Unseen. I passed through the town like a phantom.
The wind brushed against my wings as I glided above the rooftops, the red sky casting long, twisted shadows across the decrepit neighborhood. This part of the town was a rot that everyone knew existed but pretended wasn't there.
A shithole where the lowlifes festered like maggots in a rotting corpse.
The town was shit to begin with, but this place was worse.
This was where ambition came to die.
Where dreams didn't break—they were strangled, buried, and pissed on.
"Hehe… dreams in hell? I am starting to sound like a hero again," I muttered to myself, shaking my head at the irony. But it was true. Even here, in the heart of hell, there were hierarchies. There were those who had, and those who took.
And those who took it often ended up here, in the grime, in the dark.
The tavern was just as Umbra's vision had shown. A squat, ugly building made of blackened stone, wedged between two leaning tenements that looked like they might collapse at any moment.
The building looked abandoned—no windows, no lanterns, just a crude wooden sign swinging loosely by one chain, the faded letters reading: "The Sunken Fang."
Cute name.
I landed silently on the adjacent roof, wings folding against my back as I crouched near the edge. Cracks split the shingles beneath my feet, making small crunches that were swallowed by the distant noise of the town's nightlife.
This place was quiet.
Too quiet.
Most taverns were loud, drunk, and chaotic—a symphony of cursing, screaming, moaning, and the occasional mortal begging for mercy. But The Sunken Fang was dead silent, like even the rats were too scared to squeak.
A good sign.
Only the worst type of scum preferred silence.
Ding!
[Lust: 300/500]
My breath hitched—not because the lust was unbearable anymore, but because it was still there, humming beneath my skin like a wound that refused to close.
I scanned the area below.
Two demon thugs stood guard near a cellar door on the side of the tavern—big, hulking types. The kind who relied on brawn over the brain, with tusks, cracked horns, and muscles fueled entirely by bad decisions and steroids.
"Great," I grinned. "Discount security."
I could already imagine how satisfying it would be to snap their necks. So I summoned a hell chain, modified it by making it thinner—like a razor wire coated in molten hatred—and let it slither around my wrist like a patient serpent.
"Shh," I whispered to it.
Yes, I whispered to a chain.
Don't judge me.
With a flick of my fingers, the chain shot downward, silent and swift, carving through the air like a whisper of death.
SLICK!
It wrapped around the first demon's throat before he even had time to scratch his ass. His eyes widened—confusion, shock, fear—and then I pulled.
Hard.
His head didn't pop off completely, but it sure as hell looked like it wanted to.
The second demon turned just in time to see his friend collapse in a choking, gurgling heap. He reached for a rusty axe strapped to his back, but my chain was faster. It uncoiled from the first corpse and lashed out like a whip, wrapping around his neck from behind.
CRACK!
No need for a second pull. I twisted my wrist, and the chain obeyed, snapping his spine with a sickening crunch that echoed in the dead street. He dropped like a sack of rotten potatoes.
"Pathetic."
With another thought, the chain retracted, coiling around my forearm like a silver snake. I dropped from the rooftop, landing in a crouch between the two bodies without a sound.
"Good, no blood."
The last thing I want is to attract attention. The more noise I make, the more likely I'll have to fight my way through half the town to get to Rina.
Not that I mind. But I'd rather get her out of there quietly if possible.
I approached the cellar door, my feet barely making a whisper against the cracked stone. The wood was old—swollen, splintered, and held together by rusted iron hinges that looked like they'd been stolen from a junkyard.
But the lock was new. Reinforced. Runes etched along the edges glowed faintly red, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Someone wanted to keep things in, not out.
Cute.
With my hell chain, no magic is safe.
I knelt, brushing my fingertips over the runes. They sizzled against my skin, trying to bite—trying to burn. I smiled. Pain was a language hell understood, and I was fluent.
"Go," I whispered to my chain.
It slithered down my arm, gleeful, metal fangs grinding softly as it wrapped itself around the lock like a lover with violent intentions.
CRACK… TSSST… SHATTER.
The runes flickered once, twice, then died with a pitiful sputter.
The lock fell apart like wet paper.
I lifted the hatch enough for me to slip through, into the darkness.
I closed my eyes for a moment, activating one of my new skills.
Vampire sight.
It allows me to see in total darkness, and it could even detect life force.
Like a bloodsucking hunter, I could see the hearts of all living beings.
"Hmm?" My senses picked up something. A dozen faint heartbeats… slow, strained, fading to my left.
Prisoners. Or worse.
And much stronger ones—thirty, maybe forty of them—beating with dull, heavy rhythms deeper in the tavern. One in particular caught my eye.
