Chapter 238: The Light of the Demigod (4)
Crack!
A bolt of lightning pierced through the shoulder of the Blood Wraith. The blue electricity tore through the crimson aura that made up its body, causing the creature’s eyes to twist in agony.
Despite its supernatural agility that allowed it to dodge most of the lightning strikes, it was still hit by one of the countless branching arcs.
“Ugh…!”
In the tense battle between transcendent beings, even a minor hit like this could be a turning point, enough to predict victory.
Rumble!
The sky unleashed a torrent of lightning, hundreds of fiery pillars connecting heaven and earth, with blue bolts striking relentlessly in between.
These lightning strikes, descending at the speed of light, were impossible to completely evade, even if one could sense the flow of magic that heralded them.
If one couldn’t break the divine miracle that wove cause and effect, the only option was to counter it with overwhelming firepower.
The lightning forced the Blood Wraith to block instead of dodge, and to absorb the impact rather than deflect it.
Due to the nature of the lightning magic, even a glancing blow would accumulate damage over time.
The crimson aura that composed the Blood Wraith began to erode, slowly but surely.
Dalen, using his clones to pin down the Blood Wraith, took a step back to focus his will. Activating two domains to their limits was already a strain, but securing a decisive victory was crucial.
“The Forge Where the Dragon’s Breath Scatters.”
Beyond the distant mountain peaks, a massive forge, shaped like a towering chimney, responded to its master’s call.
“Master of All Weapons.”
To finish off the cornered evil god, weapons traversed kilometers over the ridges, born from the hands of a blacksmith who had touched transcendence.
A horn’s call echoed across the battlefield, though no trumpeter was present.
Clang! Clang!
Armor assembled itself without a wearer, mounted on silent steeds, charging into the sky.
Swords and spears pierced through the fiery pillars, targeting the Blood Wraith’s blind spots. Maces wrapped in cutting winds and shields spewing lava restricted its movements.
The ground crumbled under the clash of forces, and the space twisted and tore like a massive vortex.
A storm of brute force, composed of twenty-three clones, hundreds of weapons, and countless lightning strikes, converged on a single point.
In the eye of this storm, the Blood Wraith swung its twin swords desperately, but it was gradually being pushed back.
“Now.”
Amidst the chaos, Dalen took a step forward.
“Now is the time.”
A peculiar sense develops when one wields a sword for long enough.
A sense of victory. An intuition that surpasses logic or thought.
An instinctive realization that a final strike at this moment could deal a fatal blow to the opponent.
Feeling that familiar sensation from countless battles, Dalen gripped a greatsword from the armory of Delucahim and leaped into the storm.
Amidst the barrage of countless weapons and the overflow of dozens of spells, his sword aimed for the Blood Wraith’s neck.
But then—
A tingling warning overlaid his sense of victory.
The same chilling sense of danger he had felt only once before, when facing the avatar of the evil god Suum.
“Step.”
He abandoned his thrust, defying inertia to pull back just in time.
A crimson aura surged up, staining the space he had just occupied.
Crackle…
A dome-shaped space, distorted like a noisy signal, trembled violently.
A massive magic circle, centered on the Blood Wraith, painted a scarlet veil over a radius of ten meters.
Sizzle…
The red curtain shredded and annihilated everything that entered its boundary.
Lightning bolts and fiery pillars from the storm clouds, as well as the weapons and clones from Delucahim’s forge, were torn apart like thin fabric.
Dalen accepted a new sword and examined the magic circle. It was cleverly integrated into the cracked ground, centered around the Blood Wraith.
“Feigning weakness to draw this magic circle, were you?”
“Humans tend to let their guard down when they think they’re in control.”
In the center of the crimson dome, the Blood Wraith smirked.
It was a valid point, but also a mistaken assumption.
Dalen had indeed gained a momentary advantage, but he hadn’t let his guard down.
In fact, he had heightened his senses to an extraordinary level, drawing on multiple domains at once.
Without such heightened awareness, he wouldn’t have evaded the previous strike.
In this case, it was more accurate to commend the Blood Wraith’s ability to deceive such sharpened senses and draw the magic circle.
”…Not easy.”
Even as an avatar, an evil god was still an evil god.
