ Technique shattered into fragments of broken obsidian. They slammed into the walls of the Palace, sometimes knocking out small chunks of them, but couldn’t actually collapse them.

  “Damn it all!” Hadjar swore again and continued to run.

  The King, launching several more bone spears that never found their mark, spread his wings out even further, smashing through more walls in the process. With another deep, guttural growl, he raced ahead of his own sound wave. While Hadjar hurtled down the spiral staircase, the King hovered along its central pillar. His wings cut down both the staircase’s support beams and the walls around it. The Palace trembled more violently with each ruined flight of stairs. Hadjar could practically feel Death happily sharpening its gray scythe with a whetstone.

  Not today! Hadjar thought, and, after breaking through a stained-glass window with his shoulder, jumped down the staircase.

  Chapter 620

  Surrounded by glittering, multicolored shards of glass, Hadjar fell from a height of at least a thousand feet. Below him, the abyss opened its arms wide, shrouded in a predatory, living fog. Like a baby bird thrown out of the nest, Hadjar had to somehow avoid falling into it. At the last second, he managed to plunge the Black Blade into the castle wall. After a few feet, his fall slowed, then stopped. Hadjar hovered over the abyss — nothing more than a bug compared to the gigantic Palace and the gorge.

  But he didn’t have time to admire the sights. The wall he was clinging to, gripping the hilt of his sword, began to shake, then, crumbling like a sand castle, shattered into a myriad of stone fragments.

  The King, smashing through the wall with his own head, flew toward the gorge. He looked around, but couldn’t find Hadjar, who had anticipated his arrival. Hadjar released the Black Blade. The sword retained its corporeal form for a fraction of a second, then melted into smoke and returned to the depths of Hadjar’s soul. It was an incredibly short period of time, but Hadjar took advantage of it. He turned his Call’s cloak into a ribbon with an effort of will. It wrapped around the Black Blade’s hilt, then launched Hadjar toward the roof of the demon Palace. That way, when the King looked for him, he was nowhere to be found.

  Summoning the Black Blade back to the physical world from his soul, Hadjar collapsed onto the monster’s back. He was wrapped in the Call’s dark energy, channeling a third of his power reserve, and his sword was also being fueled by the mysteries of the Sword. Hadjar swung with all his might, aiming for the most vulnerable spot on any creature — the neck.

  Hadjar’s attack created a crescent of energy that was fifteen feet long and a foot wide. Only Anise Dinos could’ve done the same. Her younger brother, Tom, couldn’t have managed such an incredible feat, despite his amazing childhood full of rare resources and ingredients.

  And yet, such a powerful blow couldn’t even pierce the King’s neck, leaving behind only a small scratch no thicker than a hair. If Hadjar had been wielding an ordinary Imperial Sword, it would’ve had no effect at all. But he wielded the Black Blade. Even such a tiny wound was enough for a host of predatory wisps of dark fog to find their way into the monster’s energy body. Biting into the King’s meridians and nodes, they began to devour the demon’s Spirit. To the Black Blade’s delight, the King had a lot of it.

  “HOW DARE YOU, YOU MISERABLE BASTARD!”

  A wave of power pushed Hadjar and the Black Blade away, tearing its predatory wisps out of the King’s body. The sword had only been in the demon’s body for a second, but it had already absorbed more power than from all the five guards it had already slain combined.

  Using his cloak, Hadjar caught the edges of the broken stained-glass window and flew back up the spiral staircase. Taking advantage of the few seconds he’d bought himself, he climbed up five flights of stairs and broke away from the King.

  Then, moving back down to the first floor, Hadjar raced along a preplanned route. The castle shook violently. Huge chunks of stone broke off from the high ceiling and flew straight at the swordsman’s head.

  Dodging around them, Hadjar strained to hear what was happening. A few seconds later, not even a yard behind him, the four-winged monster flew into the castle once again, smashing through the ceiling. He wasn’t bleeding. Instead of blood, a white substance that looked like energy was leaking all over the floor. The Black Blade had managed to damage one of his major meridians slightly. This was enough to cause the Nameless an injury incomparable to any damage he’d suffered to his physical body thus far.

  Instinctively pressing his hand against the cut on his neck, the monster opened its mouth. Hadjar sensed the danger but couldn’t find any way to escape his foe’s attack. If not for the wound on the King’s energy body, the huge, ghostly maw would’ve swallowed Hadjar whole. However, its fangs still tore through his Call’s cloak and cut several deep furrows into Hadjar’s back, exposing the bones beneath, then slammed him into the wall. Hadjar’s red blood flowed from the demon King’s mouth. It mingled with small chunks of stone and flowed out onto the destroyed carpet like a brown stream.

