Episode-596
Chapter : 1171
The disciplined, silent army faltered. For the first time, the endless, grinding advance of the skeletons and Dread Commanders stopped. They looked at the sky, at the radiant angels and the granite titans and the shadow-panthers. They looked at the ground, at the legions of iron bears and howling griffins that were tearing through their ranks. And in their soulless, burning red eyes, a new, and entirely unfamiliar, light appeared.
It was the light of fear.
The tide had not just turned; it had become a tsunami. The battle for Ashworth was over. All that remained was the final, personal, and terrible judgment that was unfolding in the main square. The stage was now clear for the final act.
From his position on the fortress wall, the true, terrible scope of his miscalculation was laid bare before Viscount Rubel. He watched as the kings fell. He watched Lord Midford’s Solar Prison cleanse the sky of the Crimson General. He watched Lord Hargrave’s granite golem rip a knight in two with its bare hands. He saw the spectral forms of the Silent Stalkers devoured by a pack of shadows. One by one, the pillars of his new world, the magnificent, terrifying beings he had believed to be invincible, were being shattered like glass.
His demonic pact had promised him a kingdom. Beelzebub had promised him an army that could not be stopped. He had believed himself a king, a god of a new age. In reality, he had been nothing more than a regional test case for his demonic masters, and he had failed the test in the most spectacular fashion imaginable. The rage and despair that had fueled him were now curdling into a new, more primal emotion: the cold, frantic terror of a cornered animal.
His gaze fell upon the main square, upon the two cousins who had been the architects of his initial humiliation. Lloyd and Ben. The whelp and the cripple's whelp. They were still there, a minor, localized problem in the grand, catastrophic failure of his war. But they were a problem he could solve. He could not defeat the twelve lions of the North, but he could still crush these two cubs. He would salvage some small, personal victory from the ashes of his grand ambition.
It was this thought, this final, arrogant flicker of his old self, that sealed his doom.
He watched as Ben and Lloyd trapped him in their impossible cage of physics. He was a being of immense, demonic power, yet that power was rendered utterly, comically impotent. Every offensive move he contemplated was a suicidal act of feeding his own strength into the silent, hungry void that was Lloyd's spatial dimension. Every defensive maneuver was a fool's errand, as Ben could simply pause the very concept of motion and strike him at will. He was a god in a universe where the fundamental laws had been rewritten specifically to negate his divinity.
The pain from Ben's first blow was a white-hot, singular reality in the chaos of his shattering mind. It was not just a physical wound; it was a conceptual one. The strike had not just broken his armor and his ribs; it had disrupted the very flow of the demonic energy that sustained him.
Enraged, terrified, and utterly desperate, he focused his will, gathering all of his remaining strength into a single, final, suicidally potent blast. He would obliterate Ben, and in the ensuing chaos, he would find his escape. But as he prepared to unleash this world-breaking attack, Lloyd’s insidious, psychic whisper entered his mind.
They stole it from you.
His perception of reality shattered. His rage, now guided by Lloyd’s monstrously elegant suggestion, found a new, and more ancient, target. "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, he turned his back on his true enemies and unleashed the full, cataclysmic power of his final attack upon his own unholy legion.
The scene devolved from a battle into a grotesque, tragic, and utterly insane piece of theatre. Rubel became a whirlwind of self-destruction, waging a holy crusade against an army of phantoms, his own loyal soldiers the canvas upon which he painted his madness.
It was into this chaos that Ben moved, a phantom of vengeance, his final, brutal strike cracking the back of Rubel’s neck. The searing, white-hot agony of the blow was a shock to Rubel's system more powerful than any psychic suggestion. Lloyd's perfectly crafted illusion shattered into a million pieces.
Sanity returned in a single, blinding, and excruciating flash.
Chapter : 1172
Rubel collapsed to his knees, his head lolling, the demonic fire in his eyes reduced to a flickering, terrified ember. 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.
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.
With the last of his strength, he reached into a hidden pouch in his armor. His hand closed around a small, cold, pulsating demonic artifact—a final escape hatch. "You haven't won…" he hissed, his voice a bloody, broken thing. He crushed it.
A cloud of oily, black shadow erupted, but Lloyd was already there. A flicker of [Void Step], a shift of [Spatial Power], and he stood before the escaping traitor, the tip of his practice sword resting gently on Rubel’s throat. Checkmate.
Rubel froze, half-in and half-out of his shadow portal. But he was not afraid. He was a cornered serpent, and a cornered serpent always has one last drop of venom. He had one final weapon. And his mind, the mind of a lifelong schemer, forged it in the crucible of his own defeat.
He needed to create a diversion, a psychological grenade of such power it would shatter his opponent's focus for the single heartbeat he needed. He analyzed Lloyd. Not his power, but his soul. He saw the cold, political marriage to Rosa Siddik. He remembered the impossible acquisition of the 5-Color Divine Pearl. He knew of the ancient Siddik-Ferrum rivalry. He took these disparate, circumstantial truths and wove them into a beautiful, simple, and utterly monstrous lie.
He let a devilish, knowing, and utterly triumphant grin spread across his face. He was no longer the defeated traitor; he was the bearer of a terrible, liberating truth.
"Hehehe, hahahahaha," he hissed, his voice a serpent's whisper, a sound of pure, concentrated poison. "You have been so busy fighting the monster at your gates, you never thought to check for the one in your own house. The one sleeping in your own bed." (He repeated.)
He leaned in, his lips almost touching Lloyd’s ear, the intimacy of the gesture a final, grotesque violation.
"It was Rosa," he whispered, the name a key turning in a lock, a single word designed to unlock a universe of doubt. "It was always Rosa."
He could feel the subtle, almost imperceptible tensing in Lloyd's arm, the flicker of pure, unadulterated confusion in his eyes. The venom was beginning to work. It was a poison that fed on doubt, and Lloyd, for all his power, was a man riddled with it.
"Did you never wonder, you brilliant, stupid boy, how she acquired a treasure of the gods like the 5-Color Divine Pearl?" Rubel continued, his whisper now a sibilant, hypnotic song. "A thing that cannot be bought with all the gold in the North. A thing that can only be won through a conquest of staggering proportions… or a pact with a power of the highest, and darkest, order? A power like the Seventh Circle, perhaps?"
The seed was planted. Now, to water it.
"Did you never question," he pressed, his voice dripping with condescending pity, "why the Ice Flower of the South, a woman whose pride is as vast and as cold as the winter sea, a woman whose family has been at war with yours for a generation, would agree to marry you? The drab duckling of the great House Ferrum? The family failure? Was your pride so great that you believed she simply fell for your charms?"
He pulled back, his demonic eyes boring into Lloyd’s, savoring the dawning horror he saw there, the beautiful, exquisite sight of a superior mind beginning to turn on itself.