The demon tried to speak, but couldn’t even move his mouth.

The musculature of his pale jaw was completely locked, frozen in place by the absolute mental constraint Kael had slammed into his consciousness.

He desperately strained against the invisible paralysis, trying to force his blackened lips apart to spit out a final, defiant curse or invoke the name of his supreme lord, but his physical shell refused to respond to his commands.

The connection between his brain and his body had been surgically severed by the sheer weight of the draconic directive, leaving him trapped as a silent prisoner inside his own charred skin.

All he felt was terror... pure terror at the voice in his head, and the dragon before him.

It was a suffocating, primeval dread that bypassed his analytical thoughts and struck directly at the evolutionary core of his demonic lineage.

The fanatic loyalty that had sustained his pride throughout the entire conflict was utterly crushed under the immense pressure of the sovereign beast’s gaze.

He had spent years overseeing the dark operations of the organization, treating the lives of human children and lower-tier assets with cold, detached malice, but now he was the one experiencing the absolute helplessness of a prey animal cornered by a powerful predator.

It was like he was sinking in a massive pit of darkness, and the only thing he could see was the terrifying face of the dragon, as well as its chilling voice echoing around him.

The deep blue ice sheet, the shattered stone foundations, the vertical hole in the warehouse ceiling, and even the motionless figure of Noah faded into an impenetrable void of absolute shadow.

In this abyss, reality itself was erased, leaving the supervisor entirely exposed to the twin golden fires burning behind the dragon’s slit-pupil eyes.

The gravelly, ancient frequency of Kael’s telepathic transmission resonated through the emptiness, bouncing off the walls of his fracturing mind like a rhythmic, terminal sentence.

Trapped within this conceptual cage, the seven-foot monstrosity completely lost control of his biological functions.

All he could do was shiver uncontrollably. His porcelain-white limbs shook with violent, rhythmic spasms against the frost-covered floor, the dry friction of his blackened scales creating a frantic, scratching sound that echoed through the small space separating them.

The cold sweat that had been pouring from his brow froze instantly against his skin, forming jagged lines of ice that mirrored the cracking, charred tissue around his neck and shoulders.

Driven by a final, desperate instinct to escape the suffocating weight of the illusion, the demon attempted a final internal rebellion.

He tried to channel his mana and break through the fear.

His resistance, however, was fundamentally useless against the sovereign of the void.

It was like the flow of his mana had been frozen completely, refusing to budge by even a single millimeter within his path lines.

The complex network of mana channels that ran through his torso and limbs felt as though they had been filled with solid, unyielding stone.

No matter how much mental strain he applied, or how desperately he tried to force his core to pump, his mana remained completely static, thoroughly suppressed by the superior, divine density of Kael’s draconic power.

Kael easily sensed him trying to defy him by using his mana, and his anger grew.

He growled, a low, bass-heavy vibration that rattled the foundations of the demon’s soul.

"You think you can break free from me?" Kael asked, the mental transmission carrying a sharp, razor-like edge of pure contempt that shattered the supervisor’s remaining psychological defenses.

The dragon leaned his massive, reptilian head closer, his breath carrying the faint scent of sulfur and ozone as he delivered his next words: "You’re too puny... Yaroth."

The sound of his name sent a shiver down the demon’s spine, a sudden, concussive shockwave of pure terror that caused his vision to blur and his heart to skip a violent beat.

He almost fainted in terror, his consciousness wobbling on the very edge of absolute oblivion as the cold weight of the designation registered in his mind.

He thought to himself, a chaotic wave of sheer panic completely scrambling his thoughts: ’How... the hell does he know my name!’

The supervisor’s mind raced in a frantic circle, his thoughts colliding against each other as he lay paralyzed beneath the dragon’s terrifying gaze.

He was sure he hadn’t said his name or formally introduced himself to any of the two before him, so he didn’t understand how the dragon knew his name.

