Killed Me? Now I Have Your Power - Chapter 337

Chapter 337: Chapter 337: Vengeance, poison of the soul.
Chapter 337 – Vengeance, poison of the soul.

The world was collapsing.

At least, that was how it looked with how much power Kaden was letting out in this battle.

The whole city was against him, and that meant hundreds or even thousands of knights closing around him on all sides, the weakest of them being Master-ranked, with three or four of them touching the Epithet realm.

Lord Silver stayed high in the sky, watching as if disdaining the very act of partaking in this worthless clash. His very presence caused the sky to rot and decay.

Yet Kaden couldn’t care less. He was in his element at that moment. No, Reditha and him were living their best lives.

Inside the city, you could see a crimson-black light zigzagging through the streets of Silver City. The light burst straight into buildings, causing splintered rocks and debris to erupt into the sky in abundance before falling down in a rain of shattering stone.

Before the debris touched the ground, Kaden — still in his sprint — enveloped the rocks in his crimson intent and sent them hurtling toward the dozens of knights managing to match his speed behind him.

The crimson rocks tore apart space and attacked directly, the knights stopping in their tracks to defend.

Numerous kinds of power graced the world, causing the ground to crack and erupt toward the sky, and a growl of anger and pain to escape the throats of the knights.

Cursing, they succeeded in blocking only to freeze in their next step.

Kaden was already in the middle of them. He grinned, Reditha in his hand.

“Crimson Echo.”

A flash of red. And their heads were severed.

At that exact moment, Kaden pivoted to his right, letting pass a knight coated in lightning. As the man passed him by, Kaden grabbed his leg, his hand sizzling and burning, yet he laughed. He spun and launched the man toward the approaching knights.

At the same time, blood began to rain from the sky, blood turned into one that exploded at the slightest contact with any object, human or otherwise.

A series of thunderous explosions boomed through the space, followed by waves of smoke that blanketed the city completely.

Kaden didn’t stop.

He realized in the midst of fighting that he was not yet able to use both his exalted intents at the same level of efficiency simultaneously, forcing him to switch between the two constantly.

He was not without wounds, as attacks managed to slip past his barriers and carve lines of blood across his skin.

The whole world at that moment, for Kaden, was only the shriek of anger, the wails of pain, and the fear of death.

The ground was littered with blood and fragments of flesh and bone. Each of his steps was him walking on the remnants of death without respect.

With Reditha in his right hand, Kaden swirled and threw her high into the sky, toward a knight descending with a colossal hammer.

Reditha slashed the air with bristling speed, pierced the colossal hammer before shattering it completely, and lodged herself deep into the silver-armored knight. Her blade ignited in crimson flame, burning the man into agonized screams.

Blood began to fall.

Meanwhile, on the ground, Kaden was already surrounded on all sides again. Using the blood of the man falling from the sky, Kaden froze it in the air, sharpened it into needles.

At the same time, his crimson intent shrouded the sharp needles before he flung them toward his opponents.

Cries of pain rang out as the needles lodged deep into limbs, torsos, eyes — any part they struck — making those parts crippled and died instantly.

In the same breath, Reditha reappeared in his hand,

“Ethereal Crimson Sword.” Kaden growled, and all of them dropped dead, their heads rolling across the ground carpeted in blood.

He continued his killing spree, his whole body a canva of entrails, blood, and bones.

Yet he did not care.

‘Beyond!’ he growled inside his mind, face split into a wild smile, ‘Go beyond Kaden! Beyond!’

Each of his steps caused the ground to burst into searing fire, burning everything in its wake. Each of his breaths created storms of crimson swords falling from the sky like the punishment of a god.

The blood the knights managed to spill corrupted them, then exploded. His strikes were accompanied by mind-effects and soul-effects, making each of his attacks one worthy of an agonizing scream.

Kaden used everything he had.

If Reditha was acting on her own, flying across the sky and killing mercilessly, he used his fists, each punch bending the very fabric of space.

