Chapter 178: Settle the scores (14)

In a gloomy world, beneath a suffocating red sky and scorched black earth...

The Demon Princess Lilith stood there, struggling to catch her breath. Her armored body was covered in cracks, and blood trickled from deep wounds, dripping onto the rocky ground beneath her feet.

She looked as though she had just emerged from a crushing battle that had drained every ounce of her strength.

Before her stood the massive demon, his flaming black sword hanging loosely from one hand. His red eyes gleamed with arrogance, while a mocking smile played across his handsome face.

"You are still as weak and pathetic as you have always been, Princess... You haven’t changed a bit. You are still that fragile, helpless girl."

Lilith’s gaze dropped to the ground for a few moments as drops of blood fell from her chin.

The demon slowly raised his sword, pointed its flaming blade at her, and his cruel smile widened.

"Do you remember your father’s screams when I shattered his pride and ended his life right before your eyes? Do you remember the blood of your family and everyone you loved flooding the floor of the royal palace?"

The demon’s gaze was fixed on Lilith’s bleeding face. He seemed to relish tearing open her old wounds, then continued in a voice akin to a hiss:

"I wasn’t the one who killed them, Lilith... your weakness did. It was your own pathetic helplessness that stripped you of the Underworld’s throne and cost you everything precious you ever tried to protect."

The demon tilted his head, a cruel smile spreading across his handsome features as he watched her in silence for a moment.

"In this wretched world, only the strong have the right to rule... while the weak are nothing more than fuel for the fire, meant to be consumed and forgotten in the dark."

He took another step toward her, his mocking voice dripping with contempt.

"Give up, Lilith. You’re weak, and you’ll always be weak. Your family is dead. Everyone you ever held dear is gone. So why keep fighting? What exactly are you still clinging to?"

Lilith remained silent for a few seconds, her eyes locked on the handsome demon’s as blood slowly seeped from a wound on her forehead.

But instead of collapsing or bursting into a fit of rage, her shoulders began to tremble.

Then her lips parted slowly, revealing her sharp fangs, as a wide, twisted smile formed on her face—one that was strange even to her.

"Ha... haha... hahahahahaha!"

Lilith burst into a manic laugh that tore through the suffocating silence of that illusory dimension, echoing beneath the red sky.

She flapped her massive black wings, and her body slowly began to rise from the ground. She hovered in perfect stillness, in stark contrast to her unending laughter.

At that moment, purple demonic mana erupted violently from her body. Yet, almost as soon as it began to flow, strands of dark green energy, almost black in color, began emerging from within it. The two energies quickly intertwined, coiling around her body and forming a massive vortex of turbulent energy.

"I knew from the beginning that this was just an illusion..." Lilith said, abruptly cutting off her laughter as her glowing purple eyes fixed on the demon with disdain.

"You are not the real Malakor. Malakor could never be this pathetically weak."

She wiped the blood from her mouth with her armored claws, her manic smile widening even further.

"Besides, I didn’t stay inside this stupid illusion because I was unable to break out of it... but because I wanted to test something."

She rested one of her armored hands against her cheek and tilted her head slightly. A cunning purple glint shimmered in her eyes as her twisted smile widened further.

"I wanted to know if I still hated that bastard just as much, or if my hatred for him had faded after all those damned centuries I spent in the Realm of Souls."

A brief silence followed before she whispered, her voice laced with anger:

"And I realized something incredibly important... My hatred for that bastard has grown deeper than ever before."

BOOM!

Lilith’s purple aura, mixed with blackened green, exploded and erupted from her body with tremendous violence.

The resulting pressure spread across the entire illusory dimension until it seemed its very fabric could no longer withstand it.

The illusory world shook violently, and sharp cracking sounds echoed throughout it.

Glowing fissures appeared in the suffocating red sky and quickly spread across it before branching out over the scorched black earth.

The scene looked as if the entire world were a massive pane of glass beginning to shatter under an unbearable pressure.

CRACK!

Her aura continued to rage while Lilith hovered amidst the fractured sky, the manic smile never leaving her face.

Pieces of the illusory world began breaking away around her like shards of glass. With every passing moment, the cracks widened until the dimension could no longer hold itself together.

She raised her head. Her gaze was directed neither at the handsome demon nor at the world shattering before her. Instead, she seemed to be addressing the real demon across time and space.

"Malakor!"

The demon’s name resounded from her lips, then her voice erupted, laden with malice and a thirst for revenge, piercing the collapsing void around her.

"I am Lilith... the rightful Princess of the Underworld! The Shaper of Naught and the Princess of Falsehood!"

Her terrifying smile widened, and her purple eyes flared with the glow of malice and madness, as the world began to collapse and fade around her.

"Are you asking what I’m clinging to? I have nothing left but my hatred for you! I accepted the contract of slavery and gave up my freedom and pride just to get the chance to tear you apart!"

"Wait for me upon my stolen throne, Malakor... I will reach you, even if I have to burn entire worlds along the way! I will carve my crown from your flesh and bones, and I will make you wish for death a hundred times over... only to never grant you that mercy!"

With her final word, the illusory dimension could no longer hold.

The entire world shattered like a giant mirror smashed by an invisible hammer.

Shards of the red sky and scorched earth scattered into nothingness as Lilith was suddenly and forcefully pulled back through the barriers of consciousness.

Lilith regained her awareness. She was still standing in the middle of the ruined forest in her gigantic form, towering over sixty meters tall.

But the first thing she registered was the real pain sweeping through her body.

Her wounds were still bleeding in the real world, blood staining her cracked armor just as it had inside the illusion.

But before she could fully comprehend what had happened, a wave of biting cold caught her off guard, so much so that the air beside her seemed to freeze.

She spun around, catching sight of a massive ice spear hurtling toward her.

The spear wasn’t aimed at her head or any of her vitals; rather, it was precisely targeted at her armored arm.

Lilith understood its target in a fraction of a second. Before the spear could reach her, her gigantic body suddenly dissolved into an enormous mass of purple mana intertwined with dark green energy tinged with black.

The mass rapidly shrank and condensed, restoring Lilith to her usual size as she effortlessly evaded the ice spear. It pierced through the air where her massive arm had been moments earlier before exploding silently.

As soon as she returned to her normal size, all traces of the injuries that had appeared on her within the illusion vanished.

Her body was completely whole again. The cracks and wounds that had covered her black armor disappeared as if they had never existed.

Lilith stood in midair and looked coldly toward a direction not far from her.

From the dense aura permeating the area, she immediately understood what was happening in that direction.

Her purple eyes narrowed slightly, and a dangerous smile formed on her lips.

"So that’s how it is... But I won’t let him die this easily."

Lilith spread her black wings with a powerful beat that sent a thunderous boom through the air before shooting off like lightning in that direction, leaving behind a trail of dark mana.