Babel, which had been floating in the skies above the battlefield, was collapsing. The Demon King’s castle, which Incarceration had reigned from for the past three hundred years and beyond, was falling apart in front of everyone's eyes. Everyone fighting on the battlefield suddenly raised their heads to look at the sky and take in this sight.
Regardless of whether they were part of the Divine Army or the demonfolk armies, everyone felt shocked.
The demonfolk armies sworn to the Demon King of Incarceration had never once imagined that the Demon King’s Castle floating above their head would ever collapse. No matter how strong the foes who stood against the Demon King of Incarceration might be, the demonfolk believed that their strength would be nothing when facing the Demon King.
‘No,’ everyone suddenly realized.
Babel might be collapsing, but the Demon King had yet to be defeated.
Even as Babel fell to pieces, a cloud of sinister, ominous, and pitch-black dark power was spreading from the castle. Even the sun of divine power that Eugene had raised into the sky was engulfed by the darkness spreading from Babel. So even though the source of the large shadow that had been covering the battlefield was collapsing, the fall of Babel had caused the skies to turn into night.
“Eugene…!” Ciel shouted in alarm. She was drenched in the blood of the demonfolk and had been gasping for breath.
The excessively thick darkness was blocking all light, but Ciel’s senses were able to detect the presence of light still remaining within this pitch-black night.
“That’s…,” Carmen’s face turned pale as she shook off the flesh clinging to her fist.
The cloud of darkness that had continued to spread as Babel collapsed behind it was beginning to swirl. The ruins of Babel that had been falling to the ground suddenly froze in place.In the middle of all this chaos, someone raised his head. It was the Demon King of Incarceration. Standing in the center of this frozen scene of Babel’s collapse, Incarceration took a deep breath. As the Demon King of Incarceration breathed back out, the ruins of Babel and the clouds of darkness began to pulse in resonance.
Even while standing in the center of these immense clouds of dark power, the Demon King of Incarceration was still spitting up blood.
When he had excised Balzac from within himself, it wasn’t just Balzac’s poison that Incarceration had been forced to remove. Balzac’s treachery had indeed posed a deadly threat to the Demon King of Incarceration. If he hadn’t excised everything that Balzac may have touched, the chain that connected Incarceration to Destruction, something that Incarceration could never allow to be broken, may have been severed.
After taking a few moments to catch his breath, the Demon King of Incarceration muttered with a dry smile, “What a terrible situation.”
Rooooar!
The frozen ruins of Babel were suddenly converted into clouds of dark power that scattered into the air.
“And deadly as well,” the Demon King of Incarceration said with a sigh.
He had been forced to excise far too much of himself. The Demon King of Incarceration chuckled as he coughed up blood once more.
But the chain… it hadn’t been broken. As such, Incarceration wasn’t going to die. However, that was all that Incarceration had managed to prevent. Even if he didn’t die, if he was no longer able to fight, what was the difference between that and being defeated? Rubbing his blood-soaked lips with the back of his hand, the Demon King of Incarceration raised his head.
On the other side of the swirling vortex of darkness, he spotted Eugene.
“It seems you’ve also suffered quite terribly,” the Demon King observed.
It was the price that the heroes had paid to be able to push the Demon King of Incarceration to this extent. For an opening blow, they had used the Demoneye of Fantasy as a catalyst to combine reality and dreams into a separate world. Then Eugene had overlaid multiple uses of Ignition before summoning dozens of copies of Levantein and Empty Swords.
The backlash from exerting such great power wouldn’t have disappeared just because their actions had been performed in the dream world. The recoil of the power they had used within the dream world had still come looking for them after they had woken up from their dreams.
Eugene silently looked around him, still holding his sword in his trembling hands.
He looked at Molon, who was panting roughly, unable to catch his breath, and Sienna, who was chewing her bottom lip with a pale, tired look on her face. The Saints were still in a state of resonance with Eugene. However, while their current state couldn’t be described as being all that bad, it wasn’t great either. Moreover, the only reason Eugene had yet to collapse and was still able to remain standing was that the Saints were bearing part of the backlash that Eugene had incurred and were continuously healing him.
Now, the Demoneye of Fantasy had closed. It wasn’t completely broken, and Noir’s soul also hadn’t been destroyed, but there was no way for them to reopen the Demoneye of Fantasy in their current battle.
“Can you still fight?” Eugene asked his comrades.
