The moment the illusion wore off, the guards didn't bother checking on the head of security, since he'd commanded them not to disturb him — he was about to have the time of his life. Aboard the public transport, the Blue Star team sorted through the information and categorized it by location. At their level, their minds worked faster than most supercomputers in the lower realm. They finished sorting and drew up a hit list of every suspect — a hundred people in total. Solanky allocated ten to each team and took the remaining forty for himself, including the seven main bosses who controlled the sex trafficking trade on planet Dorvan.
The members of the Blue Star scattered in different directions to handle their assignments, raiding the apartments of the regular Dorvians first and killing them without hesitation. Solanky switched on his wristband, opening a live feed to the sect's upper echelons, then walked slowly into an alley after parting ways with his teammates. He wove a series of hand seals, invoking a spatial locking technique that sealed off the entire underground city.
The instant he did, a powerful devil of devils disguised as a Dorvian sensed the shift in the underground city's spatial laws. He rose and alerted his underlings — their cover was blown. This devil of devils was named Tanko. He stepped from his hiding place and slowly shed his disguise, reverting to his true form. It was hideous: a human upper body split into two heads, each bearing a single eye, mouths lined with serrated teeth. Four elongated arms ended in claws, and where legs should have been, only a mass of writhing tentacles remained.
The people of the underground city scattered in terror. Tanko swelled to five kilometers in height, his body punching straight through the ceiling of the underground city and breaking into the surface world above. The sudden eruption sent shock rippling through both hidden devil spies and ordinary Dorvians alike, and chaos consumed the surface and the depths in equal measure. Solanky gave the order — his teammates moved. Over the comm, Tee's voice came through, wry and amused. "Ghost, I take it that devil showing his true form has something to do with you. Thanks for keeping it subtle." She laughed and cut the message.
Tanko roared, commanding his underlings — all high-level devils and devil emperors — to abandon their disguises and slaughter the Dorvians. They obeyed without question. Solanky smiled. "Tee, Light Seeker, Beast God, Blade Emperor, Thunder King, Star God — I've got a gift for each of you. I think you'll enjoy it." The instant he finished speaking, Tanko's underlings were ripped from their positions and teleported, one to each member of the Blue Star team.
A portal tore open five meters in front of every teammate. The moment it appeared, Tee's voice cracked with disbelief. "Ghost… you can wield world-defying magic at the first level." The rest of the team, hearing it over the shared channel, fell silent, stunned — they all understood exactly what first-level world-defying magic meant. Only now did they understand why their team alone had been entrusted with wiping out every devil in the blue ice region's galaxy.
"I'll explain later, after we've dealt with these devils," Solanky said. "Don't hold back." His teammates nodded, shaking off their shock. In each location, the teleported devils found a single member of the Blue Star team standing before them. They laughed and charged forward.
Thunder King smirked. "First time I've fought a devil. Try not to disappoint me." He rose into the air, raised both hands, and dark clouds began gathering above him. Drawing his spear, he sat cross-legged and touched two fingers to his forehead. A lightning-bolt sigil bloomed between his brows, and his black hair bleached white in an instant, threaded through with crackling arcs of electricity. He rose from his seated stance and shot toward the incoming devils at a blistering 900,000,000 m/s, his body dissolving into a streak of lightning as the air around him surged past thirty thousand degrees Celsius.
Ice melted in his wake, carving a molten trail through the underground city. Thunder King drove his spear forward, and thunder cracked through the tunnels — a deafening BANG as the spear punched clean through seven of the ten devils. They crumbled to ash along with their spirit life cores, while all ten devils, struck by the same surge, froze mid-motion, electrocuted where they stood. He swept his spear toward the survivors; lightning flashed across their eyes, and their consciousness blinked out instantly. Watching the live broadcast, one of the sect's elders murmured, "Remarkable. His grasp of the laws of thunder and lightning already outstrips his peers by miles."
The feed cut to Blade Emperor, devils closing in on him from every side. He reached for his sword out of habit before remembering — Solanky had taken it, claiming he wanted to "experiment" with it. "Oh, come on, Solanky — you've killed me!" he shouted, breaking into a run as the devils gave chase. Laughter and mock condolences flooded the comm channel. "Can I have it back now? Kind of urgent," he called out. Just as the devils closed the gap, a sword plummeted from the sky and skewered one of them clean through.
"You held out on purpose," Blade Emperor said, "but I forgive you. Hey, devils — watch this. Inspired by the Sword Heart Sect's own technique. I call it Sword World." He seized the hilt and swung it skyward. The devils sneered. "We're on the ground, genius, not the sky." Blade Emperor only smiled and slammed the blade into the earth. Countless ice-blades erupted from the ground beneath the remaining nine devils, mirrored by a storm of blades gathering overhead. He closed his eyes, and the swords above converged, tips angling downward, herding the devils into a single point. With a slow turn of the planted blade, the sky-borne swords began spinning — faster and faster — before crashing down in an intersecting lattice of steel, grinding the devils to nothing. An elder from the visiting Sword Heart Sect rose to his feet. "Impressive. The sword saint himself ought to take this one under his wing — sharpen what's already there."
The broadcast cut next to Beast God, fighting bare-handed against his own pack of devils. His humanoid frame had given way to a massive werewolf's, fur shifting between black and blood-red. He tore into the devils with brute force and utter ruthlessness, seizing one and rending it in half with claws alone. The rest, seeing what he'd done, turned to flee — too late. He caught one mid-stride, bit its head clean off, then hunted down the rest without pause. When it was over, he stood drenched in devil blood, licking it from his claws before shifting back to human form. Watching from the broadcast, the elders sat in stunned silence — none had seen such raw ferocity in disciples so young.