Chapter 302
Chapter 302
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 302
Chapter Title: Diversionary Operation (3)
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Demian Haksen had lived a pathetic life.
“You must be insane! Causing a ruckus at a tavern and getting thrown out? Do you have any idea how much dishonor you’ve brought upon our family?”
He squandered the family fortune and hurt his loved ones. In the end, even his family abandoned him.
“Get out. And never come back. If you disobey me, I’ll kill you with my own hands!”
The place that took in Demian Haksen, who wandered the back alleys, was Juan David’s Mercenary Group.
“Young friend. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Hah, your skills are downright ghostly, nothing like your appearance.”
“Welcome to the Mercenary Group.”
The leader, Juan David, wasn’t much of a fighter, but he was a good man. The other members were the same.
“Demian! You bastard! I never thought you’d beat a knight!”
“Brother! I’ll follow you to the end!”
Those were truly joyful times. It was here that Demian first tasted a sense of fulfillment in his life.
Until he met Dorgo, that is.
“Fresh corpses walking right into my lair!”
It was supposed to be a simple request: hunt the monsters appearing near the village.
While carrying out that request in the forest, Juan’s Mercenary Group encountered Archlich Dorgo.
“Aaagh! My arm! My arm is rotting!”
“Brother! Run! We can’t beat that monster!”
“Demian! Go! You run!”
Dorgo killed every member of the Mercenary Group. Except for one—Demian.
“To think a human harbors such immense talent? Even my demonic eye can’t gauge it!”
It was Demian’s talent that piqued Dorgo’s interest.
“But its development is pitifully stunted. Your innate laziness has killed it off.”
“Don’t worry. From now on, I’ll make that talent of yours bloom fully.”
What followed was a time of horrors.
Dorgo dissected Demian’s living body and injected him with strange potions.
Each time the drugs were administered, Demian had to endure an excruciating sense of alienation and agony.
“Please… stop… Please, I beg you… like this…”
Unable to bear it any longer, Demian pleaded desperately with Dorgo.
But Dorgo wasn’t listening to Demian at all.
“Your bones are too weak. Shall I replace them with an alloy?”
“Are you… even listening to me?”
“What about the muscles? Strengthen them naturally? Or swap them for artificial ones?”
“It hurts… so much… I beg you, please…”
“Let’s replace the organs first. That way, you’ll endure the experiments to come.”
“Aaagh! Uaaagh! Stop! Stop it, you dog!”
Contrary to his wishes, the horrific time dragged on.
How much time passed like that? In the end, Demian was completed as the undead Dorgo desired.
“It’s finally done!”
Thinking it was over, Demian couldn’t help but feel joy.
But the true hell was only just beginning.
“…Where is this?”
Before he knew it, Demian was trapped in a dark space.
“What is this? Why won’t my body move?”
His limbs were bound to a chair, rendering him utterly immobile.
Even his head was fixed in place. He couldn’t turn it or move it up or down.
“Anyone… is anyone there? Please, help me!”
After screaming for a long while, a window appeared before Demian.
Surprisingly, Dorgo’s face appeared on the other side of the window. Dorgo examined it closely and spoke.
“Hmm… Just as I intended, your reason has been perfectly erased.”
“You were getting noisy, which was annoying. Now it’s to my liking.”
“From now on, you are my knight. Death Knight Demian Haksen.”
In the process of turning him into a Death Knight, Dorgo had stripped away Demian’s reason.
But it hadn’t truly vanished. Instead, it was imprisoned in this dark space.
With his entire body restrained, there was nothing Demian could do.
Staring at the small window before him was the only freedom granted to him.
“Demian! My knight! Let’s go show off your power now!”
Dorgo immediately ignited the War of Ruin. While Pandemonium’s villains wreaked havoc everywhere, he took Demian to a nearby territory.
“Go. Kill everything in sight!”
Demian’s body faithfully carried out Dorgo’s orders.
It cleaved a farmer tilling his field in half. It tore off a passing shepherd’s head. It trampled a fleeing mother and daughter to death.
“Stop… stop it…!”
Bound to the chair, Demian could only watch the scene unfold.
He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. With his head fixed, he couldn’t avert his gaze.
“Aaagh, Mommy! Mommmy!”
“G-God won’t forgive such deeds!”
Even closing his eyes didn’t block out the screams. No, it wasn’t just the screams.
The sounds of flesh being sliced, torn, and crushed.