Suddenly, a titanic punch came from the left. The fist was strange, Kaden found himself unable to move, as if gravity itself rebelled against him.

He gritted his teeth and used all his will and strength to move, managing only to shift his body slightly to the right, but the fist followed him, swift and merciless, and lodged deep into his skull.

CRACK—!

Kaden’s head snapped back brutally, his skull creaking and fracturing. At the same time, beneath him, the ground wavered like restless water, and in his haze, he found himself sinking deep inside.

More knights closed around him, their eyes red with blazing anger, hatred, and determination, ready to do all to kill him.

None used their domains, for fear of canceling each other’s.

Managing to recover his mind as rapidly as possible, a black light shrouded Kaden’s head, stopping the wounds from worsening before his fire and his blood acted to heal him.

At that moment, he was already halfway inside the ground, with more attacks flying toward him.

Space shuddered in dread.

Smiling with bloodied teeth, Reditha suddenly appeared and plunged deep into the muddy earth.

Soon, a resounding explosion erupted from below, launching Kaden into the sky, his own blood spraying and splashing across the nearby knights.

“ATTACK!!!!” one guard bellowed under the howling wind.

They attacked.

The world lit up in a flurry of colors.

Still in the air, Kaden clapped his hands twenty-five times in one second, laughing heartily. Each clap caused the air itself to die until no oxygen existed in their surroundings. Shocked and surprised by that event, the attacks wavered.

At that instant, Kaden switched back to his crimson sword intent and rained down hundreds of ethereal crimson swords.

Everything was severed and killed. The knights began to fall like flies.

Kaden grinned, he stepped firmly onto the air, Reditha in hand, about to continue—!

“Aspect — Freezing Heart.”

Kaden stopped abruptly, his heart freezing instantly. His death intent flared instinctively, keeping his heart undying. His body began to move, but—!

“Aspect — Scythe of Time.”

An invisible scythe pierced his chest.

His perception of time was severed, making Kaden fall into a world where everything moved backward into the past, then suddenly forward into the future, before snapping back brutally into the present.

That disorientation killed him, when three Epithet-realm beings attacked at the same time, bursting his whole body into a rain of blood and bone.

[You are dead.]

The first death.

And that, with Lord Silver not even acting.

…

Kaden’s death repeat had already begun, causing the world inside the mythic quest to go backward in time again and again with none the wiser, resetting the whole pain he went through.

Yet admist that, there was one being whose heart seemed to shred into pieces every time he died, as if she could sense his death from realities apart.

It was none other than Aurora, who at that moment was running with all the speed she could muster toward Silver City to aid Kaden.

The sight around her blurred into a hazy landscape with her speed. Not long ago, she had felt the disappearance of the sun and the moon in all the territories of the Celestial Empire.

The empire was now drowned in fearsome shadows with no substance. Those shadows were different, as if alive. The folks were already panicking, some thinking the end of time had come.

But for those who knew, they understood this event meant only one thing… that the Moonborn’s Patriarch and the Sun Empress were fighting.

After all, it was their aspects that acted as Sun and Moon above the Empire, bathing everyone in the warm light of the Sun, then shrouding them in the comforting darkness of the Moon to rest for the night.

Yet now, all of that was gone.

Aurora didn’t know what to feel about this event. Even as she ran, she could feel the moving shadows around her, and that made her worry.

She certainly didn’t want her uncle to die, but at the same time, she hoped he would use the starlight shard she gave him and follow the path it showed him to kill the Sun Empress.

He was the only one who could. For they had seen nothing in Lady Sora’s mind that they could use to bring down the Sun Empress.

Nothing.

Aurora bit her lips, her steps increasing even faster, patting the earth and shadows alike, her heart racking against the ribs of her chest so hard it became difficult to breathe.

She was afraid.

She was afraid that these events would end with the death of Kaden and those she cared for.

It was only now Aurora began to realize the cost of trying to bring down the Empire. Folks in Silver City, Morningstar City were dying like worthless flies because of her.

