Salavira was so shocked by his own chain of thoughts that his scalp tingled.
He dared not hesitate any longer and quickly dashed towards the ruins of the castle!
Just as he had anticipated, the ground here was the most severely cracked, with a large mound rising from the center, about as tall as an adult male.
And from the cracks, several huge, transparent wings stretched out.
Salavira felt a wave of nausea.
He hated these bugs the most.
“Buzz!” Black chains were summoned by him, slicing through the void with a trembling hum, crisscrossing to firmly bind the massive mound before him. Then, at Salavira’s command, they suddenly tightened, forcibly pressing the giant bug that was about to break through the earth back down!
Subsequently, those chains transformed into intricate magical arrays, firmly suppressing the mother bug that was locked in place!
“Hiss—!”
The mother bug beneath the array let out an angry screech, struggling hard, yet unable to break through these arrays.
However, Salavira did not relax in the slightest.
This mother bug was far more powerful than he had imagined, yet its true form was clearly just a Mosu insect.
How many souls had this thing devoured over the past two years to accumulate such formidable power bit by bit? No… no, judging by the size of this bug, it couldn’t possibly have only a two-year lifespan.
Salavira felt a chill in his heart.
The mother bug continued its incessant screeching, the sharp sound piercing into Salavira’s ears like a long thorn. Then, from the air came a cacophony of buzzing, gradually approaching from afar.
Salavira’s heart skipped a beat, and he turned to see countless larvae swarming towards him!
He immediately summoned a barrier to block them, but having used almost all his magic power to suppress the mother bug, he was truly stretched thin. The barrier was quickly gnawed open by the larvae, eventually shattering into countless pieces under the strain!
At this point, he alone could not stop these bugs.
He sighed unwillingly, gritting his teeth, and had to retreat bit by bit, watching helplessly as the larvae devoured his suppression array.
And then—
The massive mother bug broke through the earth, letting out a long, skyward screech. Its huge, spherical eyes rolled around in their sockets before finally fixing on the person who had tried to trap her!
The wind howled as Salavira stood atop a pile of ruins, raising his head to confront the enormous mother bug.
He raised his hand, conjuring a sharp long sword from shadows.
…………
The dawn in Solent City failed to arrive as expected, and a thousand miles away, the Gate of Hell was also shrouded in endless eternal night.
Just after Asmodeus’s avatar returned, the flow of magic on the seal suddenly stalled for a moment. Then, web-like cracks spread across the entire array, and at the center of these cracks was a silver dagger!
Since it was a seal personally set by the Holy Son, naturally, it required his own power to unlock it.
Soon, the silver-white array shattered into countless fragments, falling into the soil of Hell, gradually swallowed by the darkness surging within.
The silver moon illuminating Hell fell.
The demon sleeping within the seal awoke.
At the moment Asmodeus’s true form opened its eyes, the endless darkness from all directions seemed to hear a summons, converging towards Hell to worship their revered god.
The golden sun of Vancia was once again shrouded in darkness, as if replaying the disaster from not long ago. Yet the people trembling before the statue had a deep premonition—
This time, dawn would not come so easily.
However, Salavira, who was in Solent City, had no time to learn of all this.
He was already embroiled in a fierce battle.
The mother bug of the Mosu insects, though massive and cumbersome, was not at all hindered in speed. Even after fighting her for so long, Salavira had only managed to cut off half of her mouthparts.
In contrast, he himself was more severely injured.
His left shoulder, already with broken bones, now had a new penetrating wound, rendering his left arm completely immobile. A long poisonous sting was embedded in his calf, but Salavira pulled it out in time, preventing the poison from fully spreading, only intensifying the pain of the wound. Fortunately, it did not hinder his continued movement.
He tore off a strip of the scant fabric on his body, wrapped it around the hand holding the sword, and bit one end to tie a knot, securing the hilt in his blood-soaked, slippery hand.
At this point, continuing the fight seemed unlikely to yield victory. If it were anyone else standing here, they would probably only be thinking about how to preserve their life and retreat from this place.
But Salavira remained terrifyingly calm.
He had no thought of retreat, and in every gap of the battle with the mother bug, he was thinking about where to swing his next sword.
He had to win.
But the reason behind this thought was not out of some grand duty to protect everyone, or rather, that was only a secondary reason.
He was doing it to take this city.
He had promised Karl to gift Solent to him as a present, so he had to clean out all the filth in this city.
This city was too special; he had to wrest it from the hands of the church. Only then could his plan continue.
Although… the current situation was indeed not optimistic.
He was injured, while the mother bug was growing stronger bit by bit.
Although the barrier Salavira had erected earlier protected most of the people in the city, there were still many unlucky ones in various corners who had their souls devoured by the larvae, then offered to the mother bug.
“Tch.”
Troublesome.
Salavira leaped, dodging the massive mouthparts of the mother bug, while his left hand flung out a shadow-formed chain, wrapping around the broken segment of the mouthparts to leverage himself into the air, then twisting to land on the mother bug’s massive head!
The mother bug, enraged, shook its head violently, trying to throw Salavira off, but he forcefully stabbed his sword into its shell, anchoring himself, then summoned another long sword with his other hand, plunging it into the most vulnerable part where the mother bug’s head connected to its body!
“Squish!!” Dark green, foul-smelling thick liquid sprayed out, and the mother bug, in extreme pain, let out a sharp, long screech!!
Finally succeeding, Salavira couldn’t help but curl his lips into a smile. However, his smile froze on his face in an instant—
Not because the mother bug had any new changes, quite the opposite, the big bug seemed to sense something, curling up and desperately burrowing into the ground, causing Salavira to lose his footing and slide off the mother bug’s head.
