Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 342: The Descent of the Demon King (3)

Arkemis, the heretic among High Elves, stood in Hell. She was a returned Transcendent and an alchemist of the highest order. If the Demon King had descended and the war had shifted beneath the heavens, she would follow the current to the deepest part of the world.

Cold sweat slid down her temple. The ground in front of her boots had been shaved away in a line so clean that it looked like a craftsman had cut it with a blade as tall as a mountain. One more step, or rather, if Serena had not cried out for her to stop in time, Arkemis would have taken that step, and she would have parted with the earth in two neat pieces.

“Th-thank you, Serena,” Arkemis said.

Serena didn’t respond. She wasn’t in any state to receive gratitude. A strangled sound escaped her throat as her face went rigid, and she collapsed where she stood, her knees refusing to obey. All color had fled from her skin until she looked even paler than the woman she had just saved. Her eyes had gone glassy—vacant, unfocused, and far away.

Arkemis did not need to ask why. She could feel it as well, the terrible weight that pressed from far away and then from everywhere at once.

“The Demon King,” she whispered.

In a past so distant that the memory felt like a borrowed dream, during the Divine-Demonic War, a single being had burned half the Mortal Realm and put a score of gods to the sword. That being had set foot here.

Serena was the Holy Sword. No living person felt demonic force more clearly. Under such presence, the mind buckled. Arkemis clenched her teeth and took Serena by the shoulders. She lifted and steadied her, then turned toward the horizon.

The earth hummed. It was only a shiver at first, felt through soles more than heard by ears, but the power rolled out in bands that set her skin crawling. The duel lay beyond her sight, yet the wave crossed the land and told its story.

The Demon King was fighting someone, and there was no need to wonder who. It was Ketal. The one person who had become more than a name to her stood under that sky and faced the king of Hell.

“I want to help,” Arkemis said, and the words tasted like defeat. “But if I run to him now, I will only get in the way. At the very least, I can pray.”

She lifted her hands to trace the sign she had long forsaken, but her motion faltered halfway. Prayers carried weight in a world that still listened, yet the Demon King was a being who slew gods. In this place, where heaven itself had no power, no prayer could reach beyond the silence.

What Ketal needed was not a prayer. What he needed was a belief that did not bend.

“Do not die, Ketal,” Arkemis murmured.

She tightened her hold on the dazed Serena and turned toward the Mortal Realm. Her body felt weak, and her head rang with a voice that was not a voice, but her steps held firm. She would not be one more piece that broke in his path.

***

Ketal closed the distance. The Demon King raised an arm and swept it across the space between them. Metal and flesh met and screamed. The axe shaved power from the forearm; the forearm shaved strength from the axe. Ketal bared his teeth and pushed harder. He poured more of himself into the weapon and felt the answer come up his arms like heat.

The Demon King coiled power into his muscles. The cords along his shoulders swelled. Both of them broke away at once. The difference showed in the measure of their steps. Ketal slid back ten paces before he could plant his feet. The Demon King gave up five.

“So I am the one losing in pure force,” Ketal said, laughing with a bright spark in his eyes.

“Even the God of Strength could not push me back,” the King said, curious now. “You made me step with force alone.”

The Demon King spread his fingers, as though reaching for a cup resting on a table, then slowly closed his hand. The world bent to that motion. It seized Ketal, and his bones groaned under the strain. The air itself thickened into a crushing weight, dense enough to grind mountains to dust. Had the Myst within him not risen instinctively, he would have been pressed flat—nothing more than dried meat beneath a merchant’s press. Straining against the invisible grip, Ketal forced his mind to stay sharp and his thoughts to move faster than the pain.

I can’t win by force alone, Ketal thought.

The Demon King’s strength was monstrous. If this stayed a contest of mass and pressure, Ketal would give ground and then give blood. He needed to narrow the path and spend his coin where it paid most. He left only the Myst required to harden flesh and bone and dragged the rest into the axe. Aura gathered and compressed until the blade looked as if it were swallowing starlight.

He cut. The pressure that had held him broke like a rope severed with a single stroke. Space opened for breath. Ketal kicked into the air. The Demon King lifted his arm and swung for him again.

“That will not work the same way,” Ketal said.

The Demon King’s power was enormous, and his use of it was direct. That simplicity had its own perfection, but it left things to answer.

