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Unlike humans, the demon hierarchy closely resembles "might makes right." While not quite a lawless realm beyond human comprehension, their culture was steeped in the notion that only the strong could rule.

In the demon realm, vampires were the sole race to achieve high status as a species.

Not only are they indistinguishable from humans when not flaunting their power, but they also possess abilities that defy common sense.

Thus, vampires could blend seamlessly into human society. There was simply no way to tell them apart unless they openly displayed their powers.

So when Harte intercepted Glen and confronted the vampire, the sequence of events was straightforward.

The moment the vampire unleashed its inherent power, Harte sensed the disturbance from the bedroom.

He stepped onto the balcony, readied himself, and raced from the duke\'s mansion to the scene with all his might.

It all happened in the blink of an eye.

Harte caught the vampire from behind as it prepared to abduct the children. He brought his fist down on the vampire\'s crown like a hammer blow.

The impact resounded violently. Glen\'s gaze was filled with shock at the sudden turn of events.

... And Elphisia blinked sleepy eyes in the marital bedroom, still half-asleep.

It was a busy night for everyone.

After this sequence, the monstrous figure was now face-down on the ground.

"Our little tyke\'s out playing some dangerous night games."

"Director, how did you...?"

"Oh, I just came out for a night stroll. The mosquito buzzing was getting on my nerves."

Harte observed the girl wrapped around Glen\'s waist with keen interest. Then, with a mischievous smile, he teased Glen.

"Well, well. They say it\'s always the quiet ones. You\'ve gone and made yourself a secret friend, haven\'t you?"

"It\'s not like that!"

"Elphisia was so worried about you being a loner... Good news. I\'ve got something to tell her that\'ll put her mind at ease."

Harte continued the conversation casually.

His intention wasn\'t just to tease mindlessly. He was trying to calm the likely startled children by making it seem like no big deal.

As Harte patted Glen\'s head and turned his attention to the vampire, the creature spoke:

"So you\'re the holy knight he mentioned...!"

"\'He\'... There are too many candidates for who that might be."

Harte was already the most famous figure in the empire. If a vampire spy in the empire didn\'t know him, it would be grounds for disqualification as a spy.

\'Still, a vampire is a vampire after all.\'

The ambush must have been perfect.

Any ordinary race would have died instantly. The vampire was dripping blood it had consumed until now, but it clung tenaciously to consciousness. Its eyes burned with desperate yearning.

"The Fragment and a Baskhill descendant in one place... Even with unfavorable odds, it\'s too good an opportunity to pass up. Surely this level of overreach will be permitted!"

Whoosh!

He unfurled his cloak wide like a bullfighter\'s red cape.

A vampire\'s cloak, woven from their life force, is both a unique weapon and ability. The darkness enveloping Glen and Echo was one of the cloak\'s powers.

The pinnacle of these abilities would be the connection to subspace.

Any vampire could summon those who had contracted with them using the cloak as a medium.

Thud. Thud.

Footsteps echoed from somewhere.

The pitch-black cloak, spread like wings, rippled like a disturbed pond. Then, from beyond the cloak, black shoes stepped through as if walking.

The demon who revealed himself was also a vampire. But the aura he exuded was leagues apart from the vampire who summoned him.

"... I apologize for troubling you to come, Lord Tzepesh."

"It\'s fine. A Baskhill descendant is worth the overreach."

"That\'s not all. The gray-haired girl is the Fragment."

"Oh ho..."

Harte was bewildered listening to their conversation. It was news to him that Echo was a Fragment.

\'That child is a fragment of divinity?\'

The Fragment of Divinity - or Fragment for short - was a portion of power that had fallen from God. Unlike baptismal name holders who could perform vast miracles, Fragments each possessed a single unique miracle.

\'I can\'t sense anything. Are there separate conditions for manifestation?\'

Otherwise, there was no way a low-level vampire could detect a Fragment\'s presence that he couldn\'t sense. Harte postponed his questioning and completely shielded the children behind him.

"Hmm."

Crack. Crackle.

The vampire called Tzepesh loosened his neck this way and that as he eyed Harte. Those blood-red eyes narrowed as if sizing up his opponent.

Finally, he smiled venomously and asked:

"Shall we negotiate?"

"I refuse."

"Rejecting without even listening?"

"You\'re just going to try to convince me to hand over the kids, aren\'t you?"

"..."

Silence.

Tzepesh, hit right on the mark, was struck dumb as if he\'d taken a blow. To this, Harte once again firmly expressed his refusal.

"I may not look it, but I\'m an orphanage director. I couldn\'t show my face if I fell for human trafficking."

"Haha... Even if the whole district gets dragged into the fight, you won\'t change your mind?"

"Then how about I make a counter-offer?"

"Let\'s hear it."

Tzepesh\'s words weren\'t entirely wrong. This was a densely populated area where considerable damage was anticipated.

Therefore, Harte proposed a compromise.

"From the looks of it, you seem to be one of the Demon King\'s closest aides. I\'ll spare your life. So let\'s call it quits and you go back."

"Now this is a novel counter-offer. But I refuse."

Then Tzepesh pointed out the flaw and declared proudly:

"A vanguard of God who\'s sealed his divinity... I calculate I can hold you off for quite a while!"

"Tch."

Whoosh!

In an instant, a long omen extended like five streaks of lightning. Harte met Tzepesh\'s claws head-on and kicked him in the stomach, sending him flying into the sky.

Flap!

The sound of wings beating followed.

The cloak, transformed like bat wings, granted Tzepesh the right of aerial combat.

