Chapter 373: What a King Learns from his Wife

Aalam Aalam grew excited as he noticed three important pieces of information in the data from Elandra, things his wife likely hadn’t, mostly

Aalam

Aalam grew excited as he noticed three important pieces of information in the data from Elandra, things his wife likely hadn’t, mostly because she A, couldn’t look through the knowledge they’d gained in depth due to having to concentrate on the bloodline curse, and B, was not an expert on plagues, energy transference, and the complex side effects of gaining Laws through methods like the Power of Chaos racial ability.

First, Elandra’s slave seal was a technique that operated via the use of faith energy and, through several new aspects of faith energy revealed to them in the data about soul plagues, he could see there would be some interesting interactions between the nature of the seal and the Divine Child having lost his divine roles from Mila’s interference. Second, the Divine Child seemed to only have a single Law that he’d truly learned by himself, and this meant most of his Laws were subject to the side effects of gaining Laws through the use of racial abilities, transferred learning, and low quality dao guides, specifically that his level of understanding of his own Laws, especially the newly advanced ones, was far, far lower than a cultivator who’d gained the Laws through study and experimentation. Finally, third, the Divine Child specialized in sin and emotional Laws, and, from experience watching his wife work, Aalam knew manipulating those Laws could produce some interesting and subtle effects.

So, after performing his tests and verifying the information Elandra had sent was at least mostly reliable, he started working on a powerful new weapon to be used against the demon elder god, the second most difficult to face of their remaining four targets.

And he also decided to talk with his master about the possibility of Elandra being her daughter, seeing if she’d have any way to confirm such a claim, potentially turning the most dangerous of their targets into an ally.

Mila was approaching her limits with the curse, unable to last more than a few more days, so they were only going to get one chance to finish the fight in their favor.

Before he could truly start working on the plan his new discoveries would allow, however, things changed on the battlefield. And he had to adapt, only his first prototype design ready.

***

Arthur

Arthur sensed as Elandra broadcasted something with her mana, using a language he didn’t know in the transmission, and it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on.

Elandra, somehow, was the reincarnation of the phoenix who’d originally ruined his life, or at least she was pretending to be, trying to ally with the Heavenly Spark Soul King and his wife in an attempt to survive the interference they were adding to the fight.

The question was what he should do about it.

More than the Heavenly Spark Soul King and the Mistress of Oaths and Deception, Primordius was the greatest threat, and the man had now been shown to be strong enough to easily kill him if he were alone.

At the same time, however, if he and Primordius were the only two remaining elder gods alive, the Heavenly Spark Soul King and his wife would almost certainly see Primordius as the larger threat. And, with the danger of the two A ranks eventually reaching godhood, it was possible Primordius would want to keep another elder god alive.

Whatever the case, given there was a high possibility the Heavenly Spark Soul King would ally with Elandra no matter her origins, seeing as the United Federation of Planets and Immortalia had no real enmity with the woman, he had to take the risk.

So, after thinking about it for a few hours, he decided to act.

Releasing his full power, he flooded his body and soul with energy, wiping away most of the slave mark, and, as he did, he stopped trying to attack Primordius.

Primordius in turn, likely at least somewhat aware of what he was doing, then charged at Elandra, and, for the first time in the entire battle, started engaging the woman in close combat.

Were he not still under the effects of the bloodline curse, it wouldn’t even be a fight, but, with him cursed and needing to protect himself against the Highest Shade and a sneak attack from Arthur or the Heavenly Spark Soul King, Elandra managed to flee, using her movement technique to retreat as fast as she possibly could.

And, as the woman had seemingly been ready for his betrayal, there wasn’t much Arthur could do to stop her, especially given he couldn’t move without risking his life.

While he’d been breaking the seal, she’d done something to it, empowering her last order to do everything in his power to kill Primordius, and, even though he’d managed to wipe out most of the slave seal’s power, including the part that would link his life to hers, the compulsion from that command was still there, and it was taking almost everything he had to not attack the thunder god.

“Here, have some pills.”

While the other three elder gods rapidly moved away, the Heavenly Spark Soul King appeared in front of Arthur and telekinetically tossed nine pills at him, one for each of his heads, and then telekinetically thrust them down each of his kilometer long throats.

At the same time, that holy and devilish purple sword of the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s appeared from out of a storage space and stabbed through Arthur's center head’s right eye, entering into his main brain and systematically starting to slice through things that really shouldn’t be sliced.

The curse of the sword activated, attempting to break all the contracts he was still under with him as the party at fault, his own soul attempting to shackle itself as a result, and, especially with his main brain taking damage, he no longer had the spare mental capacity to fight against the remaining command of the slave seal and the influence of one of the plague varieties the Heavenly Spark Soul King had just put into his body as a result.

But what did it matter?

He was Arthur Algebrute, the King of Demons, and he was so much more powerful than he’d ever been before.

Sure, he was exhausted and injured from having fought on the front lines of the fight against Primordius for days. Sure, he was effectively missing his main head, and thus his ability to use his Law of Devour. And, sure, at least seventeen varieties of magical diseases were ravaging his internals, exacerbating his injuries and feeding off his energies, while a large chunk of his concentration was needed to fight off his own soul trying to shackle itself. But what did that matter?

Should he, the strongest of all demons and possibly the second most powerful elder god of all time, scheme and manipulate like a coward? Should he avoid threats like the storm lord and retreat to heal his injuries.

No. That was a coward’s way out, and he was an incarnation of wrath, envy, and pride. Primordius had hurt him, and the storm lord would pay for his transgressions.

***

Primordius

Primordius almost managed to kill Elandra, severing her left arm and right leg while she continued to try and flee, but he’d kept using part of his senses to monitor Arthur, so he saw when the Heavenly Spark Soul King arrived, and he decided the A rank was a bigger threat.

So, without wasting any time, he zoomed back.

But, when he arrived, three things happened that he hadn’t expected.

First, his grandson’s body and soul exploded, releasing more of those damn plagues that targeted his energy as well as some type of gas that spread out rapidly, the purpose of which he didn’t yet know. The body had contained a ridiculous amount of energy, an amount that would normally require forty-eight Titanic size core containers, mana wells, and mental forges, while also emitting an aura of all twelve elements mixed following the path of the heavenly spark, so he’d been tricked into thinking the clone was his grandson’s main body.

Second, Arthur, instead of staying on the sidelines like he’d expected, given he’d thought the demon had freed himself from whatever Elandra had done to him, charged at him with reckless abandon.

Most surprising of all, however, third, the bloodline curse that had been limiting his concentration suddenly disappeared.

***

Elandra

As Primordius started fighting Arthur again, allowing her to flee, Elandra felt relief.

The man was just too terrifying, and, if he attacked for a few seconds longer, she would have died.

Then, however, the moment she let her guard down, the Highest Shade’s halberd stabbed into her back, destroying her heart before heading up to her head and crushing her skull.

This alone wasn’t able to kill her, but the power of undeath started to ravage through her body, and the halberd then hacked into her sixteen more times.

Exhausted from the fight with Primordius, she was killed by the Highest Shade, and, unable to do anything, she was then forced to watch as the Highest Shade moved to bring her soul into the undead’s soulbound afterlife.