Chapter 4: Volume I. Chapter IV. – First Contact

The date was March 29th 863, when a shooting star struck our town.

The impact released a powerful shock wave, critically damaging the surrounding area and the crater it left behind…..

During this event, a lone soldier was passing by as he was sent to this town for a certain mission. This soldier was a certain knight from a certain city and with curiosity that did not show on his face, he approached the crater, in hopes to investigate.

A short man, perhaps a boy, covered with his black general cape. From beneath his general cap peaks out his short black spiky hair, well matching his crimson red eyes.

This young knight’s name was Karna Gray.

***

The dust lifted by the crash makes it hard to see…

I slowly stoop down the crate, step after step, soon descending to the bottom of the pit.

That’s when I hear it.

The gruesome beast-like groaning accompanied by the sound of bones being continuously snapped and through the remaining dust, two red eyes begin to glow.

They stare directly at me.

“It couldn’t be….”

I mumble to myself as suspicion creeps up on my mind when suddenly an object resembling a tail comes swinging my way. Its speed is too high to make a clear picture of its appearance.

I reflexively pull a part of my Katana out of its scabbard in an attempt to block what could possibly be a fatal blow. It’s enough to save my skin, but I get launched into the air and land back on my feet a few meters back, outside of the area covered in dust.

It’s definitely a demon, somewhere in the middle threat classes, if not the highest. Fortunately enough, there is a bell tower present at the scene with its guards on it and so I begin to yell.

“Ring the bell of the highest threat! The town is under attack!”

The two guards look at me in disbelief. They are hesitant to ring the bell due to a lack of information.

I click my tongue right before the demon emerges from the layers of dust at unimaginable speed and smacks me through a wall of one of the nearby houses as if it wasn’t damaged enough already.

A smug expression emerges on my face.

“So you have decided to come out of the shadows…”

I speak to the creature as if it could understand me. But now they should believe me as they have witnessed it with their own two eyes.

A tall, black and muscular crooked body, its bones are visibly mangled on many parts. The demon’s knees are bent backward and the ends of each of its spine’s vertebrae peak through its thick skin, all the way to the tail which is ended with a sharp, spear-like bone blade of its own. The head is enhanced with its two big blood-red eyes and ash-gray horns coming out of the skull. The demon’s face gives an impression of muscle atrophy as they are perfectly shaped after the skull.

The demon shifts its sight towards them and as it stares them down, the two guards begin to sweat in fear that brings them to a decision.

One of them picks up his weapon, which in this case is a hammer, and in a hurry, he hits the big church bell while shouting.

“Alert the town, it’s a demon attack of the highest threat class! Everyone get to a safe place until the Hogo-sha district’s Knights take care of it!”

The terror in this man’s voice makes me giggle a bit, but just a tiny bit.

“I’m not even sure if the threat level is accurate…Oh well, better be safe than sorry.”

I say as I get back on my feet. Blood is pouring down my face in a form of multiple thin streams.

The demon begins to look around, then suddenly, it lets out a loud and powerful roar. The bell is agitating it, I will strike it down while I have the chance.

And so I dash out of the building, right beneath the demon’s waist, where its field of view doesn’t reach. It attempts to hit me nonetheless, but its efforts are in vain as my blade is out and ready to slay.

With a grin on my face, I strike the demon with an upwards slash and split its arm in two, all the way to its elbow joint.

The beast's second arm flies out, directly at me. I dodge it by rotating my whole body into a three-hundred-sixty spin to follow up with another strike of my own but get stopped as the demon nearly hits me with the arm I’ve originally split in half.

I’m forced to take a few steps back.

“Damn monster, to think you could regenerate at this speed.”

The crooked demon continues to simply stare at me.

Despite the anxiety, I’m feeling, I can’t get rid of the smug grin of mine.

The crooked demon continues to simply stare at me, then starts sniffing, as if it caught a scent of some sort. It reacts to the smell with another roar, then leaps high up.

I won’t let you get away!

I launch myself above the beast and strike it down with a powerful kick, causing another smaller-scale crater and sheltering the demon from the Sun with dust once again. Though, unlike last time, this time I know its whereabouts and slash the space where it landed whilst I land.

The slash blows away the surrounding dust and I myself am the only one standing in the crater.

It’s gone. The demon is not here, it must have fled. But that’s impossible, I would have noticed it. Unless….

I gaze upon the spot where the unholy beast should have been standing and spot a faint gap in the ground covered in rubble. I kick the pile of rock out of the way and reveal the true size of the hole.

