God-Tier Villain

Chapter 12: Chapter 12

The shattered energy crashed back into the Resentment Spring, throwing up a tidal wave.

Under the spring’s will, it condensed again at once, one claw split into two, two into four.

All of them lunged.

Soren smiled in disdain.

With a flick of force he pushed Arnold clear of the claws’ reach. Then, under Arnold’s astonished gaze, he dove headfirst into the Resentment Spring itself.

That brief contact moments ago had been enough, the Strategy Encyclopedia had already handed him the method to conquer the spring.

His body moved like a swimming dragon, his form a phantom, slipping between the grasping claws, like a loosed arrow, he shot straight into the depths.

When the Resentment Spring was first born, it was nothing but an unremarkable stream.

Its origin traced to a demon expert who was defeated and killed, his demonic weapon snapped in the battle and was left behind.

The abandoned artifact spirit birthed a terrible resentment.

As more Demon Emperor experts fell here, the resentment accumulated, and the stream grew into an ancient river of grievance.

Finding the origin of the Resentment Spring was the key, diving in willingly would spare him the worst of the claws.

The steps were clear, retrieve the abandoned sword hilt deep within the spring, form a blood contract using blood essence, then drive it to devour the resentment and regenerate its blade.

Finally, use the sword to sever the sentience born from the spring.

So letting the broken sword that started all this win the recognition of a powerful master broke the resentment at its root.

How petty, throwing a two-hundred-thousand-year tantrum because it was abandoned and ignored.

Fine, let me, your new master, give you what you want.

Soren plunged deeper.

The bed of the Resentment Spring was paved with skeletons, countless bones carpeting the riverbed from end to end.

He had a clear goal and no time for scenery, beneath a mound of white bones, he found it, a ruined sword with nothing left but its hilt.

The hilt was exquisite, a coiled dragon and phoenix wrapped its grip, the carving still crisp, and a red gemstone pierced straight through it, a gemstone covered in cracks.

The moment Soren closed his hand around it, a shocking cold bit into him, as if he had fallen into a bottomless ice cavern, his whole body nearly froze solid.

As expected of the thing that birthed the Resentment Spring, what monstrous resentment.

No time to overthink it, he slashed his finger open, forced out a drop of blood essnece, and let it fall onto the gemstone.

The blood contract took hold.

The process went smoothly, as the contract completed, Soren’s consciousness linked with the broken sword.

A jolt ran through his mind, and its past and capabilities poured into him.

Just as the Encyclopedia said, this sword, Heavenly Resentment, was a wicked thing.

It wasn’t forged with a blade, it devoured resentment to shape one for itself.

Soren willed it awake.

The hilt trembled, then it began to feed, gulping down the resentment of the spring like a bottomless black hole, space twisted and warped for hundreds of meters in every direction.

From the front of the hilt, a blade condensed, glinting with an ominous luster.

Under the influence of the red gemstone, its surface crawled with strange patterns, like a lattice of blood vessels.

"Demonic Sword, Heavenly Resentment!"

"Come!"

At Soren’s low shout, the Heavenly Resentment Demonic Sword erupted with intertwining beams of blood-red and black light.

A terrifying sword qi slashed out and blasted the Resentment Spring apart, cleaving it in two.

At the center of the upthrown spring, a clump of viscous resentment spirit lay exposed, it let out a sound like a crying infant.

Soren charged in, sword first.

The sword sat feather-light in his hand, yet the blade carried a violent, overbearing power.

One strike, demonic light lit up heaven and earth, sweeping everything before it like dead leaves.

The spring’s sentience was slashed apart on the spot, dissolving into mist.

The Resentment Spring, which moments ago had surged with monstrous grievance and clawed at the sky, sank back into stillness.

It looked like nothing more than an ordinary river now.

Soren raised the sword slowly before his face, studying his own handsome reflection in the mirror-bright red blade, he smiled faintly, the power satisfied him.

"From today on, you follow me. As long as I am here, you will be here."

The sword trembled lightly in answer.

Just as he moved to store it away, a surge of power shot up from the depths of the spring, like a black arrow of light.

Soren didn’t blink, he pinched two fingers together and caught the streak in his palm, brilliant firelight burst around him, dazzling as fireworks.

His gaze shifted, then he frowned slightly.

"A scabbard?"

The matching scabbard for the Heavenly Resentment Demonic Sword, its material was peculiar, pitch-black, yet every layer and grain of its texture stood out clearly.

Whatever it was forged from, it wasn’t anything ordinary.

Resting in Soren’s hand, the scabbard gave off a warm, gentle black glow, as if courting his favor.

"Very well, I’ll take you along too."

He sheathed the sword and flashed back to Arnold’s side.

With his ink-black hair streaming like layered flames and the newly won demonic sword at his side, Soren radiated the bearing of a true Great Demon.

Arnold, who had been fretting only moments ago, simply stared.

He had a pile of questions crowding his chest, after a moment’s thought, he tactfully asked none of them.

Soren was clearly not a man who liked explaining himself, as his confidant, Arnold knew his place.

Ask what should be asked, keep the mouth shut about the rest.

"It seems the young master has come away with something incredible!"

Soren gave a small nod. "It went smoothly, we didn’t lose much time."

"This sword is the origin of the Resentment Spring itself, now that it belongs to me, I used it to kill the resentment spirit. The Resentment Spring, the one people call the Demon-Devouring Spring, no longer exists."

Arnold chuckled.

"That spring carried a fearsome reputation. It has always been the greatest obstacle on the way into the Ten Thousand Demons Cliff, and no small number of Demon Emperor experts met their end in it."