Chapter 926 - 925: Seed Of Wrath

Wrath was anger that had grown into a consuming desire to punish or destroy.

Anger could answer an insult, a betrayal, an injustice. It could demand that something wrong be corrected, then subside when that happened.

Wrath could continue long after correction ceased to matter.

It wanted the offender to suffer.

Sometimes it wanted suffering even when nothing could be repaired by it.

There was strength in such fury. It could drag someone through pain, silent hesitation, and sustain resistance when hope had failed.

But those advantages were few compared to what it could ruin.

One’s judgement narrowed. Restraint became intolerable. An enemy’s surrender might no longer be enough, and an innocent person standing nearby could become an acceptable loss.

Wrath could destroy the very thing its owner had first wanted to protect.

Its claim to righteousness could survive long after its actions had become unjust.

It could scream, or wait in silence. Excess was not measured by volume.

Recognising it as a sin was easier than distinguishing Pride from dignity.

However obtaining its seed was another matter.

Everyone could become angry. Far fewer entered that consuming burning state, and fewer still understood it well enough to give it a lasting existence within themselves.

A fit of temper would definitely pass but a seed had to remain.

Losing one’s senses did not automatically mean grasping the nature of a sin. Someone could smash everything within reach and understand nothing when the fury ended.

For Simon, Wrath was among the most difficult of the seven for him to obtain, and Fearless was part of the reason.

So was his nature.

He preferred a clear head. Even when something angered him, his habit was to consider what could be done about it rather than dwell upon how badly he wanted to lash out.

The skill made that easier.

It did not make anger impossible. It helped him keep enough distance to turn an insult into a problem, a grudge into a future task.

That distance was troublesome now.

Simon kept his eyes closed.

Within his Prime Forged Heart, Greed pushed against Pride again. He tightened the portion of his Will holding them apart before Gluttony could force its way between them.

Pain spread beneath his ribs.

He endured it and reached for the first thing that might help.

His betrayal.

The faces came readily.

His wife.

The comrades with whom he had survived decades of war.

He still intended to take revenge. That desire had never vanished, but revenge was no longer the centre of his life.

Strength came first.

It usually gave him a reason to put those faces aside.

This time, he did not.

He also remembered a book in the Shadowgrave Academy library.

The First Great War between the Demon King of Death and the traitorous fallen hero.

His jaw tightened.

Traitorous.

The historian had written that he intended to use the Demon King’s corpse to become a god. That the gods had intervened because his ambition had become dangerous.

The humans he had protected supposedly remembered his years as an age of bloodshed. The Demi-Gods who followed him received their gratitude for peace.

As though the war had been something he inflicted upon them.

As though he had fought because he enjoyed watching his people die.

He had kept the corpse to make a treasure. He had concealed its location even from his wife and friends, believing that ignorance would protect them from the gods who wanted it.

And then there was the other claim.

His flesh.

His blood.

Used by his comrades and other heroes to become Demi-Gods.

The historian had heard it from a drunk beggar. Simon had never confirmed it. He had wondered whether it meant cannibalism or some alchemical use of his remains.

He still did not know.

But if it was true...

A thin sound escaped between his teeth.

Killing him had not been enough?

They had needed to turn what remained of him into power while the world learned to despise his name?

He wanted those last comrades of his to experience the worst deaths he could give them.

Not a clean stroke. Not a merciful end after an explanation.

He wanted them to understand what it meant to wish for death and be denied it.

Heat gathered in his chest.

Simon held on to it.

The three seeds continued thrumming.

Nothing else answered.

He was angry.

Very angry.

But his mind remained composed, still setting the conditions around that anger. He needed to know If it was true.

He was keeping the feeling at a distance again.

It was not enough.

His attention shifted toward his bloodlines.

The Nine-Tailed Byakko and the Uruqath remained crushed within their ruined world. The mountain had fallen. Broken silver terraces lay where they had struck the ground.

Neither lineage’s hatred had weakened.

Simon remembered their response when those enormous eyelids first appeared.

