Chapter 89: The weight of atrocities
The Seraphim Kingdom was not merely rioting; it was convulsing. After Leornars' meticulously orchestrated Exposure, the capital's gilded façade cracked, swallowed by a maelstrom of furious, righteous retribution. The pristine streets were now choked with citizens who had finally seen the truth. Leornars, the puppeteer of this chaos, stood unmoved, not just speaking, but holding aloft a blood-stained, leather-bound dossier. It was a ledger—a meticulous record of every Homunculi and Beastfolk murdered in his infamous, torturous experiments. The evidence was absolute, burning into the citizens' minds like holy fire.
Three miles away, on the jagged coastline cliffs, the true battle of strength was underway.
KRRR-ASH!
Stacian was a force of raw, frustrated power. She had dragged a brutally battered Jeremy to the very edge of the precipice. With a guttural, primal roar, she smashed his body against a sheer, ancient rock face before slamming him roughly onto the ground. A sickening, gut-wrenching thud resonated, not just through the air, but through the very earth. Jeremy's pained grunt was followed by a terrifying Tectonic Shock that rippled through the crust, a seismic pulse of displaced power so immense that even Leornars, miles distant, was forced to momentarily stagger.
"Well, I guess your boy toy Jeremy is dealt with," Leornars said, his voice dropping to a cold, flat register, as he finally turned his attention to the man he truly needed to eliminate. "So what's next, Prince Luiphonia?"
Prince Luiphonia gnashed his teeth, the sound a ragged edge of impotent fury. Before he could even muster a single, princely insult, Leornars moved with the speed of an activated algorithm. He delivered a focused, devastating punch to the Prince's jaw. The blow was so sharp, so complete, that it instantly decapitated him.
Leornars sighed, looking away from the falling, regal corpse. But the respite was brief. The severed head began to regenerate almost instantly, new flesh knitting itself back to the neck with unnerving, rapid haste.
"Oh, for the love of the Seraphim," Leornars muttered, a dangerous thread of irritation pulling taut in his voice. "Does everyone in this pathetic kingdom have high-level regeneration? It's becoming genuinely annoying."
He didn't wait. Adopting a cold, relentless rhythm, Leornars launched into a rapid-fire sequence of bone-jarring punches to the newly forming head, culminating in a precision Lingus Kick to the back of Luiphonia's nape. The Prince fell heavily, only to start stitching himself back together again.
Leornars produced a wickedly sharp, black-steel blade. The next few moments were an exquisite, agonizing blur. He began to systematically dismember the Prince, cutting, stabbing, and beheading him several hundred times, an agonizing, perpetual cycle of destruction and regeneration, executed far faster than the Prince's mind could even register the pain.
Finally, Leornars tossed the blade high into the air. He kicked Luiphonia under the chin, sending the body staggering back. Leornars flipped, caught the spinning blade with his foot, and launched it, point-first, into the Prince's throat. As he landed, he unleashed six scorching Fireballs that erupted simultaneously across Luiphonia's face.
The Prince collapsed. Leornars closed his eyes, and in an instant, the world darkened.
KRCH!
He summoned his legion. Seventy-three thousand undead warriors erupted from the earth—and sickeningly, from Luiphonia's body—their weapons emerging through his chest, limbs, and skull, all pointed upward. The Prince was instantly impaled and shredded by his own dark soldiers.
Yet, still, he regenerated.
As Leornars began his calculated walk toward the mess of flesh, Luiphonia erupted in a chilling, utterly maniacal laugh. He struggled onto an elbow, clutching a horrifyingly familiar object: a glowing, crimson Homunculi Core Crystal.
Julah, who had been watching from a terrified distance, let out a heart-wrenching gasp. She recognized the artifact immediately.
"That's Papa and Mama's cores!" she screamed, her voice cracking with grief. "Their life crystals!"
Leornars lunged, but it was too late. With a vile, triumphant grin, Luiphonia swallowed the crystal whole.
The transformation was less an evolution and more a horrific biological disaster. Luiphonia's body ballooned and tore. Six extra, pale hands sprouted from his torso, eyes formed in chaotic patches across his skin, and a cavernous, lipless extra mouth ripped open beneath his chin. His human form was replaced by a massive, pulsing, grotesque, slime-like entity of raw biological matter.
Leornars didn't even pause for a flicker of shock. He simply raised his hands, focusing a torrent of magical energy, and continued to blast the monstrosity, bathing it in scorching, purifying flame.