  With a cry of pain, almost fainting from the effort, Hadjar rushed toward a wide tapestry. As he ran, he cut through it, then slipped behind it and hid in a wide gutter. It was wide for a human, but narrow for a Dah’Khass or an orc.


  Spreading his arms and legs, Hadjar jumped into its dark depths. Even with the help of the dragon’s blood and Wolf Broth, the speed of his descent and the roughness of the gutter’s surface tore into the skin on Hadjar’s palms. His legs, unprotected by his Call, suffered an even worse fate: the skin peeled away completely, the muscles tore, the cartilage broke, and the bones cracked.

  Hadjar raced down the gutter and landed on the cold stone floor like a sack of potatoes. His eyes adjusted to the gloom. He had no power left to support his Call. The Black Blade and the black fog faded. Bloodied, bruised, and exhausted, Hadjar crawled away from the gutter.

  The Palace standing above him shook so violently that it almost buzzed like a disturbed swarm of bees. The eerie sound was drowned out by the King’s roar as he pushed his way through the gutter.

  By the time Hadjar, leaving a wide trail of blood behind him, had managed to crawl a few yards away, the monster showed himself. Breaking through the stone walls, spreading his wings out, and digging his claws into the ground, he landed on the floor. He straightened to his full height in the cramped and narrow corridor. With a single bound, he reached Hadjar, grabbed him by the throat, and turned him over so Hadjar could face him, hauling him up.

  “IT’S TIME TO DIE, HUMAN!”

  His handsome young man mask cracked, until the mouth, exposing rows of sharp fangs, stretched all the way to its ears.

  His forehead and chin turned into the lips of a huge mouth.

  “What… a freak… you... are...” Hadjar gasped. “But... you’re… right... it is time... to die…”

  Steppe Fang appeared from a dark niche. He jumped on the demon’s back and plunged the bone dagger right between the monster’s shoulder blades. It went in right up to the hilt. Green blood splattered across the walls. Melting them, it flowed to the floor. Releasing Hadjar, the monster slammed against the walls. He tried to reach for the dagger, but couldn’t grab it.

  “This won’t stop me, you-”

  He didn’t get to finish his threat. Rising to his feet, Steppe Fang rammed into the demon with his shoulder, sending him into a cell, then slammed the door shut. The King struggled against the bars. They creaked and bent a little, but didn’t break. With each passing second, the Nameless weakened rapidly, thanks to the huge amount of Revelation Ore nearby.

  Hadjar crawled over to the far wall and pressed his wounded back against the cold stones. The exhausted Steppe Fang sank down beside him. Since he also couldn’t maintain his Call any longer, he found something hot and cauterized the stump of his left arm.

  “What do you think, giant?” Hadjar grinned. “How long will he take to die?”

  Steppe Fang watched the completely beaten King try to escape. It was a pathetic sight.

  “About a quarter of an hour,” he answered. “Your plan succeeded, North Wind.”

  “Is that surprise I detect in your tone?” Hadjar smiled.

  He was about to add something else, when something thundered above them.

  “An explosion?” He asked, surprised.

  Steppe Fang shook his head.

  “What could be causing-”

  They looked at each other.

  “Arkemeya and the Queen!” They exclaimed in unison.

  The huge Palace shattered into a million pieces like a glass vase.

  Chapter 621

  Hadjar opened his eyes. He was stunned to find he could do so. At the time of the explosion at the castle, he had thought that he would never be able to open his eyes again. And now, as he lay on a very comfortable mat beneath the light of the nighttime stars, Hadjar recognized the place — it was the same spot where their squad had camped out after the shipwreck two days ago. Even now, the wreckage was still there. Because of the rain, the wood had swollen and begun to grind down the rocks it was lodged in. This made Hadjar feel like he was lying on quicksand.

  Composing himself, Hadjar turned toward the castle. He shouldn’t have done that. For the first time in a long time, he felt true fear. The entire gorge, along with the thousands of Dah’Khasses, their castle, and the fields filled with zombies, was no longer there. Hadjar saw a huge flock, or maybe flying nest was the proper term, of the winged serpents constantly swarming the wreckage, hissing and biting each other. Hadjar looked up at the sky. The veil was gone. The celebration of the eve of the Black Star was coming to an end accompanied by a clear night sky full of bright stars, not to mention the beautiful moon right in the center of all of them.

  “I love the stars.”

  Hadjar instinctively tried to draw the Black Blade, but flinched in pain. He examined himself. His body, covered in bandages and smeared with colorful ointments as it was, looked like he’d been mummified.

  “What are you doing here?” Hadjar asked.