Throughout the entire confrontation, he had not muttered a single syllable of his true identity to his subordinates, nor had he left any written registries within the administrative files of the warehouse that could be parsed by a tracker.

Yet, this ancient beast had spoken the word ’Yaroth’ with a casual, absolute certainty, as if reading a public notice stamped across his very forehead.

Noah, who was standing beside them, was just as shocked, and at the same time amazed.

Beneath the cat mask, his eyes widened slightly as he processed the sudden development.

He had been prepared to initiate a lengthy, calculated interrogation using his skills to slowly grind down the demon’s fanatic resolve.

For Kael to suddenly step forward and strip away the demon’s most guarded secret with a single verbal directive was an unexpected twist that completely altered the trajectory of the encounter.

As Noah analyzed the heavy, spiritual pressure radiating from his familiar, a sudden realization clicked within his system subroutines.

’That’s it! Kael still has his Dragon’s order!’ he thought, his eyes widening in realization.

With Dragon’s order, he could command any being as long as they were of a weaker race than he was.

The moment the voice was deployed, it acted as an unbending mandate that seized the target’s free will, forcing their mind, their body, and their core into a state of absolute, involuntary submission.

With Kael being an ancient dragon, a race standing at the pinnacle, there was basically no one who could resist his command.

Any ordinary species attempting to defy a direct draconic decree would find their own genetic and spiritual code actively turning against them, rendering resistance completely impossible.

’So even demons are inferior to dragons.’ he thought.

The terrifying descriptions Tara had provided during her frantic debriefings—and the ominous system warning regarding the supreme demon lord’s absolute protection—had initially painted the demonic race as an ultimate, unshakeable hazard that existed outside the standard physics of the continent.

But Kael’s effortless deployment of the Dragon’s order proved that regardless of how much shadow monsters these three-horned entities manufactured, they still occupied a subordinate tier within the ancient hierarchy of creation.

They were still subject to the absolute authority of the apex predators of the void.

Once again, he felt glad he had Kael on his side. The sheer utility of having a dragon companion bound directly to him was proving to be an invaluable asset that consistently bypassed the limitations of standard magic.

While Noah possessed overwhelming personal strength as an S-rank arch magus, capable of deploying catastrophic domains of ice and lightning to erase physical armies, Kael provided a refined, conceptual leverage that could unravel the most complex psychological and spiritual defenses without much stress.

He was also surprised how Kael was able to get his name, since not even him could, as Eye of Truth wasn’t working on the demon.

The Eye of Truth had been thoroughly blinded by whatever thing was protecting the demon, or rather, Yaroth, leaving Noah without any baseline data regarding the creature’s true designation or hidden traits.

Yet, Kael had effortlessly bypassed that absolute barrier with a single mental growl.

’That means Kael’s Dragon command can even bypass the protection of the demon lord.’ Noah thought.

The realization was a massive strategic victory for their faction.

The protective shroud woven by the supreme demon leader might have been powerful enough to scramble the system interface, but it possessed absolutely no authority when placed face-to-face with the primal, unbending law of an ancient dark dragon’s decree.

Kael’s deagin command had simply ignored the defensive encryption entirely, plunging straight into the demon’s soul to extract the name ’Yaroth’ as if the demon lord’s barrier wasn’t even there.

Noah stepped forward slightly, his boots clicking softly against the deep blue ice sheet as he retook his position beside the hovering dragon.

He maintained his perfectly rigid, commanding posture, keeping his arms folded beneath his traveling cloak as he looked down at the shivering, paralyzed commander.

The initial confusion that had knotted his subroutines had completely vanished, replaced by a cold, calculating certainty.

With Kael holding the supervisor’s very soul within the vice grip of the Dragon’s order, the hidden secrets of the organization’s pocket dimensions, the child experiments, and the true timeline of their presence on earth were finally within his reach, and the demon no longer had the power to refuse him.

This certainly made him glad, since it meant he didn’t have to do much trouble anymore.