Chapter 668: The Nightmare (4)

Without warning .. without mercy ..

the First Seat, Crimson, appeared before the other High Seats, attacking them head-on and promising a hell they hadn’t experienced in ages.

Every one of the demons present stood among the strongest beings in existence—warriors at the very peak of the world’s power hierarchy. There were few, if any, who could rival them.

For fighters of that level, no words were needed.

No questions asked.

The sheer killing intent and ominous aura radiating from Crimson told them everything.

He was serious .. he meant to kill them all.

And he had already proven it when he annihilated Seats Thirteen through Fifteen with a single swing .. a terrifying scene few in the cosmos could ever replicate.

At once, the remaining High Seats launched into battle, clashing with Crimson in full force.

From behind, Wesker observed the chaos, his face darkened by a rare frown.

"Why...? Why would Crimson try to kill us all?"

It made no sense. There was no logic, no reason.

And what unsettled him most ..more than Crimson’s madness .. was that the King’s Eye could not see through this future.

While Agares, Marvas, and Zibar fought him head-on, Wesker analyzed every movement, every wave of power.

"Something is blocking my vision... blocking the King’s Eye itself..."

A force clashing directly with a world-breaking ability—an impossibility.

Crimson was terrifying, yes. He possessed multiple world-breaking powers.

But none of them involved causality manipulation.

He couldn’t, by nature, obstruct Wesker’s divine sight.

And yet—Wesker couldn’t see anything.

The future, destiny, everything beyond this point was sealed to him.

That could only mean one thing.

There was only one being capable of suppressing the King’s Eye.

"...Impossible."

His voice trembled with disbelief.

"Is he doing this... under the King’s command?"

The thought alone sent a chill through him.

It made no sense—but it explained everything.

If Agaroth, the Demon King himself, had ordered Crimson to purge them, then everything fell into place.

Crimson never acted on his own will.

He had remained at the King’s side for centuries .. eternal, silent, devoted.

If the Demon King had indeed commanded extermination... then it was Agaroth’s own hand blocking Wesker’s sight.

The realization twisted Wesker’s expression into fury.

"But why would he do something like this?!"

Manipulating the waves, Wesker raised his hand ..

and the skies of Helmond darkened, unleashing black rain that poured upon Crimson as he finally joined the battle.

The other High Seats followed suit, and once they all released their full power...

Helmond itself began to collapse.

Crimson was a true monster. Only Agares could match him head-on, and even then, not for long.

Every other High Seat combined their might—each wielding a world-breaking ability granted by Agaroth himself.

But even so, Crimson’s Blood Armor remained untouchable .. an artifact of ancient power that absorbed all attacks, converting incoming damage into raw offensive strength. It was impervious to both magic and wave manipulation, rendering most of their attacks useless.

That changed when Izalith intervened.

Channeling the Blood Spirit she carried within her, the Blood Queen smiled faintly.

"The Blood Armor, Crimson... don’t forget—it lives up to its name.

As long as there is blood—I hold the upper hand."

At her command, the Blood Armor’s absolute defense began to falter.

Meanwhile, Crimson’s weapon .. the King-Slayer .. was both spear and sword, depending on how he wielded it.

It allowed him to fight across every range—and its terrifying ability was the power to cut aura itself.

Each swing struck both physically and spiritually.

Every strike from the King-Slayer carved away vast portions of his enemies’ energy—delivering spiritual wounds that could not be blocked or healed.

To counter this, Yosefka the Cannibal joined the front lines, supporting Agares and the others.

Thanks to the Demon Spirit granted to her by Agaroth, Yosefka’s twisted soul could not be cut by the King-Slayer.

Her warped essence rendered Crimson’s weapon ineffective, blunting his most devastating offense.

Through their coordination .. the combined might of two of the Ten .. they managed to suppress his ultimate weapons.

And yet... Crimson still had the upper hand.

His aura alone .. equal to the Demon King’s .. overwhelmed them.

His techniques were endless, each more monstrous than the last.

The crimson aura swirling around him seemed to have risen straight from hell itself.

To resist it, it took the World-Breaking Shadows of Vain, the Wave Control of Wesker, and the Dark Spirit of Marvas—all combined in perfect harmony—

while Agares and Zibar pressed him physically, blow after blow.

Finally, Nito, the Ninth, unleashed his Spirit of Light, an element inherently lethal to demons.

His attacks pierced Crimson’s defenses mercilessly.

With his armor nullified, Crimson was struck again and again, his form battered under their united assault.

The clash only grew fiercer by the second.

Even though the High Seats gained the upper hand, the gap was razor-thin.

Crimson ..alone kept up with all of them.

And that realization chilled them to the core.

He truly was the pinnacle.

It had always been said: Crimson was born to be the next Demon King.

His potential defied nature itself.

Only Agaroth had ever surpassed him.