Its pulse was different. Controlled. Calm. Steady like a predator resting because it already knows it's at the top of the food chain.
"That's where Rina is," I grinned, locating Umbra through our link.
The stone corridor was narrow and damp, carved by hands that didn't care for craftsmanship. Torches flickered to life as I approached, reacting to the infernal presence I carried like perfume.
"Oh... I like these. Automatic torches."
The hallway bent left. Instinct guided me first toward the weaker signatures—the prisoners. Knowledge is power, and misery loves to gossip.
I slipped closer, keeping my steps feather-light. Voices reached me before sight did—whimpers, small sobs, choked breathing. I peeked around the corner.
A row of iron cages. Ten? Twelve? Hard to tell; the torchlight danced shadows across the rusted bars. Some cages held humans—skinny, pale, lifeless eyes that stared at the floor without really seeing it.
Others held elves, beastfolk like cat-kin and dog-kin, even a young-looking imp demon curled in a corner, refusing to cry.
But what really caught my attention were their gender and condition.
All women, and they were good-looking, even with the dirt and despair coating them, I could see their beauty. And all of them wore the same black hexagonal crystal on their foreheads.
The same one Rina had.
"Shit."
This wasn't a simple kidnapping. This was a slave auction, a high-end one given the quality of the 'goods' and the use of magical tools that could kill their wearers if removed incorrectly. Someone was collecting rare beauties for a very specific, very wealthy clientele.
But what for? This is hell of all hells, one could simply buy or kidnap a slave from any street if they had the strength.
No law exists in hell.
So why the fancy magic? And the secrecy?
My gaze swept over the cages, the silent despair a physical weight in the stale air. My vampire sight painted their lifeforce in pale, flickering blues. Fading. The crystals weren't just control devices; they were leeches, slowly draining them, keeping them weak and docile.
"Sigh... I can't help them," I muttered, a bitter taste in my mouth. "Not yet, at least."
It seems that being a hero my entire life has left a mark, even in this new demonic body.
My focus sharpened. Rina was the priority. The others... they would have to wait. A messy rescue attempt would get us all killed, or worse, sold. I needed to be smarter. I needed to be what Akane and the entire realm were trying to turn me into.
I needed to be a demon.
I turned my back on the row of cages, the soft sobs chasing me down the corridor. My own pulse was a steady, angry drum in my ears. A predator's rhythm, mirroring the one I'd sensed earlier.
As I moved deeper, the tunnel widened. The air grew warmer, thick with the smell of cheap alcohol, stale sweat, and the coppery tang of old blood. The torches here were brighter, their light spilling from an archway ahead. The muffled sounds of a tavern filtered through—a low murmur of voices, the clink of tankards, the scrape of a chair on stone.
I ignored everything and focused on the location that Umbra was in.
It was a private room far in the back where no one could hear the screams.
It was my destination.
'Umbra, get ready. Be my eyes.'
A low growl echoed in my mind, a confirmation. I closed my eyes briefly, and my vision shifted, seeing through my panther's. I saw the werewolf dropping Rina on a table in the middle of the room, the satyr leering from a chair in the corner, and a third figure.
The kind that I absolutely despise.
A pigman.
A fat, bloated demon with porcine features—tusks jutting from a wet snout, small, greedy eyes, and fingers so fat they looked like pink sausages. He was sitting behind a polished mahogany desk, counting a stack of what looked like golden coins.
"Ugh... I hate these orcs... I mean pigmen."
In my old world, they were known as both orcs and pigmen. However, the term orc was also used to refer to those green, hulking warriors.
In my first days as a hero, during one of the missions, I was blocked by an army of them, and believe me, the stench alone was enough to kill a lesser man. But the real issue? They were stubborn, stupid, and cruel in the most boring way imaginable. They weren't driven by honor or rage or even interesting evil. They were just greedy.
At that time, there was another army of the green orcs camping nearby, and since both of them, the pink and the green ones, hated each other's guts with a burning passion,
I easily managed to drag them into war by simply saying, "Who has the right to be called Orcs," and let them kill each other.
Yeah... good old days.
The reason why I despise the pigmen so much wasn't just the stench. It was their entire way of being.
I took a liking to a young, cute barmaid once. However, before I could make my move, the town was attacked by a demon army, and during the attack, I saw the girl getting gangbanged by pigmen.
The memory was a foul taste in my mouth, a reminder that not all demons were interesting creatures like Eva. Some were just... filth.
Filth and deserving to be wiped out from existence.
"Haaah~... I thought I'd get over that incident," I shook my head, pushing the memory back into the dark corner of my mind where it belonged, but it faded.
"Well... torturing that pigman will do the trick."