It tried to cover up its escape route, it possessed some intelligence. Even if it’s just a small amount, it’s still smarter than any other demon I’ve faced.

I begin to laugh, laugh with joy, but not just that. Curiosity, anger, fear, all these emotions combined now swirl within me.

Soon enough I calm down.

“You are one sly demon, I’ll give you that.”

Is the one last thing I say before moving out for a hunt beneath the ringing bells of doom.

———

Meanwhile, at the Hogo-sha academy.

[Yuuna’s perspective]

You are reading story HELL’S DAWN x HEAVEN’S DUSK at novel35.com

The bells haven’t stopped ringing. The demon is still out there somewhere…

My head is flooded with thoughts of what might be happening outside the Hogo-sha district while sitting in the corner of one of the classrooms, together with Iris and Himari beside me. It’s filled with terrified students, There can be a few cries heard too.

Multiple tutors have sent everyone into classrooms in order to make sure that nobody is missing.

“It looked like the thing hit the Niriu district, I wonder if the Knights are already taking care of it.”

Himari says quietly, almost whispers. She looks worried, but so do most of us here.

The Hogo-sha district is in the center of our town. Niriu is the first district you enter from here, to the east. Fortunately, our and the Sato’s homes are on the west side of our district.

“It will be alright. We have skilled soldiers on our side, they will take care of it. No doubt.”

Iris replies as she attempts to comfort her and it helps even if just slightly. Himari now has a faint and gentle smile.

“The Demon came from the sky…”

I pronounce. As someone that is fully interested in the concept of demons and everything around them, I’m lost in thought and without paying attention to what’s going on around me.

Iris looks at me worryingly as she questions me.

“…Yuuna?”

“Think about it…Demons always come out of the ground, as if actually crawling out of Hell. Not once was a Demon that fell from the sky recorded anywhere and I can’t imagine it jumping kilometers up high either…This Demon might be something new to us.”

Now both of them gaze at me with their wary eyes until Himari lets out a sigh and taps me on the head.

“You are over-thinking, Mrs. Demon ideologist.”

She frowns.

“Alright everyone, please enter the hallway. We’ll be moving you to one of the shelters.”

It seems they are done gathering us. They have decided to move us by multiple classrooms, but not all.

Commander Spriggan is nowhere to be seen, he must have left to where the demon is.

“Everyone stay calm and stick together, try not to get separated from the rest of the group!”

One of the tutors gives out his final warning before proceeding to open the entrance door, but once it’s open the tutor doesn’t take a single step outside.

Soon enough the screams of students from the front rows can be heard as the crowd of students slowly moves backward.

Standing at the end of it, we are clueless about the events going on up front.

“What’s going on?”

Iris is visibly starting to lose her cool now too.

I jump onto the back of a boy standing before me and apologize for using him as a height booster.

But then I see it….

As I set my sight straight before me, I’m presented with a street of mangled corpses and separated body parts all over it.

“This…can’t be.”

I mumble quietly to myself as I get off the male student. My head feels light, It’s getting hard to maintain my balance. I feel sick, I might throw up.

“Yuuna? What’s wrong?”

Himari gets worried as I grab her clothing whilst taking a knee.

“They are all….dead.”

Both of them are at a loss for words.

“But I thought the Demon landed in the opposite direction.”

Iris is right, it did, so why does it look like it came from the west instead….

The students begin to push on us harder and harder, they are beyond terrified. Some of them even begin to run towards the back entrance.

This situation not helping my condition…I think I’m going to throw up,

Iris suddenly picks me up with a serious expression.

“Get yourself together, we need to leave!”

Ah…that’s right, we do. My mind is becoming all hazy, but before I move, one last question comes to mind.

“Hey, if the Demon was so close, did it skip us?”

“What are you talking about?!”

At first, her puzzled expression said ‘Is she crazy?’, but changed the next moment. Almost as if she came to a realization and at that exact moment the ceiling collapsed behind me as something came down through it.

A beast-like groaning accompanied by the sound of snapping bones and the smell of something rotten.

Iris and Himari gaze upon it with terror while I have my back turned to it. I don’t want to look, I’m scared, but my curiosity is slowly getting the best of me and I slowly divert my eyes toward it.

A large black and muscular but crooked body with a face closely resembling a skull and two big horns sticking out of it.

The creature stands on a heap of rubble that has piled up and crushed some of the students as it looks at me with the creepiest smile.

The Demon has arrived.

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