Translator: Sigma Editor: Sigma

  The Shadow Devil was a weird and powerful monster. According to people who had encountered it, it had a human-like appearance, a black-red figure. However, its form was not fixed and could be arbitrarily changed. It liked to hide in shadows normally, but not necessarily for ambush or sneak attacks. It was purely a hobby.

  It was said that it belonged to the monster of a dead ghost, so it resented living things. Although it possessed terrible power that could destroy a mountain, it was keen to kill its targets by devouring their vitality. Its most terrible ability was contaminating and binding the souls of those who had been killed by it, and turning them into shadow soldiers.

  This scary monster had been living in the Ashes Woods for more than two hundred years. It had launched more than one attack on various towns and villages, and even once went through the mountain pass to sabotage the Confederation of Gold Coins. When it destroyed several cities in a row, its deeds forced the guardian God of Confederation of Gold Coins, the God of Commerce and Wealth, to descend another body, which only repelled it.

  From then on, it (which was originally known as the ‘black monster’) had the title of Shadow Devil, and even some villains believed in it. They used living people as sacrifices to get poisonous daggers that had been soaked in the power of the shadow.

  As a typical representative of the evil forces of the Ashes Woods, it and several other good or evil monsters formed the high-end armed groups of the Ashes Woods.

  As for Ice Dragon, Snowflake was still far from this group.

  So when the Shadow Devil suddenly attacked, even if the two strongest people in the Church of Void Mask were present, they would not have been able to make an effective resistance.

  At that time it was a sunny morning, and Rhode was training with the pioneers who had been recruited. Even if he chose to start in the relatively warm summer, it still wasn’t easy because he had to open up villages and towns in the bitter cold in the North, and to deal with the risks inherent in the woods. This required a lot of training so that people would understand what to do normally, and how to deal with special circumstances, in order to enhance the chance of success and avoid failure.

  After all; if it failed, it would be a matter of hundreds of lives!

  They set up a temporary village about one day’s travel north to Rye Town. The villagers were busy and did a lot of work that they did not need to, to prepare for the future.

  Gerrard was training with a group of brawny men. Their fundamental goal was not to establish a pioneers’ village, but to establish the Church of Void Mask. For this purpose, of course, a group of men capable of fighting was required to form a Knight Regiment to Uphold Religion.

  Snowflake was dealing with administrative affairs, roughly things related to finance, material, and personnel. She hated this tedious work, but only she or Rhode could do it before Sui Xiong got back Knight Parne, who was said to be very good at the administrative affairs. Rhode was also responsible for training civilians. Compared with the boring administrative affairs, those works were even more cumbersome and boring. It made people freaked out especially when dealing with those stupid mortals who lacked education.

  Snowflake had tried, and found that those guys couldn’t even distinguish the concept of left and right. Just to popularize the concept, she used several days; she was so angry that she almost killed someone. After that, even if Rhode was willing to exchange their jobs, she would absolutely not agree.

  Graupel and Frost were still looking for suitable sites for exploration. They had already found several targets. However, they were not very satisfactory. They continued to search in the North and couldn’t return for the time being.

  Because of this, Graupel had protested several times with numerous reasons, such as “insufficient sleep is the enemy of beauty,” or “children won’t grow tall without enough sleep,” etc. Frost always put on a sullen look and wore a disappointed face.

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  There were many more who were dissatisfied. Phil the Armored Demon was quite unhappy with the fact that he had to take care of the shop, and reduce his time spent taking care of the flower field in the temple. However, he was kind and accommodating.

  Originally, that day should have been spent as usual: unpretentious and boring as always, boring. But that calm morning, sudden changes occurred.

  From the shadow of a room, a red-black figure emerged. It had a strange smile. With a wave of its hand, countless shadows emerged from the shadows scattered throughout the village. Immediately they launched an attack on all the surrounding creatures.

  In moments, more than a half of the pioneer team that Rhode had recruited with hard work was dead or injured. Less than one-third of them were lucky to escaped the attack of the shadow soldiers.

  But the shadow soldiers were still emerging, and the number was increasing.

  Taking in this scene, Rhode was so angry that his eyes turned red. He immediately pulled out his dagger and fought desperately against the shadow soldiers. Gerrard rushed around the village, after he had defeated a row of shadow warriors around him by waving his tomahawk. He destroyed as many monsters as possible and protected the villagers.

  It was Satan who really improved this situation. As soon as he discovered the problem, he immediately activated the scroll he had prepared in advance and released more than ten light balls that glowed like shining suns. They floated over the village, intertwined with the light source that wiped out most of the outdoor shadows.