It was only natural that they wouldn’t be easy to defeat.
And it seemed the Blood Wraith had reached a similar conclusion.
“Very well.”
The dome’s magic began to fade, its power waning. In the center, the Blood Wraith clenched its fists lightly.
“Haa… Hoo…”
It didn’t chant a spell or form a hand sign.
It simply looked up at the storm clouds, slowly regulating its breathing.
“Breathing?”
But even that was enough for Dalen to sense something was amiss.
The Blood Wraith didn’t need to breathe.
Though it resembled a human, its body was composed of a crimson aura, not flesh and blood, created through dark magic.
What did it mean for a body, half-spiritual, to start breathing?
How far could necromancy, the art of controlling the bodies and souls of the dead, extend its reach?
As speculation and hypothesis mingled, Dalen arrived at a vague answer.
”…So this is what it feels like.”
The Blood Wraith had donned a human body.
A scene unfolded like a sponge absorbing paint.
The blazing crimson aura slowly receded, revealing bare skin beneath, as if surfacing from water.
The Blood Wraith’s skin was an unnatural blue, devoid of life, with crimson magical veins standing out like blood vessels.
It was similar in height to Dalen, perhaps slightly taller. Its body was emaciated, lacking muscle or flesh.
”…Uncomfortable and unpleasant. Restrictive and stifling. Do humans live their entire lives in such a state?”
The Blood Wraith’s voice, now embodied, was no longer a telepathic echo but a clear, human voice.
Its expression twisted in discomfort as it shrugged its shoulders and rolled its neck.
Yet the power emanating from it was far greater and more stable than when it wore its aura as a body.
In an instant, the Blood Wraith vanished from its spot.
Boom!
The earth erupted like a bomb, debris flying.
Crash!
By the time the sound of the sonic boom reached Dalen’s ears, he and the Blood Wraith had already exchanged over ten blows.
Clang! Crash!
The Blood Wraith wielded its now smaller twin swords with relentless precision. Dalen countered, switching weapons to parry and deflect the attacks.
The clones that had survived outside the magic circle rejoined the fray, and the storm clouds resumed their assault of fiery pillars and thunder.
But this time, the Blood Wraith wasn’t just taking the hits.
Rumble…
The ground shook unexpectedly.
Over the ridge of the snowy mountains, a massive wave of corpses appeared.
Bones and entrails, limbs and skulls, all aflame with blue ghostly fire, surged over the ridge, crashing towards Dalen and the Blood Wraith.
“Do you know what divine power is?”
The Blood Wraith spoke, its back to the wave of corpses.
Dalen didn’t respond. He didn’t have the luxury to add unnecessary words.
Clang! Crash!
Despite its physical form being more vulnerable to physical resistance, the Blood Wraith’s speed and strength were nearly unchanged.
In fact, the density of magic in each strike was greater and more ferocious, making it impossible to dismiss attacks that could previously be deflected with ease.
“Replacing its form with a human body and controlling it with necromancy…!”
The father of all undead, the source of necromancy.
Temomron was called the god of necromancers for a reason.
A powerful necromancer in this world could seize a living person’s body and soul, turning them into undead without the process of death.
The origin of such a cruel art was all too clear.
Temomron had decided to transcend the limitations of an avatar by transforming it into a human body and controlling it with necromancy.
“With a higher assimilation to reality, the power of dark magic will explode, but the avatar won’t last long…”
“You think I won’t last long in this state. Isn’t that right?”
”…!”
As if reading his thoughts, the Blood Spirit chuckled as their swords clashed for a fleeting moment.
“You’re right. You won’t last long.”
Rumble…!!
From the distant ridge, a wave of skeletons and corpses surged over the battlefield.
Despite the long journey, the wave had grown to more than twice its original size.
“But didn’t I tell you? You’re a most tempting offering.”
Several nearby mountain peaks were already buried under corpses, and the frozen valleys ran with blood and pus.
“To get what you want, you must be willing to take risks. Even gods are no different.”
The Blood Spirit had vanished, leaving behind endless hills and valleys of corpses. Only the towering giants of the dead remained.
As he moved, bones crunched underfoot, and decaying entrails clung stickily to his shoes.
