Chapter 530
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 530
Chapter Title: Bankruptcy (4)
The war against the demons was heating up even further.
Lilith's descent and Park Chan-woo's absence.
These two massive upheavals shook the unstable alliance that had barely united under the banner of the New World Coalition to its very core.
The front lines began to give way, slowly but surely.
Thirteen nights had enveloped the entire Abyss, causing countless allies to desert.
They lost the will to fight upon seeing their homelands burn, kneeling before the primordial terror that was Lilith.
The walls of trust that Park Chan-woo had built crumbled in places.
Through those gaps seeped the demons' mockery and the poison of despair.
But.
Even so, there were those who held their ground to the bitter end.
Zero.
He abandoned his throne and plunged into the heart of the fiercest battlefield.
In Park Chan-woo's absence, he became the faltering coalition army's central pillar through sheer force of will.
His style of combat was akin to art.
There were no flashy techniques or overwhelming destructive power.
He read dozens, hundreds of battlefield situations simultaneously, making the optimal move with flawless calculation, without a single margin for error, holding the front lines steady.
Lee Hyuk-soo and Han Min-oh's growth was also remarkable.
Their master's absence only hardened them further.
"Come at me, you damned demons!"
Lee Hyuk-soo no longer chased Park Chan-woo's shadow.
Through inheriting the Lion King, he fully embodied the weight of a perished world in his blade, beginning to carve out his own "path of the king."
He cleaved through demons with heavy strokes, disrupting their momentum.
And that was not all.
Han Min-oh perfectly supported him at his side.
'Now!'
Kwajik!
Counter.
By striking the flow of mana to disrupt it, the enemy crumpled.
Like this, Han Min-oh read the flow.
The very instant a powerful enemy attack targeted Lee Hyuk-soo's weak point, he appeared like a ghost, severing that flow with a needle-sharp sword.
He was like a famed battlefield surgeon.
What of Radiant Anubis, the fluffy Bokssili?
"For our god!"
"Follow the God of Light, Urbis!"
Inheriting the authority of the God of Light Ahpe, he led the Knights of Light reborn as the "Primal Light," standing against the horde of evil.
Bokssili's presence was the sole sun rising in the pitch-black battlefield.
Beneath the holy light he emitted, even Lilith's curses lost their power, and the faltering allies recovered their wounds and found the courage to rise again.
He was the final guardian preserving the flickering sparks of life in this darkness, beyond the war's victory or defeat.
And among all these heroes' exploits, the most outstanding by far was Adora.
"R-Run away!"
"It's the Abyss Witch!"
"Aaaah!"
She was no longer Park Chan-woo's shadow.
Born from the Abyss and becoming the Abyss itself, yet finally overcoming even that thanks to Park Chan-woo.
Awakening to love, overcoming the witch's curse, she had been reborn as the "Queen of the Night," standing at a realm incomparable to before.
Her stature now surpassed even the Twelve Lords.
She had become an existence even the great lords dared not touch lightly.
Adora alone held the central front line, where the densest concentration of demons gathered.
With every step she took, a pitch-black veil of night unfurled from beneath her feet, engulfing the battlefield.
Everything within the veil fell under her dominion.
The demons' magic scattered into the void, their bodies were eroded by shadows, and their souls devoured by the death spirits she commanded.
She alone was an army.
The goddess of war, or the calamity of night itself.
But the problem was.
'Time.'
Time.
Despite the heroes' desperate struggles, the tide of battle remained unfavorable.
The massive voids left by Park Chan-woo's absence and Lilith's descent could not be filled by their heroic efforts alone.
The demons' numbers seemed endless, and Lilith's curses continued to bind the coalition army's feet.
'We have to hold out.'
That was Zero's sole command.
In the Abyss's depths, the system's final judgment was underway.
They just needed to endure until the six lords completed their bankruptcy and fully vanished.
Once the demons' heads fell, this ragtag horde would collapse on its own.
They just needed to hold out until then, even if only a few hours.
But the demons were not fools either.
Realizing time was running out, they united in the truest sense for the first time.
Even the arrogant demon kings who had checked each other and held back with sneers now joined the front lines, gripped by urgency as they realized their lives hung in the balance.
The news of their lords facing bankruptcy paradoxically became the catalyst uniting them.
"The Abyss is ours!"
"Show them the true power of demons!"
Once the lords vanished, their own fates under those lords' dominion would be thrust into peril.
