Episode-594
Chapter : 1167
A sphere of swirling, chaotic energy, a miniature black hole of pure, concentrated abyssal flame and shadow, began to form in his hands. It was the entirety of his remaining power, the final, desperate gamble of a cornered, dying king.
But as he prepared to unleash this world-breaking attack, a new, and far more insidious, violation of reality occurred.
Lloyd, who had been a passive, defensive void, finally went on the offensive. But his attack was not one of ice or steel. It was a silent, invisible, and utterly terrifying assault on Rubel’s very mind.
Lloyd’s eyes, which had been burning with the cold, ancient light of a winter star, transformed. The luminous blue-white faded, replaced by the familiar, ethereal, and now infinitely more powerful luminous rings of pale blue light against a backdrop of absolute black. He had disengaged from his merge with Bingyu and unleashed the true, terrible, and newly upgraded power of his Austin bloodline.
He did not place a seal of negation. He did not project a ring of force. He unleashed a new, terrifyingly subtle power that his recent ascension had unlocked: ‘Super Control.’
It was not mind control. It was not a clumsy, brute-force rewriting of a person’s will. It was far more elegant, and far more monstrous. It was a quiet, insidious, and perfectly targeted suggestion planted not in the conscious mind, but in the white-hot, emotional core of his target's rage. It was a whisper to the soul, a gentle nudge to the river of a person’s hatred, redirecting its flow.
As Rubel’s fury reached its absolute peak, as he prepared to annihilate Ben, Lloyd’s whisper entered his mind.
They stole it from you.
The thought was not Lloyd’s. It was Rubel’s own, his deepest, most defining grievance, now amplified and reflected back at him with a divine, absolute clarity.
Your father’s throne. Your birthright. Stolen by the traitor Malachi Ferrum. By his arrogant, unworthy line.
Rubel’s perception of reality, which had already been fractured, now shattered completely. He no longer saw Lloyd and Ben, the two impossible demigods who had cornered him. His rage was too pure, too absolute, to be wasted on these two upstarts. His mind, guided by Lloyd’s insidious suggestion, now projected the true, ancient object of his hatred onto the world around him.
He looked at his own loyal Curse Knights, the army of the damned that still fought a losing battle against the Ferrum forces. He did not see his soldiers. In their burning red eyes, in their silent, skeletal forms, he saw the faces of Malachi Ferrum’s treacherous council. He saw the lords who had stood by and allowed his father to be cast aside. He saw a legion of ghosts from the past, the architects of his family’s long, slow humiliation.
His roar of fury was a sound of pure, righteous, and utterly misdirected hatred. It was not for his cousins, but for the phantoms of a half-forgotten history that now stood before him, as real and as solid as the blasted cobblestones beneath his feet.
"TRAITORS!" he shrieked, his voice a ragged, tearing sound of pure, unadulterated madness. "YOU STOLE IT ALL! YOU WILL PAY! YOU WILL ALL PAY!"
With a final, ecstatic scream of pure, righteous hatred, Rubel turned. He turned away from Lloyd and Ben, the true authors of his doom. He turned his back on them completely, and he unleashed the full, cataclysmic, world-breaking power of his final attack.
Not upon his enemies.
But upon his own unholy legion.
The miniature black hole of abyssal energy detonated in the heart of his own army. The result was an apocalypse in miniature. A sphere of absolute annihilation expanded, and the front ranks of his own Curse Knights, the very soldiers animated by his will, were simply erased from existence.
He had become the mad, self-destructive puppet king of his own damned army, a rabid dog turning to savage its own limbs, all orchestrated by a single, quiet, and monstrously elegant whisper from his nephew. Lloyd had not defeated him with power; he had defeated him with a perfect, weaponized understanding of his own soul.
The scene in the square of Ashworth devolved from a battle into a grotesque, tragic, and utterly insane piece of theatre. Viscount Rubel, his mind a shattered kingdom ruled by ghosts, became a whirlwind of self-destruction. He was a god of war waging a holy crusade against an army of phantoms, and his own loyal, soulless soldiers were the canvas upon which he painted his madness.
