Chapter 642: Shadows of the Infernal Peaks
After casually deleting the Old Grandpa, Arthur then calmly sheathed his sword and unsummoned it as if nothing had happened.
The remaining Denerth Sect disciples stared in shock, their faces pale with terror. They exchanged panicked glances, realizing just how far out of their league they were.
"W-we’ll make you pay for this!"
One of them stammered, his voice shaking as he slowly began to back away.
"Y-yeah!"
Another chimed in, though fear was obvious in his voice.
"W-we’ll call our senior brothers! Y-you’ll regret this!"
And with that, the Denerth Sect cultivators turned and ran, stumbling over rocks and debris in their haste to escape.
Their voices trailed behind them, full of hollow threats, but none dared look back.
As they disappeared into the distance, Evan finally caught his breath, his grin still wide but more controlled now.
"Senior brothers? Man, these guys don’t give up, do they?"
Arthur smirked, glancing at the spot where the old man’s spirit had been moments before.
"At least we know they won’t be bothering us for a while."
Evan laughed and shook his head, before reminding him.
"Only until the next cliché."
◇ ◇ ◇
As the group of Denerth Sect disciples descended the mountain, still seething with the promise of revenge, one of them—the same disciple who had been loudest about his sect’s superiority—glanced around nervously.
His face twisted in frustration, and he spat out.
"I’ll call Senior Brother Feng! He’ll take revenge for me, and they’ll all—"
Before he could finish, a flicker of movement flashed in the corner of his vision and his words froze in his throat.
Suddenly, there was nothing. No feeling below his neck, no sensation in his body.
He looked down and saw something surreal—a headless body, blood gushing out in a torrent. He blinked once and realized it was his body.
And not just him. The other ten disciples—each of them stared in disbelief as their decapitated bodies stood for an impossible second, heads still conscious as they fell through the air.
They watched their bodies collapse beneath them in a fountain of blood before everything turned dark...eternally.
Then, their lifeless heads hit the ground.
Beneath them, the earth cracked open and tendrils of wood and vines emerged, wrapping around their corpses.
Slowly, they were dragged underground, disappearing beneath the surface as the earth closed up once more, leaving no trace that they had ever existed.
From the top of a nearby, jagged mountain peak—one of the very same Arthur had cleaved in half earlier—a figure stood, watching the scene coldly.
His yellow, flower-patterned eyes flickered in the morning light as he murmured under his breath.
"Fools. Always looking to complicate things for us."
The man was tall and lean, his dirty blond hair tousled in the breeze. His greyish skin gave him an almost sickly appearance, enhanced by the dark eyebags beneath his uniquely patterned irises.
A faint stubble traced his sharp jawline, while two prominent horns curved upward from his head.
A tail, long and sharp, extended from his lower back, curling and resting against the cracked ground beside him.
He wore a brown trench coat atop a black button-up shirt and trousers.
This man, was an Infernal Devil.
Had Arthur seen him with his own eyes, the boy would know that this man was not just any random Devil, but an Infernal Archdevil.
The aura this Devil emanated was no less intense than Alvey and McEnda’s, though it was restrained to just a few feet around him.
He was the one who had beheaded those Denerth Sect members just now, to prevent them from calling whatever ’senior brothers’ they wanted to call and drawing more people to this place.
His eyes remained fixed on the dungeon entrance, watching as the group of six had disappeared inside.
"So they’re entering there, huh? Perfect for us.
It’s a dungeon we’ve cleared before, so we know the layout. We’ll set up an ambush at the exit point."
Right after he said this, another figure approached from behind him. This newcomer, too, radiated the aura of a Transcendent, an Infernal Archdevil like the man with flower-patterned eyes.
"We’ll catch them right after they’re done."
The two devils stood side by side, gazing at the dungeon entrance when the second Archdevil narrowed his eyes and asked with a frown.
"Still, that series of dimensional rifts a few days ago... spat all these outsiders onto the continent.
What caused it? I initially thought none of them would pose a threat, considering they were Inferior Transcendents at best. But to think that there was a group capable of threatening us..."
Just then, a third figure stepped forward, a woman, this time. She wore a long, flowing dress that rippled in the wind, along with a stern expression on her face.
"Anyone with Destruction law energy needs to die. They would be capable of destroying the link Vonun would create."
She glanced at the Archdevil with flower-patterned eyes as she spoke, revealing his name to be ’Vonun’.
From her words, it was clear that the Infernal Devils on this continent were targeting anyone who possessed Destruction law powers.