  Helmer, the Lord of Nightmares, was sitting by a small fire, wearing the same sentient, predatory cloak he always did, the one that had fanged maws all across its surface, and a wide-brimmed hat, holding a crimson sphere in his hands.

  He was sitting on a high, battered chair. And all around him, the horde of his minions — the black, shapeless monsters, each of which had once been someone’s nightmare — cavorted.

  “Is that how you thank me for saving you?”

  The demon’s smile looked like the snarl of a wild beast. Then he turned his gray face toward the night sky. With his free hand, he held a bottle in which something thick could be seen sloshing around. Hadjar hoped it contained alcohol, and not someone’s blood…

  “Saving me?”

  Hadjar heard a slight groan come from behind him. He turned around. Steppe Fang, looking like he was in much worse shape than Hadjar, lay wrapped in bandages. In addition to the stub where his left arm had once been, he’d also lost his left eye and his right leg up to the knee. Compared to the orc, Hadjar had nothing to complain about. The wounds he’d received didn’t hurt and his energy body shone with the same power as before. It was a miracle.

  “Who do you think saved you from becoming monster food by pulling you out from under all that rubble?”

  Hadjar looked at the gorge again. He could see that the winged serpents were currently devouring the remaining Dah’Khasses and their zombies.

  “Don’t worry about them.” Helmer got up and dusted off his cloak. He walked over to the edge of the cliff, turned his bottle over, and let the contents pour out. He did this in a manner that suggested he was saying goodbye to an old friend. “They have enough volcano ash to last them a long time, and the Revelation Ore will keep them from spreading out.”

  “For how long?”

  Helmer smiled broadly.

  “Five, maybe six thousand years. Then they’ll become so strong that one of the Empires will have a hard time dealing with them.” The demon’s smile suddenly faded and he turned back to the stars. “You little fool,” the demon whispered, “None of us can escape the laws.”

  “You knew him,” Hadjar said. “And you know Freya as well.”

  Helmer turned to him. His face was expressionless and completely gray. He looked like a stone statue.

  “How long did it take you to piece things together?”

  “That everything that happened in the past few weeks is your doing? I only realized it a second before the explosion.”

  Helmer chuckled and turned away. He corked the bottle and threw it into the swarm of nightmares. They instantly enveloped it in a black, shifting veil. When they parted, the bottle was no longer there.

  “Well, the pirates were a coincidence,” Helmer said, with a hint of mockery in his voice. “I tried to figure out how to get you here. It really was lucky they attacked you when they did. I even thought about praying to someone before the attack, but, alas, I mustn’t.”

  The truth was simple: there hadn’t been any visions. The orc shaman’s dream had been nothing more than a nightmare conjured up by Helmer. Thanks to this nightmare, the orcs, after withdrawing from their lands, had gone deeper into the Empire. That’s how Helmer had arranged everything
to ensure that Hadjar and Steppe Fang would go to the lands of the Dah’Khasses. That was it.

  Hadjar wanted to sort everything out, make sense of things…

  “What gave me away?” Helmer sat down and held out his hands toward the fire, like he was cold.

  “The battle on the roof.” Hadjar explained. He moved up into a half-reclining position. Without any fear, he picked up a bowl that lay next to him and drank the contents. It was alcohol that the demon had drunk. Nasty alcohol, at that. “Or rather, how one Lascanian boy, with just the orc’s potion to help him, managed to deal with a Dah’Khass. Several of them, even. Where is he, by the way?”

  Helmer pointed behind him. There, leaning against a rock, lay Derek. His face now had three huge scars that stretched from his right temple to his left cheekbone and he had lost his right eye. However, he looked rather good overall.

  “Weaklings!” Helmer sighed with mock sadness.

  “That’s what gave you away. If just one cultivator who is at the Spirit Knight level thanks to a temporary potion can scatter these bloodsuckers, what threat could they pose to Lascan or Darnassus? None whatsoever.”

  His first encounter with a demoness had been difficult for Hadjar only because he’d never fought such an opponent before: the effect of surprise and going up against unfamiliar Techniques. But the second battle had showed him that the Dah’Khasses weren’t as terrifying as the orcs had described.

  “The orcs trusted the shaman only because they themselves were not that far from the Dah’Khasses’ level. Their ancestral path is strong, insanely so. However, after seeing Steppe Fang battle the demon guards, I understood why humans have forsaken it. Without Techniques and artifacts, their path is nothing more than imitating animals.”

  Helmer smiled vaguely at this, but said nothing.

  “The orc scouts have never seen the demon lands with their own eyes,” Hadjar continued, “otherwise, Steppe Fang would’ve known the lay of the land.”