When The System Spoils You For No Reason-Chapter 46 - Fourty Six

"In this world, is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcendental entity or law? Is it like the hand of God hovering above? At least it is true, that man has no control, even over his own will." — Griffith

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The air in the open field had thickened into something almost solid—a palpable tension woven from arrogance, fear, and the raw, coiling power of seven of Earth’s most gifted youths. The demon stood at the center, his purple hair a violent splash of ink against the Expanse’s shimmering backdrop, amethyst eyes scanning them with the leisurely interest of a gourmand surveying a buffet.

Enel didn’t wait for more banter. He’d just been manhandled, and though he’d trained hard these past three days—however short—it seemed he was about to get washed by another handsome prick. The sting of that humiliation still simmered beneath his skin, hot and insistent.

Imperial Domain: Active.

A thirty-meter sphere of absolute authority snapped into existence around him. The air within it grew heavy, charged with the weight of monarchy—tasting of ozone and iron. To the demon, it would feel like a mild inconvenience. To the others, it was a signal: Follow my lead or get out of my way.

He blitzed forward, Eve a silver comet aimed at the demon’s throat.

The demon smiled—a slow, predatory curl of lips that didn’t reach his glowing eyes. He didn’t dodge. He caught the blade.

CLANG.

The sound hit like a cathedral bell struck by a mountain. Enel’s wrists screamed in protest, his augmented S-Rank strength meeting an immovable SSS-Ranked wall. The demon’s hand, wrapped in dark, crackling energy, held Eve’s edge with casual indifference. Not a scratch marred his pale palm.

"Fast," the demon noted, his voice a velvet rasp that settled in their bones. "Sharp. Tasty."

He flicked his wrist.

Enel was thrown backward like a rag doll, skidding hard across the crystal floor, his Domain flickering like a guttering candle. Before he hit the ground, a wall of interwoven, thorned vines erupted from the earth and caught him—gently, deliberately. Rosaline Silvanus stood with hands extended, emerald light shimmering around her knuckles, her face tight with concentration.

"Don’t be a fool, Aurelius. He’s not something you can solo," she said, her voice calm but edged with strain. The vines, sensing the demon’s oppressive aura, had already begun to wither at their tips, edges curling into brittle gray.

"Formation!" Zhōu Chénhào’s command cut through the chaos—sharp, clean, authoritative. He floated a few feet off the ground, hands held before him, fingers splayed as if cradling an invisible sphere. "Eisen, anchor! Anthony, right flank! Frostweaver, suppress! Silvanus, control the terrain! Michael—support where you can."

The heirs moved with the disciplined grace of those trained for war, not just duels. Feet slid into position. Breaths synced. Eyes locked on the threat.

Daniel Eisenberg stepped forward, his skin hardening into a faceted, diamond-like sheen that caught the strange light and shattered it into rainbows. Absolute Bulwark: Active. He became a living fortress, planting himself between the demon and the others. In each hand, a massive rune-etched axe materialized from a spatial ring—Götterdämmerung and Schicksalsbrecher, family heirlooms humming with stored kinetic energy, their edges gleaming with a cold, hungry light. "Try me," he grunted, his German accent thickening with focus.

The demon obliged. He vanished and reappeared before Daniel, a fist like a meteorite already in motion.

BOOM.

The impact echoed like a continent cracking. Daniel didn’t budge, but the ground for ten feet around him exploded into glittering dust that hung suspended in the air. He absorbed the blow without flinching—his only concession a low grunt of effort. The kinetic energy shimmered across his diamond skin, drinking in, storing. He retaliated instantly: not a punch, but a perfectly timed horizontal sweep of Schicksalsbrecher. The axe-head glowed with released force, whistling as it carved the air.

The demon leaned back. The axe grazed past his chin, close enough to stir his purple hair. "Sturdy," he mused, unimpressed.

Anthony saw his opening. Solar Colossus: Active. His body swelled with power, muscles rippling like sun-baked stone, skin radiating a deep, golden heat. He roared—a sound of pure solar fury that rolled off the crystalline walls—and brought two colossal fists down in a hammer blow aimed squarely at the demon’s exposed back.

Tectonic Release.

The shockwave hit first: a visible distortion in the air that made the ground ripple like struck water. Then Anthony’s fists landed.

CRUNCH.

The demon staggered—actually staggered—one leg scraping back across the crystal floor. A hairline fracture, thin and dark as a crack in obsidian, split across his shoulder. He turned, amused expression sharpening into something more interested, more predatory. "Ah. Heavy."

Before he could retaliate, the temperature plummeted. The air turned sharp and brittle. Anissa Frostweaver raised both hands, her breath misting in white plumes. Glacial Command. Jagged spears of ice—each the size of a man, each gleaming like blue diamond—erupted from the ground around the demon, aiming to impale and encase. A localized blizzard swirled around him simultaneously, sapping heat, slowing movement, coating his limbs in a thin crackling rime.

The demon’s skin pulsed with inner heat. The ice melted as fast as it formed, hissing into clouds of steam—but the distraction held.

Michael moved. He hadn’t been idle. While the others engaged, he’d been tracing intricate, barely-visible runes in the air with his fingertips—lines of crimson light that hung smoking in the space before him. Now he condensed them into a single lance of pure white fire, high-intensity, and drove it straight into the demon’s chest.

