Chapter 342: Black Sky (6)

Isabella’s eyes widened in shock at Cassia’s sudden appearance. “C-Cassia? What are you doing here...?”

Cassia covered her mouth and chuckled at the flustered Isabella. “It’s been a while, Bella.”

“I asked what you’re doing here.” Isabella’s eyes sharpened like a blade honed on a whetstone.

Cassia shrugged and answered nonchalantly. “Why else? I came to help my dear husband, of course.”

“D-Dear husband...?” Isabella snapped her head toward Kwon Oh-Jin and gritted her teeth.

He said nothing had happened between the two of them!

A flood of indescribable betrayal welled up inside her.

Kwon Oh-Jin sighed and shook his head. “

Haa

. Do you really feel like joking around in a situation like this?”

Cassia playfully stuck out her long, snake-like tongue and giggled.

“J-Joking?” Isabella stuttered.

“You really are the most fun to tease, Bella.”

“C-Cassia!” Isabella glared fiercely at her sister.

How had her once kind and gentle sister become so different?

They didn’t have time to leisurely watch the tension build between Isabella and Cassia.

“We don’t have time for this. Explanations can wait. Let’s destroy the cores first.”

“Yes, Mr. Oh-Jin...”

“Alright.”

Though they had been ready to tear each other apart moments ago, Isabella and Cassia stopped quarreling and turned toward their respective cores.

“

Hmm

. There is much I wish to ask you, but I shall hold it in for now too.” Vega wanted to ask a thousand things like why the Serpens Queen, the true head of the Black Star Society, was helping Kwon Oh-Jin.

Like he said, they didn’t have time for that currently.

“I will keep marking the locations of the cores so you can all see them!” Vega said.

Blue lightning marked the three cores within the massive magic circle that stretched for numerous kilometers.

Kwon Oh-Jin nodded and turned toward his core. He kicked off the ground. “Let’s go!”

“Yes, Mr. Oh-Jin!”

“Leave it to me.”

They all dashed toward their assigned cores.

“Stop them!”

“We can’t let them disrupt the ritual!”

The demonkin charged forward and blocked their path. However, Kwon Oh-Jin didn’t slow down and thrust his spear forward.

“Move.”

It pierced straight through a demonkin’s chest and emerged out the back. Then, he hurled the impaled corpse at the horde of demonkin charging from behind.

“How dare you!” A demonkin incinerated the flying corpse with black flames and came after Kwon Oh-Jin at full speed.

Fwoosh!

Just as the hand covered in black flames almost touched Kwon Oh-Jin’s back, he fired his wire shooter and soared high into the air.

Bang!

The demonkin, suddenly looking like a dog chasing a chicken, reached out as Kwon Oh-Jin flew up.

“Shoot him down with black flames!”

The demonkin behind him simultaneously launched torrents of black flames.

In mid-air, Kwon Oh-Jin activated Lightning Steps and zigzagged to dodge the incoming flames.

Crackle!

“

Urgh!

”

“Don’t let him escape!”

The demonkin chased after him, relentlessly firing flames.

This is bad.

Kwon Oh-Jin furrowed his brow as he dodged the flames from below. Lightning Steps was an overpowering technique that allowed him to create lightning footholds and move freely in the air, but he couldn’t maintain it for long. On top of that, sharply changing directions instead of moving in a straight line shortened its duration even more.

Just as he reached the limit of Lightning Steps, a ball of black flames slammed into his back.

Fwoosh!

“

Ugh!

” He barely managed to form a lightning shield to protect himself, but couldn’t completely absorb the impact.

“He’s falling!” a demonkin shouted.

Kwon Oh-Jin plummeted to the ground. As he fell, he used his wire shooters on nearby pillars to cushion the landing. The moment he hit the ground, he bolted toward the core again.

There are too many of them.

Before he knew it, demonkin had swarmed all around him, front and back.

Thankfully, there were no archduke demonkin like Deimos among them. However, he couldn’t break through all of them by force.

Kwon Oh-Jin bit his lip with a tense expression when a massive Fire Dragon covered in crimson flames suddenly appeared and incinerated the demonkins standing in his way.

Fwoosh!

“

Aaaaaah!

”

Agonizing screams rang out, followed by smoke.

He didn’t need to turn around and confirm who had summoned the Fire Dragon.

“Oh-Jin, now’s your chance!” Song Ha-Eun shouted.

“Thanks!”

In the brief opening Song Ha-Eun had created, Kwon Oh-Jin dropped low like a sprinter at the starting line of a hundred-meter dash and stretched his leg back.

Lightning Form.

His legs turned into crackling blue lightning as mana surged through him. When the condensed lighting reached its peak—

Boom!

With a tremendous blast, Kwon Oh-Jin shot forward like a cannon.

“

Agh!

” Even he struggled to control the speed himself.

The wind whipped violently against him as he surpassed human speed with a sonic boom. Though he momentarily lost his sense of direction, activating the Stigma of Pyxis allowed him to orient himself precisely amid the chaos.

He broke through the demonkin’s encirclement and reached the core Vega had marked. It was made up of a Starstone the size of a basketball with intricate formulas etched on its surface. An immense mana radiated from it.

