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Path to Prosperity - B3 Chapter 42
🕑 Added 2024-12-11 11:00:09 +0000 UTCIt was over. The Demon Lord was dead, defeated by the Beast King.
The Beast King breathed heavily, his chest heaving up and down, blood spurting out of the wounds all over his body with every breath, but he was still alive. He glanced at Percy, his eyes two blazing suns, and roared again.
Why are you looking at me like that? Showing off in front of me won’t make up for injuring Hyean. You were willing to sacrifice my Monster Card!
Percy was still deflated, and worried Hyean would die, but it wasn’t like others cared as much about their Monster Cards. Most Cardists didn’t care too much about their Monster Cards. In their eyes, Monster Cards were mere tools meant to empower Cardists. They were as valuable as the price they had to pay to acquire them. That was it.
That was why the Beast King didn’t care about the Gnoll Warlord. The Monster Card was not as valuable as someone’s life. It was better to sacrifice a summoned Monster than someone else.
Percy couldn’t deny the Beast King’s logic, but there was more to it in his case. The Monster Cards had been Ego-enhanced from scratch to keep up with him. Each Ego-enhancement bound them closer to Percy, creating a firmer connection to his soul.
To Percy, the Monster Cards were far more than mere tools used to summon Monsters. They were part of him, literally.
“Let’s get the children and leave this place,” Percy said, seeking distraction, only to remember something else, “Did you know about the accessible mana vein under the Demon Lair?”
The Beast King was high and mighty, pushing his chest out while striding to the children with a glimmer in his eyes when he heard Percy.
“A mana vein?” He spun around, the pride and happiness replaced by suspicion, “The Beastlands have a mana vein to access, just like the Kainesh Kingdom. That shouldn’t be a surprise…but you say there is a mana vein under this filthy place?”
The Beast King approached Percy limbing, his facial features distorted in pain and his eyes narrowed to tiny slits. The adrenaline coursing through his body subsided slowly, forcing the Beast King to endure his body’s pain and soreness.
“The Demons knew about that. They didn’t come here for the children. They came for the mana vein, didn’t they?”
Percy couldn’t be certain, but that would have been his guess as well. He nodded.
“They must have had plans with the children as well, but it might have been an experiment while they do…I don’t know what the Demons have been doing here. All I know is that–...” Percy was interrupted as a deep, eerily cold rumbling rang through the cavern hall.
First, more cavern tunnels collapsed – their way to the deepest part of the Demon Lair was now blocked –, and something in the hall’s center stirred. The Demon Lord’s corpse twitched.
The Beast King was the first to react. He walked ahead, blocking the Demon Lord’s view of the children behind, ready to sacrifice his worn and torn body if needed. Percy grasped Dragon Fang tightly and listened to his churning blood. However, it was his Abomination that responded by writhing and wiggling in discomfort.
Percy instantly recognized what was going on.
“The Devil,” He whispered to the Beast King, who tensed up even more.
The Beast King was out of mana, his stamina drained, and he couldn’t move around well with severe injuries like this. He was far from his prime state.
A high-pitched laughter, a giggling not unlike the Archyeas, rang out. It echoed through the cavern hall, its source seated in the center. The Demon Lord’s corpse sat up straight. It didn’t bother getting up from the ground simply because it was unnecessary. The presence gushing from the Demon Lord’s carcass was terrifying, to say the least. Darkness oozed from its body, cracking the crimson carapace and engulfing the corpse in darkness until it looked nothing like the Demon Lord of the Minos.
“It looks like I was a little bit impatient,” A familiar voice spurted out of the Demon Lord’s lips. It was the same voice Percy recalled from his nightmares, “But patience was never something I was good at.”
He suppressed the trace of regret and drowned it with an arrogant laughter, much deeper this time.
“But that doesn’t matter anymore. It’s already too late. Way too late! You cannot do anything to stop my descent,” The Devil roared, his endless hunger filling the entire hall.
The cave survived the fight between the Beast King and the Demon Lord, but the endless hunger seeping into the tiny cracks in the stone all around the hall was too potent. The cave tremored, and the cracks expanded.
“Like always, your kin doesn’t pay attention to what’s truly important,” The Devil tried provoking Percy, but his mind was blank. Fear had taken root deep inside his heart, and he was too weak to subdue it, “My puppets’ deaths won’t change anything. They did everything I wanted them to do. I know all I need to know.”
“You will all die!!” The Devil roared in the Demon Lord’s body.
As the Devil’s words swept through the vicinity, the Demon Lord started disintegrating as more and more darkness and hunger burst out of him. Percy and the Beast King noticed that right away and were ready to make a move, but the rumbling behind them stopped both in their tracks.
The Demon Lair was about to collapse, which was already bad enough for them, but there were also many innocent, demonified – unconscious – children behind them. The envoy would reach them soon if they weren’t about to turn around to escape certain death, but the ceiling and cavern tunnels didn’t care about that. They threatened to collapse at any moment, squashing and burying the defenseless children alive.
The Beast King glanced at Percy briefly and nodded to the Demon Lord’s corpse.
“He is all yours!” He roared before rushing to the children. He transformed into a flash, leaving behind a trail of blood as his wound tore open, but that sacrifice was necessary. The Beast King arrived amidst the group of unconscious demonified children, barely in time to crush several smaller rocks that would have crushed the defenseless children.
Percy sighed in relief but tensed up again when the Abomination wiggled again. This time, however, the Abomination was…excited?
He looked at the Demon Lord, whose carcass was still possessed by the Devil, shrouded in the Devil’s power, and smiled as he reciprocated the Abomination’s excitement.
[Demon Lord(Lord of Minos) – Demonic/Titled/Devil’s Possession – 231,834,911 Prosperity.]
His hair stood up to its end as Percy called upon the Abomination. He took a deep breath as his lips parted and said the only word that had to be said.
“[Consume]!”
The Abomination didn’t hesitate and burst out of his palms. Percy groaned in pain as far more darkness than usual shot out of him. His hands cracked and Percy wouldn’t be surprised if his hands would be broken in dozens of spots after today. But he didn’t care. His eyes glowed vibrantly as he allowed the Abomination to go wild.
The streams of darkness gushing from his hands combined and enlarged, forming a monstrosity much larger than Percy ever expected the Abomination to be able to grow. However, the Abomination’s size wasn’t the only thing that had changed. It was faster than usual and appeared before the Demon Lord quickly.
The Devil’s laughter ceased, while the darkness wreathing the Demon Lord burst forward. They shot toward the Abomination as if trying to attack and destroy it, but it was to no avail. The Abomination’s rows of razor-sharp teeth, dozens upon dozens, tore through the darkness, devouring it as it opened its maw wide enough to swallow the Demon Lord’s carcass whole.
The Demon Lord couldn’t resist the Abomination. It was dead, incapable of doing anything, but the Devil wasn’t the same. Bits of the Devil’s power resided within the Demon Lord. It wasn’t much, but it was massive compared to the Devil’s Touched.
Percy was no more than a mere human, whom the Devil had touched, but there was one major difference between Percy and the others who Devil’s Touch had afflicted.
His entire being had embraced Devil’s Touch, consumed it, and transformed it into a part of him. Then he nourished it, over and over again.
The Abomination wasn’t what it used to be. It was faster, more durable, far stronger, and…hungrier than it used to be.
The Devil roared one last time, unleashing his hunger and fury into the surroundings, but that was all he did. The darkness engulfing the Demon Lord's corpse retracted suddenly after the Abomination devoured the first strands of darkness and pulled back.
The Devil’s presence disappeared as quickly as it appeared.
