Vengeful Demon

Initially, the explosion of the smoke bomb from an unknown source had already given the Captain a bad premonition.

That beast with its meager intelligence was one thing, but for a human with complex consciousness, the Magic Eye was useless if they couldn’t be looked at directly.

‘What on earth is happening!?’

She had activated her Magic Eye immediately; up until now, no prey had ever escaped her. It was precisely this past success that had made her careless.

Damn it!

Almost instantly, the Captain coiled her snake-like lower half, preparing to dash forward, but a pungent smell of fire oil diffused through the air, mixing with the smoke.

Boom—!

Flames erupted from all sides, and a rolling heatwave swept over everything. The world was instantly submerged in a boundless, blinding red.

“Aaaaaah!”

A searing pain surged into her eyes, like glowing red-hot iron wires being thrust into her sockets.

The Captain couldn’t suppress a shriek. The fire devoured her clothes, and a violent agony radiated from her skin as tongues of flame lashed across her chest and arms, as if trying to swallow her alive.

She stumbled back, eventually collapsing and writhing on the floor, rolling and struggling to extinguish the lethal flames.

By the time she finally managed to use her snake tail to smother the fires consuming her, she was left barely clothed and covered in gruesome wounds.

Struggling to open her scorched right eye, she could see only a hazy, tear-filled vision of a purgatory swallowed by fire.

Blaze climbed the walls; fire danced in the air.

Smoke billowed and churned, and sparks flew in every direction.

The wooden planks let out ear-piercing “crackles” in the high heat, turning charred and brittle before snapping and falling into fragments.

The entire world was being consumed.

“Roar!”

And that moving ball of fire—the giant beast engulfed in flames—had long since lost its predator’s majesty. All that remained was the pathetic desperation to survive. It bolted around blindly, trying to shake off the fire, unaware that its frantic movements only served to spread the blaze further.

“You animal!”

Watching the beast do nothing but destroy her ship, the Captain cursed in rage and ruthlessly exerted the power of her Magic Eye. The giant beast froze mid-stride. After a few seconds of twitching, its massive frame crashed to the floor.

After being burned like that, the beast wouldn’t fetch a good price anyway.

“You brat! F*ck!”

Faced with the sea of fire, the Captain ignored the risk of further burns and slithered forward with all her might.

He fled.

That human must have fled!

First the smoke bomb, then the explosion—how much time did that buy him!? Damn it… damn it! Why was he able to do something like that even after being frozen by the Magic Eye? What the hell is he!

I have to get him back.

No matter what, I cannot let this choice piece of meat slip away!

She didn’t even think, immediately turning toward the door that had been shredded by the beast. If that human wanted to escape, the escape boat was his only direction; she had to catch him before he boarded.

However, she failed to notice that as she prepared to turn right, a ball of fire she had just moved past suddenly flared up and lunged at her.

The explosion hadn’t just injured her eyes; it had shattered her plan and her composure.

So, by the time she reacted…

Squeltch!

A sharp blade was already buried in her back.

The sudden, excruciating pain and the unexpected fireball of an attacker caused her to lose her balance, slamming her hard against the side wall.

Splurt!

As a sharp agony radiated from her lower back, blood sprayed from her mouth.

‘I… was stabbed?’

She struggled to focus her vision. The pain in her right eye made everything a dizzying blur of afterimages, but she saw it—beneath those flames was that cursed human!

His face was distorted by the intense heat of the fire, and red flames crawled along his body as if he and the blaze were one.

Yet, even with the fire on him, he seemed to feel nothing. There wasn’t a trace of pain on his face; instead, his pitch-black eyes were filled with madness and hatred.

“Kill… you… I’ll kill you!”

This wasn’t a normal person; it was a demon, a vengeful spirit crawling out of hell to claim a soul.

‘A lunatic… this brat is a lunatic!’

The Captain’s breath hitched, a fear she had never felt before surging in her heart. She immediately tried to struggle.

But it was too late.

The moment the demon pounced, the fire spread before her eyes once again.

The pungent smell of burning flesh mixed with the searing pain. With new wounds added to her old ones, the Captain could hardly put up any effective resistance. More terrifyingly, the demon had gripped a dagger from somewhere with both hands and was stabbing straight for her head.

‘Stop… stop! Stop for me!’

Her deep eyes immediately activated her ability, her coiled snake body lunged toward his waist, and she raised her left hand to block the dagger.

Pshht!

“Aaaaaah!”

The Captain let out a soul-shredding scream.

The dagger, heated glowing hot by the fire, pierced straight through her palm and plunged into her left eye.

She had intended to endure the heat and coil her tail around his waist, but the moment she made contact, countless metal spikes—red-hot from the fire—bit deep into her flesh. The Captain’s face contorted in agony.

‘What did he… what did he put on his waist? Why are there nails!?’

“Die… just die… die!”

His low voice cut through the flames, raspy and steeped in bone-deep hatred. His face was a blur in the firelight, as if he had transformed into a feral beast that wanted only to tear her apart.

‘This lunatic… this lunatic!’

More force was poured into the dagger, but in the end, it was still human strength—and he was just a child.

To save her life, the Captain ignored the pain, gripped the hand that had been pierced, and forcibly pushed the dagger away.

Because of this movement, the Captain finally saw what was behind the lunatic… or rather, what was directly above her head.

A crossbeam, burned through by the fire, was teetering.

‘Now is not the time to be tangled up with him! He wants to die with me!’

Crack, crack… Boom!

She wasn’t given a chance to react. The moment she noticed the beam, it shattered.

The massive log, wreathed in roaring flames, crashed down toward the two locked in combat.

Boom!

As the beam fell, fire scattered and a scorching airwave blasted outward, as if to consume everything—

No, it didn’t.

The beam that should have crushed them both into a fiery grave stopped at the fatal moment.

A powerful hand had caught the beam through sheer force.

The muscles of the arm were tensed like cast iron, veins winding beneath the skin to reveal a terrifying strength.

“Apologies.”

A tall, sturdy Siren stood there, eyes like cold stone, radiating an unshakable resolve.

“I am late, Captain.”