Chapter 85
Chapter 85
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 85
Chapter Title: Demonic Realm (3)
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The most difficult part of a siege is, of course, getting over the walls. Whether you break through the gates or take the ramparts, you need an opening for your troops to pour through to achieve your objective.
That’s usually what makes defending so advantageous. But with two swings of Kratos’s hammer, that advantage vanished.
Just like the scattered debris of the wall.
As Kratos slaughtered the soldiers inside the walls, the Holy Kingdom and the mercenary corps stormed in behind him.
“Kill them all! Leave no one alive! They’re not worthy of living anyway!”
Both the Holy Kingdom and the mercenaries were filled with rage. The Holy Kingdom, with fury against the servants of evil. The mercenaries, with fury for revenge.
“I’ll leave this to you!”
“We’ll clean up here and follow right behind you!”
I had no time for this. I had to find and destroy their portal within this vast castle. Otherwise, reinforcements would arrive in an instant.
On top of that, it would be great if I could secure any potential intel.
“Block him!”
“Block him? Hell no! Cover Kratos! Fire at will!”
They tried to stop me from entering the inner castle, but they were thwarted by the attacks from the Holy Kingdom and the mercenaries.
Under the fierce assault, they were too busy defending to pay attention to anything else.
Once I was over the wall and inside the royal castle’s central area, I could feel the frantic movement all around.
The defensive forces were already concentrated over there, leaving only a minimal number of troops here.
Or perhaps only researchers and administrative staff remained.
Something popped up on my spiritual power radar. The place with the highest concentration of people.
Usually, when an enemy gets this far, they have two options: flee or call for reinforcements.
If they weren’t abandoning the Demonic Realm, they’d have to call for reinforcements. And if that was the case, the place where the most people were gathered right now had to be where the portal was.
“Stall them! No, tell them to stall for time! Reinforcements are on the way!”
“Dammit! What the hell is wrong with the military brass?! They marched out so confidently, only to get completely wiped out!”
The place was in chaos. Did the news of Ivan Pons’s death arrive late? Or did they genuinely not know?
Of course, I had killed all of Ivan Pons’s forces on the spot. Every last one of them.
It felt strongly as if they were moving haphazardly in response to the crisis, rather than with any prior preparation.
“Intruder!”
“Eek! Run! What are the guards doing?!”
The researchers scattered in panic the moment they saw me enter the castle, like a swarm of cockroaches.
For now, I just smashed the heads of those in my way and advanced toward the center of the royal castle.
“Just as I thought…”
In the middle of the grand castle, where the throne room would have been, a massive, dark portal stood, exuding its own energy.
The personnel who were supposed to be here had already fled, leaving the area deserted.
“Is the portal black because it’s been influenced by demonic energy?”
Usually, portals are bluish, but this one was black.
Perhaps it was because it was used by those corrupted by demonic energy, but whatever the reason, I could feel demonic energy emanating from the portal itself.
Whoooom—
The portal began to hum loudly. A sign that it was activating.
“Now what should I do…”
Should I smash the skulls of the bastards who come through and then destroy the portal, or should I just break it now?
“Might as well thin their numbers. Even just one. Cracking a few skulls before I break it should be fine.”
Since I was going to destroy it anyway, it was more profitable to reduce their forces, even by a little.
I didn't know how many would come through, but the more, the better. If they started to become a handful, I could just destroy the portal then.
Could they possibly send someone stronger than Ivan Pons right now? Unlikely. That meant whoever they were sending now was just cannon fodder to buy time.
Whoom—
The portal hummed, and they began to appear, cloaked in black light. Traveling through a portal creates a brief window of vulnerability for a few seconds.
Moving through space isn’t such a simple task, after all.
About a hundred of them appeared at once. More than enough.
Thwack—
And before they could even get their bearings, I decisively smashed their skulls one by one with my hammer.
I spun the hammer, linked with my spiritual power, and sent it flying toward their heads. The crowbar in my other hand finished off those I missed.
They had no idea what was happening on the other side.
By the time they realized it, they would have probably already lost dozens of soldiers.
“Ene—my…”
Among them, a quick-reacting soldier noticed the situation and tried to shout, but a crowbar shot out from my hand and pierced his head, cutting him off mid-word.
This was the weakness of portal travel. That’s why guard troops had to be stationed on both sides of a portal connection.
A moment of defenselessness could lead to a major disaster.
If they’d had even a minimal defensive force, they wouldn’t have suffered this humiliation.
But I couldn’t drag this on for too long. They’d surely realize something was wrong on the other side when communications went dead.
Just when I had thinned their numbers enough.
CRASH—
I smashed the portal with my hammer, ensuring no one could cross from either side.
As the active portal shattered, an anomaly occurred, and black demonic energy spread like smoke throughout the castle.
It then billowed out through the castle’s windows. Seeing the smoke, a thought suddenly struck me.
“Ah, shoot. Should I have sent a bomb delivery through before breaking it?”
Uh, well. It's not like I'm Corki from LoL. Let's just leave it at that.
***
“Reinforcements are coming! Just hold on a little longer!”
The knight leading the charge from the front lines encouraged his soldiers with the news of Imperial reinforcements. If the current situation continued, their annihilation was only a matter of time.
