Episode-795
Chapter : 1589
"Iron," Lucifer sneered. "So crude. So heavy. You cling to the earth, Roy Ferrum. You cling to the dirt. That is why you will never reach the sky."
He squeezed. The iron dragon's head shattered into dust.
But Roy was relentless. While Lucifer destroyed one, the other two struck. Gog punched Lucifer from the side. Magog raked him with claws of lightning. Roy himself charged, his own sword glowing with the concentrated power of his bloodline.
For a minute, just a minute, it looked like a fight. Roy was a whirlwind of violence. He was everywhere at once, using his spirits to flank, using his steel to bind, using his own body to strike. He was fighting with a level of skill and power that defied logic. He was holding his own against a Devil King.
Sparks flew. The ground cracked. Roy landed a blow on Lucifer's shoulder, his sword screeching against the white armor. He managed to push the Devil back a step.
Roy gritted his teeth, sweat pouring down his face. He is strong. Stronger than anything I have faced. But he is arrogant. He is playing. If I can catch him... if I can combine Gog's gravity with Magog's speed...
He prepared his ultimate technique, gathering every ounce of his mana for a final, decisive strike.
Lucifer stopped. He caught Roy's sword blade between two fingers. He looked at the straining Arch Duke, and the smile dropped from his face. It was replaced by a look of chilling, genuine pity.
"Oh, Roy," Lucifer said softly. "You really thought you were fighting, didn't you? You thought this was a duel."
Lucifer flicked his wrist. Roy's sword, a blade forged from star-metal and tempered in dragon fire, snapped like a dry twig. The force of the flick sent Roy sliding backward across the courtyard, his boots carving deep trenches in the stone.
"I have seen enough," Lucifer said. "Your spirit is commendable. Your power is... quaint. But I am bored now. And I have a schedule to keep."
He reached into the folds of his white cloak. He didn't pull out a weapon. He pulled out a jagged, pulsating rock. It was the size of a fist, black as the void, and throbbing with a sickly green vein of light. It looked like a tumor cut from the heart of the world.
Roy froze. His instincts, honed over fifty years of war, screamed at him. Danger. Absolute danger. Run.
"Do you know what this is?" Lucifer asked, holding the rock up. "Of course you don't. Your ancestors were smart enough to bury the records of it. This is the Lodestone of the Abyss. It is older than your kingdom. Older than your family. It was forged in the deepest pit of Hell, specifically for people like you."
"What does it do?" Roy growled, signaling Gog and Magog to prepare for a suicidal charge.
"It doesn't kill," Lucifer said. "That would be too simple. It corrects. You Ferrums... you think you own the metal. You think you command the magnetism of the earth. You think it is your birthright."
Lucifer’s eyes glowed purple. "This stone... it reminds the metal that it belongs to no one. It inverts the laws. It turns attraction to repulsion. It turns strength to rust."
"No..." Roy whispered, realizing the implication.
"Goodbye, Lion," Lucifer said.
He crushed the Lodestone.
HUMMMMM.
A sound like a dying whale resonated through the air. A wave of distortion ripple out from the stone, passing through everything.
The effect was immediate and horrifying.
Roy felt a snap inside his chest. It wasn't a bone breaking. It was the connection. The deep, spiritual tether that linked his soul to the element of metal, the connection that allowed him to use his Void Power... it was severed. Violently.
"My... my blood..." Roy gasped.
The river of liquid steel that surrounded him instantly lost its cohesion. It didn't just fall; it crumbled. The metal turned grey, then brown, then dissolved into a cloud of red rust dust that blew away in the wind. His armor, the black adamantine plate that was indestructible, groaned. It rusted in seconds, turning brittle and flaking off his body, leaving him standing in his tunic.
But the worst was the spirits.
Gog, the mountain titan, let out a sound of confusion. His stone body began to crack. The magnetic field that held his massive form together was gone. He crumbled. Tons of rock rained down, burying the courtyard.
Chapter : 1590
Magog, the storm dragon, shrieked. The dimensional tether that anchored him to this plane required a specific magnetic resonance. The Lodestone had scrambled it. The dragon flickered, distorted like a bad image, and then was forcefully ejected from reality.
Roy fell to his knees. He grabbed his chest, heaving. The backlash of having two Sovereign spirits ripped away and his own core power severed was catastrophic. It felt like his veins were being pulled out of his body. He coughed, and a spray of bright red blood splattered onto the rusted dust of his armor.
"You..." Roy wheezed, trying to stand, trying to summon even a single dagger. But there was nothing. The metal in the ground was silent. The iron in his blood was just iron. He was no longer a Void User. He was just an old man.
Lucifer walked over to him. The Lodestone in his hand crumbled into dust, its job done.
"Look at you," Lucifer said, standing over the fallen Arch Duke. "Stripped of your toys. Where is your pride now, Ferrum? Where is your 'Steel Blood'? It seems you are just meat and bone like the rest of them."
Roy looked up, blood dripping from his chin. His eyes were dim, the golden light of his spirit extinguished, but the cold fire of his will remained. He didn't speak of his son. He wouldn't give this creature the satisfaction of knowing his legacy survived. He wouldn't paint a target on Lloyd's back with his dying breath. He simply stared, his gaze a silent, unyielding wall of hatred.
Lucifer laughed. He reached down and grabbed Roy by the throat, lifting him into the air with one hand as if he were a ragdoll. Roy dangled helplessly, his feet kicking the air, his hands scrabbling uselessly against the Devil King's wrist.
"Defiant silence?" Lucifer mocked, tilting his head. "How boring. I expected begging. I expected you to bargain for the lives of your family. But I suppose a Lion doesn't know how to beg."
He tightened his grip. Roy gagged, the cartilage in his neck creaking under the impossible pressure. His vision began to swim, black spots dancing at the edges of the purple sky.
"It is a pity," Lucifer whispered, bringing his flawless face close to the dying Arch Duke. "You were the strongest human of this age. You built a fortress of steel and will. But you forgot the most important lesson of the cosmos, Roy Ferrum: Steel melts. Stone crumbles. Only Pride is eternal."
Lucifer raised his free hand. His fingers straightened, the tips glowing with a razor-sharp, amethyst energy. He aimed directly at Roy's heart.
"I will not leave you to rot, Lion," Lucifer said, his voice void of mercy. "I will not leave you to watch your world burn. I am granting you the mercy of oblivion. I am erasing you here and now."
The courtyard of the Ferrum Estate was no longer a place of military precision or architectural beauty. It was a graveyard of crushed stone and rusted metal. The purple sun beat down on the devastation, casting long, sickly shadows that seemed to writhe on the ground. The silence was absolute, broken only by the ragged, wet breathing of Arch Duke Roy Ferrum.
Roy was on his knees. It was a position he had never held in his entire life, not before a king, not before an emperor, and certainly not before an enemy. But his body gave him no choice. The Lodestone of the Abyss had done its work too well. The connection to the earth, the connection to the metal in his blood, the connection to his Sovereign spirits—it was all gone. It felt as if his nervous system had been ripped out and replaced with jagged shards of glass. Every breath sent a spike of agony through his chest, where his spiritual veins had shattered.
He looked up. His vision was blurry, swimming with red spots, but he could see the white figure approaching.
Lucifer, the Devil King of Pride, did not run. He did not charge. He walked. It was a leisurely stroll, the kind a man takes through his own garden on a Sunday morning. His white boots stepped over the piles of crushed flesh and the flaking red rust of armor that used to be the elite guards of House Ferrum. He stepped past the twisted, rusted corpse of the Captain, whose brave heart had finally given out under the crushing pressure. He didn't look down. He looked only at Roy.