\'This is troublesome.\'

Certainly, he couldn\'t use his divine power against demons. Because the moment he manifested his divinity, from that point on, the war between humans and demons would degenerate into a war between the main god and demon god.

In other words, it would give the demon god\'s vanguard in the demon realm a chance to intervene.

If divinity clashed with divinity like that, the only path left would be mutual destruction. An unimaginably worst-case scenario might unfold.

\'I sense the duke\'s presence in the distance. Is he overseeing the evacuation and protection of people?\'

It seems the news of evacuation hasn\'t reached here yet. That was the shackle binding Harte now.

The situation was different from the Bloody Dragon incident.

The Bloody Dragon\'s lair was in uninhabited high mountains, so he could wield his power without restraint. But the current situation had far too many lives to protect.

Therefore, Harte made a decision.

"Glen. Listen carefully."

"Yes, Director."

"Protect that child. I can cover about a 100-meter radius, but no more than that. If you go beyond that range, hold out until I return.

Can you do it?"

"I\'ll try. The duke taught me how to run away, after all."

"Good."

It had been a while since he felt his blood boiling like this. Though the intruders were on the other side, the reality that he had to seal his own power instead made his thoughts run wild.

Harte took his first step.

"Here I go."

Whoosh!

Harte reached out towards the blacksmith\'s shop. A longsword prepared for a large knight flew into his hand.

Clang!

Harte lightly swung that violently large sword.

"A probing attack!"

Tzepesh exclaimed. He grabbed his cloak and swung it, slicing through the air.

The fluttering cloak cut through space like a famed sword honed for days on end. And when that offensive, capable of tearing even steel, clashed with Harte\'s sword strike, the slash split into several branches.

Harte\'s reaction was swift.

He nimbly weaved between Glen and the houses, protecting lives.

Clang, clang!

The clear ring of metal weapons. Only then did the people tossing and turning in bed grasp the situation.

"W-What\'s going on?!"

"There are people fighting outside."

"Flying through the sky... Wha...!!!"

"Demons! Demons have appeared!"

Chaos erupted in an instant. Like ants scurrying from a nest doused with hot water, people frantically fled to the main road. Witnessing this scene, Tzepesh laughed maniacally as if in ecstasy.

"How amusing! So very amusing! Chaos without order or reason... strangling its own lifeline... the sight of those meant to protect them shackled by their very presence...!!!"

Flap!

Tzepesh\'s cloak expands wider and wider. It covers the sky like a blackout curtain, dyeing the whole world in darkness.

When his subordinate used it, it was mere child\'s play for kidnapping kids, but Tzepesh\'s ploy was on a different level.

The Curtain of Night that saps the life force within its range of darkness. To put it another way, it\'s a sorcery where the darkness enveloping the skin acts like vampiric fangs.

"You should have stayed huddled up inside."

If they had cowered indoors, they would have been out of range. Then surely they wouldn\'t have become fodder.

Having reached that conclusion, Tzepesh decided to add one more amusement to warm the cool moonlit night.

"Humans, hear me! Bring me the gray-haired girl and the black-haired, black-eyed boy protecting her! Do so, and no tragedy shall befall you this night!"

"Did that demon just...?"

"Is he... serious?"

"Gray hair and black hair, black eyes...!"

The atmosphere changed in an instant.

The steps of people fleeing non-stop slowed, and they began looking around. Their eyes were like those of owners desperately searching for lost items.

Just then, a blind slash scarred the earth.

Crack-!

"Kyaaaaaah!"

That was the starting signal.

As soon as someone screamed in panic, the crowd\'s composure evaporated in the blink of an eye. When one person expressed their desperation to live, it spread as mob psychology, eroding everyone\'s reason.

"F-Find them!"

"Where\'s the black-haired, black-eyed boy...?!"

"Hurry and find them! We\'ll die if we don\'t!"

For some, it was an adventure at the crossroads of life and death, but for Tzepesh, who held the crowd\'s fate in his hands, it was nothing more than a farce.

He sneered at Harte, who stood with his back to the passersby, sword in hand.

"O final bastion of humanity. O knight who cannot betray his duty even upon seeing humanity\'s shameful true face. Feel free to be thoroughly ashamed."

Tzepesh bared his sharp teeth viciously.

"In the end, are you not also part of humanity, whose base nature emerges when pushed to the brink?"

As Tzepesh made theatrical gestures, Harte, who had been observing his theatrics, spoke:

"Don\'t spout nonsense."

Whoosh!

Surely he hadn\'t taken his eyes off him, yet Harte\'s form vanished. Naturally, Tzepesh\'s pupils dilated. In that brief moment, his eyeballs rolled about wildly as he desperately tried to control his racing thoughts.

By the time he belatedly sensed the presence, Harte was already,

"A human pushed to the brink is simply a human pushed to the brink."

Poised to swing his longsword while gripping Tzepesh from behind.

An impossible posture unless he had stepped on air to rise up. But the realization of that impossibility came only after a heavy mass had assaulted Tzepesh\'s cloak.

Bang! Crack crack crack...!

Tzepesh, plummeting from the sky to the ground, carved a trench-like path as he was dragged along the surface. Harte, who had rushed to Tzepesh\'s immediate vicinity, dispersed the dust cloud with a sword wind.

"The nature you defined is merely a facet of the weak with nowhere left to retreat. There\'s no room for innate good or evil in that facet."

People change. Everything surrounding a person is what constitutes them. That\'s why someone might bend even their once-upright principles and change depending on their environment.

It\'s just a matter of opportunity.

That\'s what Harte believed.

"But if you insist on calling that nature... then I\'ll thoroughly crush your base nature too, you overgrown mosquito."