With an elaborated wave, King Cobra swept his hand in a twisting arc, stirring the atmosphere into a crescendo of demonic aggression.

  Panic closed in on Koi’s solitary figure. He drew his whip to defend himself, but the oncoming attack left him both breathless and helpless. Numerous snakes rained from the sky like piercing light rays, slicing through the air with pointed skull-heads. However fast he reacted against them, the multiplying numbers of snakes eventually overtook his speed, entangling his whip with a clash and forcing him to stumble.

  One, two, three - the third clash shattered his defence, causing a serpent to slip past his reach and penetrate his diaphragm like a spear. Every inch deepened left a berating cold touch that invaded his pride. Poison leaked into his veins and quickly strained his muscles until they started to contract with cramping pain.

  Helplessly, the captain fell on one of his knees. He looked down at his blood-soaked shirt, confronted with a brutal setback.

  This is not good. That bastard has already enhanced the yin energy in the environment to strengthen his demonic spell. I can’t keep up at this rate. I need to empower the yang energy to boost my holy attack and weaken his.

  Ignoring his pain, he moved his arm just enough to slip his fingers into his sleeve and reached for a hidden dagger while muttering a few lines of holy spells. But the ground carved in as if something beneath had sensed his movement.

  A monstrous energy was increasingly expending underneath, soaking in the yin energy from the earth. Koi felt his legs tensing up and knew it was too late to save himself.

  The ground split beneath him to reveal a colossal mud-slick snake that immediately surged upward into the open air and coiled around Koi tightly.

  “Don’t even think about any tricks, Captain!” The King spat at him. “You, mere mortal, should have known better and tug your tail like a dog! Now, die like the pathetic species you are always meant to be.”

  The demon swung his hand up in the air once again, this time commanding the giant snake to slam Koi against the ground in a brutal, up-and-down, circular motion before tossing him at King Cobra’s feet.

  The elite demon looked down at the battered old man with a satisfying smile.

  I am... still…still not done… Koi persisted and tried to move, but his tortured body was as stiff as a corpse caught in a chokehold.

  The poison is seizing all my muscles. Damn it! How careless?! I have an antidote that can suppress the dark energy of demonic spells like this; I need to use it…

  “You are not so smart after all. Do you really think you can surpass me with a divine spell powered by a dirty, fake script?” King Cobra gave Koi a smug remark as he walked toward the gasping man with immense pride. “How despicable? How unholy?”

  Koi returned a stiff smile.

  Why was it no surprise to him that King Cobra had noticed something was wrong with the heavenly spell? Yes, it was in fact a fake script, but did that even matter? He was well aware of the risk he was taking, but his decision had been made from the very beginning. Hearing King Cobra exposed him felt less like an insult than it was a testament to his determination.

  Yet his heart quivered with each throb, dropping like a dead weight on a chest. Something beneath that skin of vanity rushed like a restless aching.

  The demon stomped on the captain’s face and crushed him under his heel. Stifling an unbearable scream, Koi tried to move, but the constant pulse of lethal poison in his veins blocked his energy. It was a pathetic sight, a complete failure.

  Koi had never associated himself with such weakness. He wore his Captain title like a crown bearing a righteous halo held high with an honour keeping himself safe on high regard, but here he was defeated before even putting up a real fight.

  A familiar fear finally caught up with him. Out of nowhere, overlapping voices started shouting down at him with words sharp enough to drill deep into his tough disguise.

  Why are they yelling? Why are they scorning me?! I know it! Everyone is just waiting for my death…waiting to celebrate my failure. Nobody understands. Nobody cares.

  A fat cobra slithered across the ground and slid into the sleeve of Koi’s coat. Its corrosive scale scraped against his flesh, trailing burned marks along the way as it coiled up Koi’s neck. The serpent stared him in the eyes and sounded a silent hiss before sinking its fangs into his neck.

  No, this is impossible. This is not happening. It cannot be —

  Slowly his vision darkened as his eyelids dragged downwards. In a burst of agitation, Koi let out a chilling, suffocating scream. Blood gushed out from his bite wound and cracked open to trace a cobra symbol deeply engraved into his skin and muscle.

  His soul was now marked as a product of the King.

  Like an external organ of the demon, the serpent’s bite fed King Cobra, pulsating all the taste into his mouth. As the blood soothed his tongue, King Cobra’s reaction froze, triggered by an enduring flavour that his desire had refused to release. A rush of goosebumps came like waves, sending cold shivers down his spine.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “What is this taste?! Wh-why-WHY?”

  King Cobra threw an intriguing glare at Koi. “Why do I taste that man in your blood?! What is it?”

  He started stretching his head, tugging on the bandages as his antsy desire flared. “No no, it is not you. It is WITHIN you. The taste of that man is within another energy in you!”

  Blood poured out of his mouth as he tried to vomit the blood just to relish the taste again. “Hmmm, hmm. Where does it come from, where?!!!!”

  As if hit by a bolt of realisation, King Cobra went silent. He slowly turned his head and looked behind him.

  There, in a far corner, he saw Zun lying wasted like a drained corpse on the ground. Although still alive, he couldn’t tell whether she was fully conscious.

  Her body twitched with the memory of violence still retained in her muscles, but her head was crooked, just enough for her to stare at them through her dilated pupils. She was wearing a wide, eerie grin across her lips.

  “It’s YOU. That taste comes from your energy!”

  King Cobra broke into an atypical giggle, one of inadvertently childish excitement. The restlessness of the ill-will blossomed in hellish desire. As he strode towards Zun, his giggle turned into a diaphragmatic laughter.

