Chapter 1 The Beginning

The booming sound was like thunder falling to the ground, and a burst of earth-shattering tremors shook everything around. Black smoke rose from the nearby rocky mountains, almost blotting out the sky and sun, as if the end of the world was imminent. And within that black smoke, a city slowly rose.

It was a massive city built of obsidian, with hundred-zhang walls (one zhang is approximately 3.3 meters) that seemed cast from black gold. Rigid, vertical lines were arranged on the city walls, and the head of an evil dragon was carved at the top of each line. Surrounding the city were six hundred and sixty-six obsidian spires, each with a huge, illusory eyeball floating on top. The eyeballs reflected the scene in every corner of the entire demon plane. Above the obsidian city floated a huge obelisk-shaped building that rotated slowly, constantly emitting dark red light, supporting the city's shield system.

The black city had risen above the rocky mountains but continued to rise, even reaching hundreds of meters into the air before stopping. It had become a floating city, its base built on an inverted conical floating island. Countless runes and pipes, glittering with dark light, crisscrossed within the rugged rocks beneath the floating island, forming a powerful anti-gravity field that lifted the entire city above everyone's heads!

The soldiers on the Shattered Plains stared blankly upward at the demon king city, which should have been buried long ago in the spatial storms. Finally, a mercenary cried out in horror, "The demon king city! It's the demon king city!"

With a loud "boom" from nearby, the obsidian giants that had emerged from behind the rocky mountains launched an attack on the Knights. The huge single eye embedded in the giant's head violently erupted with a ball of scorching flame, blasting a crater more than ten meters in diameter on the ground. The Knights had been intimidated by the power of the demon king city, and for a moment, they had forgotten that the deadly obsidian giants were close at hand. Several people were blasted away before they reacted and quickly retreated.

Seeing the Knights' formation in disarray, the black dwarves behind the obsidian giants immediately crouched down and took out a strange rectangular weapon from their backs. They aimed at the enemy and pulled the trigger. A slender object, like a small rocket, burst out of the rectangular weapon—this must be the so-called rocket-propelled black iron arrow. Behind the black dwarves, the heavily armored demons had already launched a flanking attack, preparing to intercept the fleeing mercenaries.

Although there were brave soldiers in the mercenary and Knights, anyone with more intelligence than a table could see that the few people on the scene were no match for the demon king's mixed forces, so they immediately began to organize a retreat. Just as they were shouting and preparing to retreat, a muffled, thunderous voice suddenly came from the air: "Since you're here, stay."

Hao Ren found the voice familiar. He looked up and saw a tall figure on the wall of the demon king city. The figure was more than five meters tall, burning like fire, with molten lava flowing across its skin, and a broken horn on its head—it looked exactly like Izhaks!

Lanina was immediately dumbfounded, and the surrounding soldiers cried out in horror, "The Mad Demon King! The Mad Demon King is still alive!" "Retreat, retreat, retreat! A full retreat!" "Abandon the supplies, abandon the supplies... go back and report!" "Carly, it looks like I won't be able to go back and marry you..." "You're crazy, you don't even have a girlfriend!" "I'm about to die, can't you let me say a few words?"

At this moment, Izhaks suddenly patted Hao Ren on the shoulder. The two exchanged glances, and Hao Ren nodded. He ran towards the demon pursuers while shouting at the top of his lungs, "Brothers, retreat! We'll cover the rear!"

No sooner said than done, Lily and Vivian and the others rushed up. Lily had been secretly eating spicy sticks since she saw the obsidian giants. She had saved enough transformation energy, and with a roar, she transformed directly into a giant husky and pounced on the giants. This girl, with her natural strength, directly slammed a giant in half, scattering it into pieces. Vivian created a large cloud of thunder with a swarm of bats, and it crashed down near the black dwarves—obviously just to interfere with their aim and disrupt the situation.

Seeing that this small group of mercenaries was so brave, the Allied small officer was greatly moved and led a group of people to help instead of retreating: "Warriors! I'll help you!"

Hao Ren almost choked when he saw this situation, thinking that he was waiting for them to run away, but they came back instead: "Leave quickly! Don't worry about this!"

The Knights' small officer drew his sword and roared to the sky: "Hahaha! Warrior! Such ambition is worthy of being a warrior of our Alliance! Today you and I will go to the…"

Vivian, flying in the air, saw this and took out a small bat and threw it over, knocking the small officer unconscious with a bang: "Too much nonsense!"