Ketal let the axe move like water under wind. He did not fight like a barbarian drunk on his own blood. He let the long years of craft that he had put to sleep rise to his hands. He let the Demon King’s fist touch the broad face of the axe and then let the force slide off the line.

He crossed the gap. The King’s other hand came down to smash him where he floated for a breath. Ketal struck the shaft like a drum, knocked the arm a finger’s breadth off course, and watched the fist drill a crater beside him instead of through him.

The ground sank, and Ketal answered with a diagonal cut for the chest. The edge flashed for the heart. Power exploded outward. The burst threw him away like a scrap of bark hurled off a river. He had no choice but to widen the gap for a heartbeat and gather his feet under him. He had focused nearly all of his Myst into the axe; his body would not survive treating every exchange as if his ribs were a shield.

The Demon King stamped. Hell rose like water before a storm. The realm itself responded to its ruler and moved to kill what its master had marked. Ketal made his decision and gained distance. The cost of standing inside that tide was not worth the pride it purchased.

The Demon King extended his hand toward the sky, and in a single breath, black clouds bloomed above him. Darkness gathered, and thunder crashed down like a falling mountain.

“Rise,” Ketal said.

The Abomination within him rose like a night wind and covered the heavens. Its authority met the falling bolts and smothered them.

“So that is how you handle it,” the Demon King murmured, and then he pushed down. He pressed his grip on the sky forward.

The clouds sank like fog and struck the Abomination’s power. The two authorities collided and spread in waves that hammered at the chamber and then at the land beyond it. Myst bled out of Ketal in long strands. He felt the drain and swore under his breath.

“Filthy strong.”

He did not soften the assessment with humor. He judged instead. He wondered if he could win walking this path. The answer came swift and cold—it would be difficult. He had spent more than a little of himself against Caliste, and he was far from his peak. Even at his best, triumph here would have balanced on the edge of a knife.

It was not a matter of being unable to answer. In the White Snowfield, he had struggled with the Primarchs. Now he held the Abomination’s power with a cleaner hand, and the Myst had rooted more deeply in him. He was not outmatched in every exchange.

The problem lay in the size of the reservoir. If he continued trading blows like this, he would eventually run dry. The Demon King’s power showed no visible limit. In sheer magnitude, the gap between them stretched like a gulf. There was a technical path to victory, and Ketal could see it clearly—but even the sharpest technique could carve only so deep into a mountain.

A swordsman could humble other men, but he could not humble a war engine by being clever with his hands. Ketal had become something that could break engines with his little finger, but the Demon King was not a normal engine.

“A monster,” he said. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

“Of course. That is the Demon King,” the Abomination whispered. Its voice carried no mockery. It sounded almost patient. “He holds the concepts that make darkness, evil, and demonic energy in this world. The gods divide their strength among many. He alone holds his office entire.”

Once, there had been many gods. In their prime, they had counted into the hundreds. However, Hell had only one being that could be considered their god, and that god was the Demon King. The Demon Lords were strong, but there had been four of them, and even together they were not as strong as the Demon King.

“To speak without ornament, most of the world’s dark ideas live inside him. The rest of Hell has only slivers.”

“I see,” Ketal said. “Even packed that tightly with darkness, he only stands a little above one of the Primarchs.”

By the Abomination’s measure, the Demon King embodied almost all the dark that had ever taken shape, and he stood only a little above one of the three Primarchs who haunted the White Snowfield. There were three of those.

Ketal did not hide his curiosity. “Then how did you guys lose?”

“We did not get along,” the Abomination said, and something like embarrassment passed through it.

Power surged before Ketal could form an answer. There was no space left for words. He hurled himself sideways, and the air where he had stood split open with a shriek that clawed through the silence. He did not let go of the earlier conclusion. He could not see a clear path to victory, yet neither was defeat assured.

Ketal had never been able to say that he had defeated a Primarch beyond doubt, but he had been able to say that he did not lose. His gaze went still. The Abomination felt the thought settle and paused as if it, too, had turned to look at the same point.

“You still have that authority,” it said.

Ketal had his own power. He had not used it a single time since stepping into the Outside. He had used it in the White Snowfield, and only when the Primarchs had tried to keep him inside a boundary he had chosen to leave.

“Do you think I can kill the Demon King with my authority?” Ketal asked the Abomination.

“With that, you could kill him,” the Abomination said. “I do not want you to. I would rather see him win than watch you turn that blade on the world.”

Its refusal ran hot. Even now, with the Demon King pressing him, the Abomination sounded more uneasy with Ketal’s authority than with the king of Hell.

