Atonement (2)
Rumble…!
The scorching heat of the inferno distorted the sky beyond the ridge like a mirage.
Seeing the waves of dark crimson flames pouring down, Dalen chuckled softly and tightened his grip on his holy sword.
“Doing well, aren’t they?”
The core of this operation was to create a one-on-one confrontation between Dalen and the Blood Lord.
Though he had entrusted Felber and the others with the rest of the army, it was by no means an easy task.
The Blood Lord was gathering forces from across the Vampire Count’s territory to strike the Northern Three Kingdoms.
The troops stationed on the Blood Lord’s flagship, the Ghost Ship, were the most formidable among the assembled forces.
Dozens of pureblood vampires and several fifth-tier necromancers. The Count himself was a monster who had reached the sixth tier centuries ago.
The sheer size of the army was enough to engage in a full-scale battle with any decent military force.
Facing them with just four people was absurd, so Dalen had fully unleashed his domain and immediately sent the enemy spearhead towards his companions.
Judging by the crimson inferno pouring down like waves, she was doing her utmost to support the team.
“Now, I just have to do my part.”
He let the fleeting thoughts pass by.
Rumble…!
As the massive hand of a giant corpse loomed before him, Dalen thrust his holy sword into it.
Crunch!
The blade pierced through the tough skin and muscle, feeling as if he had driven it into a cliff.
It was an illusion, as if the very earth had risen to crush him.
No, it wasn’t an illusion.
The corpse golem the Blood Lord had raised from the land of the dead was essentially a mountain peak turned into a giant, with size and mass to match.
Each finger was dozens of meters in diameter and hundreds of meters long, and the palm was larger than a football field.
The summoned creature, defying the laws of physics, was a natural disaster in its own right due to its sheer mass and speed.
Rumble…!
The simple act of reaching out carried an unimaginable force.
No matter how strong Dalen was, he couldn’t withstand it.
The magical foothold he stood on shattered helplessly, and his body slid along the direction of the palm.
[This is the power of the Great Hell! Mere humans cannot defy the laws!]
Perhaps thinking he had turned the tide, the Blood Lord’s voice boomed in Dalen’s ears.
Dalen smirked.
“Yeah, right.”
He exhaled.
Even as he was pushed back, he remained unfazed.
He relaxed his legs and took a deep breath.
The blood that started from his dragon heart heated up, channeling magic throughout his body.
The heat and pressure of the inferno warming his muscles and organs were easily withstood by the newly implanted dragon bones.
‘Tortanis.’
The moment he called the name of his holy sword.
Crackle—!
The blue blade responded to its master’s will, enveloped in multicolored lightning.
“Return to the Underworld.”
Ashen shadows flickered in the air, and Dalen’s form vanished from the spot.
Huh…?
The giant corpse, intending to crush Dalen against another mountain peak, hesitated at the sudden change in weight from its hand.
But by the time it turned its gaze, green lightning was already crashing down before its eyes.
“Pierce the Green.”
Crack—!
The green lightning cleaved through the giant’s shoulder.
One of Deltarion’s secret techniques, capable of splitting a mountain peak into a valley.
The giant, with an entire arm severed, clutched its wounded shoulder and retreated, but Dalen had no intention of giving it time to recover.
Zap!
With a spark, Dalen’s form crossed space.
Unlike the subtlety of “Return to the Underworld,” which skirted the edges of space, this technique tore through the fabric of space itself.
Though less discreet, it was far swifter. In front of the giant’s head, Dalen’s hand extended, a bright yellow lightning spear forming.
“Thunder Spear.”
A spear of lightning with power rivaling the concentrated breath of the Red Spear, one of the top warriors among the Thirteen Great Dragons.
With a light flick of his left hand, the spear of lightning struck the giant’s head at the speed of a thunderbolt.
Boom—!
As the lightning clashed with dark magic, a massive sphere of light erupted.
The heat and curse devoured the giant’s head in an instant, melting its upper body entirely.
Watching the sphere of light, Dalen took a step forward and casually waved his hand.
“Argh!”
At the moment his fingertips flashed with multicolored light, the Blood Lord, attempting to escape in the form of a blood mist, was struck by the lightning and flung away.
Thud! Thud!
The pale body, like a falling meteor, bounced along the ridge like a skipping stone.
After crashing into rocks several times, the Blood Lord finally managed to regain his balance, though he was battered and bruised.
Zap!
In a single step, Dalen landed before him. The Blood Lord staggered, waving his hand.
Rumble!
The ground split open, spewing forth the dead. From skeletal soldiers to ghostly knights, and massive abominations of flesh and entrails.
With the Great Hell as the source of his magic, the Blood Lord needed no incantations or rituals.
But it wasn’t just the land of the dead that had found its master.
The sea of lightning, long waiting for a new master, finally acknowledged Dalen’s right.
“Sudden Rain, Vibrant Blue.”
Crackle!
Blue lightning swept through the dead.
Hundreds of thick and thin lightning bolts spread like plant roots.
Like a pitchfork roughly tilling the earth, the lightning plowed through the dead, sparing neither corpses nor spirits.
“Ugh!”
The Blood Lord, veins bulging on his forehead, raised a castle of bones.
Crack—!
Like a sharp knife slicing through thick bread, the green lightning cleaved the white castle in two.
“Rise!”
At his command, a colossal corpse snake, kilometers long, stirred.
“Die.”
With a single swing of the yellow lightning spear and holy sword, its head was severed, and it thrashed before falling still.
