Chapter 1095: 1094: Eclipse of the Black Moon (Magic Castle Bonus -)
[A/N: This bonus Chapter is thank to Lord Enigma. You’re simply amazing man. Thank you so so much honestly.]
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The ram-horned Daemon’s body sank beneath the waves.
The shadow army didn’t stop for him.
They surged toward Simon from every side, and at their front came the two strongest among them. The demon general raised its greatsword. The Demi-God shadow stretched out its hand, and its spear tore itself free from the sea where the ram-horned Daemon had fallen and flew back into its grip.
Simon’s eyes narrowed.
He couldn’t keep fighting like this. His reserves were running low, and as long as those two remained, the army would keep pressing him.
They had to go first.
The demon general reached him first.
Its greatsword came down in a heavy arc. Simon didn’t block it. His Seed of Pride flared, and the greatsword stopped a hand’s width above his head, trembling against the invisible pressure.
It couldn’t hold for long. The general was too strong.
But Simon only needed a moment.
Black flames erupted along the Chaos Blade.
The Chaos Flames burned silently, without heat or smoke, and Simon felt the familiar pull on his soul as they consumed his soul energy. His third eye found the thick cables of power wound around the general’s core.
He swung.
SHHHK!
The Chaos Blade passed through the general’s chest, and the black flames clung to the cables. This time, they didn’t fray. They burned.
The general froze. Black fire spread through its shadow body, eating through every line holding it together.
Then it collapsed into mist.
The moment this happened, Ilvara staggered, groaned, then held her chest.
Simon was already turning.
The Demi-God shadow thrust its spear at his heart.
Simon raised his forearm. Black scales surged across his skin.
CLANG!
The spear skidded off the scales, but the faint divinity in it burned through the gaps. Pain shot up his arm, and the flesh beneath his scales blistered black.
Simon gritted his teeth.
His third eye fixed on the Demi-God’s core. The knot there was the thickest he had seen, wrapped in layers like a sealed coffin.
Before, his needles had only frayed these cables.
So he gave it more.
Crimson tribulation lightning gathered inside all four of his horns at once. Instead of firing them separately, he pulled the four streams together and compressed them into a single point in front of his forehead, right beneath his open third eye.
It burned so brightly that the rain around it evaporated.
PSHHHHHHT!
A single beam of crimson light shot out and struck the Demi-God’s core.
The cables held for a heartbeat.
Then they snapped.
The Demi-God shadow jerked once. Its spear fell from its hand. Its blurred face tilted toward Simon, and for a moment, it almost looked as though it was trying to say something.
Then it dissolved into the storm.
Simon breathed out slowly. His arm still burned, and Unholy Regeneration was working hard to push the divinity out of his flesh.
But the two strongest shadows were gone.
Across the sea, Ilvara watched the last of the Demi-God’s mist scatter and coughed a mouthful of blood as she fell on her knees.
Cough!
Cough!
For the first time, her expression changed.
It wasn’t anger, it wasn’t surprise, and it wasn’t even fear. It was something colder.
"…Enough."
She raised her shadow blade.
Simon’s pupils constricted.
He knew exactly what she was about to do.
’No.’
His wings flared, and every vent opened at once. He shot toward her, the Chaos Blade raised.
But he was too late.
Ilvara turned her shadow blade around and drove it into her own chest.
PUCHI!
Black blood poured down her coat.
"Chaos Manifestation," she said quietly.
"The Lightless Deep."
BADUM
The sound of her true heartbeat rolled across the sea.
BADUM
Simon felt it in his bones.
BADUM!
Then the world went dark.
It didn’t happen gradually. One moment, there was a storm and a grey sky and rain. The next, everything was swallowed by a darkness so deep that Simon couldn’t see his own hand.
And it was spreading.
Simon spun and fired every vent on his wings, racing away from Ilvara as fast as he could move. He had to get out of its range.
The darkness followed him.
It was faster.
Far faster than he expected, and far larger. It swept over the sea in every direction like a black tide, swallowing kilometers in a single breath. No matter how fast he flew, the edge of it kept pulling further away.
Simon reached for the space in front of him in order to teleport.
Nothing happened.
He reached again.
The space wouldn’t fold. It felt solid, as though he were trying to bend a wall of glass with his bare hands.
Space had been sealed.
Simon’s expression became extremely grave.
This was what he had always feared whenever he fought Demon Kings.
Their Chaos Manifestation was their trump card. It was the reason he always tried to kill them before they could use it. Even a Minor Demon King’s manifestation could put his life in danger.
And Ilvara was not a Minor Demon King.
After facing her, he now knew that she was actually a Superior Demon King.
But she could definitely defeat an average demon who was a Supreme Demon King with ease.
Then the pressure arrived.
It struck him from every direction at once, like the weight of an entire ocean pressing down on his body. His wings buckled. His bones groaned. The air was crushed out of his lungs.
