So Many Shades Of Gray

The sky was red in bloodied vain. Rain refused to come. The sun refused to show itself, not really because the sheer terror that Lothair's existed brough to the Baha Continent, but because this was currently at night time.

Only the moon was there to oversee. Didn't even show all of its celestial body, as if it wasn't keen enough to watch over a crazed lunatic with a goal beyond what the demon could comprehend.

As the army of puppets marched toward the next demonic dominion, numerous groups of different affiliation began to line up for the kill.

Equipped with the most powerful of spell-infused equipment, they stabbed through the formation of unrelenting waves of lesser puppets, mowing most of them down like a mere grass handled by a gardener's cutter.

"Right, I guess it's almost time for me to get a better quality of puppets." Lothair sneered at the thought of being someone prominent enough that the people on the higher echelon willingly wasted their mind and resources to snap him out from the bough of power. "Kill and recycle, or maybe I better need to judge their own skill firsthand before I make any rude assumption-"

A giant scythe was flung, almost grazing Lothair's neck by a length of breath. It wasn't technically made to purposely miss, as it took quite the attempt of dodging on Lothair's part to keep his head intact.

"Okay, I might misjudge the amount of resources they send to wipe my face from the map."

There were around 48 total demons from the coalition party, 4 of them had already reached far enough to knock on the Holy Witch's position.

The first challenger was a black knight, equipped with densely layered black armor from head to toe with no way to see or guess the identity of them whatsoever. On their back, leaned an intricate tool of what could be some-kin of a thrusters, as hints of dense flaming spears could be seen protruding from four of the extended holes. To complete it, the black knight possessed a giant warhammer with the same propelling technology in one of its sides.

The second challenger was a blade dancer, donning with the barest of clothes to free its tattooed reddish skin. Her slender yet unseemingly formidable physique might be the lead of why she could slip through the hordes of mindless puppets. But that was not the case, the reason why she was able to reach here is because of her dual crescent blades that were big enough to fit seven entire people for size comparison.

The other two were still out of sight, but their presence was close enough that Lothair needed to take account of invisibility spells and ambushes from the sky and the ground. Especially since the owner of the scythe that was thrown at her hadn't even been detected yet.

"Let me see." Lothair repeatedly tapped his cheek that was pushed by his welcoming smile. "The knight one, Circle of Voldun. The blade dancer, you're someone from the Cradling Leech. Although not technically affiliated, someone from there should have paid you a huge sum to get present my head at the dining event seven days from now on."

While the black knight merely grunted, the blade dancer was surprised to hear how close Lothair's prediction was — if it was a prediction to begin with.

"I'm not dumb enough to reject the offers of your respective organization, you know." Lothair shrugged. "It's just that, I still haven't found the one who will be giving me a mutual cooperation with mutual benefits, not those who wanted to claim me as part of their wage slaves or living arsenal."

"I would like to hear your story." The blade dancer then lunged forward with her brandished crescent blades. "But you must die!!"

"Overheal Series…"

He crossed his arms forward. But instead of advancing, he leaped backward while simultaneously spreading his hands at the speed that eyes couldn't catch on. Before the blade dancer knew it, her torso and legs were already detached from one and another. With her eyes latching at the very perpetrator — it was a pair of white crescent large crescent scythes connected to the heel of the reaper's palm.

"Mantis' Pray!" Lothair then overgrown the weapon made out of the bone inside his wrist before lunging forward to the ground. A clear X-like gap was carved from the disposal of what was left of the blade dancer.

Not waiting to know what the Holy Witch would do next, the black knight activated their thrusters. Accelerating faster than sound, the black knight took numerous sharp turns in their flight to create a large sense of dissonance, before boosting their own speed even more — seemingly appearing out of thin air behind the bearer or of the mantis scythe, followed by greater sonic boom.

Lothair then immediately cast off his bone weapons before turning around just as quickly. Now that there wasn't any weight on his shoulders, he simply made a quick strode and placed his hand on the demon's armor.

A sharp shift of heat began to engulf the black knight, before an ingrown chunk of metal sprouted out of nowhere from the inside of the armor, impaling and launching the heavily armored demon away in the air. A moment later, the floating armor began to fluctuate in form, before imploding into a giant clump of black steel as blood began to spurt from the tiny gap.

"Overheal Series: Unnatural Riposte~!" Lothair's laughter began to fill out the grotesque silence. "Hahahah! It sure is great that I have proven the duplicating nature of the 'healing' before this encounter. That might be a huge amount of Ayin that I utilized just now, I still have many from my time of saving when I'm still an entrepreneur."

Just as Lothair wanted to seek out the rest of the hiding assailant, his body freezes up from the sudden burst of aftermath of using his healing spell. Usually, it would only leave him with a mild to major mental disturbance, or even a painful muscle tense at worst. This time however, the aftermath was not as kind as any other time he embraced this unorthodox power of his.

"Aaaa… aaaa…"

The pain that he experienced before began to vividly appear one by one, until it became a massive choir of painful waves of torment. It was only by then that he began to see the clear difference in his appearance. Many strains of hair that he possessed had already passed beyond the gray that he usually shrugged. Now, stripes of black had begun to become the new color of his hair.