His wounds were once again pulled, causing him to grimace in pain, but at this moment, he couldn’t care about that. He raised his head, looking incredulously towards the western sky.
The darkness there had somehow become even deeper, so dense it seemed about to drip ink, as if heaven and hell had reversed, or the River Styx was flowing back into the human world.
And within it, Salavira sensed a power so strong it made his soul tremble, yet it was a power he was all too familiar with—
It was Asmodeus.
It was his true form.
…How could this be?!
That seal was so stable the last time he checked, how could it suddenly…
Suddenly, Salavira thought of the dagger Asmodeus had taken.
But… how could a demon use his power?
The black sword was stabbed into the blood-soaked soil, and Salavira knelt on one knee, staring unblinkingly towards the west, breathing heavily.
Soon, those annoying questions didn’t need his pondering.
Because there was no time to think.
“Boom!!”
He felt an overwhelmingly powerful magic force sweep past him, the gust it stirred up blowing his hair into disarray.
And then—
The massive mother bug was blown into countless pieces, the dark green, disgusting thick liquid splattering everywhere within a hundred miles.
But not a drop landed near Salavira.
Because someone had opened an umbrella over him.
Asmodeus, dressed in an even more flamboyant outfit than the one at the ball, held an umbrella, wearing a polite smile as he made an inviting gesture to the kneeling Salavira:
“May I have this dance, beautiful Holy Son?”
“……”
Salavira panted heavily, glaring up at him from his kneeling position, his eyes filled with vigilance, not blinking even once.
He wanted to stand, but the fall just now had torn his leg wound even more severely, and now it wasn’t just pain, it was almost numb with unresponsiveness.
He unwillingly realized a fact:
He was completely incapable of resisting.
“Asmodeus, you…”
He wanted to ask how the other had escaped, but as the words reached his lips, he realized that question was no longer important, so he changed the subject:
“What are you up to now?”
Asmodeus forcefully grabbed Salavira’s hand, pulling him from the ground into his embrace, smiling, “Just making up for many regrets from last night. Salavira, have you forgotten so soon? You accepted my avatar’s invitation to dance…”
As he spoke, he wrapped an arm around Salavira’s waist, pulling him into his embrace with a sudden force, his gaze turning sharp in an instant:
“But when you saw the inviter was my avatar, you ended up stabbing a dagger into his abdomen!”
Salavira’s wounds were almost all torn open by his forceful actions, the intense pain making his vision go black.
Yet even so, he still had the strength to retort to Asmodeus: “What else? Did you really expect me to dance nicely with you?”
Asmodeus’s eyes grew darker with his words: “Then if the inviter had truly been the castle’s owner, would you have danced with him?”
“……”
Salavira’s answer was, of course, no. His purpose in finding Charles was to interrogate the truth from two years ago, but now, seeing the faint hope in Asmodeus’s eyes, he forced a smile and said:
“Guess?”
Suddenly, the arm Asmodeus had wrapped around Salavira’s waist tightened, the overwhelming jealousy and resentment in his eyes almost burning him to ashes.
“Fine…” Asmodeus gritted his teeth, “But Salavira, you won’t have another chance.”
As his words fell, several black threads forcibly pierced through Salavira’s joints! Like a puppet on strings, manipulating him to rest on his shoulder.
The sharp pain finally made Salavira cry out, he tried to push Asmodeus away, but his current strength was like a kitten kneading, not only failing to break free from the strings’ control but adding a touch of reluctant compliance.
And the demon in front of him seemed pleased by this action, gently yet irresistibly placing a hand on Salavira’s waist, his tone finally softening a bit:
“Now, let’s make up for the dance we missed earlier.”
Then, he snapped his fingers—
In the pitch-black night, clusters of ghostly blue flames began to burn out of nowhere, completely incinerating the mother bug’s corpse, filling the air with a sweet, rotten fragrance. Then, the buried bones seemed to be summoned, crawling out of the soil, using stones as instruments and wind as strings, playing a melodious tune.
The demon and the Holy Son danced amidst the encircling bones.
One was dressed in luxurious attire, elegant and dignified, while the other was in a sorry state, covered in wounds, not only bleeding all over but with clothes so tattered they barely covered him.
It’s hard to describe what kind of scene that was, like a god fallen from heaven into the mire, forced to sink together with a demon from hell.
Absurd, yet with a hint of eerie allure.
The continuous pain nearly made Salavira faint, like a beautiful doll played to ruin, forced to follow the demon’s steps in dance.
He didn’t know how long this torment lasted until the bone orchestra finally couldn’t withstand the erosion of magic, turning completely to dust.
The dance ended.
The steps stopped.
Salavira had no strength left to resist, his consciousness blurred, letting Asmodeus hold him, waiting for the next torment.
But Asmodeus made no move, just holding him, gently rubbing his disheveled hair.
After a while, Salavira heard a “clack clack” sound by his ear, and through his peripheral vision, he saw a skeleton wearing a ridiculous top hat, carrying a tray, slowly walking towards them.
On the tray was a glass of red wine.
Salavira, in his hazy consciousness, remembered that at last night’s ball, he seemed to have broken the red wine Asmodeus had given him.
This guy, what exactly does he want to do…
In the intermittent moments of his consciousness, the wine glass was already in Asmodeus’s hand, who then took a sip.
So it wasn’t for him to drink… Salavira thought dimly.
But the next second, a warm, moist, and soft sensation, with an irresistible force, pressed against his lips, something soft and slippery prying open his teeth, and the spicy, rich red wine was poured into his mouth.
The strong stimulation of the liquor made Salavira shed tears, and only after did he belatedly widen his eyes—
Asmodeus was kissing him.