The Devil"s Evolution Catalog Chapter 142: Conclusion Part 1
"Tilith, if you can"t bear to finish her off then I"ll do it! A frightening existence like her mustn"t be allowed to exist!"
The towering man gave out the command to kill without any hesitation, and from the looks of it, planned to step in himself.
Tilith breathed another heavy sigh before shaking her head and saying, "Team Leader, I"ll be the one to do it."
Without answering her directly, the man nodded at her.
With that, the momentary respite was over as the girl launched a barrage of stabs. Rather than calling it an attack, it would be more accurate to call it a light show as each stab transformed into a flash of light the moment she thrust out with her cross sword. With no way to dodge them, I was forced back bit by bit until finally I felt a chilling whoosh from behind me. Before I could react to it, I was hammered with a crushing force that sent me flying away right back at Tilith.
Had she chosen to attack then I would"ve undoubtedly died, yet unexpectedly, she didn"t do so.
"Team Leader, you agreed to let me handle this alone!" The girl glared at her superior and even seemed to have adopted a posture to shield me.
"Haha, I apologize, but this fellow is simply too dangerous. If we let her escape now, it would cause a lot of trouble in the future." The man smiled a smile that was anything but remorseful. Then he shrugged the shoulders which he had used to slam his shield into me, signalling to the girl to continue. "Do it then, the credit for this kill is yours."
"..."
Just from our short exchange alone, her principled and honorable nature was more than made apparent to me. Despite having just declared a one on a one battle, her companion had attacked me with his shield just a few seconds later. She burned with righteous fury at my treatment yet there was nothing else she could do about it. The person who broke the rules was her superior, and he had done so under the sanctimonious banner of slaying a devil.
If she chose not to attack me now, the other party could treat her hesitation as collusion...looks like these two had a rocky relationship.
As I struggled to my feet, the girl stared directly into my eyes; her eyes wavering as she did so. She was probably reluctant to kill me because she felt I was a kind soul, yet the cruel reality was that I was a devil and devils were the nemeses of demon hunters like Tilith.
"Perhaps you are a good person but...I apologize, I have no choice but to kill you." In a voice that only she could hear, she muttered to herself as she approached, sword drawn and pointed at my various weak points: "I do not know what you are looking for but I can feel your unwillingness, however the world is as such, the good aren"t always the ones who live the longest."
"Haha, you make it sound like I"m so despicable." The Team Leader gave a dry laugh before rushing her once more: "Cut the c.r.a.p and do it."
"Hmph!" Tilith turned her head around to avoid looking at her superior. At this distance, I could clearly see her knuckles whiten from tightly gripping down on the cross shaped sword as she prepared to send me on my way.
"Flames!" Thankfully, that short reprieve was enough for my hardy devil const.i.tution to recover by around 50%. Gone was the devil who looked like she could barely lift a finger as I created a flame wall to block Tilith. After going through that recent evolution, my flame wall crackled with the blackish red of my Nether Flames, right from the very base of my feet...
The sudden appearance of the flame wall forced the girl back as she didn"t dare to take on the demonic flame; she leapt back immediately as the flames roared to life. The Nether Flames had succeeded but it came with a price of its own.
The flames had engulfed my entire body by now, and while I had a greater fire resistance than other normal devils, this was not some ordinary fire. Nether Flames were known for their terrifying power and could easily reduce a weak person to cinders in an instant should they refuse to escape. Even me, their summoner, wasn"t spared their fury as they ravaged my reddish hide.
"Nether Flames!? d.a.m.n it, how is a three-star able to control these forbidden flames! Tilith stand aside, leave this fellow to me!" The Team Leader shoved aside the girl who didn"t dare to approach the flames while he himself dove right into them; a thick layer of yellowish aura wrapped around his body as he did so.
I had intended to deter Tilith by summoning this wall, and while this had succeeded, I had forgotten about her superior standing nearby. That man was a five-star!
With his kite shield whipped out in front of him, the five-star warrior charged right through my flame wall with ease like a raging bull.
*bang!*
I was promptly thrown backward by the t.i.tanic force, flying into the air like a helpless leaf within a raging tornado. After what felt like an eternity, but was probably just a couple of seconds, I finally landed on the floor with a loud smash, my body continuing to spin around despite that.
A wave of lightheadedness. .h.i.t me as my body throbbed with a numbing pain all over. Without a doubt, this was the end of the road for me. There was no one who could save me now unless Duran suddenly died. Without him as my medium, I would be thrown out of this world by the natural laws and be instantly teleported back to the Prison of the Dead.
"Little Brother, this one will send you back this time around but this one will have to slumber once more. However, it was fun talking to you during this short period of time. Besides, Yi Yi had requested this of this one, letting you die isn"t an option…"
Return? Return where? This is my home, the place where I lived for eight years...
"Don"t be so willful, this one has already ordered Ancarin to do it."
Ancarin? Do what? How did this suddenly involve Ancarin?
My question went unanswered. As I sat there waiting for my death with a million questions in my head, my body was. .h.i.t with a sudden sense of weightlessness…
……
Ever since he was summoned to this world, Mo Ke had done a lot of things; he had saved a lot of people, yet not all of them were thankful for that.