Despite the Blood Lord’s endless summoning of hell’s minions, the moment the multicolored lightning flashed from the sky, all that remained were the charred remnants of the dead.
It was an inevitable outcome.
While it was impressive to manifest even a part of the Great Hell with just an avatar, it meant he had only brought a limited portion of its power.
“Spell Armor: Quadruple Layer.”
Zap!
Dalen, clad in four layers of spells like armor, appeared before the bloodied and kneeling Blood Lord.
The stench of burning flesh rose from beneath his feet. The spell armor encasing his feet was scorching the corpses of the dead.
“You…!”
The Blood Lord swung his hand. Instead of magic, blood gushed forth.
Before the magic could even stir, Dalen had drawn his holy sword and slashed it.
The Blood Lord’s hand, severed at the wrist, fell onto the charred ground.
“Ah…”
“I’m curious.”
Dalen spoke, and another hand was severed.
A silent cut. The flesh dropped with a thud.
The Blood Lord’s head turned stiffly. His gaze blankly fixed on the severed hand.
“How does it feel to be a powerless god?”
”…”
“How does it feel to kneel, stripped of your will, like the people you drained for four hundred years?”
“Do you think you’re any different?”
The Blood Lord muttered. He glared up at Dalen with wide eyes.
“You humans also slaughter livestock! You confine animals that should roam free, and keep chickens under roofs until they forget how to fly!”
Crack.
The faint noise slipped from his bloodied lips. Even as he spewed blood, he waved his severed wrist in defiance.
“I never took without giving. I fed and clothed them! I provided safe land, a home, and a bed! In return…”
“Spare me. You call that a fair trade after stripping away their free will?”
Slice!
The sword, charged with lightning, cut through the bone and tendons of his thigh.
The Blood Lord, trying to rise in protest, collapsed back down.
“No matter how beastly humans act, they’re still human, you bastard.”
He once thought humans were no different from beasts.
Perhaps he believed that when he was weary of the harsh, transactional relationships of society. When he repeatedly told himself that life was about surviving alone.
But he was wrong.
Humans were different from beasts.
They could defy their most primal instincts for the sake of others.
Sometimes, they willingly chose death for someone who wasn’t even family or a friend.
Like the inquisitor who stood in front of Dalen for the first time, taking the blow from the blue-scaled tail and dying.
Or like Charina, who sacrificed her life for millions of people whose faces and names she didn’t even know.
Perhaps the god of war, who descended to sacrifice himself for humanity, was the origin of this holy sword.
Reflecting on it, there were many such people on Earth. Humans were capable of sacrificing their lives for a greater cause.
“In that sense, you selfish evil gods are no better than beasts, aren’t you?”
“You…!”
The last words were cut short as the holy sword severed the blood spirit’s neck.
“Save the rest for hell.”
The head fell with a thud beside the severed hands.
Watching the eyes blink, still not drained of blood, Dalen bared his fangs.
“When the time comes, I’ll bring down not just a part of your hell, but all of it.”
Crunch—
The head crumbled to dust.
The decapitated body collapsed and instantly turned to ash, scattering in the wind.
It was the backlash of using one’s own body as a necromantic tool. The side effects of forcibly summoning hell were finally manifesting.
Sssss…
The land of corpses that had covered the mountain range quickly dissipated, and dark clouds once again filled the ashen sky of hell.
Dalen watched the disintegrating hellscape and flicked the blood spirit’s ashes off the holy sword.
The collapse of this hell would surely deal a significant blow to the land of the dead in the fantasy world.
Even if it was a trick, the blood spirit had summoned not just a shadow of hell, but the great hell itself. The powers and minions destroyed here would be equally destroyed in the real hell.
In the end, he dug his own grave.
He had scorned the fallen god who descended, yet he was no different in the end.
Rumble…
Under the slowly returning storm clouds of the snowy mountains, Dalen spotted a familiar corpse where the blood spirit had crumbled.
[You have discovered the corpse of the necromancer who screamed at the end of the world.]
”…”
Retrieving it now wouldn’t be wise.
It was better to go and help Felber and the others, who were still fighting to buy time.
The aftermath of unleashing the full power of the thunderstorm weighed heavily on his body and mind, but by mixing in other realms, he could somehow finish the fight.
Just as Dalen decided and was about to move—
”…!”
The necromancer’s corpse suddenly opened its eyes.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl.
The twitching fingertips of the corpse, which shouldn’t have moved, reached out.
“What the…!”
Flash!
A burst of light shot from beneath the trimmed nails.
The stream of light grazed Dalen’s collar before he could react.
[You have retrieved the corpse of the necromancer who screamed at the end of the world. You inherit its abilities.]
[Inheritance Reward: ]
The notification window that filled his vision stuttered and froze.
“What the hell is this…!”
His vision went dark.
It was the snowy mountain.
Not the one ravaged by the battle with the blood spirit, but the one beyond the storm, where the blizzard always raged.
Crunch.
In the backyard of an empty cabin, Dalen stopped walking without realizing it.
”…”
He corrected his earlier thought. The mountain ridges visible beyond the cabin were not the same as always.
The mountain range stretched from below the cabin to the horizon.
Those white peaks were covered in countless black dots.
Naturally, Dalen’s sharp eyes could clearly see what those dots were.
“Sigh…”
They were gravestones.
Millions, perhaps tens of millions, of gravestones covered the entire mountain range.
Standing in the middle of this vast cemetery, Dalen slowly raised a hand to rub his throbbing temples.
Damn, what kind of mess is this?