[The sixth tier can overlay its world upon another. The seventh tier goes a step further.]
The Blood Spirit’s voice echoed faintly from somewhere.
[Only a god can move the world itself.]
Uuuuu…
Watching the corpse giants rise and assemble, Dalen finally realized why this place felt familiar.
“Ah, I see.”
It was a scene he had witnessed once before, beyond the monitor.
He had visited the territory of Temomron while playing as a necromancer character, seeking greater power and spells.
“This is your hell, isn’t it?”
One of the five great hells of the evil gods, the “Land of the Dead.”
The Blood Spirit had sacrificed its own body to necromancy to bring hell itself into this reality.
[Indeed. I will capture you, offer your living blood and soul as a sacrifice, and fully manifest my true form upon this land.]
The Blood Spirit laughed, and the very air seemed to press down with a murderous intent.
If hell itself had descended, even the Blood Spirit could temporarily wield power close to its true form.
[Or… if you’re willing to submit to my authority and serve me, we could conquer this world together.]
The oppressive aura of hell momentarily lightened.
The voice of the evil god whispered softly, almost seductively, in his ear.
“Heh.”
Dalen exhaled deeply, his breath visible in the cold air.
The toxic aura of hell invaded his lungs, but his dragon blood fiercely resisted, regenerating his cells.
“I’ve had offers like that before.”
[Oh?]
“And I was persuaded back then. I didn’t care about the means or the cost.”
He swallowed the metallic taste of blood and gazed at the sky. The crimson clouds were slowly being devoured by the ashen sky of hell.
In those days, he had struggled alone to clear the game, viewing NPCs as mere algorithm-driven fools.
It wasn’t until the end of countless attempts that he realized he couldn’t overcome the apocalypse alone.
Since falling into this world, he had sought to gather heroes, indebting them to him, because of that realization.
[So, you’re saying you’re not as desperate now?]
“No. I’m more desperate than ever.”
Dalen chuckled softly at the Blood Spirit’s puzzled voice.
“But unlike back then, surviving alone isn’t the end.”
This battle wasn’t a chance he had stumbled upon. It was made possible by the help and sacrifices of his comrades.
Despite the gap in power and time, Felber was holding off the vampire count alone.
Lucia, Bjorn, Akasha, and Tommy were fending off the undead army on the ghost ship with their own strength.
Thanks to his comrades, he had the chance to face the Blood Spirit one-on-one.
If he failed to seize victory, he wouldn’t be able to face them.
And though hell was spreading across the mountains, hope wasn’t entirely lost.
He hadn’t yet reached the miracle of the seventh tier, which could directly control and move worlds.
But the power to shatter one of the five great hells still lingered beyond the sky.
“Tortanis.”
At the call of the holy sword’s name, a beam of light pierced through the dark clouds.
Thud!
The holy sword embedded itself in the ground, its blue blade crackling with red lightning like a web.
Crackle—┴─┬──┬
Lightning branched out, distorting the space around it.
After his battle with Suum in the north, Dalen had delved into the power of the lightning mage during his long solitary training.
Back then, he had barely opened the sea of lightning by borrowing the power of a presumed great ancestor.
Now, having reached the full sixth tier, he could recreate that miracle without anyone’s help.
Rumble…
The dark clouds, pushed back by hell, split apart.
「The Sea of Lightning that Swallowed Hell」
Beyond the dreary sky, the sea of the heavens revealed itself.
“And you.”
Under the ominous glow of the multicolored lightning, Dalen pulled the holy sword from the ground.
“Who would be foolish enough to trust a backstabbing traitor twice?”
[Wha…]
Crackle—┴─┴┬─
He didn’t wait for an answer.
After all, the evil god of this world line wouldn’t know the past. It was merely the regret of someone forgotten.
He stood here not to hear an answer from that someone, but to inherit what they left behind.
Even if it was nothing but regret.
Even if it was a stain left by none other than himself.
‘If it’s the past I must bear, I’ll carry it all and move forward.’
The moment he made his decision.
「Crimson Spirit」
━━━━━┳┻┳┻┳┻
The red lightning that had split the Palace of Destruction tore through the Land of the Dead that had descended to earth.