Eugene wasn’t in a great condition either. In fact, he felt like it wouldn’t be strange if he collapsed at any moment. However, he could still put up a fight. The backlash from their battle in the dream world might have exhausted both his mind and body, but in the end, what they had done hadn’t actually taken place in reality, so Eugene still had access to his full reserves of divine power.
“The Demon King of Incarceration hasn’t fallen yet,” Molon simply grunted out in response.
As Molon stretched his hand out, his axe that had been floating within this cloud of darkness flew into his hand. This axe that Molon had been swinging all his life was so worn out that it looked like the handle might snap at any moment, and its blade was also cracked here and there. However, it still wasn’t broken yet.
Molon grinned as he gripped his axe with both hands and said, “I can feel it, Hamel.”
The darkness around them was still stirring.
Molon’s eyes pierced through the thick veil of darkness as he stared at the Demon King of Incarceration and said, “The Demon King of Incarceration seemed so far beyond us, but now… I feel like we might be able to defeat him.”
“There’s no might about it,” Eugene responded as the sounds rising from the battlefield below came to a stop.
Everyone was too busy looking up at the sky to fight.
Eugene placed his left hand on his chest as he growled out, “We will defeat him.”
His fingers dug into his chest. Flames ignited in the exhausted depths of his heart. As an explosion was set off within his overworked internal universe, Eugene’s divine power was set on a rampage. The dying embers had flared back into life once more.
“That’s right,” Sienna agreed, doing nothing to stop Eugene from using Ignition.
She had also realized that they would never get a better chance than this one to defeat the Demon King of Incarceration. They had gotten good use out of the Demoneye of Fantasy and Noir Giabella. And the plan that Balzac had kept hidden even as he was dying had scored a critical hit on the Demon King. As a result, they had barely managed to corner the Demon King of Incarceration. If they retreated while having second thoughts now, they would never be able to defeat the Demon King of Incarceration.
Sienna’s eyes glowed with light. Mary’s dried-up petals unfurled once more.
Whoooosh!
A storm of soul power completely pushed back the spreading cloud of darkness. The figure of the Demon King of Incarceration, who was standing there all on his own, was revealed.
A beam of light drew a line across the sky. Eugene’s Divine Sword shot out a slash so fast that it looked almost like a lightning bolt as it flew toward the Demon King of Incarceration. Still coughing up blood, the Demon King of Incarceration raised his hand to block the attack.
Cracracrack!
Fragments of the forcefully scattered slash splashed across the walls of Pandemonium. With a loud rumble, the walls and the city itself were sliced apart.
“Kyaaah!” Melkith, who had been rampaging through the city, let out a scream.
Melkith, whose eyes had been fixed on all the destruction she was causing around her, finally raised her head to look up at the sky.
In the sky, repeated bursts of light shattered the darkness. The stream of slashes that Eugene was shooting off seemed like they would be able to cut down the Demon King of Incarceration at any moment, but the Demon King of Incarceration refused to back down and kept blocking all of the slashes with his bare hands.
[It’s the Demon King of Incarceration!] Tempest shouted.
He might have withdrawn from Hamel’s side because he didn’t want to interfere with the decisive battle, but Tempest also harbored great resentment towards Babel and the Demon King of Incarceration. The Wind Spirit King still remembered the defeat and humiliation he had suffered at their hands three hundred years ago. That was why he had always set his sights on returning to the north for the past three hundred years.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Melkith cried out in alarm as she suddenly lost control of her Omega Force.
As Tempest riled himself into a storm, he began moving Omega Force’s arm on his own.
Rumble!
Tempest wasn’t the only one shrugging off Melkith’s control and running wild. As the other three Spirits Kings also shared the same determined desire to defeat the Demon Kings, they began to follow Tempest’s lead.
“Kyaaaaah!”
Accompanied by Melkith’s scream, Omega Force threw out a punch. Despite Melkith’s objections, the Spirit Giant launched a beam of electricity that pierced through the sky. The four Spirit Kings poured so much of their energy into the beam that it ended up completely consuming Melkith’s Omega Force.
“If you go and act like that, what am I supposed to do?!” Melkith screamed as she fell from the sky.
The beam of electricity was strong enough that, in his current state, the Demon King of Incarceration was forced to spare some of his attention to deal with it.
Boooom!
With a swing of a hand, he managed to change the trajectory of the beam, but the lightning that struck Incarceration the moment he made contact with the beam tore up his arm and left it spurting out blood.
Molon’s axe suddenly appeared above the Demon King’s wounded arm in a downward swing.
Crack!
