Chapter 91 - 91: « Headband-Bound Demon King [2] »
The atmosphere became a physical weight, a pressurized tomb of ozone and sulfur as Kim Jin stood before the 65th Demon King. There was no preamble. There was no cinematic pause.
Kim Jin lunged.
The ground beneath his boots shattered into a fine powder as he bridged the gap in a heartbeat. His blade hummed, a streak of lethal silver aimed directly at the Demon King's throat. The Demon King didn't flinch. He raised a single, obsidian-clawed hand, catching the edge of the blade between two fingers. The impact sent a shockwave through the floor, spider-webbing the stone for fifty yards in every direction.
「The Constellation 『Head-band Bound Demon King』 is baring its teeth!」
Gold-white sparks erupted from Kim Jin's forehead. A faint, ethereal glow of a tightening metallic ring appeared just above his brows, pulsing with a rhythmic, suffocating heat. This was the power of the Great Sage, but it was a power held in a vice. Every time Kim Jin channeled the celestial strength, the golden band constricted, a divine corrective measure that threatened to crush his skull if he drew too much.
The Demon King laughed, a sound like grinding stones. "Look at you. A puppet pulling the strings of a prisoner." He flicked his wrist, sending Kim Jin skidding back across the wasteland. "To think a human would dare borrow the mantle of that pathetic failure. That star... that so-called 'Demon King' who crawled on his knees before a monk."
Kim Jin didn't answer. Silence was his only companion. He adjusted his grip, his muscles coiling like high-tension wires. He moved again, faster this time, a blur of motion that defied the eye.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The sounds of their collision were not like metal on metal; they were like mountains falling. Kim Jin's sword moved in a trajectory that mirrored the chaotic, untamable spirit of the star behind him. He struck with the weight of a celestial pillar, yet the Demon King parried each blow with a sneering elegance.
"You don't even know, do you?" the Demon King hissed, his eyes glowing with a toxic violet light. "You see the 'Demon King' in his title and think it's a mark of cruelty. You think he was born of the Abyss like us." He dodged a vertical cleave that split the earth into a jagged ravine. "He was a king of monsters before he was a saint. He was the one who challenged the very fabric of the Heavens, claiming a throne he hadn't earned. He was a 'Demon' because he refused to be a 'Subject'. And look at him now—a dog on a leash, forced to watch his power filtered through a mortal skin."
Kim Jin felt the golden band on his forehead burn. The Hand of Buddha—the invisible weight of the Constellation's ancient punishment—pressed down on his shoulders. He couldn't use the full transformation. He couldn't summon the mountain-leveling staff. He was forced to fight with a fraction of a fraction, his very veins screaming as the divine and the demonic clashed within his marrow.
He swung again. A horizontal slash sent a crescent of white energy screaming toward the Demon King. The King swiped it away with a backhand, the energy dissipating into harmless sparks.
"Pathetic," the Demon King spat. "The story of the West... it wasn't a journey of enlightenment. It was a ᚠᚡᚢᚣᚤᚥᚦᚧᚨᚩᚪᚫᚬᚭᚮᚯᚰᚱᚳ. It was a systematic breaking of a ᚠᚡᚢᚣᚤᚥᚦᚧᚨᚩᚪᚫ. Do you know how a Demon King is truly made? It isn't just spite. It's the ᚠᚡᚢᚣᚤᚥᚦᚧᚨᚩᚪᚫᚬᚭᚮ."
The words began to warp. As the Demon King spoke, the air around his mouth seemed to glitch and tear. The system was intervening. The floor level was too low; the information was too volatile.
"The Great Sage was the first of us to ᚠᚡᚢᚣᚤᚥᚦᚧᚨᚩᚪᚫᚬᚭᚮᚯᚰᚱᚳ," the Demon King continued, his voice rising in volume as he launched a counter-offensive. His claws grew elongated, wreathed in shadows that ate the light. He struck Kim Jin's chest, the armor there shattering like glass. Kim Jin coughed blood but didn't slow down. He twisted in mid-air, kicking off the Demon King's chest and coming down with a strike reinforced by the weight of a thousand stars.
The golden band on Kim Jin's head tightened until blood began to trickle down his temples.
[The Constellation 『Head-band Bound Demon King』 is roaring in silent fury!]
[The 'Hand of Buddha' is suppressing the manifestation!]