The soldiers who were running back to help were immediately dumbfounded, and Hao Ren quickly waved his spear and commanded: "Leave quickly, leave quickly—you're in the way!"

The soldiers then carried their captain, who had been knocked unconscious by the small bat, and left the battlefield. Hao Ren breathed a sigh of relief: these hotheads are finally gone...

Then he turned his head to look at the strange mixed army of demons + giants + dwarves. The next thing to consider was how to deal with these hotheads...

Obviously, there was no time to explain the situation to the other party at this time, and he had to find an opportunity to surrender, so he quickly locked onto a large guy who looked like an officer in the group of demons—anyway, the biggest characteristic of a demon commander is usually that he is big—and then whistled to Lily: "Lily! Come!"

The giant husky was riding on an obsidian giant, scratching and biting and gnawing, and was covered in black stone powder. Hearing Hao Ren's voice, her ears twitched, and she ran over like a domestic dog who heard a call: running with earth-shattering force. Hao Ren grabbed the long hair on Lily's leg and climbed onto Lily's head, waving his spear and pointing at the demon officer: "Take him down first! Capture him alive! Then we'll explain the situation!"

Lily howled, trying to see who Hao Ren was pointing at: everyone can imagine how big the head of a husky more than five meters tall should be. Hao Ren was standing on top of her head, so Lily couldn't see him at all. Their eyes were almost touching each other, but she still couldn't find the tip of Hao Ren's spear...

Hao Ren: "..."

"Why does everything never develop normally when it comes to me!" Hao Ren jumped to Lily's nose in exasperation, pointing forward, "Charge!"

Lily's eyes widened, and she roared and charged forward. Hao Ren suddenly felt the wind hit his face. Holding his spear and standing tall against the wind, he charged towards the demons and giants with heroic spirit. At this moment, Hao Ren felt like he was Zhao Zilong possessed—it would have been better if he wasn't riding a husky...

Forget it, a husky is fine, anyway, the color of its fur is similar to a white horse...

The obsidian giants noticed the movements of this strange dog knight and immediately gathered their single-eyed light to intercept him. Balls of scorching explosive flames exploded beside Hao Ren, but Lily, like a ghost, dodged and moved in these balls of flames. Her agility was not diminished by her size in the slightest. In the blink of an eye, she crossed the giants' defense line and pounced into the middle of the demons. A strong demon guard waved a huge chain blade sword to meet her. The giant sword was different from other demon weapons. Its blade was a row of rapidly vibrating steel saws, which was terrifying to look at. Obviously, it would be fatal if you touched it—Hao Ren sighed in his heart when he looked at this crazy thing: no wonder Izhaks almost overturned everything back then, and the Allied forces of the world barely managed to kill him in the end. Look at what crazy weapons his subordinates are using!

He inexplicably remembered Izhaks's words: Knowledge is power!

"Get out of the way!" Hao Ren waved his spear to block the chain blade sword. The moment the weapons met, he felt a strong shock, almost causing the spear to fly out of his hand. It seemed a little stupid to compete with a demon equipped with this weapon, but a burst of light and flame suddenly erupted from the end of the alloy spear, and before the demon could react, it directly broke the scary weapon. The combination of Hao Ren and Lily continued to charge towards the target.

The black dwarves were attracted by the most conspicuous target on the battlefield and immediately reloaded their rockets to intercept him. At this moment, Vivian's lightning storm had stopped, but just as they raised their guns to shoot, a large group of bats suddenly fell from the sky, swarming around Hao Ren + Lily like dark clouds.

Vivian's figure condensed on Lily's head. She spun a ball of blood mist and a ball of lightning in each of her hands, and blasted the three or four rocket-propelled black iron arrows that passed through the swarm of bats.

The trio finally broke through all defenses, and the strong demon commander raised his giant sword and stepped forward to meet the enemy, but Hao Ren reacted even faster.

A bright blue light cut through the air and smashed on the demon commander's forehead with a bang. The force was so strong that it directly knocked the latter to the ground.

"This machine is the ultimate move wahahaha!"

Hao Ren touched Lily's nose with his spear and muttered: "I think the terminal's mentality has completely adapted to being a brick..."

Lily sniffed: "... Achoo!"