"From then on, the hunt for the s.p.a.ce Beasts turned around completely...!"The Demon Hunter sighed and looked heavy hearted to continue. But Lars (and Kizorik) urged him on. How could he tell the story up to this point and suddenly stop?! There was not much time left, he hadn"t even gotten to the point about Lars and the English language and how he was involved in this Demon Hunter"s inheritance!
"Erm... Sir Marzinus?"
"Just Marzinus will do." His shoulders heaved as he let out a long breath. Then he lifted his eyes and began the tale of the rise of the first Demon Hunter - Aloin the Liberator!
"Along with the corruption of the s.p.a.ce Beasts into the demon race, the Abyss also released the scheming masterminds of all kinds of evils into the cosmos - the devils! They flooded out of the rift of darkness that opened the door to the Abyss and laid waste to wherever they pa.s.sed, leaving only desolation and destruction in their wake!"
"The many races of the universe then forgot about their hunt for the s.p.a.ce Beasts and united to resist the devils. They formed an alliance, the United Universe Alliance, to fight back against the unending hordes of the infernal creatures!"
"And this resistance seemed to work greatly, pus.h.i.+ng back the combined forces of the demon race and the great tides of the Devil Princes all the way until the battle lines were almost to the Abyssal rift, where everything had started! However... There was a sinister occurrence beneath it all that turned everything around on its head...!"
"The demons did not just lie down and disappear! And neither did they just launch all-out attacks to raze down the planets, star systems or even galaxies that hunted them down, numerous traitors among the human race began to emerge..."
"Those were... The demon contractors...?" Lars blurted out these words in shock, to which Marzinus nodded gravely.
"Yes... The demon contractors. People who gained immense strength from the blessing of the Abyss and the contract with the demons. People who were indistinguishable from another person except for their great talent... A talent that gave these individuals meteoric rises to the uppermost echelons of society and the army of the Universe Alliance!"
"You don"t need me to explain just how of a disaster it was... When these same individuals, trusted even to the point of being the apex ruler of an entire dynasty and civilisations... Betrayed the Universe Alliance!"
"The flames of war blazed across more than half of the entire cosmos... The whole universe was thrown into disarray, with none able to trust the other..."
"With the savage and star-sized demonic s.p.a.ce Beasts on one hand... The armies of the devils on the other... And the betrayals and hidden traitors within... The Universe Alliance seemed all but doomed..."
Up to this point, the retelling of the hidden history lost in the sands of time had made Lars" heart heavy while Kizorik waited with bated breath to know what happened to his race. Marzinus head had drooped by this time as he spoke of tragedy after tragedy and sorrow after sorrow. His eyes were closed, pressed together in a frown.
And then at that moment, Marzinus" closed eyes opened with a sharpness within that seemed to dispel all heaviness in but an instant, and he raised his voice in admiration and praise!
"Until the first Demon Hunter Aloin rose in his greatness and established himself as the Divine Demon Hunter and the Devil Slayer!"
"Demon Hunter! Pah!" Kizorik spat out and swore as he heard the words, while Lars continued to listen, enthralled by the heroic tale.
Marzinus spoke faster and faster, but still could be understood even as he raced against time to cover the origins of the Demon Hunters.
"It all started when Demon Hunter Aloin himself... Became a demon"s contractor!"
This drew an astonished gasp, this time from both the boy and the demonic bird!
"How, how can that be...? I thought he was a Demon Hunter? Not a demon"s contractor?"
Marzinus nodded as he chuckled and smiled. "This revelation brought about the same reaction from virtually every generation of us who heard it! Though it was always a secret, except to the sole heir of each generation..." He looked sad once more as he thought about how he, the youngest and weakest Demon Hunter of his batch became the heir by default when all his brothers and sisters fell to the schemes of their foes!
Then he shook his head as he spoke, "But that was the only reason why the Demon Hunting arts originated - from Aloin understanding exactly how demonic energies function..."
Then he breathed in deeply and held his breath, before letting it out as if making a momentuous decision.
"...And with the help of his contracted demon who fought against the corruption of its s.p.a.ce Beast race, inheriting the will of the original Wyrm at the end of the Far..."