And now, Crimson had grown far beyond what anyone imagined .. his power encroaching upon the realm of the Great Ones themselves...

the same plane once reached by Agaroth and the being known as Nameless, whom Crimson had fought eons ago.

That was the might of the First Seat.

None understood why he had launched this catastrophic assault.

But even as their world fell apart around them,

the High Seats felt not hatred... but awe.

Fear.

Respect.

Reverence.

They wanted answers .. but survival came first.

And so, they fought him with everything they had.

In the end, their combined strength prevailed.

Vain’s shadows crawled across Crimson’s skin, Agares’s fists shattered his armor, and wounds tore through his body.

Bleeding, still laughing, Crimson stood to the last moment ..

until the High Seats unleashed a final, united strike that buried him deep beneath the black soil of Helmond...

An explosion so immense followed,

it shook the entire planet to its core.

They all hovered around the edge of a colossal crater .. the scar left by their last, desperate strike.

Peering into its depths, they thought it over.

This... was the grave of the First Seat, Crimson.

No one .. no matter how strong .. could possibly stand against all of them at once.

To fight that many world-breaking beings was sheer madness.

That’s what they believed... until they realized how gravely mistaken they were.

From the void below, an ominous force began to crawl upward, thick and suffocating.

A strange phenomenon unfolded .. one that filled even the High Seats with dread.

Above them, a massive crimson moon rose from the darkness, descending closer and closer until its blood-red glow swallowed them whole.

The sky itself turned scarlet, and an unnatural aura spread through the air.

In that instant, many of them understood what they were witnessing.

"This is..." Wesker whispered, eyes widening.

A technique said to have been created by Crimson himself, one that even impressed the Demon King.

"The Red Domain."

Wesker spoke the name—and from the depths of the inferno, a voice answered.

"That’s right..."

From within the crater of destruction, Crimson emerged once more—unharmed, untouched, reborn in the very heart of ruin.

But he was no longer the same.

Every ability that the High Seats had struggled so hard to suppress... had fully reawakened.

Sensing this, they attacked at once—but this time, it was useless.

Crimson toyed with them, dismantling their defenses and crushing them one after another.

"You now stand inside my Red Domain," Crimson declared, his voice echoing in their skulls like the whisper of death itself.

"I’m sure you all understand what that means."

Within the Red Domain, he was God.

"Here, I can nullify the inevitability of any power used against me," Crimson continued, his tone calm but absolute.

"And I control the aura of this space—everything within my domain belongs to me."

The Red Domain—Agaroth himself had called it the strongest defensive ability he had ever seen.

It could repel anything, even a strike carrying the full might of the Demon King.

That was what made Crimson truly untouchable.

He had pulled them all into his world—a realm where every world-breaking ability they possessed became useless.

And if that meant anything, it was this:

Crimson’s power had surpassed even the gifts they’d once received from Agaroth himself.

Now, completely invincible, with all his weapons and abilities restored to perfection ..

the battlefield shifted once more.

And what followed... was hell.

Crimson overwhelmed them utterly, reducing the High Seats ..once the apex of demonkind .. to prey.

The moment they realized how hopeless the situation had become... was when Crimson shattered Zibar, annihilating the Tenth Seat entirely.

Zibar was the first to fall.

Then the others followed ..

one by one.

They fought with desperation, fury, pride ..

but it meant nothing.

The First Seat had ascended to the level of the Demon King Agaroth himself... and the ancient being Nameless before him.

Against such a presence ..

against such power..

they never stood a chance.

They fell, one after another, until only Agares, Wesker, and Marvas remained.

Agares endured through sheer hardness.

Marvas survived beneath the Morgul Armor.

And Wesker evaded destruction by manipulating the waves themselves.

Crimson chuckled approvingly.

"Well fought, my brothers... but now—

let’s end this."

Raising his spear, the King-Slayer, the air itself began to shudder.

The crimson moon above swelled to an impossible size ..

and then, it exploded.

A spectacle beyond imagination.

The giant red moon burst apart into clouds of scarlet stardust that streamed toward Crimson,

gathering, spiraling, condensing into the spear in his hand.

This was the ultimate technique of the Red Domain ..

its entire reality converted into a single, final strike.

A blow that could erase anything.

Before that power, Agares, Wesker, and Marvas had no chance.

Crimson released the attack ..

and in an instant, the blast consumed them,

erasing miles upon miles of Helmond’s surface

and marking the end of the Ten High Seats.

All but one.

Descending slowly amid the cataclysmic ruin,

Crimson landed upon the scorched ground—victorious, sovereign, supreme.

But then—

Clap.

A strange sound echoed through the silence.

Clap... clap... clap.

Applause.

A voice emerged from the void, smooth and amused.

"Magnificent performance."

Crimson’s expression shifted.

Without hesitation, the First Seat dropped to one knee—bowing in reverence and devotion to the being who had spoken.

The nightmare had reached its true conclusion ..

and the secret behind it all

lay in the hands of the monster who had just appeared.