Added to that, with no sun and no moon and only this strange darkness, the weird strangeness of the Empire caused some weaker beings to already go mad, devoured by shadows.

All of that because she wanted her revenge.

She smiled as the wind whipped her face, her hair fluttering behind her, “Vengeance is truly the poison of the soul.”

Yet her soul was already poisoned.

So she might as well just finish her task, and be with the one she loved in her last two years, hoping he could bear the stench of her soul.

That was more than enough to soothe her.

More than enough.

“Don’t die on me, Fraud!” She scowled, her feet kicking harder against the ground, her body slowly being shrouded by silver starlight, “Don’t you dare leave me alone!”

With a cry of both fear and love, Aurora shot forward like a star in the direction of the one who could bear her weight.

And her love.

And her life.

…

Solaris found the recent events so absurd it gave him the urge to laugh. But no sound escaped his mouth, as if afraid of the sight in front of him.

The Celestial Empire was no more, as how something could be called Celeste without the Sun, the Moon and the stars crowning it?

At that instant, Solaris felt more that it was better to use Empire of the Damned as a name.

More fitting, indeed.

He was standing in his own office room, in front of the window, the suffocating shadows clenching to him on all sides, trying to seep inside his being.

From where he stood, Solaris could feel the apocalyptic battle ongoing inside another fold of reality that he had no way of accessing as an only Epithet-rank being.

The power of the clash between Sun and Moon was slipping through the void from time to time, causing space to burn, to freeze, buildings to be destroyed by a simple wisp of white flame before the fire itself became crystallized in frost.

Sometimes the whole sky would light up into a mesmerizing color of golden and white and blue, making it look like the heavens were fracturing, causing Solaris to feel a deep seething fear.

Yet even amidst this fear, something else slithered inside. A thought. A person. His lover.

Instantly, he pivoted and used his body to race toward his father’s room with blistering speed.

‘Neila!’ he thought urgently, wanting to see the woman he loved and protect her from this collapsing world.

Chaos was already unleashed, so there was no need for him to stop himself in snatching his lover from the cruel hands of his father.

As he ran through the golden hallway, in one corner of his mind, Solaris began to think of the possibility to disappear from the Empire with her, as that was all that mattered to him.

Her and only her.

The throne, since the beginning, was a means to obtain her and keep away his father from them.

The sacrifice of Aurora was necessary for their happiness and freedom.

Yet all those thoughts died down before they came to be expressed into reality when he burst open the door of his father’s room and faced a scene that chilled his whole being.

There, Solaris saw two sides. One side was Klaus surrounded by his toys taking care of him, his skin slightly red and emitting faint smoke.

At the other side was a blue-haired naked woman who was lying down on the floor, at her right side, her forehead holding a nasty wound, her hands and forehead tainted in blood.

Sensing an arrival, Neila lazily and brokenly looked at who that was. As her blue lifeless eyes locked into Solaris’s golden ones, she instantly stood up in shock, looking at him with both shame for him seeing her naked with his father, and for the apprehension of what he was about to do.

“Solaris—!”

“Hahahah.” Neila’s voice was cut short by the laughter of Solaris.

Yet she only felt a rising dread.

Solaris’s laugh was completely empty, void of any feelings. Void of everything except one thing…

…a blazing incandescent rage.

His golden eyes moved and rested on Klaus’s own. The father smiled weakly and mockingly, “So I was right. You—!”

“I will kill you.” Solaris whispered, mind consumed by hatred. He no longer cared about the state of the Empire, or anything.

The world could be damned.

At that instant, his whole being was focused on a single purpose.

Kill his father.

“I WILL KILL YOU!!!!!!” Madness began to flicker inside his eyes as his intent exploded outward from him, in his hands a pair of daggers appeared, he kicked the ground and dashed toward his father, the temperature rising to a melting point.

“SOLARIS!!”

Neila called her lover in pain, but all of that didn’t matter.

As soon after…

A father and son began to fight. Each one determined to kill the other.

—End of Chapter 337—