Nightmare System

"My King? What happened?" Annette asked with worry on her face.

"Of course, there would be consequences," Hell mumbled, leaving the other three in a confused state. He wondered what the punishment would be. As he was contemplating it for a minute, he found himself in an empty void similar to when he was introduced to the system.

He was taken from the forest where he was just walking around next to Miur, Annette and Jack. They didn't seem to be in this space. Hell didn't panic, it had already felt familiar to him the moment he was brought here. A message popped up right before Hell's eyes.

*Player will turn the punishment wheel*

"Right, come on then, summon it," Hell urged the system. "Don't dilly-dally." There was no way he would escape from it anyway.

Almost as a reply, the wheel suddenly appeared without another message. Hell moved toward it and gripped the wheel. He was scared the turn it after last time. He checked some of the tags the arrow small arrow would point to when the wheel stops.

A small bit had "Death" written on it, similar to before. There were also various body parts he could lose, they seemed to be the same as before, too. But there were also quite vague words on it such as "Pain" or "Sorrow". Hell was sure the system quite enjoyed these open-ended punishments.

"Hey, system!" Hell yelled. He still hadn't turned the wheel. "Can I do something else instead?"

There was no answer from the deep void other than the same message appearing before his eyes.

*Player will turn the punishment wheel*

"So what if my luck is bad?" Hell murmured. "I'll take whatever punishment you give me and beat it."

After steeling himself, Hell turned the wheel with all his might, almost hoping to break it. Unfortunately, although it didn't seem too durable, it felt impossible to damage.

With Hell's new strength added to the mix, the wheel didn't stop for a while, but the force finally diminished, and it slowed down. Hell's face was suddenly drained of colour, as pale as Miur. There almost seemed to be a pattern here.

"No!" he cried. "Don't stop there! Anything but that… and my brother!"

Hell thought he could handle himself even had he lost an eye or an arm. But this body part was not one he was willing to part. Hell's eyes almost popped out of their sockets as he focused on it as his life depended on it. This body part was one he could not do without.

The wheel finally revolved just a tad more, it felt to Hell that his will was the one that made it push past that punishment on the wheel. It stopped on "Time".

*Punishment is implemented. Player will be returned*

This message both appeared before his eyes and echoed in the void. He then found himself in the same forest he was in before. The sun seemed to have moved further in the sky.

"A few hours?" Hell talked to himself. "Best punishment ever."

Hell looked around and yelled for his three subordinates, none answered his calls. After spending around half an hour looking for them, he thought they may have gone into the town first.

"I wonder if Annette found Devlin, yet…" Hell murmured as he walked. Annette was the only one who managed to listen to Hell's unending stories about his brother. It was likely that she had a pretty clear mental image in her head.

As Hell left the woods, he gazed at where his beautiful little town of Onsville was. It was a mostly peaceful town which barely had any crime excluding a few counts of murder ever since Hell moved here. However, his beautiful little town had now changed. There were some collapsed buildings and some corpses littering the road.

The cars on the road had crashed and seemed unusable. There were no animals around, either. Hell was frozen in space. He felt nauseous and dizzy. The man who stood against ancient and powerful creatures and dared to challenge Gods was now shaking. He fell on the ground, barely preventing his collapse with his hands.

"I don't have the time…" Hell whispered and then appeared to be in some sort of a trance. His eyes were lifeless and pointed at a certain direction. In the middle of the town, was their apartment. He had to make sure his brother was all right.

"What had happened here while he was in the other world? It seemed like a post-apocalypse scenario what Hell saw before his eyes. What kind of timing was this?" Hell had questions, but he kept them to himself as he pushed himself to his limits to get to his house.

With Hell's various abilities, it was a matter of minutes to go all around the town. And he had reached the spot. This was where his apartment was.

Seeing barely half a house and a pile of rubble before him caused his heart to race and his nausea to kick-in again. "Devlin!" he started yelling. "Annette! Jack! Devlin!"

He heard a laugh from behind his back. It was a rather condescending laugh. It was a man in his thirties.

"Hey, brat," the man spoke. "Whoever you are looking for, they either escaped into the Haven Palace, or…" he giggled and added with an amused tone: "we have eaten them."

Hell was yet to turn his back, so the man, thinking he was frozen in fear, continued to speak in a mocking tone:

"Could it be that I ate him? Are they your siblings? Or friends? I bet you that I have already shitted them out!" the man started laughing, expecting a reaction from the young man gazing at the rubbles in a dejected manner still.

The man certainly looked to be in his thirties, but he was far from human at the same time. He appeared demonic somehow, but Hell wouldn't say he was as bad as the sub-demons he saw at Cain's castle. However, none of these thoughts actually held any place in his mind right now.