“If you use it, it would feel as if my existence is being denied.”

“I do not like it either,” Ketal said.

Ketal was human. He belonged to this world. He was a citizen of this fantasy world. Everything he had ever done had taken shape within that stubborn pride. Had he let go of it, he would have become something else long ago, a sovereign seated upon the White Snowfield, beyond the reach of words or laws. But that was never his desire. He wanted to stay in the fantasy world.

But the power he possessed stood in perfect denial of that belief. It was a power that declared his very existence to be an aberration, something foreign to the world itself. For that reason, throughout his long life, Ketal had rarely used it—only a handful of times at most.

“The opponent is the Demon King,” he said. “He is the very shape of the fantasy world I asked for. I want to refuse it, but this is not only about me.”

If the Demon King was not stopped, the Mortal Realm would burn. The fantasy world he loved would break. There would be beauty in watching it fall apart. There would be a terrible purity in allowing the end to come when it ought to come. But he was part of the Mortal Realm now. He would not feed it to a hunger to satisfy a theory.

“I suppose I have no choice,” Ketal murmured.

Ketal’s eyes turned cold. The Demon King’s brow furrowed as he sensed a change—something stirring around Ketal that did not belong to any known order of power in this world. Had it seemed like a trick, he would have crushed it without hesitation. But this was no trick. It did not even carry the shape of hostility. It was something the mind refused to face head-on, something that bent perception just by existing. It felt foreign. It felt wrong. It felt like fear itself had taken form.

“What are you about to do?” the Demon King said.

“Something that is bad for you,” Ketal said. “And worse for me.”

Ketal drew breath. He reached for the thing he had sworn to leave asleep and prepared to pour it out of himself so that it would stain the world.

However, before Ketal could do anything, space broke first.

***

The sky of Hell cracked. Lines ran outward in every direction and then split again, until it looked as if a child had taken a nail to a painted ceiling. Ketal blinked and held the breath he had been about to spend. The lines opened into doors.

“Hahaha! Finally we’re here!” a voice came down from the sky.

“So they really stepped into the Mortal Realm,” the Demon King said. “This is dangerous.”

Five silhouettes appeared over the rent sky. Ketal’s eyes widened in surprise. He felt the pressure before he saw their faces. It was not weight like the Demon King’s weight. It was a clean light of divinity that did not boil the air. He had felt something very like it when he had faced Ferderica.

They were not avatars. The gods themselves had come.

The Demon King’s mouth tightened. “So Abyss died after all. I meant to send it words of praise. What a pity.”

“Demon King!” one of the gods shouted.

The gods’ ranks flared. Divinity poured out in a tide that set Hell alight. The gods drove forward together with hatred that did not bother to hide itself. Not one of them spared a glance for Ketal. Every eye fell on the black figure who stood at the center of the ruined hall.

The first to arrive was a god built like a fortress. They threw a punch that could have toppled a mountain. The Demon King did not retreat. They met in a sound that changed the pitch of the air.

“Merios, God of Strength,” the Demon King said. “It has been a long time.”

“I hoped never to see your face again!” Merios shouted.

The God of Strength hammered blows toward the King. Three more gods moved to support them. Their strikes broke pieces from the world whenever they landed.

However, the fifth god did not join the rush. They came down without noise and stood beside Ketal.

“It is good to see you. It has been a while,” the god said.

“A while?” Ketal said, and his confusion showed. Ketal did not remember the face. He let his senses read the shape of the god’s power and understood. “You’re the God of the Sword. Elia.”

“My followers owe you a debt,” Elia said. “I apologize for the delay. Abyss fought like a fanatic. It is gone now.”

The path was open. The gods could finally step down as they had during the ancient war.

“You have done much to hold him,” Elia said. “From here on, leave the Demon King to us. This is a matter for gods.”

“I do not mind,” Ketal said, and he meant it. A fight between gods and the Demon King was worth watching. He did not move to interfere. He did not step back either. His expression set into a line that did not quite settle. “But I don’t think you can win.”

“What?” Elia said.

Demonic energy shook the horizon. The gods staggered and skidded backward as if the floor had suddenly tilted. The Demon King closed his hand into a fist and threw it at Merios.

Merios threw one back. The God of Strength’s knuckles smeared like clay. The Demon King’s fist crossed the space and smashed into their face. A great god went down. They rolled across the ground without grace and tumbled to a stop.