  “You know him, don’t you? Why did I not notice it when I bit you earlier? Weird, weird. Impersonating a dumb child must have dulled my senses, but I do admit I never thought an older person could also cling to a past life memory, except in rare cases like a soul trauma. How careless of me! How laughable!”

  The King stopped in front of Zun. “Now, why don’t you let me have a real feast this time and tell me about that man? I promise you it will be painless."

  Zun remained motionless, staring past him with her crooked head like a rugged doll. King Cobra leaned down to reach for her face, but the golden gleam of her necklace peaking out from her blouse immediately hooked his attention.

  Carved into the winged figure of Lord Father, the necklace looked sentimentally divine, as if untouched by the ongoing violence. King Cobra noticed himself shivering from the thought and shrugged it off with a sharp exhale.

  “Useless conviction.” He gave Zun a wide grin and threw the necklace away.

  Upon hitting the ground, the necklace cracked open from the centre like a case, revealing a few strands of silver hair that were tied together in a loose knot. Out of the blue, the silver hair was dampened with threads of blood.

  Without a warning, the energy in the atmosphere clamped down further as the rain hardened. The crimson shade in the sky glowed in a pulsing beat before turning black.

  King Cobra felt his nerves itch as he watched the surroundings transform under the pressure of an intruding energy, but before he could utter a word, an unevenly compressed crystal ball rolled across the ground and struck the heel of his boots.

  Tud...tud

  “What the hell is this—” He bent down to pick it up.

  The crystal ball, smeared with a layer of blood, had left a scarlet trail that led King Cobra’s eyes towards a lone figure, who was curled up beside Koi and looking down at him like a ghost glancing back from a distant memory.

  “A ghost? No—” His vision started to glitch in an abrupt motion. King Cobra instantly pressed his palm against his temple. “Is that you, stray demon?”

  That demon looked markedly different from the one who possessed Zun in the previous fight. Instead of black hair, he had silvery white hair that hung to his chin, while his black front-wrapped robe trimmed with feather details at the collar gave him an untidy, eccentric look. The robe was tucked inside a dark green plaid sarong, torn raggedly at knee length to expose his bony legs and folded in front of him like a broken chair. His pale white skin washed out his figure further, yet on top of all these wasted and peculiar features, his marble white eyes and thin black lip, drawn into a strained smile, told a story of an everlasting cycle of pain.

  That strange demon murmured under his breath, “Death deserving.”

  “You are supposed to die in that cheap spell!!” King Cobra yelled. “What are you? Are you really the stray demon?!”

  “Once upon a time, a line was crossed. Fractured souls abound, from the sufferer to the sinner, matching tragedies weaved an unending tale.” The strange demon responded, as if telling a story. He stretched his arm forward and ran his fingers through Koi’s hair.

  King Cobra's head started to screech like an off-tune radio. “What do you mean? Look at me right now! Answer me!! A stray demon like you!!! A nobody!! How dare you always intrude on my space OVER AND OVER AGAIN?!”

  “But this path only holds one truth.” The stray demon continued, disregarding King Cobra’s remark. “Only pain can give you the answer. Only in pain, shall you be free.”

  “Wait, I think I know you. You are—” Screeching sounds started to deafen the King’s ears. King Cobra shrieked in profound pain. “Shut up! Shut up!!"

  Like colliding demonic howls flatten into shrieks straight from the blood bath in hell, the sound strangled his senses and numbed his mind. He violently shook his head in an attempt to shake it off, until he realised they came from the crystal ball in his palm.

  Overrun by a surge of agitation, he anchored to his fragmented lucidity and crashed the crystal ball in his palm before shoving it into his mouth, all the way down his throat.

  “DAMN THING! Shut up! I will cut that loose tongue of yours. You will be damned! Hahahah. That man’s story will be retold for me only. From my point of view, to the audience that I preach! You will pray to me! You will pain for me!!”

  His laughter rang unnaturally genuine for someone who was fuming just a while ago. Sliding down a spiral of emotions, King Cobra was now acting like a completely different demon. Slender fingers protruded from King Cobra’s spine and expanded outward into two large palms that stretched like a devil’s wings.

  As if disoriented, he took flight and dashed toward the bleeding horizon, sweeping clear off the black shade in the atmosphere with his wings.

  The mortal plane immediately returned to its natural colour as if the demonic aura had never invaded the place. Yet the necklace that King Cobra had shattered earlier now hung around Zun’s neck once more, as if it had never been touched.

  Koi slowly lifted his eyelids. The receding yin energy had instantly weakened the poison within him, sparing him from further pain.When he glanced up, he saw his daughter looking at him with a pair of bewildered eyes.

  All the presence of demons had vanished, but something about her felt wrong.

  “Wh-what is going on?” A weak voice parted from his lips.

  “Dad…I had a very long nightmare.” Zun’s response was instant. “In my nightmare, I saw you in total defeat. It felt unsettling. It felt so wrong. I asked myself Why are you looking like that?”

  Koi’s eyes dimmed instantly, but Zun carried on, pursuing his full attention.

  “In my mind, you were the most brutal person in the whole world. You held me in your grip like a lion preying on a fawn. In a totalitarian fashion, your rule was the ultimate start and the ultimate end.”

  "Enough...” Koi could feel his blood rushing again.

  “But then I thought to myself…you deserved it, didn’t you? This scene unfolded like a slow drop of flavour in my eyes. You bled and cried for help, but I burst into pure laughter for the very first time, not withholding any shame or fear.”

  “...”

  “I was relieved. It felt free to rejoice in such pure deliverance of justice, preaching none but pain for pain. Like a plot written right, Lord Father seemed to answer my plea. Lord Father was here for once.”

  "...”

  “He took revenge for me…”

  “...”

  “Come to think of it, I shouldn’t call it a nightmare. I was in heaven for once.”