Demon King of the Royal Class-Chapter 500

Despair filled the battlefield on which the holy warriors fought against the conglomeration of vengeful spirits.

—Beings that defy reason! Perish before the name of Ouen!

The members of the priesthood, capable of wielding the Divine Powers of both the Demon Gods and the Great Gods, found themselves in dire need of the Great Gods’ strength.

Olivia charged towards a possessed holy knight who had begun to indiscriminately attack the priests and fellow knights.

His comrades, who feared harming one of their own, were unable to act recklessly.

“Ugh!”

Olivia grasped the neck of the rampaging possessed knight.

“Begone, vile beings!” she declared.

A golden storm erupted from Olivia’s hands, enveloping the possessed knight.

Flash!

“You have no place in this world!”

Rumble!

With a sound like crackling flames, the evil spirits that had taken over the knight’s body were incinerated, leaving behind only black smoke.

Boom!

—Ahhhhhh!

Within the golden flames that burned into the soul, Olivia saw the light return to the eyes of the knight who had been lost.

“Ugh... ugh...”

However, the light lingered only for a moment. The knight, having regained his senses, foamed at the mouth and collapsed.

Though he had only been overcome for a brief moment, it was clear that his mind had been irreparably damaged.

This was the work of just one fragment of the mass of vengeful spirits.

These fragments, when entering the battle-hardened veterans of the holy priesthood, could cause their hosts to explode, and even those with the mental fortitude to withstand it were dominated. And those lucky enough to be freed from such possession were left with broken minds.

Despite being under the protection of Divine Power, the spirits still managed to infiltrate the minds of the holy warriors. Olivia observed the battlefield in a daze.

Was this the price for their sins?

Those who wielded the power of the gods had committed sin, and yet they had not been judged by the gods. Therefore, the anger, hatred, despair, fear, resentment, and sorrow of the humans that had been piled into the pit were judging them.

Was the accumulated hatred of the humans meting out judgment on the ones whom the gods had not judged?

But Olivia was not alone.

The dozens of fragments of vengeful spirits had been steadily consuming members of the priesthood, but upon seeing Olivia, the priests and knights began to rally.

They banded together, amplifying their Divine Power to protect themselves, shielding themselves with a strong divine force that the spirits could not penetrate and gradually pushing them back.

They could resist. However, Olivia sensed a change in the atmosphere. A chilling aura enveloped her entire body.

The possessed ones turned their gaze towards Olivia, as if they had identified the biggest threat.

With a rumble, one of the fragmented spirits, now a mass of vengeful energy, flew towards Olivia.

Instead of retreating, Olivia smiled.

“Come on, then.” A great Divine Power imbued Tiamata. “I’ll burn you away.”

Hatred, despair, resentment—all would vanish as the sacred fire burned away the spirits.

With a thunderous roar, the mass of vengeful energy charging at Olivia was swept away, crushed into nonexistence by the divine storm released from Tiamata.

“Leader! Behind you!”

“...!”

The frontal assault was a distraction. Three conglomerations of spirits had suddenly emerged from the bodies of the possessed knights and priests behind Olivia and were rushing towards her.

it was too late to respond, yet Olivia steadied herself and swung her sword at the first ball of spirits that poured over her.

Slash!

She sliced through the mass of vengeful energy, feeling a chilling sensation that made it hard to believe she was cutting through an incorporeal form. The spiritual mass was torn apart and vanished.

But then came the second.

With a scream, it struck the divine barrier surrounding Olivia.

However, it could not penetrate the Divine Power surging from Olivia’s body.

Then came the third.

It collided with her with a thud, and Olivia felt a suffocating pressure as the second mass of vengeful energy enveloped her.

“D-damn it...!”

It was as if she had fallen into a living mud pit. Olivia’s arms and legs suddenly felt heavy, as if she had lost control over them.

Even infusing Tiamata with Divine Power became difficult.

Despite being surrounded by sacred flames meant to burn away unholy beings, the mass of vengeful energy continued to constrict around Olivia as it burned.

Rumble!!

Olivia’s movements slowed. Black masses of darkness began to erupt from the bodies of other possessed knights and priests.

It was as if their sole purpose was to kill or possess Olivia.

Dozens of masses of vengeful energy emerged from their hosts and clung tenaciously to Olivia, who was trying to escape from the throng of spirits.

With a collective hiss, the masses of vengeful energy began to wrapt themselves over Olivia’s body one by one, layer by layer, clinging to her like a giant mass of mud.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

“Ugh... Ugh...!”

The golden light of the Divine Power pouring from Olivia’s entire body was somehow preventing her from being completely overtaken, but the overwhelming number of vengeful spirits, filled with cries of hatred, were trying to consume her.

—Rescue the leader!

The members of the priesthood began to pour out their own Divine Power to save Olivia from the concentrated attack.

She had to hold out, or risk being overrun.

But Olivia, squeezing out all her strength and borrowing Tiamata’s power to endure the onslaught, felt a chilling fear as she was wrapped in the mud-like mass of spirits, unable to see anything beyond them.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t defeat them. Olivia could clearly see the spirits being incinerated by the Divine Power she was emitting, sizzling in the sacred flames raging from Tiamata.