To survive, to win, they united under the banner of "demons" for the first time.
The battlefield instantly transformed into a hell unlike any before.
Berserkers who didn't hesitate to self-destruct, demon kings summoning their entire domains to blow themselves up, even black mages charging forward while igniting their own souls with forbidden ancient magic.
The demons staked everything they had, launching a final all-out assault on the coalition army.
The defensive lines were crumbling.
No matter how perfectly Zero orchestrated his tactics or how miraculously the heroes fought, it wasn't enough to stop enemies throwing everything away.
'Too many.'
Adora thought.
Too many demons.
Cracks formed in the giants' shield wall, the dragons' mana reserves hit bottom, and even the Knights of Light, overwhelmed numerically, began to fall back bit by bit.
The silver lining was that the other lords and elite warriors, who had served as the battlefield's anchors, were returning one by one.
Thanks to Park Chan-woo traversing the entire Abyss, resolving the thirteen nights.
With the curses threatening their homelands lifted, they gathered once more under the coalition banner.
The reassembling forces brought a temporary lull to the front lines.
But the fundamental problem remained unsolved.
Lilith's bankruptcy and the lords' erasure were progressing slower than expected.
The system's collection process was like liquidating a vast empire's assets—requiring absolute time.
The true "night" had not yet ended.
Adora eyed the deepest part of the demon lines, the center from which all darkness emanated.
There sat Lilith.
She had manifested thirteen nights across the entire Abyss, scattering horrific curses across the battlefield, plunging everything into chaos.
'Why isn't she stepping in?'
......Yet Lilith herself had not entered the fray.
She merely observed the carnage with an expressionless face.
No rage toward Park Chan-woo who bankrupted her, no anxiety over her empire crumbling.
Why?
Facing imminent bankruptcy and existential erasure, why was she so serene?
Was the Abyss God of Sorrow, Greymor, her original vessel's owner, resisting in her final moments?
No. It wasn't some shallow struggle.
Adora knew instinctively.
That being was waiting for something.
Aiming for something amid this field of carnage.
Like a predator with a vast web, patiently awaiting its prey to walk in.
Her stillness felt like the eye of a storm, sending chills down Adora's spine.
Then.
Finally, the first lord vanished.
As a signal of his erasure, tens of thousands of demons who followed him screamed simultaneously, turning to black ash and scattering.
The soul-bound servitude to their lord severed with his disappearance.
A massive hole tore open in the battlefield.
The coalition army cheered, trying to exploit the gap.
But Adora did not move.
Her gaze remained fixed on Lilith upon her throne.
And she saw it.
Srurrr...
The black ash left by the vanished demons.
The remnants carrying their final grudges and despair gathered in one place, riding the wind.
As if drawn by an invisible magnet.
Its destination was right at Lilith's feet.
[......!]
Adora's eyes widened in horror.
Lilith was "absorbing" their deaths.
Far beyond mere mana absorption.
The history of the erased existences, all the karma they accumulated, their very beings—she was incorporating them into herself.
The system's decree did not stop.
With each lord's erasure, countless demons perished alongside them.
The battlefield became buried in piles of demon ash.
Victory for the New World Coalition seemed within reach.
But Adora felt no joy.
Instead, only a bone-chilling cold gripped her heart.
She finally realized.
'No way...!'
What Lilith had been waiting for.
What she had been aiming for.
This was no defeat.
It was the most perfect form of "sacrifice ritual."
Lilith had turned Park Chan-woo's judgment against her into a tool.
The system's forced erasure.
It was the process of reverting existences to their purest energy form—as "materials."
Lilith could imagine no finer sacrifice for her resurrection.
Her great lords who followed her, and billions of her kin.
"......All of them."
A trembling voice escaped Adora's lips.
"She planned to offer them all as sacrifices to truly descend."
Until now, she had been an incomplete descent.
Primordial chaos forcibly contained in the narrow vessel of Greymor.
But now, using the six lords' authorities and tens of billions of demon souls as offerings, she sought to manifest her true form in this world.
Bankruptcy?
On the contrary, it was the perfect justification and process to shed her outdated shell and be reborn as true calamity.
Kurururururung!
When all the lords vanished and even the last handful of ash was absorbed by Lilith.
The entire Abyss screamed.
Behind Lilith, standing on the battlefield, countless "black hands" rose with the momentum to engulf the Abyss, forming massive wings.
And from within them.
The true "night."
The true "evil."
......Opened its eyes.