The battered arm was completely torn off Incarceration’s body by the axe. The Demon King of Incarceration, who was left staggering from the force of the plow, clenched his teeth as he immediately twisted his waist.
Boom!
An earth-shattering kick sent Molon’s body flying backward.
Everyone knew what would happen next. It was how things had always gone. Once Molon had created an opening by placing himself on the line, Eugene’s attack would immediately follow up on their target.
Their cooperation worked perfectly this time as well. Molon had sliced off Incarceration’s arm, then baited the Demon King into a kick. And into that opening came the Divine Sword.
The Demon King of Incarceration knew all of this as well. He could see it all happening with his own eyes. However, his body was struggling to keep up with what his mind was telling him he needed to do.
Incarceration just barely managed to dodge the blow. But even that wasn’t done completely. Blood sprayed out from the graze that the Divine Sword had left on his waist.
‘He’s slower than before,’ the Demon King of Incarceration noted.
Compared to earlier, when Eugene had stacked his Ignition several times over, it was only natural for the Hero to have gotten slower. However, the Demon King of Incarceration was even slower than that. That was because Incarceration wasn’t able to shake off the effects of all the damage he had accumulated.
“Hahaha….” Even with his waist sliced open, the Demon King of Incarceration was still laughing.
Incarceration’s shaking hand was clenched into a fist.
Crack!
This time, instead of dodging it, Incarceration met Eugene’s next attack head-on. The Divine Sword shattered as blood sprayed from the Demon King’s fist.
Lights suddenly flashed on the other side of the spray of blood. Sienna’s spell has summoned up countless stars before launching them at the Demon King of Incarceration.
Boom boom boom boom!
A massive explosion engulfed the Demon King of Incarceration.
[Hamel!] Tempest suddenly shouted inside Eugene’s head.
Without any hesitation, Eugene reached into his cloak. He pulled out the Storm Sword Wynnyd, which hadn’t been drawn since Tempest had finally made a contract with Melkith[1]. His divine flames, which had been stoked by his use of Ignition, engulfed Wynnyd.
[Aaaaah!] Tempest roared fiercely.
Eugene’s divine flames were imbued into the storm pouring off of Wynnyd. A huge burst of wind blew away both the Demon King of Incarceration and the explosion that had been covering him. If this had been earlier, Tempest’s winds wouldn’t even have been able to shake the Demon King of Incarceration. However, the current Demon King of Incarceration was finding it difficult to control the movement of his own body in these raging winds.
‘No,’ the Demon King of Incarceration shook his head.
Even if he had been in good condition, Incarceration felt like this storm wouldn’t have been that easy to simply shake off. In the midst of this violent storm that was slicing pieces off of his body, the Demon King of Incarceration laughed in admiration.
Three hundred years ago, this wind spirit had been pitifully weak. Although anyone else would have called the winds that the spirit had summoned a storm in its own right, to the Demon King of Incarceration, it had been nothing more than a gentle breeze. At that time, the world had been on the brink of destruction. With the world being trampled under the boots of the demonfolk armies and the Demonic Disease spreading all over the world, the power of the spirits had been at its weakest.
However, now things were different. The three hundred years of peace that the Demon King of Incarceration had granted had been enough to change the world for the better.
But hadn’t the people grown accustomed to peace and become weaker? One might think so, but that hadn’t been the case when it came to the spirits. The World Tree may have been sick for most of those past three hundred years, but it had since recovered. As the goddess who had originally transformed herself into the World Tree, Vishur Laviola was able to lend the World Tree’s power to the violent winds being raised by Tempest and the other primordial spirits.
[Hamel!] Tempest shouted once more.
Eugene could also sense the power brewing within that raging storm. As the wind pushed against his back, Eugene felt like he could almost hear the laughter of the Sage currently resting within that distant World Tree. The former spirits of the World Tree that had become a part of Eugene’s body in the past also heard this call and responded in their own way.
Fwooosh!
Thanks to this, the Divine Flames that had already been stoked by Eugene’s use of Ignition began to burn even more fiercely.
It wasn’t just the spirits that had grown in power. Levantein, which had become one with Eugene, also began to glow with an even stronger light.
On the other side of the World Tree, beneath that far-off sea, a figure of light suddenly formed. The flickering light solidified into the appearance of a giant man stretching out his hand toward Eugene. Eugene’s eyes seemed to have transcended time and space when he took in this sight.
The giant of light parted its lips and said, “Agaroth.”
As the figure brought its hands together, its excess light was transformed into a giant sword.