Of those girls captured by Duran, there was a portion who stuck with him because of money. Mo Ke had saved numerous girls and had even given them 300 gold coins each. Yet, while this might seem like a huge sum to ordinary people, it was nothing more than a pittance to some of the more spendthrift ones.
Samantha was one such person. When Mo Ke instructed Ancarin to hand out the 300 gold coins, her lips curled into a cold sneer. If one included all the magical tools in Duran"s mansion, Mo Ke had at least gained several hundred thousand gold coins.
Hmph, must be great earning so much money, but what about us sisters who had suffer through those days? 300 gold coins just for our silence? Did you think we were beggars or something? That was what the calculative girl thought.
However, Samantha was no fool. She was extremely aware that Mo Ke held the upper hand at the time. If she were to protest, even a fool would know that she would lose. Thus, she chose to endure it.
When Mo Ke released those girls, Samantha was naturally one of those girls as well. It was a sense of freedom that she hadn"t experienced in a while, so she put aside her dissatisfaction for the time being and proceeded to the nearest city for a shopping spree. As for her chast.i.ty, she didn"t give a d.a.m.n about that. It wasn"t like she hadn"t done it before either. Long before Duran, she had used her comely appearance to latch onto a number of sugar daddies.
In fact, her time in Duran"s estate was more of a job to her than anything else. Thus when Mo Ke sent her off with 300 gold coins, she naturally felt that it was too little.
Samantha loved extravagant things. On the day of her release, she went on a spending spree, buying all the latest clothes she could find. However, money was something that was hard to earn and easy to use up. In just five days, she managed to spend all of her money. Her wallet was as bankrupt as her morals at that very moment.
Now that she was broke, what was she to do? As she basked in the pleasure that a male prost.i.tute gave her, she suddenly thought of an idea, an idea that could bring her more money...
Because Mo Ke had revealed his destination during that meal, Samantha was sure that Mo Ke would visit Azure City so she contacted the demon hunters…
Everything after was as Mo Ke experienced it: being hunted down by the demon hunters and nearly dying in his own backyard without ever getting the chance to see Nicole.
The moment Gaywitz (Team Leader) knocked Mo Ke out of the flames and prepared to kill him, the s.p.a.ce around him warped. A second later, Mo Ke disappeared without a trace…
All this was the handiwork of Ferti"nier who now slumbered in the swirling crystalline object surrounding Mo Ke"s soul. As she slumbered, her aura would influence his soul while simultaneously absorbing the souls absorbed by Mo Ke. The fact that Mo Ke was able to subjugate countless devils despite his low level was precisely because of Ferti"nier"s existence.
In essence, this body belonged in part to Ferti"nier as well, seeing as how her aura was infused into it. However, in her eyes this body was simply too low level to catch her interest, thus she had no intention of taking it over. Besides, there was still that promise with Yi Yi.
Seeing as Yi Yi had barely no mana in her when she sent Mo Ke into the Blood Sea, the majority of the mana was taken from Ferti"nier. Thus she had always been in a catatonic state until Mo Ke returned unexpectedly to the Western Human Realms.
Ferti"nier was once a demon king of the l.u.s.t demon race and naturally possessed a vast soul. Compared to that, Mo Ke was like a tiny firefly standing before a full moon. Even if she had no intention of taking over his body, she ended up having an influence on him anyway, turning his body into one that was neither male nor female. However, such a change could be reversed as long as she left his body.
The skills he had picked up when he evolved were actually all from Ferti"nier who, because of their soul link, ended up transferring them over to him when he evolved. All these skills didn"t need to be learnt, he merely had to unlock them in order to use them.
When Mo Ke was battling Dawson, she had already awakened; however, she chose to observe him and continued pretending to be asleep.
In order to guarantee that Mo Ke"s jaunt in the human realm wasn"t a fatal one, she influenced the souls of Ancarin and Regine without Mo Ke"s knowledge, turning them into demonesses who would only serve Mo Ke. From that moment on, Ancarin began addressing Mo Ke as "Master" (TL: master-servant) instead of what she used to call him.
(TL: Previously I used "Master" in both cases since it can be used as a way of showing respect without both parties being in a master-servant relationship. Obviously, this ended up causing some issues. Either way, Master now refers to a master-servant relationship.)
As a former demon king who almost created her divine core, she naturally had a host of unrevealed skills. Unfortunately for Mo Ke, her soul was still too weak especially after she transferred a vast amount of energy to Mo Ke during the fight with Dawson. Thanks to that, he was able to evolve on the spot, but that had used up most of the souls Mo Ke had absorbed up to this point.
Just as Gaywitz was about to finish off Mo Ke, she activated her secret arts and sent a message to Ancarin stationed far away in Azure City. Her order was to kill Duran and sever the only link between Mo Ke and the Western Human Realms. However, the price of this secret art was that she had to sleep once more. Thankfully, this plan worked just in the nick of time.
Footnotes:
Credits:
Special thanks to Steve Granger, Kaung Thant Win Naing, and Antoine Thompson!!