But the sheer mass was too much. The creature's massive, newly formed hand grabbed Leornars' arm, smashing him hard into the ground. It hauled him high, then threw him as it spat a stream of bubbling acid-spit. The chemical fire engulfed Leornars's left foot, instantly turning the flesh rotten.
Leornars landed, looked at the decaying tissue, and calmly sliced off the necrotic flesh with a quick wave of energy. A new, pristine foot instantly regenerated to replace it.
Luiphonia let out a bloodcurdling scream, wallowing toward Leornars, who moved fast, searching for a weak spot in the endless, mutated mass. He found none—but he saw something worse. Among the bubbling flesh and new eyes, were the screaming, tortured faces of the homunculi used in the crystal, their ghostly visages pleading for release.
Leornars instantly fired a blazing, focused Helveklev—a hell-fire cleave—burning a hole right through the monster's center. He leapt up, but his vision blurred, a wave of nausea hitting him. He flipped back to the ground.
"I… don't feel too good," Leornars mumbled, his focus wavering.
A slick tentacle snapped out and grabbed his ankle.
CLANG!
Leornars instinctively summoned Bellian, his sword spirit, who instantly materialized and cleaved the grabbing tentacle. Bellian looked back to see Leornars' typically crimson aura changing, becoming a deep, unsettling black, and his entire arm was turning the same shade of obsidian.
"Huh?" Leornars exclaimed, just as another, thicker tentacle smashed into his gut, sending him flying into a pile of rusted metal pipes.
"Lord!" Bellian shouted, just as Zhyelena, his shadow assassin spirit, emerged from Leornars's shadow. She leapt toward the mass with her twin daggers, beginning a flurry of chaotic cuts. A chilling laugh echoed from the pile of pipes, and Zhyelena looked back—only to be slowly, irresistibly pulled into the metal wreckage. Bellian, loyal to the last, followed her into the dark pile.
Within Leornars's damaged core, the mechanical voice of his support AI, Althelia, activated:
> "System is critical… regenerative atoms are stabilized. Accessing damage… damage to the host is critical and needs to be treated quickly. Deploying the Necrochimera fusion… form… the Void Reaper Form activated… looking for other sufficient reserves, activating the adaptive energy…"
>
Leornars's body began to rapidly fuse with the remnants of his entire seventy-three thousand undead legion, transforming him into the Necrochimera Fusion known as the Void Reaper.
A piercing, inhuman scream tore out from the metal pipes as the new form emerged: an eight-foot-tall, towering figure wreathed in black armor and crowned with menacing, obsidian wings.
Luiphonia tried to attack, but the Void Reaper was already there. It grabbed the massive, mutated body and tore it in two, exposing the central core mass in the middle. Luiphonia managed to stab the Void Reaper, but the wound was nothing.
> "Healing procedures instantly deployed," Althelia announced.
>
The wound vanished. The Void Reaper grabbed the Prince's main body and smashed it repeatedly into the ground. Luiphonia gasped for air, looking up at the horrifying visage of the Void Reaper. The creature opened its mouth, and a dark, absolute void of flame poured out, scorching the Prince's face. Luiphonia began to slowly regenerate.
The Void Reaper let out a final, piercing, metallic scream. It tore open the Prince's nape and, with a sickening shred, ripped his spine out. Luiphonia instantly began regenerating another spine—but before the cycle could continue, the Void Reaper dissolved, and a fully healed Leornars stood in its place. The Necrochimera Fusion disabled.
> "Systems fully healed… Necrochimera Fusion disabled," Althelia confirmed.
>
Luiphonia stared at Leornars. His aura was no longer just a black flame; it pulsed and coiled like a massive, predatory serpent. Leornars walked toward the Prince, every step heavy with finality.
"Luiphonia," Leornars said, his voice flat, emotionless. "You have wronged the world, wronged creation, and corrupted the sanctity of life. Your punishment is Death. There is no negotiable term."
"Gatekeeper!"
Leornars's cold command summoned the impossible. The thousand-foot-tall monolith emerged from the sky, its eyes bleeding black energy, holding a massive stone tablet. A new inscription was carved into its surface:
"Lies and deceit create illusions of trust."
The tablet opened wide like a cosmic doorway, and Luiphonia was instantly pulled in. His soul was seized, burned over and over, grabbed, torn apart, and incinerated. Within the Gatekeeper's unforgiving embrace, his essence was permanently erased from the cycle of rebirth and resurrection.
Luiphonia's physical body melted into a bubbling, vile liquid that poured onto the ground. Leornars, not wanting a single trace to remain, fired a final, focused Helveklev onto the liquid, erasing it permanently.