The demon took two steps back from the impact, the sound a searing, violent thump. He looked down at the smoldering hole. Then he looked up, found Michael, and smiled—wide and unnerving—as his wounds knitted shut with impossible speed, flesh closing like time-lapse film.

He stomped once, cratering the crystal beneath him, and accelerated toward Michael.

"Somebody help me!" Michael yelped, his composure cracking as he broke into a sprint toward Daniel. Mid-run, he shot Daniel a quick, almost imperceptible wink over his shoulder—then snapped his expression back to mock terror just as cleanly.

"Sike!" The laugh that followed was bright and sharp. He hurled a blistering wave of fire back at the demon, the flames roaring wide and distracting.

Daniel stepped forward into the opening. He crossed both axes before him. Force Redirection: Shockwave Emission. All the kinetic energy he’d absorbed from that first punch channeled through Götterdämmerung in an instant—the axe unleashing a focused, crescent-shaped blast of pure annihilation, visible only as a rippling distortion tearing through the air.

The shockwave collided with the demon mid-stride. The sound deafened every hunter in the depression—a KRA-THOOOM that vibrated in their teeth and ribcages. When the dust and steam cleared, a large, smoking slash mark ran across the demon’s chest, his hands still half-raised. The grin was gone. What replaced it was flat and empty.

He was annoyed. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

"Enough play," the demon said, his voice dropping an octave—colder, flatter. The playful gourmand had evaporated. What remained was something older and more deliberate, his presence seeming to darken the very air around him.

He punched Daniel.

Daniel had already shifted his skin back to full diamond, augmenting endurance and strength to their absolute peak.

It wasn’t enough to bridge the gap.

BOOM.

The hit landed like a wrecking ball meeting a bank vault. Daniel’s stomach caved in, armor and all. He sprayed blood that glittered in the strange light, diamond skin spider-webbing with fractures around the point of impact.

"You stain me with your blood," the demon said, glancing at the crimson on his knuckles with something between contempt and disgust. He drew his hand back, dark energy coiling around his fist like serpents. "Let’s see how long your defense holds before I put a hole through you."

Before the blow landed, he felt it—a sudden, irresistible pull yanking at his core.

Zhōu Chénhào had moved. Force Manipulation — Attractive Dominion.

The demon’s hooves scraped backward across the crystal as the pull intensified, dragging him away from Daniel with slow, grinding force. He let it happen, a curious light returning to his amethyst eyes—and in the moment his trajectory shifted, a silver blur cut through the air. Eve. Swung by Enel with desperate, surgical precision. The hand still raised toward Daniel hit the ground with a dull thud.

"Hmm."

The demon registered the loss of pull as his grip failed. He landed lightly, regarding the stump with mild curiosity.

They distracted me to save their kin, he realized. And I let them.

POP.

His hand grew back with a wet, organic sound—tendons weaving, bone extending, pale skin stretching smooth and new over the reforming structure. He accelerated toward Enel with a speed that was little more than a blur, only for Enel to be yanked sharply sideways at the last instant by another of Zhōu’s precise pulls.

"Ah. I see." The demon smiled again—a genuinely alluring smile, had it belonged to anything other than what he was. "Don’t you find the numerical situation... displeasing?"

Before they could parse the statement, his figure split.

One became two. Two became four. Four became eight. Seven identical copies sprinted toward the heirs with the same lethal, unhurried grace, while the eighth angled toward the cluster of terrified hunters at the field’s edge.

The copies spoke in unison, their overlapping voices dropping into a chilling chorus.

"I said I was hungry. Since you’ve become hard to eat—I’ll save you for last."

The clones reached the heirs before a coordinated response could form. Each heir isolated, the strategic thrust of the charges had done its job—and without the ability to support one another, the damage began to accumulate. In every direction, a brutal and personalized beatdown took shape.

Only Enel and Anthony could put up a decent fight, their superior stats and combat instincts letting them parry and counter—though neither could land anything decisive.

Zhōu Chénhào and Daniel had ended up side by side, which was some mercy. But Daniel was already injured, his breathing wet and labored, and they fought back-to-back in a desperate, shrinking circle of force and steel.

At the field’s edge, the eighth clone—logically the original—moved through the hunters like a scythe through wheat. Efficient. Emotionless. He seized one by the face, his arm already rising to crush—

SCHICK.

His arm separated from his body and fell to the ground with a dull, anticlimactic thud.

"Ahh." A soft exhale, almost wistful. "I wanted to watch longer. But you brought up a bad memory."

A black-haired young man walked toward the demon at an easy, unhurried pace, boots clicking softly against the crystal. Silver streaked his hair. A golden hue surrounded him—faint but unmistakable. He was devastatingly handsome in the way that made people immediately suspicious, and the smile he wore was infuriatingly at ease, his metallic grey eyes alight with something fierce and satisfied.

"It genuinely fills my heart with joy," Zeke said, his voice carrying across the field without effort—smooth, bright, tightly coiled with anticipation, "to get my get-back."

He tilted his head, the grin widening just slightly.

"Different scenario, sure." A small pause. "But monsters are monsters."