I Was a Loner, but My Class Got Summoned to Another World…

The battlefield trembled as Roland and Azragor met in a storm of steel blades and stone fists.

On Roland's side, the cursed blade screamed with hunger as it attacked, but received no souls to eat. With each strike colliding against the demon's earth crystal-clad fists, sparks flew between the two, and darkness and earth mana erupted with every blow.

Their power was overwhelming as waves of mana were tearing through the ground while scattering the red mist with each hit.

"Fall further back!" Roland barked to his companions who stayed back, his hands not stopping for even a second, as he forced Azragor back a step.

The soldiers hesitated only a moment before retreating, knowing they would be crushed if they lingered in the wake of the clash between the two powerhouses.

While the rest retreated, two refused to move an inch.

Stella, who kept her shield up, planted herself in front of her brother while holding up a shield. While Lucien remained at her side, even though his face became pale, he could feel the vibrations from the skills colliding from where he stood.

The two siblings exchanged no words, for both already knew that they would not abandon Roland, no matter the risk.

It was a silent understanding between the two.

Roland's grip tightened around the dark blade as it pulsed with sinister energy; he could feel his veins begin to fill with this dark energy.

It was not his own, though; it was his blades and it was evil in nature.

The more he swung, the more it demanded from him; the blade's influence grew stronger.

His vision blurred at times as he tried to adjust himself.

It caused a haze of frenzy within his now murky mind.

Each of his cuts grew wilder, but also heavier, forcing Azragor to match his pace in their brutal exchange of blows that shattered stone and the ground beneath them, all while shaking the battlefield.

"Good… yes, show me more!" Azragor roared in pleasure; the fun he sought was with the boy, and while it grew harder each second, the demon had yet to use his best skill.

The demon generals grin, widening as Roland's strikes pressed harder and far faster with his challenging words.

Roland, on the other hand, grinded his teeth, struggling against the haze that filled his mind.

His light-based skills felt distant as his connection with Elios weakened due to the corrupt demon blades' influence.

His thoughts began slipping from his grasp, no matter how he tried to suppress the demon blades' influence.

The weapon drank greedily at the pit of darkness within him, especially today when Roland had seen so much vile darkness from the buildings that produced red mist. The way they appeared was like concentration camps, sucking the life out of humans to produce the mist that kept the vampires thriving.

The darkness within his heart began to coil around him like living chains, flowing into the cursed steel blade.

This only made it easier for Roland to invoke his darkness-related skills, as he produced demon-like wings that pulsed with darkness energy that enhanced his next strike.

The blade's edge split the air with a shriek, slamming against Azragor's amber crystal fist in a violent burst of black, even causing one to slightly break.

Roland smiled for the first time; he knew those weapons used as shields were slowly losing their effectiveness, and Azragor could not keep repairing them indefinitely.

The frenzy of their battle only grew far more devastating as the two forces collided with such ferocity that the battlefield itself seemed too small to contain them.

In his last attempt to protect his own, Roland turned to his wife and shouted.

"Leave! I'll be fine, but you won't if I keep holding this blade. I'll find a way to rid myself of it… But you must go!" Roland bellowed with all his remaining mental endurance.

Azragor sneered at the exchange as he added more mana into his crystalline fists, which were pulsing brighter as if to mock Roland's struggle.

"Look at you… clinging to love when the darkness slowly consumes you, will you be just another one of us… I wonder how far I can push you in that direction, haha!"

Roland's eyes burned with defiance towards the demons' words.

He spread his wings wide, darkness swirling around him, and raised the cursed blade high for another brutal strike.

Stella hesitated, looking at Roland, her husband struggling to keep himself in check, her eyes paying close attention to his emotionless eyes as Roland's words struck her.

For a heartbeat, she wanted to argue, but she knew he was right. If she stayed, he would have to keep holding his power back, and she also felt that he posed a danger to her at this moment.

"Don't lose Roland! Not this fight or yourself…"

With one last, reluctant glance, she looked at Lucien, who held her hand before teleporting both of them out of there and towards the last of the large vents.