Leornars stood on the cliff, the scent of brimstone and sea-salt filling the air. He sighed, the battle finally over.
Three miles away from Leornars' devastating victory, the coastline cliffs were undergoing their own annihilation. The fight between Stacian and Jeremy was a brutal, one-sided spectacle of speed versus desperation, fueled by Stacian's incandescent fury.
Jeremy, the disgraced former Captain, was a mess of bruised muscle and fractured bone, pinned at the cliff's edge. He was powerful, but Stacian's speed and strength were transcendent, utterly mocking his defenses. He wasn't arrogant now; he was pleading.
"Stacian, please, listen to me!" Jeremy choked out, spitting blood onto the sharp rocks. "Luiphonia… he promised! He said he would heal Clarissa and our unborn child if I served him! I only did this for them!"
Stacian didn't slow. Her rage was a fire that burned away excuses, leaving only the need for retribution against all who had supported the Prince's atrocities. She moved, and the world seemed to freeze for Jeremy, turning her into a black-and-silver blur.
FWOOSH!
She vanished from his sight. The air immediately behind him compressed into a thunderous strike. Jeremy barely managed to throw an arm up, activating a desperate, shimmering Mana\ Barrier.
K-R-A-A-C-K!
Stacian's fist connected, the sound like granite exploding. The barrier disintegrated instantly, and Jeremy's arm snapped outward at an impossible angle. He was sent cartwheeling over the cliff's edge, falling hundreds of feet toward the churning ocean.
But Stacian was a force of inevitability. Before gravity could truly take hold, she reappeared beneath him. Her speed generated a sonic boom that cracked across the water, and she drove a devastating kick straight into his back. The strike slammed him upward, reversing his fall with catastrophic, bone-jarring momentum.
Jeremy rocketed back onto the cliff face, impacting the sheer rock with a sickening, wet slap. A deep, car-sized depression was instantly carved into the dense stone. He slumped, his breath stolen, his last threads of hope fraying.
Stacian landed silently, her breathing steady, her eyes the only cold things in the warm evening air. Jeremy, driven by the memory of his sick wife, tried one last time to summon his strength.
He struggled to his feet, trying to project a defensive Earth Spire Blade, his signature technique.
"Why... why are you doing this?" he wept, the tears mixing with the blood on his face. "I am not him! I was blackmailed! He holds their lives!"
"You chose who to obey," Stacian stated simply, her voice low and cutting. "You chose tyranny over integrity."
She launched her final, unblockable assault. She didn't deliver single strikes; she delivered combinations that were impossible to perceive.
A Left Hook: She appeared beside him, her fist blurring. It hit his temple.
A Right Cross: Before the left hook's reverberation could finish, the right cross impacted his jaw, shattering it.
A Rotational Back-Kick: She spun, delivering a final, focused impact to his sternum, sending him stumbling back, utterly broken and paralyzed by the speed and power of the blows.
The entire sequence was faster than a heartbeat. Jeremy's limbs seized up. He collapsed, paralyzed, his spine screaming in pain, unable to move a single muscle, but still tragically conscious.
Stacian stood over the immobilized Captain, her shadow falling across his face. She retrieved the crystalline Earth Spire Blade he had failed to summon, its tip wickedly sharp.
She lifted the weapon high. Jeremy, staring up at the figure of absolute vengeance, could only make one last, desperate attempt to save what he cherished.
He forced his broken throat to utter his final plea, his voice a ragged whisper that defied his failing body.
"P-please..." he rasped, his eyes locking onto hers, tears flowing freely for his family, not his life. "Save my wife, my unborn child… please, I beseech you as my dying wish!"
Stacian froze. The speed, the rage, the relentless assault—all of it came to a dead stop at the sound of his pure, final desperation. She looked at the man, seeing not a villain, but a desperate, cornered fool who had made a pact with the devil.
For a moment, a flicker of something other than fury—pity, perhaps, or a hollow understanding—crossed her features.
But the retribution still had to be delivered. The debt was too high.
With a speed that still transcended human sight, she brought the Earth Spire Blade down. It was a precise, clean cut, a single line of absolute finality.
WHOOSH.
Jeremy was severed perfectly in two, an end that was brutally decisive but tragically swift. Stacian dropped the shattered weapon. She stood there, silent for a long moment, watching the sea foam crash below. She had granted him a final moment of tragic dignity, but she knew the final wish was likely already a broken promise.