He wasn’t just saying it. The portal had been active right before he came here, and he had left a minimal force to guard it, so he believed they just needed to buy enough time for support to arrive.
“Hold on! I said hold on! We just need to hold on a little longer!”
Of course, the one mercenary who had slipped past him was a bit concerning. But unless that man was a Sword Master, it would be impossible for him to find the way to the portal, break through the defending troops, and sever the connection before reinforcements arrived.
CRUMBLE—
A loud explosion and tremor from the rear threw the Imperial soldiers fighting in the outer castle into confusion, and they glanced behind them.
“What… what was that?!”
Billowing black smoke came into view. There wasn’t a huge amount of it, but it was clearly coming from behind them.
From the very place where their reinforcements were supposed to arrive. It was clear something had gone wrong.
The soldiers’ morale plummeted.
“Push forward! We’re breaking through to the inner castle in one go!”
Luther, the first to notice the drop in morale, rallied the mercenaries. This was the perfect chance to finish them off.
“We’ll push to the inner castle and join Kratos!”
Once they broke through here and the purification was complete, they could return to Rzhev.
And the next task would be to rebuild the White Mercenary Corps.
***
With the portal completely dealt with, I set out to explore the castle, smashing the heads of the cockroach-like bastards hiding around and gathering intel.
They were hidden quite well. It seemed some had already managed to escape.
“Hee hee~ Ready or not, here I come~”
It looked like they hadn't utilized this entire vast capital, but rather used the royal castle and its surrounding buildings as dormitories and research labs.
It would take hundreds, or even thousands, of people to fill this capital, which was obviously far more than they had. Besides, this place felt more like a way station for them to spread out across the Demonic Realm.
After all, this Demonic Realm was likely a land of mystery to them as well.
“No—!”
After smashing the skull of a guy who was waving his hands in protest, I scanned the castle grounds. It seemed I had taken care of all the cockroaches on the surface.
“Hmm. The entrance must be somewhere.”
The largest presence on my spiritual power radar was underground.
A massive underground space, as if it were completely empty, was detected, but I couldn't find the entrance down.
They must have built it somewhere inside this castle.
“Here it is.”
As I scanned with my spiritual power radar, I arrived at the far end of the castle.
There, a hidden entrance leading underground was concealed. Or more accurately, a rather thorough security system was in place.
It was the kind of security meant not to stop people from getting in, but to stop something from getting out.
“This looks shady. Smells rotten.”
CRASH—
My fist punched a hole through the thick iron door.
Beyond it was a staircase where not a single ray of light entered.
Relying on my spiritual power, I descended the stairs, one step at a time.
“What is this place…”
Upon entering the largest cavern beneath the royal castle.
A sense of bewilderment made me swallow dryly.
“You goddamn bastards.”
The vast cavern was filled with experimental tubes, containing dozens, hundreds of species of creatures.
It wasn't just humans. All sorts of animals and monsters were contained within them. I couldn't even tell if they were dead or alive.
They were just submerged in an unidentifiable liquid, connected to the tubes. Most of them showed signs of demonic corruption, but some were still trapped in the tubes while maintaining their original forms.
The scene, reminiscent of something I’d only seen in labs on the internet back on Earth, made my stomach churn.
What the hell were they trying to do here? Building such a large-scale laboratory. For what purpose?
In the center of the cavern, inside a tube several times larger than the others, I saw something that made me recoil in shock.
“This is insane!”
That was definitely a dragon. Though only parts of its skeleton remained, its size and shape could only suggest a dragon.
“Ugh—”
Suddenly, the spiritual power inside my body began to churn violently. My spiritual power and this massive experimental tube created a resonance phenomenon, as if they were synchronizing.
The glass of the tube trembled visibly, shaking as if it would shatter at any moment.
“What’s going on? Why is it doing this?”
For my spiritual power to suddenly go berserk like this—it was the first time since I had learned to control it properly.
“Guuuh—”
An unbearable pain, as if my whole body was being skewered from deep within, erupted.
And it wasn't just my spiritual power.
The egg that had been sleeping soundly in my inventory suddenly popped out on its own, without my intent, and rolled onto the floor.
It began to rock back and forth frantically, like a roly-poly toy.
“Gyaaaaaaah—!”
An unbearable scream of agony burst from my lips, and at the same time, the spiritual power inside me erupted outward like an explosion.
Every single test tube in the vast cavern shattered, spraying its contents everywhere.
The subjects inside the tubes collapsed to the floor like limp dolls.
Some of them were still breathing faintly, but even those weak breaths were fading, as if they would die any second.
“Hah… Hah…”
After releasing the burst of spiritual power, I could finally breathe again, and the pain subsided.
Crack—
The sound of the egg cracking echoed loudly. The egg, which hadn't moved at all until now, had started to resonate with the lab and was now cracking.
As if something inside was about to be born.
The egg began to fragment, revealing what was inside.
It was a grayish light, the same color as my spiritual power, though slightly closer to white.
The spiritual power that had filled the cavern began to gather around the egg, brushing past the lifeless experimental subjects on the floor.
Their souls, too, were drawn along with the spiritual power and absorbed into the egg.
“Awooooooo—”
And then, a howl was heard.
A truly pitiful cry.