Rage.

Hatred.

The desire to fight despite barely being able to remain standing.

Now he understood why.

The One was the enemy of Daemons.

Their blood recognised something his own knowledge had not.

He did not search for the history behind that recognition.

He let himself feel it.

The Byakko’s fury reached him first, fierce enough to make the muscles along his spine contract. The Uruqath’s hatred followed, no less violent beneath its ruined majesty.

Simon stopped holding those impulses apart from his own.

The remembered faces remained.

So did the words in the book.

Then another memory forced itself between them.

The God of War.

The grip around his neck. The ease with which that god had held and humiliated him.

And now...

The ground was against his cheek.

Blood beneath his chest.

No hands to push himself up. No legs to draw beneath his body. Six wings that could not even lift from the ground.

The One did not need a hand around his throat.

A gaze was enough.

A deep growl came from Simon.

It hurt his chest, but he allowed it to continue.

His rage and the hatred of his lineages began moving together.

He opened his eyes.

Their crimson colour deepened, gathering a light that spread across his bloodied face. Killing intent seeped from his body, thickening until the air immediately around him began to turn red.

Lilith’s gaze snapped toward him.

"Blackmoon?"

He did not answer.

He reached deeper into the killing intent.

Beyond the battles of this life.

Back to the years when he had hated demons to the core.

He remembered what it felt like to want them gone. Not driven away from another city. Not forced to retreat until the next invasion.

Gone.

The memory carried the weight of decades.

For a moment, the hatred of the human he had been met the hatred of the Daemon he had become.

Different enemies.

The same desire to destroy them.

The crimson around his torso grew denser. It stained the ivory spars of his flattened wings and spread through the cracks beneath him.

His heart hammered.

Still, no fourth seed appeared.

Simon’s expression tightened.

There was more fury now, but it remained divided among faces, memories, and inherited impulses.

He could feel all of it.

He had not yet brought it into one thing he could hold.

The three completed seeds strained again.

He forced them apart.

His injured mind ached beneath the effort. The foreign perception pressed against his soul once more, still unable to penetrate whatever was protecting it.

He ignored it.

There was one last thing he could try.

The tribulation lightning.

He had devoured its power and used it to change his lightning affinity and its nature.

That destructive quality was part of him now.

Simon reached for it.

A crimson thread stirred within his demonic energy.

He felt the nature that had torn into him during the tribulation. The merciless force that broke what it struck, leaving nothing intact simply because it pleaded to survive.

Lightning did not need to feel anger to destroy.

Wrath did not need lightning to do the same.

But destruction was where their natures could meet.

His hatred supplied the desire.

The lightning gave that desire an expression beyond the remembered pain.

He let the two touch.

A sharp crack sounded beneath his chest.

Simon did not seek the lightning’s speed. He followed its destructive edge, allowing the fury within him to settle upon what that power could do.

Break.

Ruin.

Destroy.

The betrayal, the stolen reputation, the gods who held his life as though it belonged to them... he stopped imagining explanations that would make those things bearable.

For this moment, he wanted destruction more than an answer.

He wanted his enemies ruined beyond the point where they could ask whether it was enough.

He knew that wish was excessive.

He did not soften it.

His Will remained upon the conflicting seeds. Holding that restraint did not make the desire less vicious.

The crimson thread thickened.

His bloodlines answered.

BADUM!

Simon’s Prime Forged Heart struck so hard that his ruined torso jolted against the stone.

Lightning crawled over his skin.

The killing intent surrounding him contracted.

For a fraction of a heartbeat, the crimson clung tightly to his body.

Then his heart beat again.

BOOOOOOM!

A shockwave exploded from Simon, threaded with tribulation lightning and overwhelming killing intent.

The pressure from above crushed its rising edge, driving the blast across the ground. Stone splintered along its path as crimson branches flashed between the fractures.

Inside his Prime Forged Heart, beside the three seeds held apart by his Will, a fourth presence began drawing together.

The seed of Wrath was being formed.