Devouring Dragon Heir

[Ding!! Congratulations, host, for advancing to the SSS rank.]

A chime rang in Klaus's ears, clear and sharp amidst the chaos of battle.

Upon hearing the notification, his red eyes gleamed as he soared through the air, slicing through the sky like a streak of shadow.

A confident smirk appeared on his face. Without hesitation, he changed direction mid-flight, curving his trajectory towards the heart of the demon army's formation. His target was the demon general himself.

The system's notification had only confirmed what Klaus had already felt: a monumental surge of power coursing through his veins, one unlike anything he had ever experienced.

It was as if every fiber of his being had transcended its previous limitations, as if he had shed an old skin to reveal something far more refined.

Just like the last time he had ascended to SS rank, his mana capacity had expanded exponentially hundreds of times over.

But this time, it was something else entirely, like an ocean full of mana.

Every breath he took felt like inhaling pure mana. He had officially broken through the barrier that separated SS-ranked beings from those standing at the absolute apex of mortal power, SSS rank.

He was now standing at the edge of Paragon-tier power, the final realm known to humans before the ascension realm.

Among all of humanity on the Blue Planet, only a handful had ever touched such a level. Klaus was now one of them. A true paragon in the making.

Below him, chaos reigned.

The demon general, a towering creature with obsidian-black horns and leathery crimson skin, was bulldozing his way through Klaus's forces.

Sharp fangs jutted from his wide jaw, and his eyes glowed with a sickly yellow rage.

He was an EX-rank demon, one rank above Klaus.

But now, he paused.

The general's attention had been fixed on the battlefield until moments ago, cleaving through soldiers, barking commands, and wreaking devastation.

But then he felt it the subtle but unmistakable shift in the environment. Like the calm before a supernatural storm.

His gaze snapped upward, narrowing on the figure descending from above. The temperature dropped and the air became heavy. And in an instant, he understood.

That human he had seen from far away was no longer the same.

The general's instincts screamed at him of danger.

Klaus did not waste a moment. Without fanfare, he activated a newly created SSS-rank skill.

It was a darkness-based skill, one he had named Shadow Phase. A unique SSS-rank skill that allowed him to merge with the shadows and move between them instantly.

One blink, and he was gone.

Next, he reappeared directly behind the demon general like a shadow.

Before the towering demon could even turn around, Klaus raised his hands and activated two curse-type darkness. SSS-ranked skills simultaneously

Curse of Eternal Thirst and Curse of Mind Erosion.

Dark tendrils of corrupted mana snaked from his fingers and latched onto the general's massive form, disappearing beneath its skin like burrowing serpents.

The effects weren't immediate. But Klaus knew that the curses had taken effect.

Without giving the general time to recover, Klaus extended his hand, activating the Poison Body.

A thick cloud of violet mist poured from his palm and engulfed the demon general's face.

The reaction was immediate.

The demon general let out a bloodcurdling, guttural scream. The sound reverberated across the battlefield, halting even the lesser demons in their tracks for a brief second.

"You insect!! What have you done?!" The general roared, clutching his head as the twin curses began their work from within.

His mind, once sharp and war-hardened, was now a cauldron of agony and confusion. The Curse of Mind Erosion was dissolving his cognitive defenses, injecting hallucinations, and fragmenting his sense of reality.

Simultaneously, the Curse of Eternal Thirst began to gnaw at his sanity, creating an ever-growing, unquenchable thirst that clawed at his mind like a starving beast.

Klaus didn't stop there.

Raising both hands, he invoked Earthen Lord's Dance, an SSS-rank Earth-elemental skill. The battlefield responded like a living organism.

Giant fissures split open the ground. Spiked walls of rock burst forth, encasing the demon general in a shifting labyrinth of stone.

As the terrain changed, Klaus followed up with a combination of elemental devastation.

Flaming God's Fury ignited parts of the battlefield in white-hot flame, while Glacial Overlord flash-froze sections into jagged shards of crystal-blue death.

Fire and ice now warred across the field, creating a landscape so chaotic and uncomfortable that it could only be described as a manmade hell.

The demon general, being crushed from all sides, cursed internally, trapped physically, and now enduring elemental torture.

His resistance crumbled fast.

No longer able to focus, the general stopped dodging Klaus's strikes.

His massive form trembled under the weight of the mind-numbing thirst and illusions that blurred reality.

He began clawing at himself, biting into his own flesh.

The Curse of Eternal Thirst, in tandem with the Curse of Mind Erosion, had reached critical effect. The thirst created an insatiable craving, while the mind erosion removed the willpower to resist.

The result was horrifying.

The once-proud general, Mr. Vilefang, a warlord who had slaughtered countless humans in the past, now turned upon himself.

He began tearing his skin apart with his claws, chewing at his limbs like a starving animal. He howled in confusion and pain, eyes wide with terror as his mind fractured entirely.

Klaus simply watched, arms folded, his expression cold.

In moments, the great demon general died, his own flesh mangled beyond recognition.

With their leader gone, the remaining demon army broke. Leaderless and thrown into disarray, they became easy targets.

Klaus's Death Legion, already organized in combat formations, swept through them mercilessly.

The battlefield was soon littered with the remains of demons.

Many of the fallen demon corpses slowly began to rise, converted by Klaus's Death Monarch skill.

They joined his ever-growing army of darkness, now numbering 19,000 strong, though he had lost 1,000 soldiers in the skirmish.

Those lost troops, however, were not gone forever. The Death Legion had a regeneration cycle. In three days, they would rise again, pushing his army's strength to 20,000.

The entire battle had been astoundingly one-sided.

By evening, it was over.

Klaus descended onto the blood-soaked ground, approaching the corpse of the demon general. He crouched beside it, placing a hand on the mangled remains.

With a thought, he activated his Absorption Skill.

Earlier he had absorbed similarly from the ex-ranked watcher, but instead of a skill, he had unlocked a concept.

Opening his system interface, Klaus navigated to the [LAWS] tab.

Inside, he noticed a sub panel labeled concepts. There, shimmering faintly, was an entry:

Telekinesis – 1%.

Intrigued, Klaus had experimented with it briefly. He found that while telekinesis was indeed usable, it drained his mental strength at an alarming rate. It was inefficient, at least for now.

The System had advised him to be patient.

Until Klaus got his hands on a specialized cultivation technique to increase his mental resistance or ideally ascended to EX-rank himself, the idea of using telekinesis in battle would have to be dropped.