The demonic man started walking towards Hell, bent on making a meal out of him, but he was forced to stop in his tracks by some force, which was radiating from his so-called prey. Hell's Bestial Aura could no longer be restrained, it started pouring out.

It appeared to be pouring out of all his orifices and promptly covered a large area. The man became the one frozen in fear. He couldn't figure out what was happening before him, but simply the pressure radiated from Hell nigh-tore him apart.

He couldn't speak, the words wouldn't come out. The liquid poured out and formed a giant beast with claws of steel with a scarlet hue. The beast slowly reached a claw out to him and gently gripped him. The grip became harder and harder and the man struggled to escape more and more.

However, it was all useless. He almost had his life squeezed out of him to the point that he was barely alive, solely by the initiative of the Bestial Aura. Hell tried to compose himself but found himself unable to do so. He made twenty copies with his mana, covering his face with his hands.

"Find him! Find my little brother!" he commanded this deadly force of twenty. Doing this was no different than using two-third of his mana at once, but he couldn't care less. Even though each copy was similarly distressed, they couldn't ignore Hell's orders. They immediately dispersed, looking into each direction.

Hell would check out this Haven Palace himself, so he commanded his aura beast. Bestial Aura left the broken demon-man on the floor. Hell drew a brand on him to heal him, seeing that his life could be extinguished at any moment. Brand of Healing, Hell activated.

The man's wounds were almost immediately healed, the man was shocked. He realised he faced someone who could either bring death, or give life. This was no ordinary kid in front of him.

"I will go! I swear I won't bother you again!" The man was now truly seeing Hell. He was sweating so much that it seemed simply standing around Hell would cause him to die of dehydration. Hell managed to withdraw his aura for the moment so that he could focus better on finding his brother.

"You will take me to this haven you talked about, or I will start taking your fingers," Hell said in a sinister tone, approaching the man with every word he spoke.

"Of course, I will!"

"Don't you have any pride? Sc.u.m," Hell insulted the terrified man.

The man, in response, smiled and only said: "This way, please." He couldn't think of his pride at this moment against such a foe. Who was this man, anyway? Why was such a figure in a small town such as this?

The man started walking and even when Hell urged him to run, it was far too slow. Hell used his "Flying" ability and soared into the air, holding the man from his shirt.

"Where is it?" Hell asked. The man quickly showed him where they needed to go. It would seem that Hell would find this place no matter what after flying into the air. There was an immense parameter established covering almost a third of the town. Of course, it wasn��t as visible from the ground. Behind the parameter was a large building which used to be the huge mall they had in town which also worked as an attraction. It seemed it was now used as a shelter.

"Good job," Hell said. "I will let you live."

"Thank you! Thank you!" the man yelled, until Hell said one more thing.

"So let's hope that you survive the fall."

Hell was feeling depressed, it seemed this man became a target for his extreme frustration. He dropped the man and a thud was heard on the ground. It was a 50-metre fall. Not impossible to survive.

Hell then landed on the ground and proceeded to the Haven Palace. It was a perimeter created with many cars. Guards with guns roamed the top of the cars.

"Halt!" one of the guards yelled at Hell. "Show us your hands!"

Hell complied and yelled back: "I want to know if my brother is with you."

He figured it would have been a lot faster to rush into the place and search, but that would potentially upset his little brother.

"Wait there! You can check yourself once you get inside."

The guards seemed to be contacting someone with their radios, and made Hell wait for more than ten minutes already, which infuriated him.

A woman soon left the large building behind the cars and slowly approached Hell. She was a middle-aged woman with not so remarkable features, but she seemed to be in charge. He didn't know who she was.

"How did you survive out there?" the woman asked as soon as she got closer with one of the guards following her, a gun pointed at Hell still. "Where did you come from?" the woman added.

"Look, I'm just trying to find my little brother. Will you help me, or not?"

"There are more than a thousand people in there. All scared. We can't spare the manpower to search for your brother," she said and then added after a brief pause, not giving Hell a chance to speak: "However, you can search for him yourself after a short containment period of three days."

Hell's face clearly showed some anger but he also restrained himself. He was holding back his aura so these weaklings wouldn't be scared.

"I have already been waiting for some time, I am already being nice, just let me check," Hell said through gritted teeth.

"Are you insa-" the woman's words were cut short when another man, identical to the one in front of him arrived.

"I couldn't find him, but headed here after getting the directions from one of those demons."

"Are you twins?" the woman asked. She was surprised she didn't notice the second one until he was right beside Hell.

"Me neither, I couldn't find him. But I killed a few of these demon creatures."

"Our Knights weren't around either," said yet another one.

"I couldn't find anything, did you?" a new copy just arrived. In mere minutes, the 20 copies Hell sent out gathered before the gate. The woman took a step back with each copy arriving at the scene. Before she realised, she had backed off quite a bit. The guard standing beside her had already rushed back into the building.