  As for indoors…… It was estimated that there were not many people left.

  His magic was used very accurately, and it suddenly stopped the shadow soldiers who haunted. The combat effectiveness of these shadow soldiers was not very strong. They could make a surprising attack merely by relying on shadows to break into the main plane from the shadow plane. Now, all shadows were erased at that moment, and many moving shadow soldiers were cut off, turned into a smoke, and disappeared without a trace.

  The red-black figures screamed in anger, because after that magic was used they lost about one-fifth of the shadow soldiers. It was a heavy loss.

  So they acted personally, turned into a profound shadow, and directly attacked Satan who was casting the spell.

  It came fast and without warning; Satan simply did not have time to react.

  Faced with this devil who had been ravaging the world for hundreds of years, even if he had put several layers of defensive spells on his body in advance, it would not have worked.

  After the hit, his body was broken up like a piece of paper that was randomly cut by scissors. The blood overflowed from countless wounds, but it was sucked up before it reached the ground. Satan instantly became as dry as a dead tree, fell heavily on the ground, and was broken into countless pieces of varying sizes.

  Until this time, Satan reacted. In the face of sudden death, he unexpectedly felt very calm.

  “Ah…… Is this death? Ha-ha; it doesn’t seem so terrible……”

  However, he was clearly calm too early, because a grim black gas emerged from the red-black figure and tightly wrapped around his soul. Then the negative energy, as profound as the deep sea, crazily rushed into his soul. After a moment, his soul was completely polluted by the negative energy and turned into a distorted evil spirit.

  Before he was contaminated and transformed, he only had time to make a final prayer.

  “Oh my Lord! Please save my soul!”

  After killing Satan with a blow and even contaminating his soul, the red-black devil slightly vented some anger, and turned its eyes to more valuable targets.

  For example, the giant dragon that appeared with cold air, and was as transparent as ice crystals. Or that giant man with a tomahawk in his hand who was raging and rushing toward it.

  Snowflake and Gerrard felt the existence of the Shadow Devil at almost the same time and rushed to it invariably. One of them blew out an icy flame and the other completely activated the strong supernatural power of the tomahawk that Sui Xiong had specially made. Conical blue-white flames turned everything into ice as they passed and fully enveloped the red-black devil. The golden tomahawk hit its head like a bolt of lightning.

  Both of them were strongmen in the legendary realm. The momentum of their joint strike was daunting. But when they were faced with the Shadow Devil, this type of strike was completely ineffective. The red-black figure just waved its hand, and scattered the ice flames with a shock wave of negative energy. It changed them into countless pieces of ice. They fell like a heavy snowfall, and Gerrard couldn’t even get close to it. He was thrown away with his tomahawk, crashed through several wooden huts in a row, and finally fell into a ruin.

  Shadow Devil was simply incredibly strong!

  With a blow, it broke the joint strike of Snowflake and Gerrard. It smiled proudly and its gloomy eyes fell on Snowflake.

  The soul of an ice dragon might be a good collection.

  But before it launched an attack again, a blue-white thunder descended from heaven, accompanied by a thunder-like bang.

  Before, Sui Xiong had been floating in the air, absorbing magic power and slowly transforming it into supernatural power to enhance his own strength. This was his cultivation, just like what he did in the ice trench.

  It was precisely because of his dedication to cultivation that when the Shadow Devil came to attack, he could not immediately react to it. When the believers suffered heavy losses, they awakened him from cultivation and he hurried to the ground.

  But just as he swiftly rushed to the ground, Satan was killed, and Snowflake and Gerrard were defeated.

  Sui Xiong was so angry that he almost freaked out, and while accelerating his speed, he fiercely struck the devil by using a thunderbolt of supernatural power without hesitation.

  Because of the high speed, he even broke through the sound barrier and made an immense noise.

  The thunder of supernatural power had its own tracking effect, and there was no possibility of evading it. Shadow Devil seemed to know something about Sui Xiong’s situation, and didn’t intend to dodge him. He waved his hand and a profound dark tide of negative energy rose and rushed directly against the supernatural power.

  The two forces collided with each other in a haphazard manner. They did not make a sound, but they distorted the space around them. People could even see the scene of the shadow plane from the distortion.

  The first strike between the two sides shattered the space barrier on the main plane and opened the way to the shadow plane.

  But this was only the beginning. A half second later, a tentacle that was like a towering ancient tree dropped and attacked the red-black figure.

  It was not until then that the roar of Sui Xiong was transmitted to the ground.

  “You! Court! Death!”