Chapter 598: Achieved Vengeance

[You have extracted the Demonic Bloodline of Ken Dusker]

[You can absorb the bloodline back into yourself or bestow it upon your demonic followers.]

[Ken Dusker is no longer your Demonic Servant]

[Ken Dusker’s foundation has greatly deteriorated; he has fallen to become a 1st-phase seeker]

[Ken Dusker’s Life force has been exhausted.]

[His soul has been severely wounded.]

Axel merely glanced over the runic texts Prime displayed once. Without hesitation, he swiped his fingers horizontally across the Dusker Heir’s neck with cold, brutal precision.

SWISH!

A clean arc of pressurised mana severed Ken’s head cleanly from his shoulders, sending it rolling across the blood-slicked marble floor. The sudden strike instantly freed the boy from the detestable, agonising soul torment inflicted by the demon.

As the fading light vanished from his eyes, a faint, peaceful smile touched Ken’s lifeless lips. He looked as though he had been liberated by Death itself rather than dying with lingering regret.

Axel did not really feel anything regarding the boy’s end. After all, the true target of his burning hatred had always been the Duchess.

Livia Dusker offered a broken, hollow smile as she watched her beloved son finally die. In a dark, twisted way, she was glad that her child would no longer have to endure that endless, horrific torment.

Gathering the last shred of her remaining sanity and will, the Duchess whispered one final message directly into Axel’s mind. Her telepathic voice carried neither wrath nor softness, sounding like an emotionless, hollow husk speaking from beyond the grave.

"You won, demon... you did."

"But there will come a day when even you would have to pay the price."

"There will be a day when Karma will bite back at you, just like me."

"Sooner or later that day shall come... You wretched demon."

Axel merely chuckled softly, not giving a damn about her dying curse. He stepped forward and placed his heavy palm flat over her pale face.

Activating his specialised ability derived from the Sin of Despair, he began pulling out all the despair and dark negative emotions filling her mental space.

He greedily absorbed the purest, most concentrated essence of hatred, misery, and despair imaginable into his demonic core.

From a loving mother who had watched her own son being endlessly butchered while trapped in total helplessness, there could not be a form of despair purer than that.

A string of words flashed directly in front of his eyes:

[You have absorbed the emotion of Despair and all the Negative emotions associated with that]

[The primary stat ’Mind’ of Livia Dusker has fallen below the threshold of Zero.]

[Her consciousness has been shattered completely.]

[Livia Dusker is dead.]

Then a soft sigh unusually graced Axel’s ears. The mechanical voice of Prime added a message in his ears, containing a subtle trace of emotion that Axel could not quite understand.

[Congratulations!! Axel Nomrad, for completing your revenge]

The instant the Duchess died, Daniel, who had been watching silently with a blank, hollow expression, dropped heavily to his knees. The silver armour covering his legs clattered sharply against the cold, bloodied stone floor.

Tears slid continuously down his bruised cheeks as the Patriarch whispered to himself in a choked, mourning tone. "Myra, we did it... We killed the bitch who was responsible for your death."

Arching his neck upward, he stared toward the heavens. Compelled by years of buried grief, he uttered at the top of his lungs.

"Are you watching?? Will you be happy now!!! MYRA??"

Axel slowly turned around, looking at his mournful father weeping on the ground. He, too, could not help but look up at the open sky, a subtle smile touching his face.

"Yes, mother, I have avenged you," Axel said softly to himself.

In that quiet, solemn moment, he felt an immense, heavy weight lifted directly off his chest. The suffocating, bitter burden of vengeance he had been carrying on his heart for so long seemed to evaporate completely into the cold air.

He realised this burden of retribution might not have been his to begin with. It had been placed deep within his heart simply because he possessed the body of the original Axel Nomrad.

As this profound thought occurred to him, a sudden and miraculous phenomenon took place. A wisp of brilliant, ethereal blue mana oozed out of his figure like glittering smoke, swirling around his body.

Axel frowned in confusion, not understanding what was happening.

