Chapter 57
Chapter 57
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 57
Chapter Title: Demon King Bulki
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The Demon King, who had come to the valley of Hava in the lands of Gehenna-where nothing grew and nothing bloomed-alongside Iveldra to once again suffer the backlash from inheriting the flames of sin...
"What in the world is..."
stared at the 'other Demon King' that had appeared before him.
"Haa... Why?"
From his previous experience, he had learned the degree of pain that came with the backlash after lowering his horns. But this time, after spewing forth something horrific, he felt agony on an entirely different level.
It wasn't any pitiable wretchedness or the rage born of embracing jealousy.
It was overwhelming despair.
"You should've just stayed like this after all. Right, friend?"
Bulki appeared, bearing the same wings, the same body, and the same broken sword as him.
Bulki's hammer-shaped sword looked like a mere skewer stuck in a criminal's waist for piling up corpses, or a broken iron rod discarded on barren ground, with its hammer head snapped off.
"Iveldra, what is this? Is this the same kind of backlash as before?"
"Yes, Iven."
Iven gazed at what he was seeing all too clearly: the guiding star that had lost its light.
The Hero, once believed to be the sole light in this veiled world, was submerged in the abyss, his broken and torn form wearing that signature smile full of leisure. No, it was less leisure and more a sinister smirk laced with mockery and contempt.
Whether he had already claimed even the imaginary Great Demon King's essence, the Bulki with two pairs of massive horns slowly dragged his feet as he approached the fallen Iven and spoke.
"Friend, you've never once called me that."
He asked with the laugh of a madman.
"Isn't that right? Iven van Ivelhac."
Bulki called Iven's name in a voice like a curse. It felt as if he were invoking not a friend, but the Demon King from some ancient fairy tale.
"How can you speak? How do you even have a voice?"
"I don't know. Whether these memories are real, or if I'm even alive."
As Demon King Iven rose, Demon King Bulki instantly widened the distance and aimed his sword.
"But Iven, there's nothing left of the Iven I knew inside you anymore."
"What are you talking about? I... I'm trying to save you..."
"Look at yourself. Who the hell are you? A knight? A Demon King? Or maybe Iven of Brunown?"
Purple-black karmic flames blazed from Bulki's horns.
"No, you're just the one who abandoned me. A criminal who failed to protect his friend. And I'm merely the product of your incompetence, the you who hoped that Bulki would somehow fix everything."
In that instant, overwhelming killing intent washed over him, and Iven felt an inexplicable despair crawling up his back. Desperately, Iven asked again.
"What the hell are you?"
If the sin that had appeared before was the product of his deepest desire and the inferiority complex from failing to attain it...
Then this backlash from sin stemmed from a guilt he had never wished for. The guilt spoke to its master self.
"I'm the guilt you forgot, friend."
Iven clutched his head with trembling hands. Sobbing with wretched eyes, he screamed as if the words were directed at a ghost haunting him.
"Guilt? I never wanted this! I tried my best! What more could I have done?!"
"You thought about it, sure. Ah, if only I were Bulki, I could've saved the world even if it meant becoming the Demon King. If I were Bulki, I wouldn't have lost myself. If I were Bulki, if only I were Bulki. My friend..."
Bulki closed his wretched eyes, then snapped them open again like the gaze of death.
"If I were Bulki... I wouldn't have lost Lije."
The Demon King aimed the tip of his sword at another Demon King and asked.
"Well, shall we have a spar after all this time, friend?"
Bulki swung his broken sword.
Boom!
Space split open, and a section of the empty valley cracked and poured down. Massive boulders tumbled through the air as if time itself were slowing. Amid it all, Bulki said to Iven.
"Oh, I forgot to mention."
Demon King Bulki now extended one leg forward, sword slung over his shoulder, utterly devoid of any killing intent save for the tip aimed perfectly forward.
"I've always been stronger than you, friend."
Iven couldn't help but flinch at the stance. It was one he had considered but never adopted, as he hadn't faced such urgent combat since becoming the Demon King.
"I'll usurp you!"
Bulki launched forward at a speed Iven couldn't track and swung his sword. The hatred infused in the strike ignited black flames, and realizing he couldn't block it, Iven hastily dodged, tumbling down into the valley below.
"Kugh!"
"Too slow!"
But Demon King Bulki, as if anticipating even that, plummeted straight toward Iven's landing spot wreathed in black flames. The flames crashed down like a comet of calamity, exploding right before Iven's eyes.
Boom!
"Damn it!"