The spirits were indeed being burnt away. However, this was a conglomeration of countless numbers of vengeful spirits. They were gathered together, seemingly fused together, but were ultimately separate entities.

As countless vengeful spirits perished, others continued to rush at Olivia to engulf her. The despairing thoughts and voices of the spirits, perhaps their final thoughts or spoken words, broke through the shield of Divine Power around Olivia and assaulted her ears.

Despair.

—Ahhhhh!

—Mommy... I... I don’t want to die...

—Why... Why do I have to die?!

Hatred.

—The Demon King must die.

—Those who side with the Demon King must die as well...

—Why did you kill me?

Amidst the vengeful cries, Olivia watched in horror as the vengeful spirits, who still wandered the world even after death, rushed in, trying to exact their revenge on the Demon King even as they burned away.

It wasn’t that the vengeful spirits were strong.

There were just too many.

Hundreds of vengeful spirits were disappearing every moment, obliterated by Olivia’s Divine Power and the Divine Power of the other priests, yet they still sought to devour her, as if they were willingly throwing their existence away. As if they were willing to offer up their existence if it meant they could slake their thirst for revenge.

There were so many vengeful spirits, each a different entity, but with one desire.

The death of the Demon King.

The downfall of the Demon King.

The destruction of those who followed the Demon King.

Olivia gritted her teeth as she saw the hatred humanity held toward the Demon King and the resentment of the dead writhing before her eyes.

“What do you... know...”

‘What do you know? Do you know even a fraction of the truth?’

“You know... nothing... Nothing at all...”

‘It’s unjust. This is unjust. You know nothing.’

In the end, Olivia had to respond to the hatred and anger of the vengeful spirits.

And that ultimately created a crack in her heart. A small tremor.

Thud!

A gap appeared in the Divine Power surrounding Olivia. And like water seeping into a crack in a rock, like water oozing into a breached dam, pushing its way in until the dam finally collapsed, the black mass of vengeful spirits engulfed Olivia’s entire body.

“Ah... Ahh...!”

The dark souls surged through the crack like a flood, and penetrated Olivia’s mind in an instant.

Was this what it felt like to have one’s soul plundered?

Olivia lost her composure for a moment. The divine barrier, her last line of defense, vanished, and the golden glow radiating from Tiamata was extinguished.

“Ugh... Ugh...”

Olivia could only cry out unintelligbly as she was engulfed by the flood of souls.

A single fragment of this mass of souls had been enough to overwhelm the minds of the holy knights and priests and cause their bodies to explode.

Yet now, all those souls had rushed in to engulf Olivia.

Though divine spells rained down on the mass of spirits from the outside, on the inside, the souls rampaged about, trying to dominate Olivia’s mind and soul, hurling their words of hatred and curses not into her ears, but projecting them directly into her mind and soul.

The body is a vessel meant to house a single mind and a single soul.

When countless souls begin to pour into that vessel, even if the souls are pure, the mind of the one experiencing that phenomenon is bound to break.

However, these were not pure souls; they were vengeful spirits.

When countless souls filled with malice, resentment, and hatred invade the mind, driven only by the will to destroy, the mind is not just broken but torn to shreds.

The body, engulfed by hatred and resentment, becomes a revenant driven by the shared desire of the vengeful spirits.

However...

“Ugh... Ugh...!”

Olivia Lanche did not easily crumble.

Born with the trait of Divine Spirit, she had immense resistance to all mental interference and harmful effects on her mind.

The gods do not choose humans who break easily, and Olivia was not made to break easily.

In that stormy sea of souls, Olivia clung to the last piece of her mind like a castaway clinging to a raft after being thrown into the sea during a shipwreck.

She resisted the tidal wave of resentment and hatred trying to crush her will.

Her body had already lost the physical battle. If she also fell in the battle of mind and soul, she would disappear.

She struggled desperately against the vengeful spirits as they grasped at her hair and limbs and tried to drag her down, trying not to sink into the abyss, filled with the terrifying fear that she would be dragged into the darkness if she let go of her mind for even a moment.

Her mind was on the verge of sinking, like a small boat being battered by a storm, as she endured her fear and the bizarre and chilling pain, as if thousands of needles were being driven into her brain.

The vengeful spirits, vessels of resentment and hatred, tried to engulf Olivia, and her momentary loss of composure when confronted by all of that resentment had allowed them to invade her mind.

Olivia was struggling to hold onto her mind, afraid that she would lose herself and her identity.

“Ugh... ughhhhh...!”

To fight against these unholy beings, the vengeful spirits hungry for revenge, Olivia desperately tried to recall the name of her god, as if recalling that name would prevent her identity from being erased and stave off the destruction of her soul.

‘Ouen, the god of purity...’

To maintain a pure and steadfast mind, she tried to carve the name of god into her heart and soul, as if engraving it in stone. Because what was needed to overcome chaos was tranquility.