The blue smoke condensed into the blurry, imperceptible visage of something or someone resembling his very own face. A faint, almost imperceptible voice echoed directly inside his mind, speaking in a tone that was his very own.

"Thank you for everything, Tyler."

"I could never have done it as you did..."

"I could never have become so cruel."

"Never strong enough, never good enough..."

"So thank you... again..."

Before Axel could even comprehend what was happening or form a coherent response in his mind, the blurry visage appeared once more, speaking in an almost guilty tone.

"And I am sorry for what is about to happen."

The blurry figure consisting of his blue rune-attributed mana flickered violently before breaking down into tiny glittering particles, making it seem as if nothing had ever happened.

However, Axel’s eyebrows scrunched up tightly into a deep scowl. A grave premonition suddenly gripped his heart in an inexplicable, suffocating manner that he could not logically explain.

Strangely, this instinctual foreboding did not indicate a direct threat to his very life. Instead, it warned of an overall, atmospheric danger that he could not pinpoint.

This unnerved him even more. As a true Ancestral Demon Baron, any sense of danger should tell him specific details rather than displaying a blank red warning page in his mind.

Before he could continue that train of thought, out of nowhere, slithering cracks spread rapidly through the twenty-kilometre-radius-wide barrier centred around the bloodied Dusker mansion.

KRRRR-K-K-K-K-KAAAA-SHHHHHHHHH-KLANG!

With a catastrophic sound unlike any other, the entire mighty rune barrier shattered into falling shards. At the same time, the ominous feeling coming from Axel’s demonic bloodline reached its absolute peak.

Axel’s mind raced in sheer panic as his gaze locked onto the distant horizon. He was damn sure that none of the three 6th Phase Kings would be awake by this time, nor should any of the powerhouses that he knew be present in this immediate area.

Whether they were friends or foes, he had accounted for almost every single possibility. He had planned for this revenge operation from the very moment he returned from the academy.

Which meant an unknown variable had suddenly entered the picture... something or someone he hadn’t accounted for in his calculations.

The worst part of all was Axel’s current physical condition. He could not transform back into his strongest demonic state, as he had overused every facet of his demonic might in the brutal event to kill Allen Dusker.

Axel wore a solemn, darkened look and spread his senses far and wide across the perimeter. The moment his sensory waves clashed with two mighty powers, his face contorted into a hideous expression.

His senses registered two powerful, overwhelming 5th-Phase Seekers. One of them was someone that he recognised instantly and hated with complete, unadulterated, burning passion.

It was none other than Mason Vex.

Axel’s two demonic hearts beat loudly against his ribs as he roared to his surrounding minions with all his authority.

"RUN!!!!!"

It was not a mere shout, but rather an irrefutable, absolute command issued by their Lord. The demonic weight behind the order forced the thralls to turn and scatter instantly.

Daniel snapped out of his broken stupor of grief and stared at his son in deep confusion, asking, "Axel, what’s going on?"

Axel had no time to explain the complex situation and said in a grave, urgent voice, "Father, run from here right now! Go along with my followers; they will take you to a safe place!"

However, Daniel saw that Axel had no intention of fleeing with them to face the incoming enemies. The Patriarch shook his head firmly and said, "No, I’m not leaving and..."

Before the Nomrad Patriarch could finish his sentence, Axel placed his hand on the rune armour and sent a pulse of a specific mana frequency directly through the metal, which instantly knocked his father unconscious.

His sharp gaze moved swiftly to Gareth, who landed right beside him on the ruined stone floor.

Axel said through tightly gritted teeth, "Keep him safe."

"Go through the escape teleportation route that we had set up and leave immediately."

Gareth opened his mouth as if wanting to say something or object, but Axel did not give him the chance to speak.

With all of his remaining physical might, Axel kicked off the ruined ground with explosive force and dashed into the stormy skies. He flew directly toward the two incoming enemies to hold them off as long as possible, fully aware that he could not win against them in his exhausted state.