Chapter 634: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU!?
On the battlefield, his wives faltered under the Demigod’s power. Vinea slid back through the mud, her spear cracked and trembling. Alice panted, while the Spirit beasts lay unconscious in their human forms. Even Ciela’s arrows lost their radiance and burned before reaching Mephisto.
Yet none of them could give up, because they suddenly felt it. The pulse that reverberated from his chest, from that strange black crystal beyond the walls.
Levia’s arms held her shield up with blood oozing from her nose and ears. She slammed her shield into the wall to add another layer above Asmodeus. The iron dome trembled, covered in cracks, nearly breaking.
Her eyes shifted from the battle to the man lying silent, when he suddenly twitched.
“Eh… did he just move?!”
Sariel and Riel hummed in either side of Asmodeus’s ears, their voices gruff and raspy from overuse, yet their lips pressed against him in unison, carrying their mana directly into his body, hoping to help him.
A final flicker of light passed from their bodies into the crystal before they became limp and collapsed against his chest.
The dome shattered.
Instantly, a massive aura exploded like a raging tsunami.
Which enveloped the land completely.
“Is this Aura?” Mephisto froze in mid-air, his wings flapping to avoid the dense, misty fog. It might have been the first time he felt this strange feeling that made his efforts useless. “What… is this?”
The only answer came in a second burst of aura, this time like a tangible wave of cool mist, which wrapped around the battlefield, seeping into each of his wives. The black crystal inside his chest pulsed once more.
And with a deep thump, his heartbeat filled the battlefield.
***
Everyone froze momentarily, unaware of what had happened.
The brainwashed troops all snapped out of their strange haze, holding weapons at their former allies and brothers as their memories returned. Cries of pain, sorrow and despair echoed through the darkness.
A black mist covered the frozen citadel.
Ba-Dum!
Ba-Dum!
The heartbeat thrummed through the world, as if the planet’s heart itself was beating. Every soldier, whether orc, demon, goblin, elf or beastkin, froze. The sound created a pressure that rolled out in all directions, crushing bone and marrow into submission. It formed a massive dome that encased the entire Demon Kingdom.
Thump.
Thump.
Each pulse from the crystal felt heavier, more deliberate, as if reminding the world itself of its reason for existing.
Levia’s arms shook violently as her broken shield slipped from her hands, her whole body trembling as ghostly hands caressed her body, embracing her from behind as something flowed into her abdomen rapidly.
A dense, demonic energy.
“My Lord, Asmdoeus… this is you. I can feel your aura, but it’s a little different.” Her voice cracked as her head flung back from a sharp jolt in her stomach, the tattoo on her pelvis seeping into her flesh and fading.
Vinea leaned on her spear, which hummed with a high-pitched noise. Before the darkness surged and enveloped her, she closed her eyes. Confidently allowing herself to fall into it, a smile on her face as it poured into her nose and mouth. “Honey, you’re okay?”
Alice coughed blood, forcing herself upright, her greatsword trembling in her grip. Her tiger’s unconscious form glowed faintly, as if responding to the same power. “Ryuji…” she whispered, her voice trembling between hope and rage.
Yumiko’s eyes widened the moment the darkness blinded her.
She didn’t resist or fear it. Instead, her lips curled into a smile as she spread her arms. “It took you too long, you idiot, I was worried.”
The same phenomenon followed for all his women. Their tattoos sank into their abdomens, fusing with the divine shards Asmodeus implanted in them all.
However, the most confused was Mephisto.
He snarled, wings and body swelling with his divine aura, burning the area around him. “No… no, this is impossible. I killed you. I killed you!” His emerald aura flared wildly, twisting, writhing around him like a storm desperate to snuff out the rising presence.
Enraged, he turned towards the source, his figure becoming more deformed, barely resembling Alan the human Hero anymore.
Thump!
The black crystal cracked.
Inside a beautiful spherical web of scarlet threads appearing along the surface, not like anything natural but carrying an eerie atmosphere, like veins, they pumped slowly, spreading outward as if the stone itself came to life.
From his chest, dark, bloody mist bled into the air, thick and heavy, wrapping the unconscious Sariel and Riel in a protective shroud. The two succubi stirred, smacking their lips as they rolled onto their backs in their exhausted state.
Levia finally managed to turn around, knees hitting the stone as tears streaked down her bloodied face. “M…My… King…..” she whispered in a fragile voice. “Please…. tell me you’ve returned to me.”
The aura surged as if to respond to her, the unconscious body wrapped in a layer of scarlet thread. This time, it wasn’t the oppressive weight of a god’s divine core, but it carried a gentle, affectionate warmth as it caressed her cheeks.
