NOVGO.NET Chapter 334: Prince Of Broken Swords [II]
Chapter 334: Prince Of Broken Swords [II]
“A deal? You have a deal for me?” Xaldreth looked as surprised as I would be if a toddler one day walked up to me and offered me a job. “You do realize that it is usually demons who offer deals, correct?”
“Then would you like to offer me one instead?”
“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “Tell me how you know as much as you do, and I will consider making your death painless.”
I resisted the very strong urge to pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Yeah, okay, no offense, but that’s a really rubbish deal. Here’s a better one from me.” I paused to let the silence stretch, because believe me when I say theatrics are always important when dealing with ancient beings like him. “You listen to my demands, and I’ll consider— khwaa!”
Xaldreth didn’t wait for me to finish.
His finger pressed harder against my chest, and a sharp, searing pain ripped through my heart, as if something had suddenly cinched tight around it like a vice.
My words were cut off in a heaving gasp. It took everything I had not to double over as I clutched at my chest and ground my teeth against the agony.
“Not interested,” the Sixth Demon Prince remarked with a snicker steeped in disdain. “You were tolerable when you were useful. Now your arrogance has curdled into impudence. So goodbye.”
The pain intensified brutally as Xaldreth’s finger punched through my shirt and began sinking into my flesh, no doubt intent on piercing straight through my heart.
He could have simply withdrawn his finger and severed my soul entirely, but true to his earlier words, he seemed intent on making my final moments as excruciating as possible.
And excruciating they were.
The pressure around my heart continued to tighten. It felt like dozens of invisible bands were constricting around a single point. Each beat was more torturous than the last, and every slowing pulse reminded me that my remaining life was being measured out by the whim of the being standing before me.
My vision blurred at the edges, and my breath was now coming in shallow pulls. My knees nearly buckled beneath me.
Xaldreth observed it all with little interest. He wasn’t excited, nor was he angry. Would you be, if you were watching an ant die right in front of you?
Unfortunately for him, I was an ant making an offer he couldn’t afford to ignore.
“T-The Monarchs will know who your vessel is!” I choked out with one of my last sundering breaths.
…And just like that, the pain stopped.
Xaldreth’s claw halted an instant before piercing deeper, stopping just beneath the upper layer of my chest’s flesh.
Despite still being outside my body, I felt my heart ease as the crushing pressure vanished all at once, not just fading gradually but ceasing altogether as if it never existed.
He didn’t withdraw his hand, but when he spoke again, the many voices layered within his own were noticeably quieter.
“What… did you say?”
His finger was still buried in my chest, close enough that I could feel its lingering cold seep into my bones, yet the killing intent behind it had disappeared.
The mild curiosity from before had sharpened into something more cautious.
Got him.
I managed a trembling grin, straightening despite the shudder running through my legs. “If you kill me, the Monarchs will know Michael is your vessel. They’ll come after him… and they’ll kill him.”
“Is that so?” Xaldreth lifted an eyebrow. “And how, exactly, would they know?”
“I don’t know how closely you keep up with technology,” I said, pressing on, “but I have documented proof. Records. Contingencies. Call them failsafes. If I don’t reset the timer on my cloud storage every six months by entering my password, all of that information gets automatically released.”
Xaldreth went still for a long second… then narrowed his dark, abyssal eyes at me.
My grin broadened. I was amused for reasons I didn’t entirely understand myself. “Aww, are you trying to read my mind? Sorry, but I already had that memory removed for safety purposes. It wouldn’t be good if someone who wasn’t supposed to find out about this… found out.”
When you call a Demon Prince’s name, they can read your mind — at least, in a sense. They could see what is going on inside your head.
And when you talk about a topic, no matter how disciplined your thoughts are, something related to it will always surface inside your head — maybe an image, a feeling, or a fragment of intent. Anything.
That was the trap most people fell into when dealing with beings like him.
His gaze lingered on me, slow and probing, like he wasn’t weighing my words so much as the spaces between them.
I could almost feel the weight of it skimming across my thoughts, brushing against sealed doors and reinforced walls, searching for a single crack to pry open. He was definitely in my head.
But there was nothing for him to find.
The memory I had referenced simply… wasn’t there.
Because it had never existed in the first place.
Yeah. I was bluffing.
“You’re bluffing,” the Demon Prince said, his tone carrying equal parts offense and uncertainty.
I was outright grinning from ear-to-ear now.
“Yes! Yes, I am!” I exclaimed far too cheerfully. “Or… am I? That’s not really the question, though. The question is whether you have the courage to risk it and kill me.”
He didn’t.
Because unlike Asmodeus, who couldn’t care less whether his vessel lived or died once his goals were met, Xaldreth wanted Michael’s body completely.
He wanted to inherit it, to take it over for himself.
And for that, Michael needed to stay relatively safe at the Academy until he grew stronger — because the stronger the boy became, the stronger his cursed sword would grow, and the more influence Xaldreth would be able to exert over him.
In short… putting Michael in danger was not a risk Xaldreth could afford right now.
He knew it.
I could see it in the way his posture stilled, in the faint gleam of the broken swords embedded throughout his body.
The hesitation was brief, nearly imperceptible, but it was there. And noticing it brought me far more satisfaction than I’d expected.
I like forcing people into losing gambles.
After a moment of thought, his finger finally withdrew from my chest. There was no wound left behind, and even my shirt appeared intact, unmarred by any tear.
Of course. Even though I had invoked his name, he couldn’t hurt my flesh, only my soul. Because he himself wasn’t present in the flesh.
“Aghh,” Xaldreth sighed, rolling his pitch-black eyes. “Of all the mortals I have ever known, I dislike you the most. And that is really saying something. Do you truly believe threatening me counts as bargaining?”
I gave a noncommittal gesture. “Whatever do you mean? If anything, I’m the one drawing the short straw here. So I’ll add another condition. Save Michael. Take the God’s Mask off. Do that, and I’ll be gentle when it’s time to have you killed.”