They Called Me Trash? Now I'll Hack Their World

Chapter 294: The Day Of Judgment [1]

The five jagged tears in the sky pulsed with a sickening, violent crimson glow. Down below, the air instantly grew thick and suffocating, reeking of sulfur, rot, that made the skin crawl.

From the yawning depths of the rifts, figures began to emerge.

They were not the mindless, bone-armored beasts the students had just fought.

These were tall, terrifying silhouettes clad in jagged obsidian armor, their skin pale as ash or deep as twilight.

Cruel, curved horns sprouted from their foreheads, and their burning crimson eyes glinted with a cold, sadistic intelligence. In their hands, they held weapons wrapped in dark, cackling flames.

Silence fell over the Rainwood encampment for one horrifying second.

"What... what are those?" a fourth-year student stammered, his sword trembling violently in his grip. "Horns? Obsidian armor?"

"No... that’s impossible," another murmured, stepping backward in sheer terror, his eyes wide and unblinking. "Demons? But... those are just folk tales! Bedtime stories to scare children!"

The delusion shattered instantly.

A tall demon with twin horns curling like a ram’s snapped his fingers. A wave of pitch-black fire erupted from his palm, washing over the front line of student defenders. Their magical shields didn’t just break, they dissolved like parchment in a forge. Screams of agony cut through the air as several students were reduced to ash in a fraction of a second.

"Form ranks! FORM RANKS!" the lead professor roared, his face pale with desperation. He channeled his entire mana core into his broadsword, unleashing a massive, roaring arc of elemental fire that swept toward the advancing horde.

A high-ranking demon stepped forward, raising a clawed hand with a bored, condescending smirk. With a flick of his wrist, he snuffed the professor’s inferno out as if it were a flickering candle. Before the instructor could even draw a breath, the demon vanished in a streak of black lightning, reappearing directly in front of him.

THUMP!

A spear of dark mana punched straight through the professor’s chest, lifting the veteran battle-mage completely off his feet before slamming him onto the blood-soaked grass.

"Professor!"

Panic exploded through the camp. The illusion of safety, discipline, and academic superiority crumbled into raw, unadulterated slaughter.

The demons moved with terrifying speed and unnatural coordination, systematically slaughtering the academy’s elite senior students. High-tier spells were deflected or absorbed, steel armor was shredded like paper, and the battlefield quickly turned into a grim abattoir.

"Lady Aris! We are leaving NOW!"

Before Aria could raise her wand to cast a divine barrier, the Church Knight grabbed her firmly by the shoulder, yanking her backward with brute force.

"Release me! I can still heal them—!" Aria cried out, her eyes burning as she watched three senior students get cornered and cut down by dark-clad executioners.

"They are already dead!" the knight snapped, his metallic voice sharp and unyielding beneath his visor. "Look at the field, my lady!"

Aria looked. The encampment was entirely overrun. The remaining professors were being swarmed and slaughtered one by one, their spells failing against the sheer, overwhelming wave of dark magic pouring from the five rifts.

Suddenly, a demon commander, a female abomination with sweeping obsidian horns and eyes glowing like dying stars, turned her head. She locked her gaze directly onto Aria’s radiant ivory wand.

"Oh? A light-attuned rat..." the demoness purred, her voice echoing right inside their minds. She lowered her stance, black lightning surging across her boots. "How appetizing."

"Hold on!" the Church Knight roared.

He didn’t hesitate. Reaching into his cloak, he pulled out a heavy, silver medallion embossed with the Holy See’s crest and crushed it between his gauntlets. A blinding, sun-bright sphere of divine holy light exploded from his grip, scorching the air and forcing the charging demoness to violently recoil, shielding her glowing eyes with an enraged hiss.

Taking advantage of the split-second blinding flash, the knight scooped Aria up under one arm and thrust his free hand toward the dense, shadowed tree line of the deep forest.

A flash of silver light enveloped them both, and in the next millisecond, they vanished from the blood-soaked clearing entirely, leaving behind the crumbling encampment, the burning tents, and the echoing screams of the fallen.

---

The blinding flash of the spatial teleportation faded as suddenly as it had erupted, leaving them enveloped in the heavy, quiet dampness of the deep forest miles away from the Rainwood camp.

The Knight carefully lowered Aria onto a flat, moss-covered stone. Without losing a beat, he stepped back into a defensive guard, his humongous broadsword raised as his hidden gaze frantically swept the towering pines and shadow-draped thickets for any signs of pursuit.

Aria sat frozen on the cold stone, her slender hands trembling uncontrollably in her lap.

Her breath came in short, ragged gasps, every exhale forming a small white cloud in the chilling air.

The horrifying images of the slaughter played on a loop behind her eyes, the scent of burning flesh, the helpless shrieks of senior students who had been top of their classes, and the casual, terrifying ease with which the professors were butchered.

They’re... they’re nothing like what we’ve faced before, she thought, her crystal-blue eyes dilated with pure, unadulterated terror.

She remembered the previous containment expeditions she had joined with the high-ranking Holy Knights of the Holy See.

They had cleared planar gates before. The demons encountered in those ancient texts and minor incursions were brutal and formidable, yes, but they were bound by tactical limits. They could be held by divine barriers and pierced by blessed steel.

These creatures were entirely different. They moved like shadow-spirits, wielded ancient, corrupting magic that dissolved holy barriers like paper, and possessed a cold, sadistic intelligence that belonged to true warlords.

Suddenly, the ambient wind died. The quiet rustle of pine needles ceased instantly, replaced by a suffocating, static heavy pressure that made her ears pop.

Aria slowly raised her head. The sky directly above their distant hiding spot tore open, the pale afternoon blue instantly rotting into a sickening, bruised violet hue. The trees surrounding them began to wither, their green leaves turning to dark, brittle ash within seconds.

The Knight gasped, his heavy silver boots shifting back as his aura flared in sheer panic. He spun toward her, raising a gauntleted hand.

"My Lady... please ru—"

SHING!

A whisper-thin thread of pitch-black lightning flickered through the air.

Before the knight could finish his sentence, before he could even raise his sword to defend himself, a clean crimson line opened across his armored neck. Time seemed to stop for a fraction of a second, and then his head detached smoothly from his shoulders, flying into the air before thudding heavily onto the damp soil.

His headless, plate-armored body stood upright for an agonizing heartbeat, blood fountaining into the air, before collapsing like a hollow shell onto the rocks.

Aria’s vision went entirely white. And a raw, blood-curdling scream tore from her throat, echoing helpless and terrified into the decaying woods.

"AAAAGGGHHH!"