Chapter : 1168
He tore through his own ranks, his shadow-chains and abyssal flames lashing out with a wild, joyous abandon. The Curse Knights, their simple, malevolent intelligence incapable of processing the betrayal of their own master, could only react with a clumsy, instinctual defense. It was a battle between a mad god and his own confused, terrified creations.
Lloyd and Ben stood back, silent observers of the magnificent, horrifying spectacle they had orchestrated.
"Well," Lloyd commented, his voice a dry, academic murmur. "That's one way to solve a manpower problem. A bit unorthodox, but you can't argue with the results."
Ben's expression was a mask of cold, analytical satisfaction. "His psychological profile was always unstable, predicated on a foundation of unresolved grievance. Your targeted psionic attack was the logical catalyst to induce a catastrophic systemic failure."
"You say 'psionic attack'," Lloyd countered, a small, weary smile touching his lips. "I say I just reminded him why he was angry in the first place. It's really more of a therapeutic intervention, if you think about it."
Their detached, clinical analysis was a chilling counterpoint to the screaming, chaotic self-immolation of Rubel's army. They were two engineers, watching a complex machine they had designed tear itself apart with perfect, beautiful precision.
But the spectacle, however entertaining, could not last. Rubel's power, as vast as it was, was finite. And the searing, agonizing pain of a mortal body being consumed by demonic energy was a powerful anchor to reality.
As Rubel was in the process of vaporizing a hundred of his own soldiers, Ben saw his opening. The mad king's guard was completely, utterly down. His entire being was focused on the phantoms of his own making.
Ben moved.
He was a ghost, a flicker of motion at the edge of reality. He flowed through the chaos of the one-sided battle, a phantom of vengeance moving at the speed of light. He appeared directly behind Rubel.
And he delivered his final judgment.
It was not a flashy, world-breaking blow. It was a single, brutal, and perfectly executed strike. The hardened edge of his steel hand, infused with a lifetime of rage and a son’s grief, chopped down on the back of Rubel's neck.
The sound was a sickening, wet crack.
The searing, white-hot agony of the blow was a shock to Rubel's system that was more powerful than any psychic suggestion. Lloyd's perfectly crafted illusion, the cathedral of ghosts he had built in Rubel’s mind, shattered into a million pieces.
The phantoms of Malachi Ferrum's court vanished. The righteous fury was extinguished. Sanity returned in a single, blinding, and excruciating flash.
Rubel collapsed to his knees, his head lolling, the demonic fire in his eyes reduced to a flickering, terrified ember. He looked around at the devastation. He saw the smoldering remains of his own army, annihilated by his own hand. He saw Ben standing over him, his face a mask of cold, unforgiving judgment. He saw Lloyd, his eyes now returned to their normal, intelligent green, watching him with a look of profound, almost pitying, contempt.
He saw it all. And he understood. He had been played. He had been a puppet, a fool, a magnificent, self-destructive toy in the hands of his brilliant, monstrous nephew.
The humiliation was a force more powerful than any physical blow. His pride, his ambition, his very reason for being, had been turned into a joke.
He began to laugh. A low, gurgling, bloody sound. It was the laugh of a man who had stared into the abyss and found it staring back, wearing his own face.
"You haven't won…" he hissed, his voice a bloody, broken thing.
He simply smiled. A devilish, knowing, and utterly triumphant grin.
"You fool," he hissed, his voice a serpent's whisper. "You have been so busy fighting the monster at your gates, you never thought to check for the one in your own house."
He leaned in, his lips almost touching Lloyd’s ear.
"It was her," he whispered, the words a poison dart aimed at the very heart of Lloyd’s soul. "It was always her. She orchestrated everything. She approached you only to get close, to learn your family’s weaknesses. She approached you only to destroy you from within."