Chapter 199: Dead end
Inside the massive, ruined throne room, the latent mana it tasted like ash. The colossal, mangled corpses of the three Calamity Lords lay on the pulverized stone.
Commander James Maddox stood perfectly still in the epicenter of the destruction. His body dyed a violent black and crimson from the beasts’ blood and his own. His youthful face, however, was no longer smiling.
The playful nature that masked his true nature had entirely evaporated, leaving behind a cold, ancient gravity that made him look every bit the century-old monster he truly was.
"You always did hide behind your toys," Maddox said, his voice echoing off the fractured obsidian walls. He didn’t look back toward the corridor where the Joker was hiding. His glowing brown eyes remained locked on the towering, skeletal Lich still sitting upon its throne of spines. "Is this the best you could summon? Or have you grown weak sitting in the dark?"
The Lich let out a wet, rattling laugh, the violet maggots spilling from its jawbone. "I am eternal, Maddox. You are merely flesh. And flesh rots."
The Supreme Calamity Lord raised its skeletal hand. The dark, corrupted mana pooling around the throne room flared. The pulverized stone of the floor began to ripple and crack.
CRACK. CRUNCH.
Pale, rotting hands burst from the earth.
Maddox’s expression hardened. He watched as dozens of figures dragged themselves out of the floor. But these weren’t normal, mindless undead thralls. As the figures stood up, their rotting features shifting and reforming into terrifyingly familiar faces, Maddox’s breath caught slightly in his throat.
They were wearing the antiquated Exterminator uniforms from over a hundred and fifty years ago.
Standing in the front row was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a familiar, weary smile. Next to him was a beautiful woman with long, braided hair, her eyes hollow and completely black. They were the ghosts of Maddox’s past. The comrades he had watched die during the first major Gate Breaks. His own older brother. And his very first wife.
"Let’s see if your resolve holds, human," the Lich mocked, leaning forward on its throne. "Kill them again. If you can."
Maddox stared at the reanimated corpses of the people he had loved the most in this world. A profound silence fell over the room. For a fraction of a second, the Joker, watching from the corridor, thought the Commander had broken.
But then, Maddox sighed.
"I already buried you once," Maddox whispered, his voice trembling not with sorrow, but with a sudden catastrophic rage. "I will not let this thing defile your rest."
Maddox closed his eyes. Deep within his chest, a blindingly bright core pulsed with pure, concentrated life force. But right next to it, a second, identical core flared to life. Over the last century and a half, Maddox’s primary talent had allowed him to manipulate raw life force, storing fifty years’ worth of condensed energy into secondary cores to sustain his youth. He had already burned his fourth core today.
Now, he ignited his third.
BOOOOOOM!
The eruption of pure white mana from Maddox’s body was apocalyptic. The physical density of his aura slammed outward like a tidal wave, instantly vaporizing the reanimated corpses of his friends, his brother, and his wife before they could even take a single step forward. The shockwave blew the Joker entirely off his feet in the corridor, slamming him brutally against the wall.
Maddox’s hair instantly lost its rich auburn color, turning a stark, pristine silver. Deep wrinkles carved themselves into his face, his youthful skin rapidly aging as he spent fifty years of his stored life force in a single, catastrophic burst. He now looked like a man in his late sixties, but the power radiating from his body was that of a god.
"My turn," Maddox rasped.
He lunged forward, moving at a speed that completely broke the sound barrier. The Lich didn’t even have time to raise its hand to cast a spell. Maddox was instantly in front of the throne. He pulled his right fist back, his arm completely coated in blinding white, physical mana.
CRASH!
Maddox punched the Primordial Calamity Lord squarely in its skeletal chest. The impact didn’t just shatter the ribs; the compressed life force violently detonated on contact, turning the dark mana holding the Lich together into a blinding explosion of sparks. The Supreme Calamity Lord shrieked, a sound that tore at the very fabric of the dimension, as it was violently blasted backward, completely destroying the bone throne and cratering into the far wall.
"Get in there!" the Joker screamed in absolute panic from the corridor. He snapped his fingers, tearing open two massive gates.
Roaring with feral fury, two colossal B-Rank Calamity Lords—a massive, four-armed armored behemoth and a towering, serpentine dragon—burst from the gates, charging directly at Maddox’s exposed back.