Iven barely escaped the explosion by tearing through space, but with labored breaths, he spotted Bulki extending one leg amid the black flames, poised to leap again.
"Lije must have hated you!"
Demon King Bulki charged once more. Convinced he couldn't evade this time, Iven hurriedly raised his sword to block.
Boom!
He only felt the guilt burning him.
"And I hate you too, Iven."
Bulki instantly swung the clashing sword, sending Iven flying.
Strength, speed, technique, and rage. Iven, embedded in the valley's largest boulder and burning away, realized he was utterly outmatched in every way by the Bulki he had birthed.
"I admit it, Bulki."
And Demon King Iven, gripped by fear and hesitation, opened his wretched eyes.
He twisted his embedded body grotesquely to slip free. Floating in the air, flames of sin rose from his wretched eyes, and black flames-different from before, perhaps even matching Demon King Bulki's-erupted across his entire body.
"I've never called you friend. Not because I thought you were better than me."
Jealousy aimed its sword-its sharply shattered tip-at the guilt that had become its master.
"That's right. Shall we get serious now?"
In response, Demon King Bulki laughed just as Iven remembered.
"I expected it, relied on it, envied it. I even tried to drown you in the abyss, and you're right-I forgot you. And Lije too... I failed to protect a single thing."
Demon King Iven and Demon King Bulki eyed each other's openings.
"But I haven't given up on you yet."
And the two Demon Kings clashed.
Boom!
A duel that would never be recorded in any tale of this world.
It might have been called a mere spar between best friends at its origin, but now it was a battle between the kings of all races and the king of humans-the Great Demon King versus Great Demon King.
The extended leg belonged to the sun fairy, propelling him upward to let the zombie's left arm hang loose, then raise it in the widest possible arc to slash upward and downward. The two swords collided.
'Sword that Follows Behind.'
'Sword that Crushes Behind.'
Everything behind them along the trajectory of their slashing swords warped and burst like ripples on water disturbed by a branch.
With a single swing, the valley imprisoning them collapsed.
"Not bad, friend?"
Demon King Bulki let his rebounding sword drop along the zombie's arm like a whip, slashing upward.
'Sword that Breaks the Enemy.'
Demon King Iven gripped his sword with the red blood savage's right hand to block it.
'Sword that Cuts Through Counterattacks.'
Boom!
Space shuddered and exploded once more.
Each time these two clashed swords, the ground swelled and the sky crumbled. Iveldra thought it resembled the brutal fight between Neshef and Or.
"Feel the weight of your sins! Friend!"
This was the power of the true Great Demon King.
Demon King Bulki extended his hand, generating pressure like celestial authority. Demon King Iven braced his sword on the ground to withstand it, then used the mountain giant's feet and demon heart to bind Bulki midair with shattered fragments of the world.
"You might've done better! But I'm doing my damn best too, Bulki!"
"Don't make me laugh!"
His form vanishing into those fragments was beautiful like stars coalescing, but he exploded madly once more, bursting forth with his broken sword.
"You're just a coward who hid trembling in the stable!"
"I gave everything to protect Lije!"
Soaring into the air, the two sliced through space, twisting toward each other as they exchanged blows nonstop.
Boom!
Whether due to the impossible shock in this world, with every sword clash, the world grew stranger. The sky fell, the sea rose, the earth burned. After slashing relentlessly for a while, Demon King Iven ignited karmic flames to push back Demon King Bulki.
"Then what the hell was I supposed to do? What could I have done?!"
To that wretched scream, his friend-who had once been a Hero but had become an even more wretched Demon King-replied.
"You did nothing. Isn't that what you wanted deep down? You saved no one, changed nothing, and unlike a true Hero, accomplished zilch."
The pitiful fate of one who achieved nothing. Thus, the friend before him now was his cruelest fate-his guilt incarnate.
"So you entrusted your fate to me. Like that little kid from Brunown, terrified his baby bird would fall from the tree and die."
Demon King Bulki ensnared the crumbling world in black flames and rebuilt it. Black seas, black earth, black skies swirled in flames, binding Demon King Iven like the world's gravity crushing him down, rendering him immobile.
"I..."
His arm snapped, his neck twisted.
"You never understood my pain, Iven. No, you don't even deserve to speak of pain."
His horns broke too, tearing into his shoulders again.
"So, friend... you can't beat me."
Iven thrust out only his sword amid the twisting, and Bulki flew at him swinging his own.
"I..."
Boom!
In that moment, Iven exploded.