Chapter 535: Fusion of the Three Essences
Kris, while fighting, could not tear his gaze away from Klein. Every movement of reinforced his suspicions: the way he rolled his shoulders before a diagonal strike, the way his toes anchored into the ground to generate power, the precise curve of his high guard.
A giant of flesh tried to crush him by bringing down both arms like a hammer. Kris dodged with a lateral dash, the blast of the blow ruffling his hair, and detonated his by driving his spear into the creature’s heart. A column of fire roared upward, then reduced the monster to ashes.
In the center of the sea of flames, Pandora remained upright, arms crossed, observing the massacre of her creatures with divine detachment. Klein was panting, sensing his aura reserves at their lowest. Maintaining the Full Moon had drained him more than he had expected. His arms trembled, drops of sweat mixed with blood ran down his jaw, and his field of vision blurred at intervals. He counted mentally: fifteen percent of aura remaining, at most.
"Shit... if this keeps up, everyone is going to die in this sea of flame," Klein swore, his eyes sweeping the devastated battlefield. The corpses of Homunculi piled up in smoking mounds, their bodily fluids forming pools that mixed with the molten rock.
Aeshma, or rather the entity possessing her, let out a high-pitched and cruel laugh that contrasted with the surrounding horror.
"You fight for nothing, Lucifer... I already killed them long before you came here! Your precious little women are nothing but cold corpses." She opened her arms as if to welcome an ovation. "I personally tore out Kleopatra’s tongue before she could speak your name. Sierra screamed, for a long time, before she went out. And little Kara... she tried to fight. I loved breaking her bones one by one."
Klein remained frozen. The names of Kleopatra, Sierra, Kara and Loriel resonated in his mind. Kleopatra’s smile, her imperial hands tracing strategic maps. Sierra handing him a cup of tea, her fingers brushing his. Kara, wild and determined, promising him she would become a legend. A black and absolute rage began to boil in his veins, submerging his talent. His mind, so clear until then, became an ocean of hatred.
"Son of a bitch Constellation!!!!" he roared, his voice breaking under the emotion, a hoarse sob mixed with a war cry.
’Shit... I failed! Everything I did... for nothing?’ He fell to his knees, his Katana serving as a crutch, the blade sinking into the ground under his weight. His aura flickered, threatening to go out, the last embers of white light dying one by one. His hot and salty tears ran down his cheeks, tracing furrows in the dust.
It was then that a familiar voice, dark and insidious, whispered in the deepest part of his soul. It was his own, but different. A voice that came from before his birth, from a past he had forgotten. "Yeah... that’s it... let me take control... abandon yourself to your hatred... it’s so delicious, isn’t it?"
Bluish system windows appeared before his eyes clouded with tears and fury.
[ The Usurper’s system is Activated! ]
[ Fusion with the host has already begun! ]
[ Synchronization level: 47%... 61%... 83%... ]
Klein felt a foreign, monstrous power invade his limbs. His muscles swelled, his tendons cracked under the strain, his senses sharpened to the point of pain; he could hear Kris’s heartbeat twenty meters away, the sizzle of the flames on the Homunculi’s skin, the Antichrist’s ragged breathing.
His aura, once white and pure, tinged with purple and black, a corrosive shadow that ate away at the ground around him. Another part of him, the will forged by Diavolo and Sulyvhan, revolted. He saw in his mind Diavolo’s mocking smile, his hand resting on his shoulder during their first training. "Fuck Them, Baby boy!"
He heard Sulyvhan’s deep voice: "An Emperor does not bend especially not before his enemies!"
"Never... will I give you my body..." Klein growled, rising slowly, every joint emitting a dry crack. His aura was no longer white, but abyssal black, streaked with purple veins that pulsed like a sick heart.
"I promised Diavolo I would fuck all of you, all you Constellation bitches, all you shitty gods who treat us like toys... and I’ll start with you, you filthy dog!"
The space around him began to twist. Dimensional fault lines opened in the air, revealing a starry void, distant nebulae, unknown worlds. The katana in his hand began to vibrate, emitting a deep sound like a cosmic gong. His shadow on the ground lengthened, twisted, came to life, rising into a black silhouette with shifting outlines.
Something the world had not seen since Alexander Sulyvhan was being born.
The basalt ground began to levitate, the blocks of rock rising weightlessly around him, turning in a slow funeral dance. The black flames froze in the air, suspended like crystals of incandescent frost. A total darkness, denser than night, spread from his feet, a darkness that was not the absence of light, but its negation, a substance that absorbed rays, sounds, hopes.
In an instant, the battlefield disappeared. Only an infinite void remained, a space without up or down, without landmarks, where only Klein’s silhouette shone, transformed. His silver hair floated as if underwater, each strand undulating in an invisible current. His white and radiant eyes had lost iris and pupil, two cold suns.
His two blades, the black and the white, fused into a single weapon: a long sword, translucent, made of solidified light, whose guard represented a sun and a moon intertwined. The Antichrist, for the first time, showed a sign of fear. Her jaw tightened, her black wings retracted.
Gravity no longer obeyed her orders, the fire turned against her, the Homunculi she summoned disintegrated before even taking form.
[ Ding! Lucifer’s essence has been successfully awakened!]
[ The fusion of the Three essences.]
[ Alexander Sulyvhan’s essence 100%
Diavolo Star Giovanna’s essence 100%
Lucifer’s essence 100%]
[ You are now a new person: Klein Konstantine =100%