"Look at that!" the Demon King mocked, pointing a clawed finger at Kim Jin's bleeding face. "Even now, the Heavens won't let him help you! They fear him! They fear what happens if a Demon King actually ᚠᚡᚢᚣᚤᚥᚦᚧᚨᚩᚪᚫᚬᚭᚮᚯᚰᚱᚳ. We are the anomalies in their perfect script. I am the 65th, but your star? He was the ᚠᚡᚢᚣᚤᚥᚦᚧ."
The Demon King's face contorted. He realized his words were being swallowed by the void. He looked up at the sky of the abyss, toward the unseen gaze of the Constellation Stream.
"You're filtering me?!" he screamed, his voice cracking. "You cowards! You dare hide the ᚠᚡᚢᚣᚤᚥᚦᚧᚨᚩᚪᚫᚬᚭᚮᚯᚰᚱᚳ! Why do you hide the truth from these insects!?"
He turned back to Kim Jin, his eyes wide with a manic, desperate rage.
"You are not ready! None of you are! What you are seeing here is but the surface! I wasn't supposed to appear on this floor's abyss! This is all deliberate! The ᚠᚡᚢᚣᚤᚥᚦᚧ is already ᚠᚡᚢᚣᚤᚥᚦᚧ!"
He was cussing now, a string of foul, ancient blasphemies that the system turned into a series of distorted, electronic screeches. He was so consumed by his hatred for the "Stream" and the Constellations watching from above that he began to overextend. His guard dropped. His movements became erratic.
"You will learn soon enough... you are all just ᚠᚡᚢᚣᚤᚥᚦᚧᚨᚩᚪᚫᚬᚭᚮᚯᚰᚱᚳ!"
Kim Jin saw it. The one moment of true vulnerability.
He didn't hesitate. He ignored the agonizing pressure in his skull. He ignored the notification windows popping up in his peripheral vision warning him. He poured every ounce of his remaining mana into a single, blinding flash.
The blade cut and erased the space between Kim Jin and his target.
Schwing.
The Demon King's tirade ended in a wet, gurgling sound.
Kim Jin stood behind him, his sword extended, his breathing heavy and ragged. A thin line appeared on the Demon King's neck. Then, with a slow, sickening slide, the head of the 65th Demon King fell from his shoulders, hitting the ground with a dull thud.
For a second, there was silence. The oppressive weight of the Demon King's presence seemed to vanish, replaced by the hollow ringing in Kim Jin's ears.
"What... what was he saying?" a voice whispered from the shadows. The few survivors of the party were stepping forward, their faces pale. "Filtered? Deliberate? What did he mean he wasn't supposed to be here?"
Kim Jin didn't answer. He couldn't. He stared at the decapitated head, whose eyes were still open, fixed in a permanent snarl of frustration.
Then, the world began to smell like burning rot.
The headless torso didn't fall. Instead, it began to shudder. A deep, guttural bubbling sound emerged from the neck stump.
Suddenly, a fountain of thick, viscous purple mana erupted, coating the surrounding stones in a glowing, oily sludge. Along with the mana came a heavy, rolling grey smoke that smelled of ancient graves.
"Get back!" someone screamed.
The body began to swell. It didn't grow into a larger version of itself and it instead decided to deform. The skin stretched and tore as muscle and bone liquified and reformed into a massive, pulsating sphere of raw meat. It expanded like a giant meatball, growing ten, fifteen, twenty feet in diameter. Blood vessels as thick as fire hoses throbbed intensely across its surface, glowing with that same sickly purple light.
The 65th demon king's limbs distorted, elongated, and dripping with mana—pushed out of the meatball at random angles, twitching rhythmically.
The head, still resting on the ground a few feet away, began to dissolve into the same purple smoke, its jaw still moving as if trying to finish a sentence that the universe refused to hear.
And then, there was the tiger.
The beast that had been lurking, the one that had survived the initial onslaught, was suddenly caught in the spray of the leaking mana. It let out a pained, distorted yowl as its body began to warp. Its muscles doubled in size, tearing through its fur. Its eyes turned a solid, glowing violet. It grew larger and larger, its bones cracking and resetting until it stood as tall as a house.
The mutated tiger threw its head back.
It let out a roar that wasn't a sound, but a physical force. It was a sound that carried the weight of the Demon King's final, filtered words—a sound of impending doom and broken words.
The roar ripped through the air, shaking the foundations of the abyss, causing the very walls of the floor to crack and tremble as the purple mana began to saturate the world.
[WARNING: AN UNKNOWN ENTITY IS MANIFESTING!]
The roar shook the whole place.