Whatever plans they had for this continent, the law of destruction was a direct threat to it.
Not just destruction, but ’Annihilation’ and ’Extinction’ as well. The three laws that made up the ’Destructive Trio’.
Though there were Transcendent Cultivators who dabbled in the Law of Destruction that had fallen onto this planet, most of them had already been killed—hunted down one by one.
And now, Arthur and Evan were their next targets.
From what they had observed, Arthur’s destruction power was far greater than the dozen Transcendents they’d eliminated combined.
Not surprising considering he was the only being on this planet with an 80% comprehension in the law.
When Arthur reunited with Evan yesterday, the Infernal Archdevils noticed that Evan, whose Destruction energy had initially been overshadowed by Arthur’s, was not to be underestimated.
They could see he was a Legendary, yet his power was more potent than what some Sovereigns wielded.
They instantly concluded he was one of those nonstandard type beings who could defeat those above their Realm.
Letting those boys run scot free was not an option. They had to be eliminated.
Sometime after the party of six had entered the dungeon, a fourth voice echoed across the mountaintop, calling out the names of the first 3 in order of appearance.
[Vonun, Jegunul, Yujia.]
The humanoid figure owning that voice appeared from a spatial gate, but unlike the other three, his body was translucent, like an astral projection hovering just above the ground.
[You can do whatever you want with the others, but leave the dragon boy. He’s mine.]
Vonun, the first Archdevil, frowned at the request.
"What’s so special about him?"
The newcomer didn’t hesitate to respond.
[He has the bloodline of a White Dragon.]
"?!"
Vonun’s eyes widened, disbelief flashing across his face. A White Dragon? Here?
Jegunul, who had been standing silently beside Vonun, turned toward the newcomer, his expression brightening with realization.
"If that’s true, then you should be able to—"
[I know.]
The newcomer interrupted, cutting Jegunul off before he could finish. His gaze remained fixed on the dungeon entrance as he continued.
[Kill the others, but leave that boy. I need to absorb his soul to obtain the keys and control his body perfectly, achieving 100% synchronization... immediately.]
His voice grew quieter as he muttered the last part to himself, but the other three heard him loud and clear.
[If I have his body, I will be able to return to my full strength. My full Transcendent power.]
Unlike the other three Archdevils standing at the peak of the mountain, this one neither had horns nor a tail but he was a devil all the same.
A Soul Devil, to be precise.
Soul Devils weren’t born from flesh and blood, but from the amalgamation of countless dead souls that had wandered the Infernal Dimension, unclaimed by the law of death.
For one reason or another, these souls avoided the law of death’s pull, combining into one until they formed a singular entity.
The most powerful soul within this amalgamation became the core—the one around which all others revolved, and the personality of the Soul Devil was based on that as well.
But while Soul Devils had their strengths, they also bore grave weaknesses. They lacked physical bodies.
Any attack, whether it was imbued with energy or purely physical, would damage their spirit directly.
For a Soul Devil, pain was not something felt in the flesh, but rather the very root of their existence.
And this particular Soul Devil, who called himself Azzonnin, sought one thing above all else—a physical body.
As the core soul that made him up was that of a White Dragon, he could only enter a body with the same bloodline.
At present, Azzonnin’s power was capped at the Superior Legendary Realm, and he would be unable to breach the ceiling into Transcendence until he secured a suitable physical vessel.
Now, Evan was his target.
As Azzonnin made his desire clear, Vonun, the Archdevil who had used his wood manipulation powers to bury the corpses of the Denerth Sect disciples earlier, placed a hand to his chin.
"That means I will have to concentrate my attacks on the silver-haired boy. From what I can sense, he is the greatest threat.
I can’t pinpoint the exact Existence Realm he is in, but when he obliterated that forest yesterday, I caught a glimpse of his real destruction power.
Now, we have seen that he also controls time, as he slowed the movements of those foolish humans who I just killed."
Vonun then turned to the female Archdevil and spoke.
"I do not think he is a Transcendent with how young he is, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.
Yujia, I’ll count on you to seal his time powers. There’s a chance he might possess the ability to see the future, and we cannot afford that."
The Female Archdevil nodded, a small grin creeping onto her face as the thought of locking down a time manipulator thrilled her.
With his immediate plans laid, Vonun turned his attention back to the dungeon and he muttered a command.
"Come out, my pets."
At his feet, the shadow he cast began to writhe and ripple, expanding into a vast pool of darkness.
From this darkness, twelve pairs of crimson eyes stared out at the entrance to the volcano dungeon.
