Chapter 383: A little insane
The floating barrier surrounding Elion drifted lower as Melroy came to a stop in the sky. His body swayed faintly, barely held upright by the final traces of strength flowing through him.
His remaining eye moved across the destroyed land. He noticed Asmodeus lying half-dead on the ground.
He noticed Zenith standing over him, surrounded by an aura so powerful that the land itself seemed to bend around her.
Then he noticed Elion floating nearby, protected within the barrier by the same powerful energy rolling off the woman’s frame.
Melroy smiled faintly.
"Ahhh..." he breathed with great difficulty. "So I wasn’t too late." His voice sounded weak and raspy. Nothing like the booming, confident voice Elion had grown used to hearing.
"I came here as fast as I could, you see."
He coughed, and a thick mouthful of blood spilled from his lips and fell through the air.
"The little bastard got us..." Melroy continued hoarsely. "But we ended up winning in the end."
His smile widened slightly.
"Hahahaha..."
The laugh came out broken and painful. He coughed again, more blood pouring from his mouth, then his body went limp. His single remaining eye closed slowly as his head tilted to the side.
The last traces of mana and strength holding him in the sky faded away, and the king fell. His broken body dropped from the heavens like a fallen angel.
Thud!
He struck the scorched ground several metres away from Elion.
The barrier surrounding Elion moved forward as soon as he willed it to, carrying him rapidly toward the fallen king. The moment he reached the ground, the shield vanished.
Elion stepped down lightly and dropped onto his knees beside Melroy’s body. For a moment, he simply stared.
The man’s injuries were beyond anything he had ever seen. His chest wasn’t moving, and his body had gone eerily cold. Still, Elion reached out and pressed two fingers against Melroy’s neck.
His breath hitched; there was nothing.
Elion slowly lowered his hand.
"He’s dead," he said simply.
The words came out heavier than he expected. They seemed to lodge themselves in his throat, carrying a weight he could not properly explain.
He had not known Melroy for very long.
Not truly.
The king had been loud, shameless, absurdly carefree, and almost impossible to take seriously at times. Yet he had also trusted Elion with the fate of his kingdom. He had laughed easily, stood proudly, and thrown himself into a battle he knew might kill him without once showing fear.
And now he was gone.
Elion remained kneeling beside him in silence, with nothing but the distant thunder of a dying battlefield and the bitter weight of a victory that suddenly felt far more expensive than it had moments before.
While it hurt more than he thought it would, he was more concerned about how Alexander and Isla were going to react.
He even forgot that The Hero King Melroy Starhaven was meant to always die in this war, while fighting a grave battle, and that is why he came to be known as the hero king, because among all the saints who participated in the great battle, he was the only one who died, even though he was the also the strongest, because he carried most of the weight in battle.
Elion let out a shuddering breath and stored the body away in his storage space.
"I wonder what happened to the others?" Unless something unexpected had happened, they were most likely still alive, or perhaps they were still embroiled in battle.
The protective bubble reformed around Elion, and he was lifted back up into the sky.
Asmodeus groaned weakly from across the scorched battlefield, and Zenith turned toward him.
Her expression remained unchanged until a deep scowl found its way onto her face. The softness vanished from her face, replaced by a cold, unsettling smile as she walked toward the ruined Demon King.
The blood wings behind her shifted slowly, pulsing with quiet menace, her mask reformed around her face.
Asmodeus dragged himself backward through the rubble.
"Zenith... listen to me."
"No."
Crimson threads stretched from her fingertips and wrapped around his battered body, pinning him against a slab of broken stone.
"I am your father," he rasped.
Zenith’s smile widened slightly. "And since when does that mean something to you?" The threads shimmered with pale light as a crackling current akin to lightning spread across their lengths.
Asmodeus screamed.
Elion shuddered. It couldn’t be as simple as just a lightning spell if it made someone like the demon king scream!
And worse, his screams sounded like the cry of a banshee! Surely it couldn’t be that bad. Right?
However, it wasn’t long before Elion realised that he was yet to see the worst of it.
He watched from the sky as Zenith methodically peeled away strips of his skin and fried his flesh with the same streaks of lightning, before allowing his regeneration to repair the damage, before tearing the wounds open again.
She broke his limbs one after another, never raising her voice, never losing that calm smile. This went on for the next few hours, without pause, until the distant battlefield quieted down.
At this point, the poor guy couldn’t even scream anymore; he didn’t seem to have the voice or strength.
"Mercy..." Asmodeus eventually begged with a barely audible voice.
Zenith crouched in front of him.
"Did you show mercy to the people you sacrificed?" she asked quietly. "To the demons and humans that you burned alive for your power?"
Asmodeus could only tremble, "And you expected mercy after trying to kill my darling? No, father, we are just getting started."
Her hands shimmered with a pale blue light, healing Asmodeus just enough to bring him back from the brink of insanity. Then the same sequence began all over again.
The same period of time passed before she finally stopped, seemingly satisfied. She looked up to Elion to check how he was doing, to find his lips separated in an O, looking a little pale and disturbed.
"Just a little longer, darling." She blew him a kiss and looked back at Asmodeus. Her blood wings spread wide and sharpened, and the tendrils struck at once.
Asmodeus screamed one final time before his body went dead and still. His soul began rising from the corpse, twisting through the air like a shadow trying to escape.
Zenith raised one hand as the Philosopher’s Stone pulsed within her. Crimson-gold chains wrapped around Asmodeus’ soul and dragged it into place.
"No..." his incorporeal voice echoed faintly.
"You will not reincarnate," Zenith said.
The chains tightened as his soul cracked, "You will never return to this world."
Zenith closed her hand, and the soul collapsed into a single point of darkness, snuffing it out. It vanished completely. The oppressive presence covering the demon territory disappeared with it.
Zenith turned toward Elion, her expression softening as though nothing had happened, "Darling," she said gently.
Elion stared at her for a moment before he glanced toward the place where Asmodeus had died with a disturbed look on his face
’She might be a little insane,’ he thought quietly. Should he be concerned about her state of mind? Perhaps.
Would he do what she had done to a blood relative, her own father, if he were in the same situation? Definitely not. Regardless of whatever altercation had occurred between them, he would at least grant them a swift death.
But only she knew just how much she had been through in all these years spent in this seemingly endless loop.
Zenith tilted her head cutely. "Is something wrong?"
Elion smiled faintly, "Nothing at all."