"What the hell are you?" the woman yelled. "Don't come any closer!"

Other guards also seemed distraught as they also started catching on about the happenings when the copies gathered in the same place. They raised their weapons and aimed at them. They still seemed human, so they hesitated to shoot.

"Hey, you bastards," Hell said and looked into the women's eyes, then using his Gaze of Pain with 50 mana. It was enough to incapacitate her for the moment. "I am running out of patience."

The woman started struggling on the ground in mere moments. It felt to her as if her cells were screaming out. She was not used to pain. She squirmed and finally found the strength to yell just as reinforcements started pouring out of Haven Palace. It seemed the soldier had called them just in case.

"Shoot! Kill them all!"

These four words brought upon the fierce power of modern weapons as both Hell and his copies were riddled with bullets in mere seconds. They fell, one after another. One of the more veteran soldiers arrived by her side.

"Are you okay, Vice President Mina?"

"The pain won't stop!" she yelled as she grabbed his shirt. "Don't let anyone get close."

"Understood, ma'am," he said and ordered one of the soldiers to take her inside.

The dust settled. However, neither Hell nor his copies disappeared from the view. The Bestial Aura poured out again from Hell. Copies also started manifesting the scarlet beast, but theirs seemed to be weaker, and smaller. Although the copies were boosted to close to Hell's level thanks to his skill, they still couldn't display the same efficiency in skills.

The veteran soldier was the first to notice the pressure rising in the air, also the first one to shoot what was seemingly a body.

"You attacked first, didn't you?" both Hell and his copies giggled. They all stood up in mere moments with large grins on their faces. Hell summoned his Imp Needle again. Even though the copies didn't have weapons in their hands, it wouldn't matter against opponents like these. Even Hell himself would be far too much for them to handle.

The veteran soldier shot a copy from its head and caused it to momentarily collapse again, but the rest had already started moving at a speed they couldn't track with their eyes. The screams ended as soon as they started. Unfortunately for Hell, these guys didn't level him up or give him any skills at all.

Just before the soldier carrying Mina could open the door, he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned back, seeing the man they just fired. It was truly just a few seconds! Yet, it was enough for more than 60 soldiers in total to be killed. Their blood started joining one another to create small ponds. It was a gruesome sight to behold.

Before the soldier could speak, Hell simply held the man's hand and activated his Vampire Claws, instantly piercing into his brain. After neutralizing all opposition, Hell used his Mana Manipulation ability to dispel his Gaze of Pain. He never had a chance to use this ability after acquiring in the fight against Pandora. It felt quite useful.

"You killed us all!" Mina yelled. "Smell of the blood will draw them and the soldiers are dead!"

Hell held her face with one hand and asked once more: "My brother, I have to find him. Do you know where Devlin Reeveman may be?"

She proved to be useless and was tossed aside by Hell. Just as she said, he could already see some more of those deformed demonic creatures gathering for the feast Hell left behind. He entered the large building with his copies with great speed, searching everywhere inside. The people inside seemed miserable and scared, but he didn't care about them. He started from the bottom floor and asked as many people as he could as he searched the place.

"Devlin!" Hell yelled, in the middle of the immense mall, every second he failed to find him was a thorn sticking into his heart.

"King Hell?" a familiar, melodious voice called out to him. Hell turned back and saw his beloved subordinate, Annette. He quickly rushed at her and held her by the shoulders.

"Devlin, where is my brother?"

Annette was taken aback, but still replied as a loyal subject to her great King. Oh, how she had missed his King!

"Devlin is in a safe place, guarded in a fortress in the capital both by Jack and Miur. I stayed here in the case that you would require an explanation."

Hell and a few of his copies on the scene heaved a sigh of relief when they heard the words that Devlin was indeed all right. Hell's Bestial Aura dispersed by itself and a tear was formed in his eye. Hell hugged Annette in relief who in return blushed again, her heart started racing. But this time, she hugged back.

"Everything is all right," she whispered. "We have been taking care of everything while you were gone."

"President Annette!" a woman yelled. "Get away from this man, he is a demon who has killed the majority of our armed forces!"

Annette was quite displeased as her King had stopped hugging her because of her. She walked up to her and slapped her face.

"You will show some respect to King Hell!"

She then turned to Hell and added: "King Hell, please ignore this insolent subordinate!"

Hell giggled and spoke in a gentler tone: "It is certainly hard to believe you organised that force and became some president to the mall in just a few hours."

"King Hell, when do you think we arrived on this land?"

"A couple of hours?" Hell asked. It couldn't have been half a day, the sun is barely going down. Or was it more like a day?

"King Hell…" Annette seemed to be having trouble getting the words out. "…the last time we have seen you, was in the forest, five years ago."

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