Extra: Yandere Milfs Obsessed with me!

Chapter 468: The human continent (3)

Sulyvhan killed the remaining demons. Black smoke still rose from their charred carcasses, whose severed limbs littered the broken stone ground. Sulyvhan sheathed his sword with a sharp metallic click that echoed in the heavy silence of the desolate plain. The viscous and fetid demonic blood slowly evaporated on his traveler’s cloak. He turned toward the group of survivors huddled inside the cage. He opened the cages quickly.

"You are free now," said Sulyvhan in a calm voice.

The woman holding the child approached the newly freed and gave them water from a recovered gourd. The gray-haired man nodded with gratitude.

"Thank you. We thought we would die here," murmured one of the captives.

Sulyvhan gathered the entire group. They now numbered about fifteen. He made them advance in silence through the ruins.

"We had better leave this area," suggested Sulyvhan while observing the surroundings. "This place is saturated with demonic mana. If you stay here, you will mutate or you will die."

An old man, whose beard was soiled with ash, stepped forward trembling. "Where... where do you want us to go, Sir? Everything is destroyed."

Sulyvhan scanned the horizon beyond the clouds of blood. "I spotted a narrow valley, but it will take a few hours of walking to the East. The terrain there is steep, which will facilitate defense. That is where we will build."

Then Sulyvhan turned around and led the way, his six-foot-three silhouette cutting through the scarlet sky. His long silver hair floated in the wind while he sometimes smoothed his locks back, his eyes with black sclera and silver pupils scanning the shadows to detect any hostile presence.

After a few hours, they finally reached the site: a natural basin protected by high basalt cliffs. Without wasting a second, Sulyvhan got to work.

"Gather the usable stones," he said to the able-bodied men. "Women and children, look for dry wood in the dead forest on the heights."

Sulyvhan used his own strength to speed up the process. He approached a pile of massive rocks that blocked the center of the camp and then released his energy.

The invisible shockwave hurled the multi-ton blocks with disconcerting ease, leveling the ground for the foundations. For cutting the wood, he did not use an axe. With a fluid gesture, he drew his blade.

The steel imbued with aura sliced through the petrified trunks with precision, creating perfectly straight beams.

The first building, a sort of common hall, was erected in one week. It was the first sign of civilization in this desert of slag. But Sulyvhan knew that walls would not be enough. One evening, after the meal, he gathered the survivors.

"The demons will return. Always more numerous," he declared, the campfire light dancing in his cold gaze. "I cannot be everywhere. You are going to learn to fight."

The next morning at dawn, the training began. Sulyvhan distributed wooden slats carved in the shape of swords.

"Fencing is not a question of talent. It is a question of endurance," he repeated, taking up the words of his own masters. "Adjust your feet. Bend your knees. Keep your gaze straight."

He moved between the ranks, correcting a posture here, an angle there. When a young man named Elian attempted a blow that was too ambitious and lost his balance, Sulyvhan swept him with a simple leg movement.

"You put too much force into the void," he commented with a mocking smile. "Control your breathing. If you do not master your own body, how do you hope to master steel?"

While the village was being fortified, Sulyvhan continued his incursions into the surrounding lands. He became the nightmare of the demons. On each mission, he saved new captured humans, tearing them from the cages of the demonic beasts. Each group of survivors he brought back added new hands and new skills to the village, which gradually grew.

One day, he returned with about fifty refugees he had saved from a hobgoblin nest. Upon entering the valley, he stopped at the top of the ridge to observe the work accomplished. Dozens of stone and wood houses now lined up along a stream purified by his care. Fields of resistant crops were beginning to turn green under the red sky. In the central courtyard, about twenty of his students practiced parries, their movements becoming more fluid, more confident.

The weeks passed. Other survivors arrived, guided by rumors or saved by Sulyvhan during his expeditions. He often left alone at dawn. He sometimes returned with freed prisoners, sometimes with supplies found in old warehouses.

Sulyvhan continued his training every day. He taught the villagers to fight as a group, to protect the weakest. The youngest were already showing progress.

The village now numbered more than a hundred people. They cultivated a small field near the river. Sentinels, trained by Sulyvhan, took turns on guard. Demon attacks became rarer. When they came, the villagers fought alongside Sulyvhan. They killed together the creatures that came too close.

The months passed therefore, marked by relative stability and a reassuring routine. The daily tasks were distributed with precision, the oldest took care of the cooking and the care of the lightly wounded, the strongest cut wood and maintained the fortifications, while the most agile took care of hunting and gathering in the areas deemed safe. As for those who trained assiduously under Sulyvhan’s guidance, they began to show tangible progress.

He hated seeing so many people suffer when they weren’t responsible for what happened to them, which is why he made it his mission to save as many people as possible. He knew that the current peace was fragile, that monsters, even weak ones, always regrouped in large numbers, and that the future held more trials.

Thus, life gradually resumed its rights, not without constant vigilance, but with the growing certainty that each day gained was a victory. The nights were sometimes disturbed by distant howls or dull rumblings, but the watchtowers kept vigil, and the guards, trained by Sulyvhan, changed posts with a discipline that reassured the most anxious.