However, in the depths of that gentle aura, she could feel something different. It was something sharper, hungrier. Where divine power bound, this power devoured. It didn’t descend from heaven; it rose from the abyss.
All the crying souls that screamed became at peace, slowly fading as their energy fused with the sleeping Demon King.
And every soul that had been screaming inside Mephisto’s chest, every shard of power meant for his divine rebirth—suddenly split.
Half wrenched away, torn screaming into the crystal in Asmodeus’s chest.
Mephisto froze mid-air, his eyes bulging in shock. “W-what…!? No! That power is mine!” His body convulsed as emerald light bled from his chest, dragged in two directions. “Stop it! STOP IT!”
He grasped at the air as if desperate, but the souls and divine aura streamed into the sleeping demon like a broken tap. The wails of the dead became more like the song of Sariel and Riel, a charming and affectionate tone, as if reaching bliss and utter euphoria.
Only a small portion of the souls remained within Mephisto due to his desperate attempts to avoid losing his power.
The other half vanished into Asmodeus, where the black crystal drank deeply, its scarlet veins pulsing brighter with each beat.
Thump.
The battlefield screamed from his power.
Everything that existed in the land dropped… kneeling with an expression of awe, as if a god had descended, their eyes clear, and hearts calm.
Elves dropped their bows.
Knights knelt as if giving an oath.
Orcs gripped their chests and bowed; the entire area became under control.
And with this reverence, the aura grew stronger, denser and now, like a beautiful ink-black shade, it seeped into the mana-enriched ground and the hearts of each warrior with the crimson threat in their chest.
Ciela raised her bow with trembling hands, her eyes fixed on the wall. She was crying openly now, but her voice remained sharp and steadfast, breaking through the storm. “Do you hear it, everyone!? The heartbeat of our master, our beloved… our king!”
A roar answered her. Orcs, knights, beastkin, elves—exhausted, bleeding, half-broken—lifted their weapons again. The tide surged forward once more, even as emerald flames tore through their ranks.
Mephisto’s face twisted in pure fury. “NO! IT BELONGS TO ME! THIS SHOULD BE MY POWER!”
He dove for the wall, scythe raised to split the iron dome in two!
The mist grew dense, swallowing the wall whole. The black crystal pulsed one final time, shattering into a thousand motes of obsidian light that sank back into his chest.
And from within the fog, his voice came, low and resonant, carrying across the battlefield like a tolling bell:
“This power is mine, Mephisto.”
The fog thickened, swallowing the wall and blotting out even the emerald blaze of Mephisto’s aura. The battlefield went silent, as though the world itself dared not breathe.
Then came the sound of stones grinding, flesh shifting and finally the creak of armour.
Asmodeus moved.
His fingers twitched first, curling into fists that cracked the stone beneath him. Then his chest rose, slow but steady, air searing his lungs as if he were breathing for the first time.
Sariel and Riel still clung to him, unconscious but smiling faintly, their bodies warmed by the pulse beneath his skin. Levia’s exhausted eyes widened, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on her cheeks as she whispered, “M…Master…?”
The mist parted.
Asmodeus sat up. His horns lengthened, jagged edges glowing faintly crimson. His once-torn wings stretched outward, feathers burned away and were replaced by obsidian black threaded with scarlet light. His eyes opened, no longer the gold of a demon king nor the gentle blue of a human, but two pits of burning black, veined with living crimson flame.
Every soldier on the wall felt it.
A weight different from before, something that surpassed even the monster named Mephisto that triggered pure terror in their souls.
Mephisto staggered back in the air, his scythe trembling in his grip. “No… no, that’s not possible. You’re dead! I killed you! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU!?”
Asmodeus rose to his full height, Blood Reaver materialising in his hand, much different now… like an extension of Asmodeus himself.
The axe’s threads writhed like hungry serpents, drinking from the mist that rolled around him. The black crystal was gone, fused into his chest, and in its place pulsed a heart of shadow, every beat sending ripples of dark power through the battlefield.
“I was Ryuji Vincenzo,” his voice rumbled, layered with something inhuman, echoing across the plain. “I was Asmodeus, the Demon King.”
He lifted his weapon, the aura around him flaring like a crimson eclipse, blotting out the emerald blaze of Mephisto’s flames.
“But now…”
The fog snapped outward in a tidal wave, knocking back the possessed in droves, scattering even the strongest of them like leaves in a storm.
“…I am something more.”
The armies roared as one, the battered defenders surging with newfound fury.
Mephisto’s eyes widened in horror as Asmodeus stepped forward, wings unfurled, his voice tearing through the silence:
“I am the Demon God.”