Maddox didn’t even turn around.
Using his second talent, Maddox forcefully imposed his life force onto the environment. The ambient mana in the entire throne room suddenly froze, becoming as dense and unyielding as solid lead. The two charging B-Rank monsters hit the invisible wall of pressure and were instantly pinned to the floor, their massive bodies groaning under the ten fold increased gravity.
Without looking, Maddox raised his left hand and formed an air gun with his fingers.
Two small, highly compressed bullets of pure white mana materialized in the air. Maddox shot them and they dropped like stones. The moment the mana bullets touched the Calamity Lords, they detonated. The explosion was silent at first followed by a deafening sound. The two B-Rank monsters were instantly vaporized into fine, glowing ash leaving their heads, their high-tier defensive carapaces completely useless against the condensed life force.
The Joker stared at the ashes, his breath coming in short, terrified gasps. He’s a monster, the Joker thought, true fear freezing his blood.
He’s the strongest human alive.
But the catastrophic expenditure of power took its toll.
The blinding white aura surrounding Maddox suddenly violently flickered and died. The Commander let out a ragged, agonizing cough, dropping heavily to his knees. The energy from his third core was completely drained. His breathing was shallow, and his remaining left arm hung limply at his side. His right arm, the one he had used to punch the Lich, was completely mangled, the skin scorched and the bone shattered from the recoil of his own detonation.
He had reached his limit. He was an old, battered man, bleeding out on a cold floor.
From the crater in the far wall, the Lich slowly pulled itself out. Its skeletal chest was entirely caved in, and its dark mana was visibly sputtering, but it was still alive.
"You are out of time, Vincent," the Lich mocked, limping forward.
Maddox knelt on the floor, his silver hair hanging over his wrinkled, exhausted face. He looked at his ruined arm.
Then, very slowly, a twisted, grieving smile spread across Maddox’s weathered face.
I never thought I’d have to try this, Maddox thought.
He closed his eyes. He didn’t ignite his second core. Instead, he opened the internal pathways of his body. He breathed in.
He allowed the dark mana to move inside his body. Something that was lethal for humans.
Like a vacuum, the corrupted dark mana of the Lich’s domain was violently sucked toward Maddox. It spiraled into his chest, bypassing his natural defenses and filling the space of his second core. His body, of course rejected it—his veins turned black, his skin cracked, and he coughed up a mouthful of pitch-black blood.
He was rapidly aging by the second, his body deteriorating past a hundred years old, his limbs turning into little more than skin stretched over bone.
But at that exact moment, James Maddox truly felt as if he was nothing, and absolutely everything.
He truly felt that he was the strongest being on Earth.
"Humans..." Maddox rasped, his voice ancient and echoing with a dual, terrifying resonance. He raised his bony, trembling right hand, pointing a single finger directly at the Lich and the Joker. "...are the strongest of all."
A single, small bullet of mana materialized at the tip of his finger. But it wasn’t white. It was a perfectly swirling, unstable mixture of blinding white pure mana and pitch-black corrupted mana.
The Joker stared at the tiny bullet. His entire body screamed with a primal, absolute terror. That wasn’t an attack. That was an extinction-level object. It was a certain, unavoidable dead end.
"NO!" the Joker shrieked, biting his own gums.
The bullet left Maddox’s finger.
It moved so fast that no one could have seen it.
The Joker violently channeled every drop of his mana, tearing open a massive gate directly beneath himself and the Lich. They dropped into the swirling void just a fraction of a millisecond before the bullet went by them.
One of the lich’s hand was caught in its explosion and was turned to blinding white sparks of light.
Some time later... when the Joker stepped out of his gate, tumbling onto a safe precipice miles away, he looked back and completely froze.
The main castle was gone. half of the raised plateau was gone, it had simply ceased to exist.
The Joker stared at the catastrophic erasure. And then, he laughed. He clutched his face and laughed and laughed and laughed.
He had survived. The old Commander had missed.
Amidst the falling debris of the erased castle, beyond a single patch of rock, where everything remained intact. Two skulls of the B-Ranked calamity lords lay... and above them resting perfectly still, his body reduced to a fragile, ancient husk, was the Commander.
Vincent Greyhart, later went by the name, James Maddox, and also known as the Chain Breaker, was dead.