Chapter 614: War of Schism (2)

The Ghoul King was subdued and defeated after falling prey to the tricks of a vile demon called Wesker.

Rhenis suffered a bitter loss when she found herself opposed by a demoness who wielded shadow along with a witch whose skills rivaled her own.

As for Kalman the First, he died pitifully, overwhelmed by Crimson—the Red Moon—whose power had grown at a pace that rivaled the Pure Vessel’s, growth that would later make him the First Seat.

The races lost ground piece by piece... but hope remained ..hope placed in their strongest: the Pure Vessel.

He faced the Demon King head-on—and what a battle it was.

A true collision of light and darkness—a clash whose reverberations were felt across the world.

The Pure Vessel poured everything into that fight:

All his potential. All his power.

His perfect body, perfect martial arts, preternatural quickness and keen mind—and his immense Light Soul.

A world-breaking power, the strongest weapon in existence against demons—capable of wounding even Agaroth himself. Nothing in the cosmos is more antithetical to demons.

And yet, despite it all ..despite every cut, every strike ..Agaroth’s laughter never ceased.

The Demon King fought the Pure Vessel face-to-face, receiving everything he threw at him with a dreadful smile that never left his face from the first moment to the last. He was no ordinary demon.

He was different—utterly different from the rest of his kind.

He used countless abilities—many of them world-breaking powers demons should never have possessed. Throughout the battle he kept changing his form, fighting with shifting styles, hemming the Pure Vessel in from every side.

At some point, the Pure Vessel’s light began to fade. Within Agaroth’s darkness—like a black hole—he became no more than a spark struggling to survive.

The Light Soul was powerful—enough that he struck the Demon King grievous blows. That much was certain.

But those wounds only made Agaroth more monstrous, more rampant.

Instead of waning, his power increased—as if he were evolving in the midst of battle—like a beast without limits.

Thoughts raced through the Pure Vessel’s mind as blood drenched him, muscles burning, the Light Soul thrumming inside him. He tried to overturn the board, to push past his limits and kill the accursed demon before him.

The gold in his eyes dimmed, little by little, under the gaze of Agaroth’s crimson eyes.

All his people had placed their hopes on him ..indeed, the entire world watched that battle from afar, counting on him. His foe was the strongest of all; if he could defeat this one, none would remain to threaten or steal his freedom.

If he won, everything would be all right .. the quiet days he had once spent in the Valley of the End would return, far from the chaos raging outside.

Everything would be fine ..if Agaroth fell.

Defeating Agaroth...

Who was Agaroth?

The Pure Vessel wondered, even as he clashed with the demon who kept laughing, savoring every exchange.

A terrifying beast embodying all the darkness of the cosmos.

"Is defeating this monster... even possible?"

The ominous feeling in the Pure Vessel’s heart swelled, and at some point only despair remained.

Absolute despair before a feral foe whose strength knew no bounds—a beast on whom wounds had no effect, who never stopped no matter how much damage he took.

Then, at the height of that despair, Agaroth forged a blade from a strange darkness—fusing two world-breaking abilities into one, forming a bizarre sword of shadow blended with black flame.

King’s Shadow + Dark Soul.

It was the first time the Pure Vessel had ever seen anyone fuse two world-breaking powers together. Agaroth did it as if it were nothing, and from that moment the battle was already over.

After a bitter struggle and a thunderous clash, the whole world gasped; faces went ashen and hopes collapsed... when Agaroth’s blade cleaved the Pure Vessel’s body in two.

The greatest and strongest Lightbearer—felled before the eyes of the world—was cleaved vertically in two by a single finishing strike from Agaroth.

In that decisive instant, the Light Soul flared at its utmost, struggling by any means to save the Pure Vessel. It flashed from within his body, flooding him with radiance and trying to knit him back together.

But in that same moment, Agaroth thrust his hand into the Pure Vessel’s chest and halted the process entirely.

From the Demon King’s hand, a terrifying darkness spread, flooding Pure’s body. That darkness coiled around the Light Soul, which fought back, tearing at it. Yet before that bottomless void, it was only a matter of time.

Agaroth then ripped the Light Soul from the Pure Vessel’s body savagely and devoured it before the eyes of all who witnessed that tragic moment.

"The monster that devours everything."

That was the title Agaroth earned, and not without cause: the Demon King’s core power was to devour other powers and make them his own. His strange body could withstand world-breaking abilities no matter how many ..

Even those that were his direct antithesis, like the Light Soul. Though it should have annihilated his body, he managed to absorb it and tame it ..an unprecedented feat in all recorded history.

A monster that can devour anything, whose strength knows no bounds—that was the Demon King the Pure Vessel had been forced to face. And before such a creature, he lost ..miserably.

Despite being split in two, he tried to regenerate and clung to life until the very last moment, which led Agaroth to aim for a final blow to end him once and for all.

But just then, a pillar of light descended from nowhere and swallowed Agaroth in an instant. The Demon King fought against that light ..which carried the same bane as the Pure Vessel’s Light Soul ..its effect on him ruinous. The one who unleashed it was none other than Audrey, arriving at last.

With her sword, she slashed across Agaroth’s chest with all the power she could muster and struck at the Light Soul he was attempting to absorb. Power collided. Audrey’s attempt to reclaim the Light Soul caused it to shatter as well—split cleanly in two—before both she and Agaroth recoiled, their auras exploding outward.

In the end, one half of the Light Soul remained with the Demon King, while the other went with Audrey.

She immediately returned that half to the Pure Vessel’s body in an effort to save him—but there was little she could do with the Demon King standing before her. She had come because she could not bear to let the Pure Vessel die as Orsted had before him, and she had arrived at the very end of the war—just barely in time.

It felt like history repeating itself: in the past she had failed to save Orsted from Crimson, and now again she was too late—the Pure Vessel had been utterly defeated by the Demon King. She came intending to take Pure and flee at once, certain that Agaroth was far stronger than she had imagined—so strong he filled her with despair.

But everything changed the moment she saw his power with her own eyes ..

The power to devour everything.