Chapter 185: The Demon Hunter Knight

"So, you came to find the Demon Hunter Knight?" Caslana blinked her large eyes at Muria.

"The pride of humanity, of course, I want to see for myself."

"That's quite a coincidence, I'm also here to find the Demon Hunter Knight."

"What do you intend to do?" Muria asked, frowning.

"Protect this yet-to-grow Demon Hunter Knight. He's made quite a stir this time."

"Protect?" Muria's face showed a hint of scorn, "Another group of humans wants to persecute the Demon Hunter Knight?"

"That's what I've heard."

"A bunch of idiots, aren't they afraid of driving the Demon Hunter Knight to a dark fall?"

...

During the era when humanity was just rising, establishing city-states, many dark creatures like chromatic dragons, trolls, giants, vampires, werewolves, and others considered humans as food, freely hunting and feasting on them.

Demons from hell and devils from the abyss coveted human souls. Although small, human souls were plentiful and their bearers weak, making them easy prey.

Back then, human cities were often destroyed by chromatic dragons, turning into ruins...

Attacked by werewolves or vampires, entire human populations were captured and consumed as food...

Whole cities were used as sacrificial sites, with hundreds of thousands of humans offered to demons...

In that era, human survival was exceedingly difficult, akin to ants. Human strongmen were a joke in the face of other races; they could only rely on higher-level beings to combat non-human monsters and dark races, with soul intent facing gold, and gold facing silver.

In equal-level confrontations, humans stood no chance against non-human monsters and dark races, easily crushed, making human strongmen a laughingstock. Repeated failures nearly shattered humanity's confidence.

Even, at that time, many human cities began to believe that humans were inherently weak and destined to serve other races as vassals and food.

For humans, it was an incredibly dark era.

Fortunately, a sage appeared during this era, inspired by the idea that if humans couldn't overcome monsters on their own, they should utilize external enhancements to give them the power to fight back against non-human monsters and dark races.

Thus, he proposed the Demon Hunting plan, but unfortunately, few city-state rulers supported it.

Still, the sage didn't give up. Using his prestige, he gathered a group of alchemists, pooled their wisdom, and began researching armor that could significantly amplify human strength based on their own capabilities.

He also assembled all willing human strongmen to protect their kind, selecting the most outstanding individuals to receive the first generation of armor, thus birthing the first Demon Hunters.

The Demon Hunters' duty was to protect humanity from all non-human threats.

The first Demon Hunters were not strong; they were still weak and easily killed by many powerful monsters. However, they could now confront some weaker dark races like werewolves and vampires.

Their emergence proved humans were not weak; they could slay and resist non-human monsters and dark races on equal footing.

In this dark era, the appearance of Demon Hunters was like a beacon in the darkness, offering desperate humans a glimmer of hope for a brighter future.

Consequently, some city rulers began to support the Demon Hunting plan, providing human and material resources. More mages and alchemists joined the sage's project upon hearing about it, researching stronger Demon Hunting armor to increase the Hunters' combat capabilities. The second generation of Demon Hunters, capable of slaying lower-tier demons and combating mid-tier vampires and werewolves, was born.

That single beacon of light turned into a brighter spark. As the second generation of Demon Hunters continued to slay vampires and kill demons, their achievements spread.

The entire human race became invigorated, with more city rulers supporting the Demon Hunting plan. The resources of the city-state era began to lean towards the sage's project, and countless human elites joined the plan, researching stronger Demon Hunting armor.

The third, fourth... sixth... eighth generations of armor were successively stronger than the last.

Similarly, with the entire human race as the selection pool, the knights who donned the Demon Hunting armor became increasingly excellent, and thus, their combat capabilities while wearing the armor also grew stronger.

Of course, many events occurred during this process, almost causing the Demon Hunting plan to fail or even halt, such as united warnings from dark races feeling threatened, threatening human extinction if the plan continued. But with the increasingly elderly sage and some human forces' protection, the Demon Hunting plan never stopped; it continued.

Later, after certain events, the sage, considering various factors and at the request of human rulers, added two restrictions to all Demon Hunting armor.

The first restriction was that all Demon Hunters could not wield their swords against their kin. If they had thoughts of attacking their own, the armor would automatically fall off.

The second restriction was that only true-blooded humans who embodied the eight virtues of knighthood could wear the armor...

At the end of the human dark age, the ninth generation, the last generation of Demon Hunting armor, was born, pooling all of human wisdom.

A single spark turned into a blaze capable of spreading across fields.

On that day, knights wearing the ninth generation of Demon Hunting armor became the relentless nightmare of non-human monsters and dark races.

Because the ninth generation of Demon Hunters possessed the most terrifying combat power in human history—solo dragon slaying.

The first battle of the ninth generation Demon Hunters was the solo slaying of a red dragon intending to ravage a human city, marking one of the symbols of Demon Hunter combat power.

From that day, humans ended their despair and suppression of the dark age, no longer fearing powerful monsters, for they had the strongest Demon Hunters.

From that day, under the protection of Demon Hunters, humans began establishing kingdoms, then embarked on paths of external expansion, gradually growing stronger.

Under the Demon Hunters' watch, dark races truly became dark races, forced to hide underground or within human cities to avoid Demon Hunter persecution.

Countless chromatic dragons started to avoid human cities, and innumerable monsters voluntarily relocated. With the existence of Demon Hunters, humans were no longer weak, easy prey.

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