All sorts of horrific noises assaulted his eardrums. They burrowed into his mind.
“How dare you harm my territory’s people! Cease this at once!”
Soon, a knight arrived leading soldiers.
“I am Augustus! A high-class knight!”
“Death Knight! Your skills are mediocre for your size.”
“N-No? H-How did you see through my technique…?”
At first, Demian was overwhelmed by the knight. He could barely defend.
But the tide turned. Demian perfectly read the knight’s sword and plunged his blade into his chest, killing him.
After slaying the knight, he massacred the remaining soldiers. Over a thousand troops turned into corpses in an instant.
Blood flowed like rivers. Bodies blanketed the fields. In the center stood Demian, drenched in gore.
“Urk… Ureeegh…”
Unable to endure, Demian dry-heaved repeatedly.
After that, Demian continued killing people under Dorgo’s orders. Before long, the number he had slain exceeded ten thousand.
“Stop… stop it! That’s my body! Stop! I said stop!”
Demian tried desperately to regain control of his body. But it was futile.
“Someone… kill me… please… make me stop…”
Demian gave up on reclaiming control. Instead, he wished for someone to kill him. But it was a vain hope.
He always triumphed over equally skilled foes.
Even against stronger enemies, he still won.
With each battle, Demian grew stronger.
In the end, when he reached the level of perfectly mimicking any swordsmanship after seeing it once, he had no rivals left.
“…”
By then, Demian had given up on everything. He spent his time listlessly seated in the chair.
Until the moment he drove a sword into his father’s heart.
“What… why is Father… no… stop… stop it…”
Demian realized too late and screamed, but it was pointless.
“Brother! What are you doing! Stop! Please stop!”
The same when he severed his younger brother’s neck.
“You’re alive? But that form…”
He couldn’t stop himself from killing his mother either.
“Demian… you must not have been happy.”
In the end, Demian was forced to watch his older sister die as well.
“Aaagh! Dorgo! Dorgoooo!”
In the dark space, Demian wept tears of blood and wailed. Dorgo laughed merrily at him.
“How did it feel to kill your own family with your own hands—the ones who cast you out? I prepared it especially for you.”
Dorgo hadn’t made Demian slaughter his family for any grand reason.
Pure curiosity.
Simple amusement.
He issued those horrific orders just for his own enjoyment.
“Haha, of course you felt nothing. But I had a grand old time. Watching was quite entertaining.”
That day, Demian vowed.
He would kill this damned skeleton with his own hands.
He would avenge his family, even if it cost him everything.
“Dorgo!”
In reality, Demian bellowed. His rage-filled shout echoed throughout the cavern.
“Stay right there! I’ll kill you right now!”
The pent-up fury exploded alongside murderous intent.
“Kyaaak!”
“Kkrrk!”
Even the elves were affected by the killing intent. Wounds appeared on their bodies as if slashed by blades.
“D-Demian Haksen! Calm down!”
Mata shouted, but it was no use. All of Demian’s senses were locked on Dorgo.
At that moment, the dimensional gate began to close slowly.
The thought of letting Dorgo escape made blood vessels burst in Demian’s eyes.
“Where do you think you’re going! Stop!”
Demian charged toward the dimensional gate. At the same time, he concentrated mana into Dawn.
Ever since confirming that the Four Great Demon Kings could open dimensional gates, Demian had prepared for this.
A way to block their escape.
Demian’s swordsmanship had reached the realm where he could sever the gaps between dimensions.
So reopening a closing dimensional gate by slashing it was child’s play.
“I said stop!”
A few more steps.
Just a bit farther, and he could slash the gate. He could kill Dorgo.
His heart raced with anticipation. His mind burned hot, as if about to burst.
That was when it happened.
Suddenly, the magic circle on the floor glowed. Demonic power erupted from it.
At the same time, an earthquake struck.
It wasn’t localized. The entire island was shaking.
And that wasn’t the only anomaly.
“Guhk, kuhk!”
“Aaagh!”
The elves screamed and collapsed. Demian couldn’t help but falter at their cries.
“Can’t… can’t breathe…!”
“Khulk, khulk…”
Their vibrant skin withered rapidly. Their hair turned brittle and dry.
What startled Demian most was that the spirits’ power within the elves was weakening at an alarming rate.
Caught between the elves and Dorgo, Demian hesitated.
