Chapter 297: Stay Still, Don't Move!
As mentioned before, the Root of Evil in the Ys Origin worldview is the embodiment of human negative emotions, the unique 'Evil of this World' in that worldview.
As long as humans are alive, negative emotions will always exist. The more humans there are and the larger society develops, the stronger and more varied these negative emotions become.
The relationship between the Root of Evil and humanity is like that of a shadow and light; they are interdependent and cannot exist independently.
As long as humanity exists in this world, the Root of Evil will never truly disappear. This is the real reason why, even after the Twin Goddesses sacrificed all their power to seal the Black Pearl and the Root of Evil, it still broke the seal seven hundred years later, leading to the Demon Lord's resurgence.
From this perspective, if Demon Lord Darm had truly replaced the Twin Goddesses and ruled the Kingdom of Ys and even the entire world, it would have needed to actively maintain the existence of humanity. If humanity ceased to exist, then the demons themselves would eventually vanish.
However, the emergence of Cheng Tian, a variable, undoubtedly interfered with this fundamental logic of light and shadow's interdependence.
The Eye of Judgment possesses the ability to indiscriminately judge guilty souls. Furthermore, with the enhancement of the Demon Gauntlet, even souls shattered into fragments cannot escape the Holy Fire's burning.
Units burned will continuously suffer Holy Fire damage at a soul level and will endlessly relive the sins they committed against others in their lifetime.
However, a logical bug appeared here.
The Eye of Judgment's judgment of evil relies on the existence of a soul. For units without a soul, the Eye of Judgment cannot take effect.
This was demonstrated in the original work when facing the soulless unit 'Witchheart Demon'; no matter how evil the target, if it had no soul, the Eye of Judgment would only burn empty space.
Similarly, the Root of Evil is essentially just a collection of human evil thoughts. No matter how powerful the Eye of Judgment is, it cannot do anything to this collection of evil thoughts... But the problem is, Cain Fact, who possesses a complete soul, has also devoured a large number of monsters and three members of the Clan of Darkness, and is now in a state of high assimilation with the Root of Evil.
The soul fragments bursting from the tentacles, which derived from Demon Lord Darm and had independent health bars, all originated from the previously devoured monster units.
And the Eye of Judgment, which isn't picky, doesn't care if your soul is noble or not; it just starts burning. Then, along with the soul fragments, it also burned a tiny bit of the Root of Evil responsible for integrating different souls within them... Yes, this incident was also recorded in the original work.
As a soulless unit that could naturally immune the Eye of Judgment, the Witchheart Demon at the end of the story absorbed a large number of evil spirits, gaining powerful dark energy and almost unresolvable infinite regeneration ability. However, it also added the label of a 'soul-possessing unit' to itself, thus meeting the Eye of Judgment's trigger mechanism.
Many people sell their souls for power, but not many buy souls for power. One can only say the Witchheart Demon deserved it.
The current relationship between Demon Lord Darm and the Root of Evil is somewhat similar to that of an evil spirit + Witchheart Demon. Their combination indeed greatly increased its power, but it also added a formidable and unignorable weakness.
Upon detecting an imperceptible incineration of the Root of Evil, Demon Lord Darm realized this point, and an emotion called 'fear' quietly surfaced in his heart as never before.
Coincidentally, Cheng Tian, who was responsible for burning souls, also observed this phenomenon through the judgment playback mechanism.
Click, click, click, click, click~~
Cheng Tian turned his head to look at Demon Lord Darm, his upper and lower jaws making high-frequency clashing sounds.
Facing such a Cheng Tian, Demon Lord Darm's massive body instinctively recoiled, and even the tentacles that Cheng Tian had severed earlier were twisting on their own.
Cheng Tian took a step forward, the Demon Lord took a step back. Cheng Tian stepped forward again, the Demon Lord retreated again.
Suddenly, the pair of demonic wings on Demon Lord Darm's back rapidly swelled in size, flapping powerfully, and he shot straight into the sky!
However, just when everyone, including Cheng Tian, the Goddess, and all those on the ground, thought that Demon Lord Darm was about to unleash some ultimate move, this massive, strange creature actually flung its tail and sped away in the opposite direction from the White Tower—
This was Demon Lord Darm's escape route!
Even someone as proud as Cain Fact made a decision that, objectively speaking, was very correct at this moment: to flee on the spot and not engage Cheng Tian.
Although his body also contained the soul and flesh of a Shura Berserker, granting him melee combat abilities no less than any purely physical BOSS, losing his spellcasting ability caused his combat power to drop by more than seventy percent compared to his perfect state.
The Cain personality within Demon Lord Darm was arrogant but not blind. He clearly understood that in this state, he could not possibly be an opponent for Cheng Tian, who had been implanted with the Twin Goddesses' two pairs of wings.
Moreover, the move Cheng Tian had just displayed made him realize that the Root of Evil was not truly invincible; there was indeed a third way to destroy the Root of Evil in this world.
Flee! He must flee!
Cain's capacity for forbearance as the main personality was unparalleled throughout the Kingdom of Ys.
This forbearance was enough for him to instantly make a decision to abandon all dignity. The gazes of others meant nothing to him; what final BOSS, what Six Priests, what losing face in front of his useless sons—none of it was within his consideration.
As long as he could survive this immediate crisis and find a way to lift the anti-magic field, he would do anything.
History is written by the victors. As long as he found an opportunity later to eliminate everyone who knew about this, then everything could be treated as if it never happened.
But if he wanted to run, he still had to ask if Cheng Tian would agree.
Watching Demon Lord Darm's rapidly receding figure, Cheng Tian's two right wings quickly turned blue, and Rhea's phantom also solidified.
The Goddess reached out her slender hand towards Demon Lord Darm from a distance, and with a single point—
Goddess's Grace: Azure Moon's Prelude.
As an extension of the Authority of Freedom, the effect of the Crimson Moon Ritual allows Cheng Tian to freely use player-side skills.
As an extension of the Authority of Order, the effect of the Azure Moon's Prelude allows all units to indiscriminately obey certain reasonable rules and orders that should originally exist.
With the Goddess's finger, Demon Lord Darm, who was frantically fleeing, unexpectedly crashed into an air wall that appeared out of nowhere!
Before the Demon Lord could even react, the air wall began to rapidly contract, forcibly dragging the already distant Demon Lord Darm back into the scene range of the Twin Black and White Towers!
["Azure Moon's Prelude activated, original rules reappearing—"]
["When a BOSS battle is triggered, both enemy and friendly forces will be simultaneously restricted to a fixed BOSS battle scene, and neither side will be able to escape the current scene by any means until one side is defeated."]