Zoran was indeed pleasantly surprised.
His gaze was firmly fixed on this battlefield; not a single rustle of grass or breath of wind could escape his eyes.
The application Kobeni had puzzled out on her own was genuinely intriguing. By squeezing and refining repulsion down to an infinitely precise, microscopic level, she could unleash a staggering burst of force to cleave her enemies apart.
In her hands, the power Zoran had bestowed was no longer a grand, steamrolling force of absolute dominance, but had instead been forged into a razor-sharp blade.
Akane Sawatari, who had already been thrown into a blind panic upon seeing the Katana Man sliced into blocks, suddenly felt an even more formidable pressure bearing down on her.
Looking up, she saw the colossal hand obscuring the sky suddenly withdraw.
Yet, this brought her absolutely no joy.
Because the master of that massive hand had suddenly manifested right in the center of the battlefield.
Zoran floated in midair, his true form exposed to everyone's gazes. He lowered his eyes slightly, lost in thought.
Not far away, the few who had been watching Kobeni's fight stared unblinkingly at Zoran. They suddenly realized that this was the demon Kobeni had forged a pact with.
Though he appeared completely serene, the moment he materialized, the very space around him seemed to pivot and revolve entirely according to his whim. He was an entity of absolute, unquestionable power.
Right now, it seemed his interest had been piqued by the previous clash, prompting him to personally step onto the field.
"Hey, what is he doing?" Power, usually boisterous and carefree, suddenly lowered her voice to a tense whisper.
"I don't know," Aki Hayakawa replied, limping his way toward the nearby rubble, preparing to pull the cord on Denji's chest to revive him.
"Fascinating. If that's the case, I should be able to execute it even better," Zoran suddenly murmured with a slight smile, his eyes sweeping across his surroundings.
The moment his gaze swept over her, Akane Sawatari felt an unparalleled, crushing weight crash down upon her shoulders. She grew desperate.
"Snake! I'll give you half of myself, swallow this guy whole!"
She roared, and the Snake Devil, which had just been hacked down by Kobeni, suddenly began to writhe violently once more.
With a look of savage resolve, Akane sacrificed both her arms and legs, collapsing onto the ground as a mere torso. As long as she could survive, anything was better than being slaughtered by the terrifying entity before her.
In an instant, her sleeves and pant legs went completely hollow, her limbs consumed as nourishment for her contracted devil.
The Snake Devil's body swelled drastically. It coiled through the sky in a massive loop before plunging downward from above like a diving dragon, lunging straight for Zoran's back.
Yet Zoran merely remained suspended in midair, completely deaf to the massive commotion the Snake Devil was causing behind him.
He let out a soft chuckle, extended a slender hand in front of himself, and gently tapped the air.
An invisible force coalesced at his fingertips, forming a blade completely imperceptible to the naked eye.
"If this can be considered a blade, that is," Zoran said to himself.
"Repulsion Slash."
He spoke the words softly. An exquisitely sharp strike sliced outward, piercing through everything along its path from front to back.
The Snake Devil's gargantuan body instantly froze in midair.
One second, two seconds...
As an old friend once said, the fastest blade can only be perceived after the strike has already concluded.
Zoran used repulsion as his blade, manipulating it with flawless, microscopic precision. The Snake Devil's winding, massive frame suddenly began to disintegrate.
Hundreds of millions of flesh fragments rained down like a drizzling mist. Every single portion of the Snake Devil's body was cleanly divided down to a nanometer scale.
A dense, fine rain immediately showered the battlefield.
But the slash did not stop there.
Tracing the path of the Snake Devil's body, the residual force of the strike surged all the way into the sky, tearing across the tops of the distant skyscrapers.
Silently and soundlessly, the upper floors of several distant high-rises crumbled into fine powder.
Kobeni's eyes widened in utter disbelief.
She finally snapped out of her combat state, reverting back to that slightly timid, bashful young girl. Mr. Demon's move was identical in principle to what she had just done, but the sheer destructive scale was worlds apart.
"I held back quite a bit of power, but this will do," Zoran chuckled softly.
In front of him, the expression on Akane Sawatari's face suddenly froze. Before the eyes of the onlookers, her remaining form dissolved into tiny, scattering particles, perishing like drifting dust.
This was a slash Zoran had tested on a whim. It was precise to the absolute extreme.
"An intriguing technique indeed, but it still lacks something… it lacks the backing of conceptual rules," Zoran murmured to himself.
Unlike the vast, sweeping obliteration he was typically accustomed to, the strike just now utilized the power of his own authority, yet applied it in a completely inverted manner. Because it lacked a deeper conceptual definition, it could currently only be viewed as a casual diversion.
However, a certain figure, or rather, a certain devil, suddenly crossed Zoran's mind.
He suddenly burst into a resonant laugh.
What a perfect coincidence!
In this world, was there any devil whose power was renowned for an all-severing, peerless slash?
There was. Of course there was.
The Darkness Devil.
In his memory, the moment that entity debuted in Hell, it had instantly severed the limbs of everyone dragged into its domain.
In the air, Zoran couldn't help but clap his hands lightly.
He had already figured out how to fully develop this new style of power. Although that specific authority currently resided in this world's Hell and did not belong to him yet, since he, Zoran, had already set his sights on it, half of it was already as good as written under his name.
As for the other half, it was simply a matter of when he felt like claiming it.
The Darkness Devil was meant to be a dish on his dining table during this little journey from the very beginning.
Far away in the depths of Hell, the Darkness Devil, one of the three Primal Fears, had absolutely no idea that it had already been targeted by a far more terrifying demon. The opposing party had already planned out the future distribution of its power while it remained completely in the dark.
With these thoughts in mind, Zoran cast his gaze toward Kobeni and couldn't help but praise, "What a clever child."
There weren't many things that could pique his interest, but Kobeni had just managed to do so.
Down on the ground, Kobeni blinked blankly upon receiving Zoran's sudden, unexpected compliment, her face turning red purely out of reflex.
Though she didn't quite understand the details, Mr. Demon seemed highly satisfied with her. It felt rather wonderful, almost like being praised by an elder in the family whom she had always looked up to.
She couldn't suppress the bubbling glee in her heart.
It seemed that without even realizing it, she had done something to please Mr. Demon again.
Come to think of it, if things kept going like this, maybe she would receive a monetary reward from Mr. Demon.
She, Kobeni Higashiyama, felt as though she had taken another massive step toward becoming a truly successful person.
Would it be cash, or a house?
Kobeni's mind drifted far out into space, already entirely consumed by visions of a wealthy lifestyle.
Thick, frantic footsteps suddenly echoed from outside the ruins of the building.
Only now, after Zoran had retracted his massive hand, were the mobsters originally led by the Katana Man finally able to rush into the ruins.
Yet, what greeted their eyes was nothing but utter devastation.
The Katana Man and Akane Sawatari had completely vanished. The only thing remaining was a demon with an aura of absolute serenity, floating casually in the sky.
Zoran unhurriedly extended his hand. Since he had already shown himself, he didn't mind cleaning up the remaining loose ends.
"Damn it! The boss failed! Run!" someone finally realized something was horribly wrong and shrieked in terror.
Zoran chuckled softly. These frail, pathetic insects weren't worth wasting his breath on.
It was as if the Grim Reaper had unhooked his scythe.
And so, repulsion pierced through, slicing everything to pieces.
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