God-Tier Villain

Chapter 19: Chapter 19

Althea, Duke, and Abel hung bound to a massive stone pillar by demonic vines, looking exactly as he’d left them, Lysara sat quietly off to one side, hands woven into an obscure seal as she worked to restore her condition.

At Soren’s entrance, her eyes snapped open and she retreated into a corner, glaring at him with a gaze full of storm clouds.

"It seems you didn’t do as I demanded." Soren sounded genuinely regretful.

He had ordered her to torture the three of them, with a single rule, don’t kill them.

Clearly, she hadn’t lifted a finger, Lysara was an arrogant snow lotus, however wretched her circumstances, she refused to lower her head.

"Damned demon, I am a human Empress. As if I would ever dance to your tune!"

"I despise the demon race. If I could, I would erase every last one of you from this world."

"Under normal circumstances, I’d have killed these three without wasting a word."

"But I will not do it for you!"

"The more you want me to torture them, the less I will touch them."

As the last word fell, her hand flashed, and a medicinal pill wrapped in crackling lightning and spiritual energy flew at him.

"Since I cannot kill you, then we die together!"

"That is an Emperor-Tier Heaven-Shocking Pill. In a space this cramped, even you won’t survive the blast."

"Blame yourself for not confiscating my storage. Demon! Your own carelessness kills you!"

The pill’s name alone had Althea’s trio shrieking in terror.

Soren’s face didn’t move, calm, from brow to jaw, as if he’d been waiting for exactly this.

He hadn’t confiscated her storage, and thus handed her the chance to strike? Soren was not that careless a man.

"A Heaven-Shocking Pill going off would indeed be a hassle, but in front of me, it will not go off."

He struck out with one palm, the violent demonic energy took the shape of an azure dragon and swallowed the Emperor-Tier Heaven-Shocking Pill whole, along with every arc of lightning and thread of spiritual energy meant to trigger it.

Lysara froze, dumbfounded.

How is this demon so strong? He extinguished a Heaven-Shocking Pill on the verge of detonation?

The palm force rebounded, pill and all, and slammed into the defensive formation she’d barely raised. It punched through and smashed her into the stone wall, blood burst from her mouth.

Soren raised his hand, demonic energy sheathed Lysara and hardened into tough black vines that bound her fast.

A flick of his finger, and the Heavenly Resentment Demonic Sword lay in his hand, he walked toward her, unhurried.

One stroke, the wicked blade slid through the right side of her chest and buried itself in her lung.

Agony whited out her senses, her chest went numb, blood traveled down the blade in a thin line, she couldn’t find the breath to scream.

"I am kind-hearted by nature, I don’t even dare kill a chicken."

"And yet you brought hundreds of thousands of people to lay siege to me."

"Refusing to reflect on that is one thing, but you call me demon with every other breath."

"Do you think that’s appropriate?"

Althea and the other two trembled where they hung, hardly daring to breathe.

This is what doesn’t dare kill a chicken looks like?

Then again, none of them could blame Soren, you provoked the man, was he supposed to not hit back?

Soren drew the sword out, clean, decisive.

A mist of blood spattered across the faces of Althea’s trio, their hearts hammered.

They did not have Lysara’s undying constitution, one sword through anything vital, and there would be no saving them.

The heavy doors burst open.

A woman in a long dress, figure not half bad, stumbled in sobbing, the moment she saw Soren, she ran at him like a drowning woman at driftwood, tripped, and collapsed after a few steps, her trembling hands stretched for the hem of his trousers, her eyes bottomless with despair.

In the next second, Bruce came pounding in after her, grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, hoisted her up, and slung her over his shoulder.

Bruce was bare from head to toe except for a pair of black-and-white striped underpants, which were on backward, evidently he’d been in too much of a hurry to check.

"Master and Master Arnold are back?" Bruce scratched his head, sheepish.

"Blame me, didn’t keep a close enough eye on her, and she slipped out."

Arnold jabbed him in the backside with the skull cane. "Blockhead, you can’t even mind one woman at the King Realm! Get going!"

"Oh! Right!" Bruce jogged a few steps with the woman over his shoulder, then stopped and turned back.

"Master, you’re not angry, right?"

Soren said flatly, "I’m not angry."

"Good, good." Relieved, Bruce hustled off, then, still uneasy, he turned around one more time.

"Master, you’re really not angry, right?"

Soren wasn’t angry, he was very nearly laughing. "Get out of here, you’re an eyesore."

"Okay!"

The whole farce did wonders for Althea, Duke, and Abel, jolting them out of the terror of watching Lysara’s ordeal.

Duke and Althea traded a silent glance, then both looked at Abel, whose face had gone a shade of green.

Duke asked, "Third Brother... isn’t that the concubine you married recently? Soren captured her too? Why did he give her to Bruce?"

Althea added, "She looked pretty miserable, that Minotaur is nearly three times her size! Good heavens, just thinking about it frightens me."

Abel’s scalp crawled as if something were sprouting on top of his head. "Soren! You’re not human!"

Soren only found it funny, looking at him with open contempt. "I’m merely serving you a taste of your own medicine."

"What’s wrong? Spent your whole life bullying others, and now that you’re the one being bullied, it’s suddenly unacceptable?"

He shot Arnold a look.

"This old servant understands!" Arnold grinned wickedly, flame roared from his skull cane and condensed into a blade of purple light.

The purple blade fell, blood-scent flooded the room thick enough to taste, and Abel’s heart-rending screams rang through the fortress.

The Great Emperor Palace.

The Great Demon Emperor Vorian sat with his eyes closed, face ashen, around him, several Matriarchs stood with reddened eyes.

An eerie pressure filled the hall, as if a mountain hung suspended over every head, squeezing the very air thin.