Chapter 159: EX 159. Wicked
Bal’ark was stunned, no, humiliated. The idea that a great demon lord like him now shared the fragile body of a nineteen-year-old human girl was beyond disgrace. If the other demon lords ever learned of this, he would never live it down. The whispers and the mockery, would be eternal.
What Governor Akira had done was deceptively simple, but wicked in its precision: he had fused Bal’ark’s essence with Eleanor’s very being. Cruel? Absolutely. Necessary? Without question.
Bal’ark had no one to blame but himself. In his bid to ensure Eleanor’s success in capturing Leon, he had given her a fragment of his own essence, an act born from a dangerous mix of desperation and overconfidence. But instead of delivering the Vessel to the demon lord, he had walked straight into Leon and Elizabeth’s trap. His essence had been damaged, bound, and locked inside the girl’s body.
He could never have guessed she was dragonborn. Those were rare, vanishingly so. Yet it didn’t matter. The moment of realization had come too late. And now, with Akira’s intervention, the fusion was complete. Any knowledge Bal’ark carried could now be extracted at will. There was no fate worse for a demon lord.
There was also a reason Akira had chosen to intervene personally. His eyes were sharp, his thoughts sharper still as he regarded the demon before him.
’The rate at which demons have infested the Federation has gone too far. Before, it didn’t matter, every vision of the future led to the same end: death. But now... now there’s a future I can’t predict. One that could end in our victory. And I have to make sure it does.’
He stepped forward, voice calm but edged with steel.
"I’m going to ask you some questions," he said, his gaze locked on the figure now wholly under Bal’ark’s control. "And you’re going to answer. Am I understood?"
Bal’ark, wearing Eleanor’s body, lifted his head with defiance in her eyes.
"I am the demon—"
He didn’t finish. A crushing wave of energy slammed into him, pinning him to the wall with such force that blood burst from Eleanor’s mouth.
Akira’s voice dropped lower, colder, carrying the weight of finality.
"Am I understood?"
****
Outside the reinforced chamber, Nikko, Rebecca, and Raven stood behind the one-way glass, watching as the strange man calmly took control of the room. In a single, unhurried gesture, he had expelled every healer present, sealing the door as though the air itself obeyed him.
What followed wasn’t healing, it was deliberate, methodical torment. Eleanor’s body slammed into the wall under invisible pressure, her mouth spilling blood. The man did it without a flicker of hesitation, his expression unreadable.
And yet... none of them moved to intervene.
It wasn’t fear, not entirely. The raw force radiating from him was undeniable, but that wasn’t why they stood still. It was because of what Nikko had called him.
Raven, still unsure if her ears had betrayed her, turned sharply.
"Father...? Nikko, that’s your father? The Governor; Akira Yakomoto?"
She was so stunned she didn’t even attach the title supreme heir to Nikko’s name.
Nikko didn’t answer. She didn’t even look away from the window, her eyes locked on the man inside. She had only learned what he truly looked like yesterday, and now, seeing him here, calmly dismantling their prisoner, it felt unreal.
Her silence told Raven and Rebecca everything they needed to know. The conjecture they’d formed snapped into certainty. This was the Governor. The real one. The man whose true face no one in the Federation had seen, always hiding behind avatars and proxies.
Seeing him in person was like staring at the summit of a mountain you’d only ever imagined. Raven and Rebecca felt the weight of it, an awe that stilled the tongue.
It wasn’t just them. Outside the chamber, the healers who’d been expelled stood frozen in the corridor. Some simply stared, reverence plain in their eyes. Others had gone to one knee, heads bowed in silent devotion.
Raven’s gaze flicked to them, her tactical instincts kicking in.
"What do we do with them?" she asked.
Rebecca’s eyes lingered on the kneeling figures, then shifted back to the glass.
"Leave them. The Governor knew exactly what he was doing when he came here in person."
Raven gave a slow nod of understanding. Then, almost idly, she smirked as her gaze returned to the chamber.
"He’s ruthless," she murmured. "And I like it."
Rebecca only shook her head at the comment, while Nikko stood silent, still staring, and processing the man behind the glass who was both a stranger... and her father.
****
While the Governor worked in the chamber with Eleanor, something else was unfolding in a separate wing of the base.
In the quiet of a dimly lit clinic room, Eden writhed on his bed. His screams tore through the stillness, raw and unending, as though his very soul was being clawed at. Sandra, his mother, had both hands on him; one gripping his shoulder, the other pressing down on his arm, trying to keep him from thrashing off the bed. Her voice trembled with panic as she called his name, over and over, but nothing eased his pain.
The healers left behind after Khalifa’s departure worked frantically around him. Threads of mana wove through the air as they cast healing spells, their hands glowing with practiced skill. But with every pulse of light, the boy only arched harder against the bed, sweat soaking his hairline.
Sandra’s voice broke into a desperate cry.
"What are you doing? Nothing is working!"
They didn’t answer. They couldn’t, nothing they tried was making a difference. And Sandra, S-rank mage or not, was a mother first. All she saw was her son in agony, and the helplessness was an iron weight in her chest.
Then, just as the healers gathered for another round of incantations, Eden gave one last, sharp yelp. His eyes flew open wide, and from his mouth spilled a string of sounds that didn’t belong to any human tongue.
"@$#$$@$#$@$@$$#$@$$@$@@$@#@$@."
Sandra froze. The healers froze. And then his jaw slackened,
A slow, oily stream of black mist poured from his mouth, coiling in the air above him like something alive.
Sandra’s expression shifted in an instant. The wide-eyed fear hardened into the sharp, cold focus of a predator protecting its young. Her aura flared, S-rank mana surging like a storm as her voice cut across the room.
"Leave my son, you filthy creature."
The mist hissed in response, twisting and thrashing, but Sandra was already moving. She summoned a sphere of mental force with a snap of her will, the air warping as it took shape. With a decisive pull, she yanked the dark essence from Eden’s mouth and trapped it within the sphere, its movements violent but futile.
With a single push of her power, she crushed it out of existence, and the shadow dissolved into nothing.
Eden collapsed back into the bed, his breathing shallow but steadying. His eyelids fluttered open, his gaze dazed at first before it found her. Recognition lit in his eyes, and tears welled instantly.
"...Mom."
Sandra’s breath caught.
"Eden?"
"Mom!" His voice broke into a sob.
She was at his side in a heartbeat, dropping to her knees, her arms wrapping tight around him. Her tears mingled with his as she pressed her cheek to his hair.
"I’m sorry, Mom," he choked out. "I’m sorry."
"It’s okay, baby," she whispered through her own tears. "Everything’s okay now."
And for a long moment, the room that had been filled with screams held only the sound of a mother and son clinging to each other, alive.
****
A/N: I swear I don’t hate Eleanor.