Chapter 231: None Shall Contradict Him

Evangeline's intervention had eased the situation in the Kingdom of Solren somewhat, allowing the King of Solren to deal with the remaining Paragons and focus on helping the neighboring kingdoms, which hadn't had the luxury of having a Calamity show up and lend them a hand.

But if there was a good side about all of this, there was also a less pleasant one.

Some of the Demigods of the Abyss had sensed the anomaly coming from the direction of Ashwick, and when they noticed the overwhelming strength with which the entity there was massacring the DemiGod, they became wary.

Soon, much to the astonishment of the rulers of the neighboring kingdoms, the Demigods stopped devastating their territories and all began moving toward a single location.

Ashwick.

On one hand, that drew a sigh of relief from many. On the other, it put her under even greater pressure, because if every DemiGod on the continent was now marching to fight her, how long could she possibly last before falling?

That mattered a great deal, because calamity or not, if she perished, the burden would fall right back onto them. The realization put every ruler on high alert, and they began exchanging messages with one another, trying to decide what to do next.

Evangeline, meanwhile, had just finished tearing apart the DemiGod, which now lay dying before her, its eye burning with rage and humiliation as it screamed.

"You vile creature, you have only yourself to blame for what is about to-" it began, but it never got the chance to finish its threat. With a flick of her finger, Evangeline sent out a trail of black smoke that swallowed the DemiGod's body whole and devoured it.

The Element of Darkness, one of the rarest elements to possess, let alone master.

Evangeline hadn't merely controlled it; she had mastered it to the point of forging a Concept Core at DemiGod rank from it. Combined with her Void element, and with Death, the very origin of Darkness itself, it made her the most fearsome of the Three Calamities.

She didn't spare it a second glance. Instead, she turned toward the horizon, where several points had appeared and were steadily growing larger.

More DemiGods, coming to deal with her.

She watched them approach with nothing but absolute calm, as though what she was looking at were nothing more than ants marching forward to be slaughtered.

But that wasn't all. More fractures began tearing open across the area, a sign that even more DemiGods were descending onto this world. Several of them emerged from those tears while the rest, still approaching from a distance, finally reached the site as well.

She looked at each of them, one by one, her expression never changing.

Some were colossal, true mountains of flesh and power that blocked out the sun as they passed. Others were smaller, yet still enormous compared to any human being who had ever walked this land.

They were all different from one another. Some resembled beasts, quadrupeds with impossible proportions, limbs multiplying along their spines like diseased growths. Others bore a more humanoid shape, though human applied to them only in the vaguest, most distorted sense imaginable.

One had no face at all, only a mass of mouths opening and closing along its entire torso, each one whispering something in a language no living being could hope to understand.

Another crawled, if that unnatural, slithering motion could even be called crawling, on a number of legs that kept shifting, as if its own body couldn't decide what shape to wear. A third floated, wrapped in a veil of semi transparent flesh, beneath which pulsing organs could be glimpsed, following no anatomy known to any world.

But one thing united them all.

They were horrifying. The kind of horror that burrows into the mind and stays there, capable of making even the sturdiest of souls tremble.

Some of them seemed to size up Evangeline's strength, having watched how effortlessly she'd erased one of their own. Others even seemed to comment, in their guttural tongue, on her audacity, voices that scraped against the air itself.

"You are a strange being, part dragon, part Hollow, part something else entirely. Truly a walking contradiction, one that defies the natural order of things. You must be eliminated," one of them finally said, in a language she could understand, as though reading out the charges against her and passing sentence in the same breath.

Evangeline looked at it completely unfazed, her only reaction a mocking smirk, as if what she'd just heard were nothing more than the whining of some inferior creature.

That seemed to provoke many of them. None of them wasted any more time watching her or trading words, as if perfectly coordinated, they all released their Domains at once.

Reality shifted instantly around them. The air turned thick and oppressive as void energy saturated every inch of sky and ground. The strength of each of those beings seemed to intensify further under the pressure of their own Domains, their physical forms twisting into something even more grotesque, as though reality itself were contorting to accommodate their presence.

Evangeline stood at the center of it all, struck by nearly ten Demi God Domains simultaneously, a weight that would have crushed any other being in an instant.

But she didn't retreat a single step.

Instead, she released her own Domain in turn.

Her figure lit up for an instant, then was swallowed by a dark mist that expanded rapidly, engulfing the space around her. From that mist emerged a colossal creature, dragon like in shape, its body a raven black shot through with veins of blood red light, curved and menacing horns crowning its head, a demonic maw lined with blade sharp teeth. Its body held almost nothing physical in its substance, it looked more like the skeletal incarnation of an impossibly dense dark energy, barely held together by the sheer will of the one commanding it.

She roared.

A sound that shook the very foundations of the torn sky, and soon the entire area, blanketed by the Domains of ten DemiGods, began to darken as Evangeline's own Domain overlapped theirs, swallowing them whole from within.

That left every one of them stunned, watching in disbelief the scene now unfolding, unleashed by the very being they had come to kill.

She, now in her draconic form, looked at them, her eyes, two circular slits of white light amid a mass of darkness, gleaming with excitement, as though she couldn't wait to slaughter every last one of them.

Without wasting another moment, the colossal wings at her back spread wide, and with a single light beat, she vanished from the spot, reappearing directly in front of one of the DemiGods, which only noticed her once she was already there.

"A walking contradiction, you say? So what? My Master adores me exactly as I am, If he sees no contradiction in my existence, then none exists, and any who dare claim otherwise shall die by my hand." she said, the words closer to a roar than speech, as she unleashed her fury on the unfortunate Demi God before her.