He wanted to chase and kill Dorgo right then. But doing so would surely doom the elves.
He had no real bond with them. He barely knew their names.
Yet the screams and curses of the elves he had killed in his previous life held his feet back.
“Damn it!”
Demian squeezed his eyes shut and turned. He rushed toward the elves.
In the meantime, the dimensional gate closed completely. Dorgo vanished entirely.
“D-Demian… Haksen…”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
Demian hurriedly opened his subspace and fed them potions. He also used Dawn’s power to heal them.
“Kuhk…”
“Khulk!”
But the elves’ conditions didn’t improve at all.
They were dying in real time, even now.
“What the hell…”
Demian sent mana into the elves’ bodies to check their status.
“…Your connection to the World Tree is severed?”
Elves draw life force and spirit power from the World Tree. Its sudden severance was killing them.
“…No way.”
Demian expanded his senses. Only then did he realize.
The World Tree’s aura, which had enveloped the entire island, was gone. Something major had happened.
Demian examined the magic circle on the floor.
He’d been too agitated earlier to notice.
This circle was similar to the one at the fortress, but not identical.
The fortress one was meant to inject ‘demonic power’ into the World Tree’s roots.
And this one…
“It’s a magic circle to activate a power.”
Demian finally understood what Dorgo had done to the island.
He injected demonic power into the World Tree’s roots, then activated a devil’s power.
“A power strong enough to affect the World Tree…”
It required at least a marquis-class devil’s power.
And recently, Demian had encountered an even stronger devil.
Babel.
A duke-class devil who wielded the power of ‘Isolation’.
“So that’s why you summoned a devil. To kill the World Tree…!”
That was when it happened.
Suddenly, explosions rocked the walls.
They occurred simultaneously everywhere. The entire cavern collapsed.
The cascading earth buried Demian and the elves completely.
* * *
“Why did you close the dimensional gate in such a hurry?”
Dorgo grumbled discontentedly. Lambda explained methodically.
-Demian Haksen. Capable of rapid charges. Risk of gate intrusion.
“You lot could have blocked him.”
-There is always an ‘if’.
Even after the explanation, Dorgo’s mood didn’t improve.
It was because that Demian Haksen fellow somehow nagged at him.
“I didn’t even get a proper look at his face.”
Dorgo turned away regretfully.
“Empire’s Greatest Swordsman. How have you been?”
There stood the Empire’s Greatest Swordsman, facing off against Hela Fallen, the Ruler of Myriad Flames.
Surprisingly, the battle favored the Empire’s Greatest Swordsman.
Hela Fallen and the Ruler of Myriad Flames bore large and small wounds, but the Empire’s Greatest Swordsman’s body was pristine.
“…”
The Empire’s Greatest Swordsman stared blankly into the distance.
“…The World Tree is dying.”
The World Tree at the island’s center was blackening from the tips of its branches and crumbling away.
“What have you done?”
Rarely, the Empire’s Greatest Swordsman was angry.
“Tell me! What have I just—”
“Why are you so relaxed? I can’t understand it at all.”
Dorgo spread his arms wide. The Four Great Demon Kings stepped forward.
“You can no longer draw support from the World Tree. Meanwhile, reinforcements have joined us.”
Pandemonium’s leader, the Ruler of Myriad Flames. And the Four Great Demon Kings to boot.
“Was that a joke?”
Yet the Empire’s Greatest Swordsman showed no intimidation.
“Sorry for realizing late. I couldn’t laugh.”
Instead, he exuded an even greater aura. The Empire’s Greatest Swordsman hadn’t revealed his true power yet.
“As I thought… it’s you. The danger I must eliminate. Only you. Kill you, and I’ll be free.”
Dorgo addressed the Ruler of Myriad Flames.
“Leos, use it.”
Leos immediately drew a black awl from his bosom.
The Empire’s Greatest Swordsman’s brow furrowed at the sight.
“…An awl made of demonic power? Leos, why do you have that?”
Instead of answering, Leos smiled. Then he stabbed the awl into his own heart.
“Leos?”
The next instant, the Empire’s Greatest Swordsman felt a violent shock.
“Guhk…!”
His mana flow solidified. His blood stopped circulating. Even breathing brought no air.
It wasn’t poison or a curse. This was…
“Using blood ties as a medium to manifest a duke-class devil’s power.”
Dorgo chuckled.
“Even the Empire’s Greatest Swordsman can’t withstand this?”