Dragon King: Throne of Demons and Gods-Chapter 199: Act IV, Scene VII: The Mask of Fear

Above the burning city, dragons circled like storm clouds, their wings blotting out what was left of the sky. Their roars rolled across the ruins, shaking the ground as people below screamed and scattered.

At the center, Novaria's giant red wyvern form dominated, her massive wings stretching wide, casting shadows that swallowed streets whole.

Her roar thundered, a deep, bellow that signaled doom for the people below.

The Crimson Bloom hovered in the chaos, her wide smile splitting into a gleeful laugh.

"Yes! Show me the full power of Bel's army!" she called, eyes sparkling with twisted joy. "Unleash it all, puppy! Let me feel his secrets through you!"

This time, Maël and Astros' instinct gave them a different command. The civilians' security would be impossible to maintain in this scenario.

"Ok, stop with this game," Maël muttered, finally decided to be serious. "She's lost it, this'll kill everyone."

Astros nodded.

"We have to stop her now, no matter how. Forget the Demon Lord and focus on her."

They leaped upward, Maël's golden aura flaring like a sun, Astros weaving Celestial Mandalas to shield the crowds one last time before joining the fray.

Meanwhile, in the fractured void of the King's domain, the battle raged on.

Bel hovered among the crumbling platforms, wearing his semi-draconic form. White wings beat steadily, claws gripping the Void Orb sword, now infused with his Authority of Ruination.

The rift from his last slash had closed, leaving a faint purple scar lingering in the air like wounds on space itself.

Regulus floated beside him, his hands forming white seals that latched onto Bel's aura.

"If your strikes are tearing this dimension apart," Regulus said. "Then I'll buff them a bit... make them hit harder, or better, they'll last longer. Do your thing again, I'll handle it from here."

Bel nodded, his slit eyes cold but burning with exhilaration. He bolted forward, sword raised, slashing at the space again.

The blade carved a violet arc, his essence exploding outward in a dazzling burst that shattered a wave of puppets mid-formation.

The cut lingered, purple haze corroding the void, erasing threads of the King's Authority before they could reform.

Regulus's seal amplified it, the slash's energy pulsed stronger, the corrosion spreading wider, lasting seconds longer than before, devouring more of the domain.

Each slash left a door to a void of white.

The Slumbering King panicked. His omnipresent voice cracked with desperation.

"You won't reach me!"

The void twisted frantically, platforms morphing into jagged spikes that lunged like spears toward Bel.

Time warped in pockets, slowing sections of space to trap him, and puppets swarmed in thousands, their forms shifting into nightmare beasts with claws of shadow.

Phantom hands multiplied, slamming down in erratic patterns, trying to crush, bind, erase.

The world changed, gravity inverted, pulling debris upward; voids became swirling, sucking in light; red slashes rained from all angles, faster, wilder.

The world that Bel had judged as an attack became fitting of this term.

But nothing worked.

Bel's Mantle of Ruin nullified the slows, his regeneration sealed every wound in seconds, and his slashes countered each assault, erasing spikes, dispersing puppets, shattering hands.

The King was almighty, but Bel was his counter.

Aurus clung to a floating rock, sword in hand, watching with growing shame.

His breaths came heavy, eyes wide as Bel weaved through the frenzy, each move a masterpiece of destruction.

Move.

Aurus' mind trembled.

Regulus's buffs were invisible to him, making Bel seem like an unstoppable force that caused lasting damages on the dimension itself.

He showed a greater power and prowess than him minutes ago.

He was feeling a deep shame burning his chest. He, the hero, the legend, stood idle while a Demon Lord battled for them all.

"Coward," he whispered to himself, feeling small, useless. "Get in there... do something."

But doubt held him back. A trap wasn't a trap until the moment it closed on its target.

What if Bel turned against him in the last second?

What if he had a way to cut through his divine protection, just like he was cutting through space?

He was the strongest warrior, but not the strongest mind reader. There was no way to tell.

The King attacked more wildly. He summoned illusions of past conquests, skeleton armies charging, but Bel's ruination slashes unraveled them, amplified by Regulus's seals that made the slash permanent, working like acid air.

"Why won't you fall?!" the King screamed, his voice laced with something new, something that was never in his tone before.

Helplessness.

As a Demon Lord, the Slumbering King had always been the pinnacle, a sovereign on his throne of dreams, deciding fates with a whisper.

He commanded realms where his way of living was law, where he orchestrated dooms with his will.

He had decided a legend among the Sacred would die, and the legend had died in terror, his face twisted in despair in a scenery of nightmare.

He had decreed the Ravager should be retrieved from the humans, so they would start their move, and it unfolded flawlessly.

The King decided, and the King did. It was his way of living.

The power of a King, the power to control reality, to decide what was, and how it was.

Darwin had looked frightened in his final moments because the King had decided that the setting would be terrifying, the death would be painful.

Every scheme succeeded, every victim wore that mask of horror he crafted so carefully: terrified expressions frozen in time, despair etched in their dying gazes, locations made into nightmares.

This was his law, his reality that he chose to wear.

But now, for the first time, he tried and tried, layers upon layers of power unleashed, more than he ever did... and nothing worked.

Again, and again, and again, he had tried, he had been cocky, he had been bored, annoyed, innovated, angry, even countered, and lost his three General.

And yet, no result.

This man... no... this thing, who had openly declared his intent to end him, slashed open the doors to his deepest sanctum, and the King could do nothing.

He came as a threat and tore apart his world piece by piece, until.... Until...

He couldn't process the thought, because 'until' would mean there was a conclusion, but the monster hadn't concluded anything. He was still in the process, and the conclusion would be his dead.

And again, he came for his head, and he was still in the process of getting it, and the King couldn't keep him from succeeding.

Helplessness gripped him, a foreign feeling in his world. He couldn't ensure his safety; his throne felt fragile.

For the first time, he, the decider of fates, was not the master of his own life.

... He could really die.

This feeling, this tightening in his essence, this urge to flee... It was the darkest poison in existence, so horrible that it had become erased from the demons and only delivered to humans.

This disgusting feeling... it was fear.

Glimpses flashed in his mind: victims' faces mirroring what he now felt, terror in their eyes as he loomed, despair as their worlds crumbled.

He wondered, amid the panic, what expression marred his own hidden face.

Not the obsidian giant, but the real King, the real body.

Was he also wearing this mask? Was he also trembling like them?

Bel and Regulus had turned the space into a shredded world of distorted slashes and void.

He channeled deeper for a bigger slash, destined to cut the world in a wide zone.

"Now," he said to Regulus, who nodded and sealed the sword with a glowing mark: [Amplified Annihilation.]

The blade thrummed, Bel's essence surging.

He swung in a single line, the sword tracing a cosmic arc of violet. His energy bloomed like a dying star, fractals exploding in waves of purple light that lit the void in a dazzling spectacle. Shockwaves rippled, space breaking like a mirror into countless shards, each reflecting distorted horrors before crumbling to dust.

The slash cleaved the domain's core, erasing layers in a cascade of void.

Through the breaking mirror, a void appeared, and in this void, something caught Bel, Regulus and Aurus' attention.

A young boy with very long white hair cascading like shadows, covering parts of his slim, fragile face.

Pale skin, delicate features twisted in unfamiliar lines. As shards of space passed before him, reflecting his image, he saw it.

A face like those he killed: eyes wide in terror, mouth parted in despair.

For the very first time, the Slumbering King saw his face, and it was wearing the mask of fear.