He fell out of the sky, then his knees struck something solid in the darkness.
BANG!
Simon couldn’t stand.
He tried to lift himself, but the pressure pinned him down. His arms shook. Blood ran from his nose and the corners of his eyes. Every breath felt like drawing water into his lungs.
He understood now.
The Lightless Deep was the bottom of an endless sea of shadow, a place where light had never reached.
There was no sky above him. No horizon. No up or down. Only endless black, and the crushing weight of it all pressing him toward a floor that didn’t seem to exist.
Shapes moved in the dark around him.
The remaining shadow army.
They no longer walked. They swam. They glided through the darkness like creatures of the deep sea, circling him slowly, their pale eyes glowing.
And beyond them, Simon felt her.
Ilvara was everywhere.
Her presence filled the darkness the way water filled the sea. He couldn’t tell where she was, because in here, she was all of it.
A shadow beast lunged out of the dark and tore across his back.
Simon couldn’t even turn to block it.
Another raked his side.
Then another stabbed a spear into his stomach, causing him to cough out a mouthful of blood.
’She’s toying with me.’
He clenched his teeth so hard that his gums bled.
’She’s probably doing this to make me suffer for killing Thorgan.’
Devour reached for the energy in the air, but the darkness resisted. In here, every scrap of energy belonged to her. He could barely pull anything in.
’If I stay like this, I’ll die.’
His third eye blazed.
The silver cross within it burned brighter than it ever had.
And Simon poured everything he had left into it.
Black light exploded from his body.
It rose around him, stretching higher and higher, taking shape in the darkness. Two colossal legs. A broad chest. Long arms. Four great horns curving from its head. Six vast wings unfolding from its back, each one larger than a warship.
And in its hand, a colossal black sword with a thin crimson edge.
Black Sky Incarnation.
Simon’s physical body hung suspended in the chest of the giant, wrapped in black light.
The pressure was still there.
But now, the giant carried it.
Its knees bent beneath the weight of the abyss, but then slowly, it straightened. It stood up in the darkness, towering above the circling shadows, and for the first time since the manifestation began, Simon could breathe.
The shadow army surged toward the giant.
Simon swung its colossal sword.
BOOOOOOM!
Dozens of shadows were wiped away in a single stroke.
He swung again. And again. The giant moved slowly beneath the crushing weight, but every one of its strikes carried enough force to tear through the deep.
But Simon could feel his reserves draining at a terrifying speed.
Maintaining the giant cost demonic energy and mental energy. Fighting inside the manifestation cost even more. And he could barely replenish anything here.
He had to end this fast.
His third eye searched the darkness.
At first, there was nothing. Only endless black.
Then he saw it.
Far ahead, deep within the abyss, the threads of the manifestation converged. Countless thin lines of power, all flowing inward toward a single point.
Toward her.
That was the heart of the Lightless Deep.
Simon raised the giant’s sword high above its head.
The last of his demonic energy flowed out of his heart, through the cube, into the giant, and into the sword.
A black crescent formed along its edge.
It was shaped like a moon, darker than the abyss itself, rimmed with a thin, burning line of crimson.
’Sword Daemon’s Sword Art…’
The crescent grew until it covered the entire blade.
’…Eclipse of the Black Moon.’
The giant swung.
The black moon left the sword and fell through the darkness.
It didn’t make a sound.
But wherever it passed, the abyss split apart.
The darkness tore open in a long, curved line, like a crescent moon cut into the night. Through the gap, light poured in. Grey storm light, and rain, and wind.
The black moon struck the point where the threads converged.
CRAAAAAACK!
The Lightless Deep shattered.
Cracks raced outward through the darkness in every direction. The pressure lifted. The shadow army froze mid-swim, then began to dissolve as the manifestation holding them together collapsed.
And in the center of it all, Ilvara was revealed.
She stood on the sea with blood running from her mouth and chest, her shadow blade still embedded in her heart. Her dark eyes were wide.
The giant faded.
Black Sky Incarnation dissolved into motes of black light, and Simon dropped out of its chest.
He reached for the space before him.
This time, it folded and he vanished.
Simon appeared in front of Ilvara.
She tried to raise her hand.
He was faster.
The Chaos Blade drove into her chest, right beside her own shadow blade, straight through her heart.
PUCHI!
Black flames erupted along the Chaos Blade.
They burned inside her, silently, reaching deep into her heart and the Chaos Flame within it.
Ilvara’s body went rigid.
The shadows around her feet writhed and tried to rise, then fell still.
She looked at him.
For the first time, there was something in her eyes that Simon could read clearly.
Disbelief.
Simon looked back at her with cold, indifferent eyes. Blood and sweat ran down his face, and his body was shaking with exhaustion.
But his grip on the Chaos Blade didn’t loosen.
"It’s over," he said.