Hearing this, color drained from the Soul Devourer’s cheeks. Almost no one alive still held proof of his betrayal. Across level nine, people remembered only that Heaven Gate vanished overnight; none had discovered how the sect had fallen.
“Master Hawksley spared your life, and you repaid him with blood, slaughtering the entire sect before dawn. I am here today because I swore to Master Hawksley that I would cut you down and carry Heaven Gate’s vengeance…” Jared’s expression hardened to black ice as his stare locked on the Soul Devourer.
“Yes, I erased Heaven Gate, every last disciple. So what? Strength rules here in the celestial realm. Sentiment is for the weak. I butchered them, stole their resources, and rose stronger.”
Soul Devourer’s manic laughter clanged through the audience hall, brazen, metallic, and utterly devoid of mercy.
“Then steel yourself for death,” Jared said, rage filling him.
Dragonslayer quivered in his grasp, loosing a chain of dragon cries that rattled the pillars.
The Soul Devourer’s mirth rebounded off the stone, swollen with arrogance. Even Jared’s swift ruin of the Five Shade Demons looked, in that contemptuous gaze, like children tussling in sand.
“Revenge? For Heaven Gate Sect? Brat, you think you can boast before me just because you have a scrap of their legacy? Killing a few worthless minions does not earn the right to challenge me, the Soul Devourer!”
He rose from the throne. Light itself recoiled, and a tide of thick, living darkness rolled from his pores, crushing every chest.
The disciples whose spirits Jared had rekindled found their knees trembling once more beneath that hammering malice.
Neville and Sylvia exchanged grim looks; the Soul Devourer’s depth defied even their bleakest guesses.
Jared was formidable, yet this ancient fiend had ravaged the heavens since forgotten ages, the outcome uncertain.
“Try me…”
Sensing Jared‘s resolve, the Dragonslayer Sword sang louder, its corona of sword light shredding the encroaching miasma into glittering dust.
“Fool! How cocky and ignorant!” With lazy disgust, Soul Devourer flicked his wrist as though brushing away a fly.
Space screamed, ripping like overstretched parchment. A raspy tear shivered through reality. A pitch-black fissure yawned open, its rim crackling with chaotic void currents that breathed annihilation.
From the jagged tear in space oozed a breath older than mountains, raw, primordial, and heavy with the dust of endless centuries.
Under that pressure, a figure stepped through the rift: a man so huge he seemed to carry an entire battlefield on his shoulders, nearly three meters tall and broad as a city gate.
His battered bronze cuirass, chipped and slashed by countless blades and axes, clanked as though it still remembered every clash it had survived.
Bronzed skin stretched over knotted, roped muscles that twitched with explosive promise, each sinew hinting at storms of violence held barely in check.
His face resembled a monument carved from granite, yet his eyes remained hollow, indifferent, windows without a soul, the gaze of a machine built only to kill.
Around him, invisible threads of Heavenly Law curled and writhed, bending light, warping air, leaving everything near him looking slightly unreal, as if the world itself doubted he belonged. Even Bloodshade skittered backward, terror widening what passed for their eyes.
“The boy is yours!” The Soul Devourer lounged on his throne, one cheek propped against a lazy fist, as though the carnage to come were nothing but afternoon theater.
He sank deeper into the seat, drumming idle fingers on the armrest. “Do not take forever. My patience wears thin.” The words floated out, casual yet lethal.
