Chapter 1865: The Bullet Demon"s Second Chance
"It"s finally over?"
The Bullet Demon watched the Crimson Star"s final moments, as Drake swung his ma.s.sively powerful sword, combining Gluttony with all his other abilities.
A definitive technique with no name, something that rivaled the Terminus Blade, but that was much smaller in scale, more precise, and perhaps even deadlier.
The Crimson Star was finished, her very existence eaten, Drake felt a rush of psychic energy after taking care of her, but yet again, he gained nothing else.
It was a bit disappointed, but he was happy she was freaking gone.
"Haahh... It"s done," he sighed in relief. "Hm? Bullet Demon?"
"I-Is it finally over? Really... Hahah... I never thought it would end like this," the Bullet Demon laughed a bit. "Even when I defeated her earlier... Deep down, I felt unease, I knew that she was alive somehow. Her flames left that mark on me to tell she"s there. Alive, somewhere... but now... I feel strangely light."
"Is that so..." Drake calmed down, sighing in relief one last time, as his blade disappeared, he noticed the train getting farther and farther away, they had to get going. "We have to get going, let"s go."
""
The Bullet Demon didn"t move though, remaining there, gripping his mechanical fists tightly.
He couldn"t cry anymore; his eyes were gone.
However, right now, Drake could tell he would be crying.
His aura, his emotions, had completely changed.
Before he seemed so unapproachable, so strong, so intimidating. But right now?
Drake finally realized he was only a wounded man.
Someone that lost everything against a monster.
A person that even lost most of his body, most of himself.
Then someone that even lost his ident.i.ty, his name.
Someone that embraced the cold steel of an ancient weapon, turning it into his new body.
All for the sole purpose of killing the monster that took everything from him.
"I oftentimes doubted why I was alive... Why was I left alive when my wife, and my son died..." he muttered. "Many times I wished I would"ve died..."
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"I gave myself the sole purpose in my life to kill her, you know... It was all I had, I was living for this moment," the Bullet Demon muttered. "I joined this race knowing she would appear to ruin it. And now it"s... done. Hah... It wasn"t by my hands alone, you helped me... Maye that"s why I feel slightly... annoyed. But at the same time, I"m grateful."
Memories flashed through his mind.
The screams of his village as it was being burned.
And the laughter of this monstrous demon.
"Hahahaha! Sorry not sorry. I was paid a bunch of money to burn all of you!" she laughed. "Looks like you rejected the offer from someone wanting to buy this land to mine its starlight, well too bad now. Instead of having gotten rich, you"re going to become cinders!"
She wasn"t even taking it seriously, that monster that saw all life as nothing but "fuel for her flames".
A complete psychopath.
"Dear!"
His wife running towards him, trying to reach him.
"No...! Wait!"
And his scream as he saw her burning by the flames coming from the skies, which ravaged through all.
"Aaaarrrggh!"
Her body calcinating in front of him, her skin and flesh burning until he saw her skull.
The pretty face of his wife, reduced to a calcinated corpse.
As his body burned he ran to see his son, his last hope.
But it was too late as well.
His entire house was already destroyed, and his son was there...
Burned alongside it.
"No...!"
He fell to his knees, as the world around him turned into h.e.l.l.
The small mining town, on a small moon on a distant planet.
Which didn"t want to sell everything they had built to a big corporation.
They ended like this, because they simply wanted to keep their home.
The people of the village, everyone...
They all burned.
As he burned in agony, he kept crying.
His eyes melted, his hair burned, his legs were left calcinated, and so were his arms.
"Hmm, it seems someone survived..."
And he was found by someone after all of that, the next morning.
He was delirious, unable to talk or hear anything, to see anything.
"Oh? You awakened an Esper Ability? This is why you didn"t die..."
In that last moment when his mind and spirit broke, the man awakened an Esper Ability.
It was an incredibly rare thing to occur.
But sometimes, only by being exposed to the radiation of Starlight Stones, very rarely, people could awaken Esper Abilities.
But this also came with a deteriorating, cancerous brain due to the radiation reaching its peak, blossoming into an Esper Ability as he died.
Yet even then...
"You"re the one that will avenge your family... You will be known as a Demon from now on."
"I will rebuild you, I will give you tremendous power."
"In exchange, you have one mission. Kill the Crimson Star!"
He could still remember the voice of that dying old man.
He used all his energy to remake him, using the body of an ancient weapon from an old
civilization.
All for this purpose all for this moment.
"Hahh..."
Blood started coming out from the crevices of the Bullet Demon"s body.
His cancer had spread through what barely remained of him too much.
He was at his limits.
But he pushed himself every day just for this.
Maybe...
It was finally time to rest.
To go back to his family...
"Hang in there!"
Yet he was woken up from his daze, as his brain deteriorated, Drake had grabbed him,
noticing he was falling unconscious.
And using his Dungeon Gate, he teleported inside the train again.
"Benladra, my daughter! Use your Anti-Mold on him! He"s dying!"
"E-Eh?! Okay!"
He felt something getting inside of his body, a strange, cold liquid that spread through every
inch of his limbless torso, and his faceless head.
His dying body and his brain rapidly began to regenerate.
His limbs, everything he had lost, started to come back.
The large metal suit he had been encased since that incident became too little now.
His arms, legs, his face...
His eyes.
They all came back.
"Aaah!"
When he woke up, the train had already reached the station.
And his entire body was back to normal.
"T-This... can"t be...!"