She knew what needed to be done, and if she could help destroy that vent, then the skies would surely begin to clear, maybe just maybe it would help Roland clear himself of his crazed state.

As soon as he felt the siblings leave, Roland no longer had anyone to protect.

That absence twisted something inside him further now that he had no one he cared for around.

The cursed blade pulsed with delight, feeding on his isolation, his rage, his raw thirst for victory.

Each strike grew even faster, more reckless, as he tore through the earth walls that the demon began to produce to protect himself

Azragor's grin faltered as the attacks began to shift the tempo of the battle.

Where once he had matched Roland blow for blow, now he was driven back far more than he would love to admit, the blue-skinned demon's defenses crumbling.

Roland's strikes became a blur now that he had no one to care for him, his blade shrieking like a reaper's scythe as it tore through walls endlessly, causing stone to fly off like shrapnel that at times struck the demon's armor with a great force.

As if a shotgun was being used at point-blank range.

Roland then jumped in and, with one brutal swing, the blade severed Azragor's hand at the wrist. The demon howled, staggering back, his once-arrogant smile gone.

For the first time, fear twisted across his once joy-filled features.

"You… monster," Azragor spat, clutching his stump of an arm as Roland advanced without mercy; each of his steps caused Azragor's fear to spike.

The demon only had time to produce a little light magic to heal himself, not caring if Roland saw that he had a hidden third element.

The demon general began to retreat in earnest, desperately forcing himself back toward the red mist factory.

Roland's darkness empowered, slash carved a wall apart in a single blow, rubble collapsing around them. Azragor used the opening to slip deeper inside, but he was far from finished.

Snarling, he turned his wrath upon the humans trapped in the extraction machines. With his remaining hand, he tore them free and hurled their broken bodies like weapons, killing them on the spot.

Each corpse slammed against the floor, walls, and even Roland himself, a grotesque storm of the dead that pelleted the hero to stop his march forth.

Roland froze as one body landed before him.

A human captive used by the vampires, the hero's eyes wide at the sight of the humans tossed towards him.

That was only for an instant, though.

Roland tried to summon grief, fury, compassion, or any emotion that would let him feel that he was still human.

But the blade in his hand seemed to be burning through them all, leaving only a hollow void within his heart and mind.

The realization struck him harder than any blow as the reality was becoming clear, he was truly losing himself.

He forced his gaze upward, past the corpses, past Azragor's cruel laughter.

His mission was still there, and that was all that mattered.

Breaking the factory, freeing the prisoners, ending the twisted red mist.

And yet there was still an emotion that he could tell was helping him be human; it was the hate towards anyone who was mindlessly killing.

As he looked at the demon generals' action of killing the humans to make time, this emotion deepened.

Roland roared, bringing his blade down and cleaving the machines that produced red crystals from human blood apart, their twisted parts screeching as they split under his strikes.

The humans still trapped inside were freed from their torment, though far too many were already gone, and many more as the machine blew up.

Yet he could not stop there. Roland's eyes lifted to the second floor, where runes were placed, feeding off these same crystals to produce the cursed mist into the skies above.

The formation was something else he had to destroy before concluding his fight was Azragor, before he needed to finally regain control of himself.

He leapt, wings carrying him upward, his blade crackling with darkness as he tore directly at the floor above.

But Azragor would not allow it that easily.

With each moment, another corpse flew, hurled like a weapon to break Roland's concentration, to further edge him into attacking the hateful demon general.

Roland snarled as he tried to rip himself momentarily from his blade's guidance.

He hacked apart the corpses sent his way and continued up, breaking the floor.

Azragor could only mock him in a last attempt to keep the hero's mind on him; this only further fueled the blade as it urged the boy to forget the mission and drown in rage.

"Enough!" Roland's voice rang through the factory as he swung, black energy tearing through floor and wall alike, causing the building to tremble.

The building groaned under the force, its very frame beginning to collapse.

Azragor stumbled back, cornered, his eyes darting wildly. He had wanted to make Roland suffer.

Now he was facing a monster far worse than himself, and the worst part is that he had no way out; his tactics had run out.