Chapter 526: Chapter 526: Desdemona
Chapter 526 – Desdemona
Diatah watched impassively at the dozens of women surrounding her from all sides, their eyes carrying different emotions, but the foundation of all of them was the same.
Anger.
Anger at her. Anger at what she had been doing inside their family. Anger at the natural disdain that surfaced every time she looked at them. Anger at her overwhelming existence among their fleeting ones.
Diatah Taraji Desdemona was truly not surprised by this. Such events were not rare in her own home. A home where power reigned supreme, and where each family member preyed upon their own without mercy.
Fathers killing their sons. Sons killing their fathers. Wives poisoning their husbands and refining their children into evolution materials. Brothers killing each other, only for the sister to collect their remains and forge a weapon from their lingering hatred.
That was the family she had been born into. The Desdemona. A family of pure, unfettered monsters with no care for their own, let alone for anyone else.
Diatah had been born there and groomed into that cruelty, shaped into a weapon embodying everything dark and evil of that bloodline. There had been billions of reasons for her never to reach her current level, nor her long lifespan.
Yet she had.
How could such a being — one who had survived things these women would never comprehend — be swayed by their coalition?
She almost laughed. But she found them unworthy of even that.
"As you wish." She said, almost dismissively. "If you wish to battle me, I certainly won’t stop you. Recent events have left me quite irritated."
She slowly unfolded her arms, letting them fall at her sides. She stretched her right hand. Reality parted like a pulled veil, something appearing through the wound left behind.
A staff.
Black, with crimson marks running all over it.
The wives’ hair immediately stood on end, like frozen ice shards, at the sight of it. Nothing needed to be said for them to understand — one strike from that weapon would make them wish for death.
Their hearts shook like struck drums.
"I won’t kill you." Diatah continued smoothly, twirling the staff with mastery, cracking the space around her. "But you will wish I had."
"Oh, this is going to be so interesting." Anya grinned, her voice trembling slightly underneath. "Against you, I won’t have the luxury of toning down my Destruction Aspect."
"In other words," Red said, standing just beside her, "we pour out everything. Everything that exists within us. Drain ourselves completely."
"Only then," Ester added, her mother Sari continuing the thought, "would we climb higher on the Ladder. Isn’t it what Noah loves to say, ever since our time in the Spirit World?"
"You can only be reborn stronger after killing the past version of yourself." Emmie quoted her husband, then winced. "Noah can be so cringe sometimes."
They smiled, even though every inch of their bodies wanted nothing more than to run from the grinning Demoness in front of them.
"You plan to use me as your whetstone?" Diatah grinned. "Fine. Come at me then. Let’s see if there will be anything left of you to be reborn from."
That was the start.
Providence acted immediately, opening the Realm of the Tree of Ashes, and swallowed all of them within its spitting, thrashing, burning world.
The battle about to be unleashed would tear Laeh apart. Even the Tree of Ashes would barely survive it.
But Providence was delighted for the opportunity to hurt Luelle. She would never pass up the chance to make the one who had once caused her husband’s death suffer.
So the battle officially began.
Luelle shuddered in absolute horror when the first clash occurred.
She was split in half by one of Yuki’s deflected attacks. And that was only the beginning.
The beginning of the most intense and painful training the women had ever gone through.
Providence didn’t know what would happen after 100 years. But one thing was certain, if the women managed to win against Diatah, whose very identity existed above Reality, even in avatar form, then hardly anything in this universe would stop them again.
And with war approaching...
The Hunt of the Prime’s Horn
...they would need every last shred of strength inside their skin.
’So do I.’ Providence thought. ’So do I.’
Now it was time to oversee the training of her children.
They too needed to be ready.
...
And while his wives began their battle — about to be completely wrecked by a merciless Demoness — Noah was staring at a scene in front of him, wondering briefly if some illusion had been cast on his mind.
It was just that ridiculous.
He stood inside a realm of frosted ice. Everything around him was nothing but dunes of ice jutting upward, mountains that looked as though carved by some genius working ahead of their time, and a frozen sea with strange creatures watching from behind the glass beneath.
The air was riddled with birds made of black frost, their chirping creating a harrowing whirlwind, ice shards sharp enough to cut immortal skin spinning within it.
This was one of the Forbidden Lands of Laeh. Top five most dangerous, to be precise. The kind that had killed countless adventurers and those who sought their own path.
And in that place, stripped of her power by Noah and chained to a block of ice, was Idalia Marigold.
Yet that was not what surprised him.
It was the fact that the woman was weeping. Crying as if she had received the worst news in existence, unable to stop, completely undone.
Noah didn’t remain in the dark for long. Soon enough, Idalia lost what was left of her composure and began crying out a name.
A name he knew all too well.
"ELIJAH!" She bellowed from the depth of her soul, her eyes bleeding tears at a grief so deep it was maddening. "ELIJAH!!!"
Again. And again. And again.
Marigold thrashed on her chains with no care for herself, slamming her head against the block of ice behind her, cracking her skull after doing it nearly a thousand times.
Yet she never stopped. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
She kept going — crying, hurting herself, calling out the name that would never answer. The name of the one she had loved with everything she had.
Noah stood there, flabbergasted. Because Marigold’s love for Elijah ran so profoundly deep that her own soul was fracturing at the realisation of his ultimate death.
There was no mistaking it.
At this rate, Marigold would die completely...from grief and madness alone.
"ELIJAH!"
"Bloody hell." Noah whispered. "Just what in the hell is happening lately?"
—End of Chapter 526—
