Till now, Taranis had fought countless clashes every day against the beasts of the Mountain of Ten Thousand Beasts, which exponentially increased his battle prowess and experience. However, not even once did he kill any beast, as he was aware that he was the one who had invaded their territory. But now, it was different. Now, he wasn't the one invading a territory, but protecting one. And unlike the beasts—who, despite their violent nature, still possessed moral restraint—these demons were nothing but a curse upon the cultivation world.

In the cultivation world of Vyoman, the more innocent lives a cultivator took, the more their Soulforce became corrupted and their mind unstable—a punishment delivered directly by the heavens. Conversely, cultivators who eliminated these corrupted beings received purer Soulforce and a stronger cultivation base, leading to greater opportunities to break through to higher realms—a blessing from the heavens.

Being born with divinity, Taranis could sense even the tiniest corruption within a cultivator's Soulforce. During his time in the Hundred Sky Mountains, he had rarely encountered anyone with corrupted Soulforce. But here, at the frontlines, every demon emitted such overwhelming negative energy that merely imagining the atrocities they must have committed sent chills down Taranis' spine.

The moment Taranis' eyes fell upon them, he had already made the decision to kill without mercy. But when he was actually about to take a life for the first time, his hands trembled, and in the end, he failed to land the finishing blow.

The two demons lying on the ground, who had just been struck down by Taranis, had their foreheads pierced in the very next moment by arrows shot by the archer standing beside him.

"What kind of god are you if you can't even kill two Low-Tier demons?" the archer scoffed, a mocking smile laced across his face as he returned his focus to protecting his subordinates at the front.

Smack!

Taranis slapped his cheeks loudly with both hands, snapping himself out of the daze as the impact left his skin reddened.

"Pull yourself together," Taranis murmured to himself. "This war will never end if I keep hesitating."

"O-oy, Thunderbane… are you alright?" the archer asked, startled by Taranis slapping himself so hard in the middle of the battlefield.

"Better than ever," Taranis replied, his eyes flickering with golden lightning.

"Idiots! What are you two doing?!" Alex's sharp voice rang out from the front. "Focus on the battle!"

While the archer had momentarily lost focus and Taranis was steadying himself, more than twenty demons had surrounded Alex and the two subordinates from behind, while hundreds more continued to rush in from the front.

"Oh shit!" the archer shouted as he hastily pulled back the string of his bow.

Before the arrow could be released, a loud and commanding voice echoed across the battlefield.

"Bend down!" Taranis shouted, his voice brooking no disobedience.

Alex and the two subordinates beside him instinctively ducked low, compelled by the overwhelming authority in Taranis' tone.

The instant they lowered themselves, a thunderous arc of golden lightning surged through the battlefield, striking all the demons that had encircled Alex and his subordinates from behind.

Without the slightest resistance, the lightning cleaved through the demons, severing them at the torso. Yet the attack did not stop there. Brushing past the lowered members of Taranis' team, the arc surged forward and sliced through fifty more demons in a single strike.

The demons at the back froze in place, their lips parted as a primal, raw fear coursed through their veins when their gazes fell upon the source of the overwhelming attack.

Alex and his subordinates also slowly turned, their eyes settling on the origin of this otherworldly spectacle.

Taranis stood motionless, a sword of radiant steel—mirroring the hue of his hair and eyes—trembling in his grasp. Sweat drenched him from head to toe, soaking through his robes. His breath came in short, ragged gasps, each one scraping his throat as though his body might give out at any moment.

However, it was not exhaustion that made him shake like a fragile petal in a storm; it was the weight and permanence of taking a life for the first time.

"Th-that Thunderbane is trembling," one of the demons murmured, still feeling the lingering terror from the attack Taranis had unleashed.

"H-he is just a brat. He must have used every bit of strength in that attack. We must kill him before he grows stronger," another added.

"Yeah, kill him."

"He must die…"

"Attack—"

Just as the demons were about to make their move, the night sky turned crimson as thunderous red lightning roared from the area where the Demon General, along with hundreds of lesser demons, had been battling a single Thunderbane.

Every eye turned toward the source of the violent sound, and another wave of dread surged through the already terrified demons.

The Demon General, whom the lesser demons had served for many years, lay on the ground. A massive crater spread outward from where he had fallen. His body was scorched black, remnants of red lightning still crackling across it. As for his head, it was no longer attached to his body. Instead, it was held in Nathan's hand, clutched by the hair.

"The Demon General is dead!!!" Nathan roared, his voice powerful enough to reach the ears of every subordinate scattered across ten kilometers as he rose the severed head high in the air. "The rest are just flies. Kill them all!!!!!"

"Th-the Demon General is dead?" the demons murmured. "B-but the battle has just started. H-how is that possible?"

The demons' morale began to crumble as the confidence of the humans surged to its peak. While the cultivators fought with renewed fervor, there was one person who remained frozen in place.

"I-I have killed them," Taranis murmured, his lips trembling. "Was it the right decision—"

Just as doubt crept into his mind, a gentle hand tapped his shoulder.

"So it was your first time killing someone, huh?" Nathan said as he stepped beside him. "You did well. And yes, the decision you made was the correct one. Otherwise, it would have been your team members lying dead instead of those corrupted demons."

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