“

Haa, haa!

” Panting heavily, Kwon Oh-Jin looked around.

The magic circle was so large that he couldn’t see Isabella or Cassia anywhere.

“Vega!”

Floating high above and observing the battlefield, Vega replied, “They’ve all arrived! I’ll give you the signal to go!”

“Got it!” Kwon Oh-Jin pointed his spear at the core, and lightning condensed at the tip.

Crackle!

“Three!”

He steadied his breathing and gathered his mana into the spearhead.

“Two!”

He raised the spear high with both hands. They wouldn’t get any second chances. He had to shatter the core in one strike.

“One!”

Crackle!

The spear and the core collided. Expecting a tremendous backlash, Kwon Oh-Jin clenched his eyes shut.

Crack.

The basketball-sized core easily and anticlimactically shattered into pieces like dry clay.

“What the hell...?” Kwon Oh-Jin frowned at the core’s fragments.

Something felt off as an ominous chill ran down his spine.

The magic circle... stopped.

Had Isabella and Cassia succeeded in destroying their cores too? The magic circle had ceased functioning. Rather, it wasn’t just the circle that stopped.

“W-What the hell? Why did they suddenly all freeze?” Kwon Oh-Jin asked in confusion.

“What did you do, kid?” Riarc asked.

All the demonkin fighting against the beastkin and dragonkin suddenly froze like deactivated machines.

“Did we... succeed?” Vega asked as she descended from the sky.

Kwon Oh-Jin walked back toward his original spot, weaving through the frozen demonkin like mannequins.

Isabella came running up to him. “Mr. Oh-Jin! Did it work...?”

She seemed to sense something strange too.

Though the circle had vanished and the demonkin stopped moving, Isabella frowned and glanced around with unease.

The ritual hall fell into silence. The battlefield, filled with bloody chaos, suddenly grew as quiet as a movie theater before a film began.

“The clouds...”

The black clouds that blanketed the area slowly dissipated. As the sky cleared, sunlight began to pour down.

“

Ugh

, it’s so bright.” Song Ha-Eun squinted from the light as she approached Kwon Oh-Jin. “You did amazing, my Oh-Jin! I knew you’d pull through!”

She patted his back and beamed brightly.

From the scene alone, it felt like a moment worth celebrating since they had stopped the ritual. For some unknown reason, the demonkin also stopped moving.

“Something’s wrong.”

Everything had gone too smoothly.

Kwon Oh-Jin looked around with a tense expression and saw Cassia standing still, blankly staring at the clear sky.

“Cassia?”

She began to tremble slightly as she looked up. Her face had gone completely pale.

“Why is this happening? W-We definitely stopped it. So why...?” Cassia mumbled.

Kwon Oh-Jin grabbed her trembling shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“I-I can hear it.”

“Hear what?”

“T-The Heavenly Demon’s voice... I-It’s been going on for a while now.”

Just then, the earth shook violently like an earthquake had struck.

Rumble!

The ground split open at the center of the massive triangle, and thick black clouds erupted like a volcanic explosion as if they intended to devour the sky itself.

Kwon Oh-Jin’s face hardened as he watched the pitch-black clouds rise. “What the hell...?”

The clouds quickly swallowed the sunny sky above.

𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

We destroyed the magic circle, so why is this happening?

His thoughts spiraled into confusion as he couldn’t make sense of the situation.

“Damn it!”

They didn’t have time to think.

“Run!”

Rumble!

The black clouds that consumed the sky turned into a monstrous wave and began crashing down.

“O-Oh-Jin, what the hell is going—”

“I don’t know either! Just run!” Kwon Oh-Jin grabbed Cassia, who was clutching her ears with a deathly pale face, and took off.

The wave of black clouds rained down on them at a terrifying speed like a tsunami.

The beastkin and dragonkin warriors, who failed to escape the wave, screamed as the clouds swallowed them whole.

“

Aaaaah!

H-Help!”

“What is this?!”

Kwon Oh-Jin cursed as he ran with Cassia in his arms, “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

Just where did it all go wrong?

Anyone would have assumed that the magic circle was the key to unlocking the Heavenly Demon’s seal. The demonkin had also frantically tried to stop him when he tried to destroy the core, which meant they also believed the magic circle was the key to breaking the seal. Then, what were those black clouds?

Does that mean there’s a separate mechanism for breaking the seal?

No, that made no sense.

Breaking the restrictions of the Law requires that much power. It can’t be done secretly without releasing some sort of energy.

He knew this better than anyone since he had once shattered the chains sealing Vega with Open Heaven. It was impossible to silently and discreetly undo the restrictions without some type of energy escaping, especially in an open area like this.

Then how—!

As his face twisted in frustration, a thought suddenly flashed through his head.

“

Ah

.” He stopped in his tracks. “No way...”

His face turned completely pale.

Even after the ritual stopped, the Heavenly Demon’s voice continued to echo. The black clouds had devoured the sky. This could only mean one thing.

“You motherfucker!”

The Heavenly Demon had never been sealed in the first place.