Chapter 602: The Demon’s Karma [2]

{Author Note - Warning!! This chapter and a few chapters ahead contain severely disturbing content!!! You have been warned.}

***

For the first time since the torture session of Axel began, the demon was thoroughly shaken, rattled to his very core.

The Runecaster merely stared at the shimmering glyphs floating in front of him, a hollow look on his face; the messages displayed by Prime were something he could not believe, not even now… even while staring at it… with eyes wide open.

He could even feel it vividly within his body, the destroyed rune circuits.

His rune-attributed mana pathways had burst open into a bloody mess by the scathing, poisonous nature of the Anti Rune element.

It was a material that fundamentally opposed his pure Rune-attributed mana to the utter extreme.

Through gritted teeth, Axel kept trying to force his Runic Eyes to activate.

Putrid black blood poured from his slightly dulled Blue eyes with every attempt, but no matter what Axel tried, or how much willpower he pushed for the Runic Eyes to activate,

Nothing happened; Prime's words remained the cold, harsh truth.

Seeing his fallen expression, Mason Vex let out a burst of gleeful laughter and said, "Uh yes, I knew. I could not truly break you physically, no matter how I tortured you."

"Because your so-called inviolable Will must be shaken badly first to open a small gap in your psyche, before anything else."

The man grinned and walked closer to Axel.

His torture session started once more…

Bang!!!

With a strike, Axel's finger, pinned to the wall by the palm, was smashed to paste.

Mason uttered, "One Finger…"

Bang!!

"Two fingers…" the man continued ruthlessly…

Bang! BANG!!! BANG!!!!

"Three, four and five… fingers…" Mason laughed in pleasure at vengeance, as the fingers on Axel's hands were ruined.

And unlike his previous attempts to cause agony to the Nomrad heir, this time the demon wasn't so indifferent to the pain…

Axel roared in anger, "You fucking wretch, don't let me get out of here. Otherwise, hahahha, even I'm afraid of what I might do to you… "

But the Vex powerhouse was only excited by the prospect of it....

Mason went on to smash the fingers on Axel's hands…

Then the powerhouse brought out a sword, slashing it nonstop, piercing his body again and again and again… and again…

Swosh!!

Slash!!!!

Squelch!!!!

Filling Axel's body with muscle-tearing deep cuts, from which black demonic blood slowly crawled out.

More often than not, Mason stabbed the more grievous wounds repeatedly. To cause Axel more pain.

When the pain became unbearable, and the madness in Axel's Demon Bloodline proved too much for his weakened Will to contain, he erupted in monstrous fury, struggling through the pinned iron nails like a mad wraith who'd lost his mind.

"YOU FUCKER, I'LL KILL YOU!!!!"

"I'LL KILL YOU!!!!"

"I'LL KILL YOU!!!!"

"I'LL KILL YOU!!!!"

"I'LL KILL YOU!!!!"

"I'LL KILL YOU!!!!"

"I WILL BURN YOUR SOUL IN MY DEMONIC FLAMES FOR ETERNITY."

"I WILL ERASE YOUR MEMORIES PIECE BY PIECE…"

"PUT YOU IN THE BODY OF ANOTHER"

"CAUSE OF YOUR ENDLESS SUFFERING, AND YOU WOULD NOT EVEN UNDERSTAND WHY…"

Axel roared in his demonic voice, no longer silent, no longer able to be silent.

Mason's excitement reached its peak, seeing his torturer becoming desperate. "YES, YES, YEEEEEEESSSS, ahahahahahahah…"

"Wail, Axel Nomrad, wail…. shout more, scream more, cry more, bleed more…. this is exactly what I wanted…"

"I want to see you regret ever being born into this world. I want you to scream like a dying dog, forever daring to lay your hands on my sons."

Axel gritted his teeth, his blue eyes flickering between his black, monstrous demonic eyes, as if he was failing to control the rampaging Demon Bloodline which was consuming his mind, for a mere human had dared to commit so many offences against him.

Mason paused, then added softly, "Actually, you know what, Axel… we are perhaps not so different, you and I."

"For both of our cases, in our own perspective, no matter what sort of harrowing act we commit, it's in some way always the right thing, isn't it?" said Mason with a smile.

"But… the moment an action goes against our personal interest, or someone harms our loved one. For whatever reason it may be, it is the gravest of offences, beyond any explainable reasoning."

"Because that, in our eyes, would be the ultimate Sin," questioned the Vex powerhouse, his face twisted and dark.

Axel replied with a condescending look, "Putting yourself on the same level as me????"

"A true demon, how disgusting… you're just as delusional as your two sons."

The Demon let out a bark of inhumane laughter. "Your younger son couldn't handle the thought of me being superior, so he tried to frame me, and then died while begging in his last moment."

"And your older son? he was blinded by jealousy over the Red hair, Vyra Vanelis. Misunderstanding that I was some nobody who got too close to her. So, he ambushed me…"

Axel grinned, "But the wretch merely wailed like a dirty bitch in his last seconds; it's such a pity I don't have their last moments recorded..."