To navigate the stormy sea, Olivia Lanche remembered the name of god.

However, even as she desperately sought the name of god, the divine being did not lend its power to the realm of her mind.

In the stormy sea, the names of the stars were too distant.

In despair, clinging to her sinking mind, Olivia repeated:

‘You Five Great Gods, and you Five Demon Gods with different names but who are one and the same. You cannot abandon me like this. Did you choose me only to let me crumble like this?’

Though she could not know the will of the gods, she knew they at least had not created her to be crushed by these vengeful spirits and their thoughts, not after revealing the truth to her.

Even as she desperately called out the names of the gods in her heart, tranquility did not come, and the vengeful spirits continued to pour into Olivia’s mind like a flood, threatening to shatter the vessel named Olivia Lanche and dominate her broken body.

In the chaos, filled with too many things that were not herself, at the edge of consciousness and at her physical limits, a thought came to Olivia.

‘If I crumble like this... If I disappear like this...

‘Reinhart will be sad.’

If the life that Reinhart had saved countless times sunk under the weight of this unjust hatred, then Reinhart, who suffered from the guilt of trying to save the world only for it to be ruined, would blame himself for Olivia’s death as well.

‘I don’t want that to happen. I cannot bring him such sorrow.

‘Reinhart, who is surely already very sad and suffering, cannot be subjected to more despair and fear.’

Amidst the torrent of souls pouring in, amidst the howls of hatred toward the Demon King, Olivia finally abandoned her attachment to tranquility.

This absurdity was tiresome.

‘Why is it Reinhart’s fault that the world ended up like this while he was doing all he could to protect it?

‘Why is it Reinhart’s fault that Riana de Granz recklessly killed all these people?

‘Why must Reinhart bear the responsibility for all these things?

‘Though your deaths are tragic and pitiful, that pitiful tragedy does not justify this misplaced hatred and anger.

‘Why? What did Reinhart do so wrong that he has to be on the receiving end of such hatred?’

Tossed about by the waves that were trying to engulf her, she abandoned her attempts to maintain reason and composure.

“You... wretched evil spirits...”

With a single, focused will, she found a ledge that she could hold onto amidst the raging torrent.

“You’re... pissing me off...”

That ledge clearly bore the name of anger.

Flash!

And the holy relic, responding to her anger, released a crimson torrent that matched what was in Olivia’s heart.

Rumble...!

The priests and holy knights trying to save Olivia clearly saw the fierce pillar of Divine Power that shot up into the sky.

***

Sssssss...

The crimson pillar of Divine Power that shot up into the sky soon subsided.

The overwhelming sight left the members of the priesthood speechless.

Olivia sat on the field, staring blankly at Tiamata, now tinged with a crimson aura.

No matter how desperately she had called upon the names of the gods, no power had appeared.

But her anger at the absurd situation she was in had annihilated the enormous number of vengeful spirits trying to engulf her mind.

She had held onto her mind until the end, and despite experiencing the horrifying sensation of her mind and soul being tainted, she had not let her heart crumble.

“Ugh... ugh...”

“Leader!”

The excruciating experience left her in a state close to exhaustion.

She staggered, and one of the priests hurriedly ran over to support her.

Olivia looked around at the now-quiet field.

The conglomeration of vengeful spirits had attacked Olivia en masse, and had been annihilated by Tiamata’s power, drawn out in response to Olivia’s fierce anger.

Olivia did not know how many vengeful spirits there had been, or how they had disappeared.

It was a feat and a miracle.

Even skilled priests and holy knights had not been able to withstand even a part of that power, yet Olivia had endured the full brunt of their assault and even annihilated them in one fell swoop.

There was no one in the world who wielded Divine Power more powerfully than Olivia.

It was truly something only Olivia Lanche could have achieved.

“Is it... over?” The priest supporting Olivia asked in a daze.

Everyone hoped this horrific ordeal was over.

But Olivia’s expression was grim. She seemed to sense something.

Though she had performed what could be called a miracle, and not just a manifestation of Divine Power, Olivia was staring somewhere into the abyss with unfocused eyes.

She was looking into something that seemed like a bottomless pit.

Olivia sensed something that no one else could.

Something was stirring within that abyssal pit.

With a roar, the pit exploded as if erupting, and once again, the abyss surged forth.

The being of hatred that had risen earlier, the conglomeration of vengeful spirits, had been enormous.

Groooooar!

But what appeared this time was dozens of times larger than that.

Just as the conglomeration of vengeful spirits Olivia had faced had split itself apart into dozens of fragments, that original ball of spirits had also been just a part of the main body.

With a look of despair, Olivia gazed up at the manifestation of hatred.

She had performed a miracle, but the hatred embedded in the world was even greater.

She looked blankly at the other holy warriors, unable to even scream at the overwhelming form of terror.

“Run awa—” freewebnoveℓ.com

Olivia could not finish her sentence.

How? How could she possibly escape from something like that?

She was once again engulfed in a wave of wailing vengeful spirits.

This time, Olivia could not resist.