Lars and Kizorik waited with bated breath and hung on every word that proceeded from Marzinus" lips at this point, anxious to know the great secret behind the universe, and the Demon Hunter"s origin!
"...His contracted demon, the true-soul of the Wyrm... Devouring Demon G.o.d, the infernal penguin, Razku"rak Kizorik."
The words were like a cannonball blasting through the consciousness of the two listeners. Their ears and minds rang with a gonging sound, as if though they had placed their heads in a bell and rang it with the might of a planet!
How could this be possible! There was no way what they were hearing was real, was it...? Impossible! Inconceivable! Ludicrous! Preposterous! IMPOSSIBLE!
"L-Lars... Tell me... We didn"t... I didn"t really just hear my name and my t.i.tle and my description just now, did I...? Please tell me I"m like, just dreaming, kiddo!"
"Ha... Ha ha ha... Hahaha! Kizorik... I was hoping you"d be the one who told me that... Everything I"ve heard so far sounds like something even my wildest dreams could not imagine...!"
But even as he carried out the mental conversation with his contracted demon, Lars" memory returned to the secrets of the universe he had seen in the artefact Brightstar. He recalled the esoteric image he had seen and had refused to connect to the bad-tempered, irritating penguin who he had formed a contract with. But he could not deny what he had seen, and neither could Kizorik.
Everything so far seemed to point to all that Marzinus said being true!
"Together with Aloin, the Penguin Emperor Kizorik researched and created the Demon Hunting Arts, a cultivation path together with a set of 9 great techniques to detect, to discern... And to destroy the demons, releasing them from the corruption of the Abyss!"
"To cut the long story short, Aloin created the Demon Hunting sect and turned the tides of war around in the decades to come as he sniffed out every traitor in the United Universe Alliance and restored the mighty synergy of the Endless Worlds fighting as one!"
"The united armies drove back the devils and the demons into the Abyssal rift, the place where the Wyrm had self-detonated, where the fissure to the next plane was ripped open. But just when it looked like the war was over, an ominous scene occurred, shocking and blowing away the allied armies from across the universe..."
"On the cusp of victory, one almighty ent.i.ty emerged from the rift. Just one ent.i.ty! But all that one being needed was to stretch his arm through the rift, and every defense, offense, magic formation, art, power... Everything that the entire Endless Worlds had gathered for that battle was rendered useless! Everything!"
"In the face of the cackling, mad ruler of the Abyss, when it seemed like all hope was lost, the first Demon Hunter convened together all the rulers of every party, be it an emperor, self-proclaimed G.o.d, patron deity or saint. And with one arcane formation..."
"They sacrificed their lives to seal the Abyssal rift, and the being that threatened to erase the entire fabric of reality all on his own..."
The muscular drow finished his story with a sigh.
Lars, snapped out of his reverie when the story came to an abrupt end, frowned.
"But it didn"t end there, right...? How does it relate to me...? How did the Demon Hunters come to this stage, where you"re the only one left and bound here guarding this array...?" The golden-haired boy asked with furrowed brows.
The drow nodded.
"Before he gave up his life to end the war... Aloin left a foretelling of the future to come. His contracted demon partner infused its soul and part of its memories into the simple wooden necklace Aloin had worn for all his life. Then Aloin said that one day, another would come in his place who would end the threat that he himself could only stall and seal. That person would be fated with the necklace and emerge once more in the time of greatest peril, once more a mere man contracted with a demon...!"
"He foresaw that one day, even we the Demon Hunters might face extinction...! So he left his inheritance and a copy of all the Demon Hunting Arts on his homeplanet, and obscured the coordinates to his world somewhere in the universe... And he said that his greatest heir, the one who would end everything, would emerge from that planet, hidden in the mists of time and s.p.a.ce! This heir would emerge one day bearing the seal of not the physical necklace, but the merging of his righteous soul with the spiritual essence and mark engraved on his body!"
"Aloin handed down the ancient tongue of his homeworld in his most profound tomes... And it has been pa.s.sed on to the heir of every generation that this tongue shall be the sign of the prophesied one, along with the necklace of the founder and the demon contractor who is unharmed from our Demon Hunting Arts."
"Boy! You are the heir of our great founder, the final sect leader of our fallen Demon Hunting sect!"