The Light, no, the God of Giants whispered as he slowly extended the sword to Eugene, “Take this sword.”
The Divine Sword that Eugene had been holding evaporated, as a huge sword that only a giant could have comfortably wielded suddenly appeared in his hand. Without feeling any apprehension or surprise, Eugene tightened his grip on the sword. Then, he brought Wynnyd, which he still held in his left hand, close to the God of Giant’s or the Light’s Divine Sword.
[Aaaaaah!] Tempest let out another roar.
Grumble!
The blade of Wynnyd, which still had a storm roiling off of it, trembled violently before shattering into pieces. The fragments of the sword transformed into shards of light that swirled wildly within the storm. The prayers of the Saints, who had sounded like they might lose consciousness at any moment, were suddenly strengthened. Instead of continuing to whisper their prayers weakly, Anise and Kristina’s voices rose in a hymn of worship.
The swirling light grew into a gigantic figure in the air. The Spirit King of the Wind had somehow fully descended into the world. This descent came neither in the form of lending his strength to the holder of his contract nor in the form of an incomplete descent that had all sorts of strings attached. The huge sword of light had opened up a door that had allowed the Spirit King’s true self to descend into the world.
Even seeing it with one’s own eyes, this sight was hard to believe.
The Demon King of Incarceration burst into laughter as he watched this impossible scene take place right in front of him, “Hahahaha…!”
Pitch-black dark power quickly coalesced around the Demon King’s hands. The Demon King of Incarceration was preparing his own attack to meet the mounting threat from what could only be described as a miracle.
“Graaaaah!” Molon let out a warcry as he charged back into the fray.
Molon was all too aware of what he should be doing now. As Eugene’s Incarnation and Greatest Warrior, what Molon should be doing now was opening up a wide path so that Eugene’s attack wouldn’t be interrupted. Sienna also understood her role as she waved her staff. Beautiful sparkles flew off of Mary and struck Molon.
Time suddenly seemed to be flowing faster around Molon. He instantly leaped through the remaining space between them and closed in on the Demon King of Incarceration.
Poppop, poppoppop…!
The veins on Molon’s arms bulged as his muscles swelled with strength. Instead of shattering the handle of his axe, the terrifying strength being transmitted through his grip was causing the axe head to vibrate.
Molon’s positioning and his incoming attack were forcing the Demon King of Incarceration to make a choice. But no matter whether Incarceration chose to respond by striking back, withdrawing, or trying to block, he still wouldn’t be able to face the force of that Divine Sword with his full might.
“Are you so eager to die?” the Demon King of Incarceration questioned Molon.
By pushing his body even further, Incarceration felt that he could still open up a path to escape. But the price for doing so definitely wouldn’t be light.
Parting his blood-drenched lips in a grin, Molon simply said, “I have faith.”
Was it faith in his own strength? Did Molon believe that he would be saved by a divine miracle? Or perhaps, did Molon just have faith that Eugene would make good use of the path he would be opening at the cost of his life, thus ensuring that his death wouldn’t be meaningless?
His tone filled with respect, the Demon King of Incarceration issued Molon a compliment, “Amazing.”
Long ago, what the Demon King of Incarceration had been desperately lacking from his comrades was just that sort of faith. While feeling a bitter regret along with his respect, Incarceration stretched out his hand.
Rooooooar!
The Demon King’s dark power collided with Molon’s axe. The boiling turbulence that erupted between them knocked the Demon King of Incarceration's arms up and shattered Molon’s axe while sending the man flying backward, spraying out blood.
Eugene’s next move came neither too late nor too early. The moment Molon opened up a path that would lead directly to the Demon King of Incarceration, Eugene swung his Divine Sword. Behind Eugene, the manifested Tempest also swung a fist wrapped in light.
The darkness that had covered the sky was erased. Not a single speck of darkness or gloom remained in the sky. The brilliantly shining sky was then split apart by the force of Eugene’s slash. Immediately afterward, the storm raised by Tempest’s fist blew away everything, even the split in the sky. In the midst of this violent storm, the Demon King of Incarceration was left unable to resist and could only erupt with even more blood.
Then, the Demon King finally fell.
As he crashed into the earth, Pandemonium was left shaking.
1. This is the first time it is explicitly stated that Tempest formed a contract with Melkith. ☜
Openbookworm & DantheMan's Thoughts
OBW: The Demon King of Incarceration is such a badass. He just casually reattached his severed head in between chapters despite already being on the brink of death, and he’s lost enough arms to make an Avalokiteshvara.