The soldier stared up at the large crimson gates with a rising feeling of glee. They were remarkably well-carved, featuring curving angles and spiked ridges near the edges. Measuring probably thirty or forty feet tall, they vaguely reminded him of the doors just outside Envy's palace. He'd knocked those ones down pretty easily. These shouldn't be too much different.

Tagral looked up at them with an appreciative whistle. "Now these, these are quality gates. Paid and built by and for slaves. Despair might be a cesspool, but it's a rich cesspool. These are pretty heavily enchanted, so we might need to pull a key off of one of those... I was gonna say corpses, but that might be a bit generous."

It was a rather accurate statement. A large group of armored demons had been guarding the door and had attempted to fight the soldier off when he had arrived. It'd been a pleasant thirty seconds while it lasted, but once he broke out the shotgun, they had faded away like a snowman in summer. A snowman made out of blood, and guts, and limbs, and - just generally a walking meatbag.

Daisy was wearing a pair of their boots. They didn't fit in the slightest, which the soldier took personally.

Rubbing his hands together, the soldier raised his hands, a hefty weapon forming between them. Daisy immediately covered her ears, Isabeld following suit. Behind him, Tagral picked up part of a torso, frowning at it. "Do you think the key might possibly have been destr-"

The soldier pulled the trigger on the Super Shotgun, and the majority of the doors disappeared in a white-hot blast of stone shrapnel and rubble, collapsing inward. Tagral nearly jumped out of his skin from the sound, whipping around. His jaw dropped as he saw the remains of the gates. "Those - those were enchanted to be nearly immune to magical and physical attacks! How'd you do that!?"

Raising the Super Shotgun in Tagral's direction, the soldier happily waved it around briefly, and then walked onward through the gaping hole where the gates should have been.

It was heaven. Well, it was Hell, but it might as well been heaven.

In front of him, staring at him wide-eyed, was a truly massive crowd of demons. They came in every variety the soldier had seen thus far. The large ones, with curling horns and bulging muscles, the smaller ones, with little wings and nubs, and the absolutely massive ones with tusks and ape-like builds. Whatever their biology, every single one of them stared at him with a blank expression of fear.

The soldier looked down at his hands and realized he was still holding the Super Shotgun. He raised his view back up to the demons in front of him.

Everyone moved at the same time. As the horde began to flee, the soldier launched himself forward, aimed, and fired. A good chunk of the mob vanished into a red mist of blood and guts, and his Mana skyrocketed back up to full. Swinging the Shotgun out of existence, he swapped it for a chaingun, paused, and then tossed it to one hand. He promptly summoned another chaingun and raised both, grinning.

Before he could fire either of them, a blast of hot air scorched his back. Several blunt objects sailed over him, smoke trailing from their back ends, and then soared into the crowd. Each one detonated with more force than his grenades, and he whirled around to see what the source of the missiles was.

Looking quite surprised, Isabeld was standing in front of him, legs splayed outward, and a pair of mounted missile racks protruding from her shoulders. The dense armor packed around her chest and shoulders evidently held a few surprises.

The soldier put one chaingun under his arm, gave her a cheerful thumbs up, and turned back to the fleeing crowds, raising his chainguns once again. Their barrels began to spin, and the soldier braced himself. The instant they began firing, the barrels jerked upwards, but the soldier found that they weren't bucking nearly as much as he thought they would.

At any rate, between the soldier and Isabeld's neverending barrage of missiles, the crowd in front of them was reduced to several rather large hills of scorched and bleeding corpses in a matter of minutes. Dismissing one of the chainguns, the soldier grabbed the handle on the second, all barrels glowing red-hot and smoking, and moved forward.

Some enemies had escaped him in Brimstone. They wouldn't be doing the same here.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Korokho hunched behind the table in the small shop along with two imps, praying that the thing hunting them down wouldn't find them.

The shop was darkened, its lamps hastily doused the moment they'd sprinted in through the door. Who knew how long it would be before the Elite Guard showed up to take the Doom Guy down, but they couldn't come fast enough, that was for sure.

A distant boom shook the dark store, causing the windows to rattle, and he hunkered down further, squeezing his eyes shut. What kind of nightmare was this? Those doors were supposed to be indestructible. They'd been guaranteed that the gates were indestructible. So how was it that some man, some monster, was capable of knocking them down like a deck of cards?

The sounds of the havoc were slowly going away, becoming more and more distant. Oddly, they were simultaneously getting louder. It was as if the Doom Guy, instead of tiring and slowing in his rampage, only grew more powerful as he slew. It was an indescribably terrifying thought to Korokho.

Demons were made almost completely out of mana. Running out of it was tantamount to suicide, however temporary. So an enemy that continued to rejuvenate and collect mana as he used it was not only a paradox, but an absolutely horrific one. The mere concept was enough to make shivers crawl up Korokho's spine.

The door opened.

Hunching down, he braced for the inevitable end, and then heard something unexpected.

"Anyone in here?"

He nearly cried in relief. A demon! It was another demon! The Living Massacre had passed! Standing up from behind the counter, Korokho began in relief, "Ohhh, you have no idea how glad I am to-"

The Lepori standing next to the demon in front of him was holding something. A short stick of some kind, Korokho thought vaguely. Whatever it was, the end lit up in a plume of crimson fire, and Korokho's mind went dark.