Before the Demon could even finish his sentence…..

Kachink!!!!

With a single swing of the sword, in a smooth motion, Mason Vex cut off Axel's tongue.

But the man did not stop there; with another swing of his sword, the joint between Axel's upper and lower jaw was cut. The Demon's lower jaw hung loose… downward; black blood exploded out of the cut-off tongue and ripped from the lower jaw.

A guttural scream escaped from the Demon's mouth. It was a damning… harrowing screech of unprecedented magnitude.

The mad flicker in Axel's eyes grew to be violent, disturbingly chaotic.

Like a bulb turning on and off continuously, but with each cycle the speed grew faster and faster…

In one millisecond, Axel's eyes were dull blue, but in the very next moment, they were completely black, with no distinction between his sclera and the iris, only a narrow white slit in the middle as a pupil.

His very bloodline began to churn…

Axel felt like he was losing consciousness, about to lose his mind, like a dying ember trying to hold onto its fleeting existence desperately.

In truth, he wanted nothing more than to lose himself amid his endless, boiling rage of the demon bloodline, as if a forbidden power was close to erupting in profane calamity.

But that would mean surrendering himself completely to the demon bloodline. The harrowing bloodline would devour his very consciousness and soul. What would be left would be nothing more than a mindless, disastrous beast.

That was the eternal bane of all Demonkin who could evolve into a true demon. They could never; they must never truly surrender themselves completely to the urges of the Demon Bloodline.

It was also the main reason Axel didn't eat the raw Human heart when he attacked the Vex family. [Chapter 444]

So, in the end, even the one thing Axel could do at this dead end still led to another dead end.

Giving himself up to the Demon Bloodline would only mean another form of the same awaited doom, and perhaps a more immediate death than what awaited him at the hands of the Vex powerhouse.

So it wasn't even an option worth considering….

But the continuous tortures inflicted upon him by the Vex powerhouse were only pushing his mind more and more to the edge of a breakdown; as such, it only became easier for the unfathomably deep, dark well of insidious despair to take hold of him.

And then… Mason Vex did the worst….

Squench!!!!!

A long, thin, sharp needle was thrown by Mason, which pierced exactly through Axel's left eye, going through his brain.

The pain was horrid beyond all description; black veins started to squirm all over his body. As if snakes were crawling under his skin…

The light in his eyes flickered at an alarming rate, faster than ever.

Just when it seemed like his consciousness was truly about to snap, deleted forever from this world, a terrifying and unimaginable oppressive wave of aura seemed to spread through the world, including the very dark torture cell itself.

Mason, who was about to slash and cut off Axel's fingers, suddenly stopped in his tracks. A disturbing throb in his heart made him frown.

His face scrunched up. Involuntarily, or by instinct, the 5th-phase Runecaster looked upward, toward the dark ceiling merely a meter above him.

A tremor ran through the ground, and then another.

Until the entire dark chamber started to shake madly.

Then, with no warning whatsoever, the entire roof of the dark chamber was blown off, as if someone or something had ripped it away.

Mason Vex's heart trembled; his eyes narrowed, despite his 5th phase power. The powerhouse did not even sense what had happened. This terrified the man to an overwhelming degree.

His gaze travelled beyond, looking higher and higher, searching for the one responsible for what had just happened.

And then finally, as his eyes landed upon the entity, the very world seemed to freeze in motion, or perhaps it was his heart that stopped working; it was his heart that did not dare pump blood in sheer unfathomability.

A pair of ever-so-familiar, striking blue eyes stared at him from 500 meters above, a disturbing gaze as if Mason were but a mere ant that dared to defame the heavens, the old-looking... blue-eyed entity's mage clothes fluttering in the cold wind.

Blue thunder rumbling throughout the heavens, echoing the rage... the wrath overflowing from the legendary Runic Sage.

Those monstrous blue eyes gazed down at Mason with such intensity that it felt as if they could peer through the very soul of the Vex powerhouse.

In that moment, Mason's foundation as a powerful 5th-phase seeker felt all but worthless against the calamitous force known as the strongest Runecaster.

Mason's knees hit the floor. All colour drained from his face, his eyes becoming dull as if he were already a dead man in his last moments.

And how could he not?

After all, Mason had chased the very shadow of this man for a long, long time, wishing to surpass this towering titan named Damien Nomrad. The very man who ruined his family, the man against whom he wanted to exact his vengeance.

The man whom everyone thought had died. So often he regretted it; he regretted why that man had died before he could take his revenge.

And yet, here he was… brought down to his knees by just one deep gaze from Damien Nomrad, because that was all it took for Mason Vex's willpower and desire for vengeance to shatter into oblivion.

As the ever-changing, shimmering golden Runic Symbols flashed over Damien's blue eyes, Mason Vex felt it: a boundless chill crawling up his very soul.