He stood. “Enough,” he said.
A blast of wind surged out of him and pushed me back. I somersaulted in the air, backflipping as I fell, and landed on my feet. The Dark Lord walked over to Asterion and put his hand on his head.
“Lord?” the Emperor asked in confusion.
A flash of white light shone from the Dark Lord’s arms, and Asterion began to glow. The Leader of the Dark Alliance looked around in confusion. “My Lord, what’s going on?” His voice tensed.
“Nothing you need to worry about.” Azmuth tightened his grip, and Asterion burst into a sparkle of light. The glowing points orbited the Dark Lord for a second and then surged into him. A bright flash shone out, and with it the lights had all disappeared.
What the hell? My eyes widened.
“Oh dear,” Nyx said. I quickly used my Analyze skill on Azmuth once again, while I still had the chance.
Name
Azmuth Razugan
Race
Eternal
Level
805
Oh my God. My eyes widened. He’s become much stronger now.
I clenched my fists. The Dark Lord had absorbed Asterion’s energy and had powered himself to even higher levels. “That monster,” I muttered.
“He can only increase his levels temporarily this way,” Nyx said. “However, that doesn’t mean you can just sit back and wait for the effects to wear off.”
“Well, I can’t take him on either,” I mumbled. “He’s way stronger than me.”
The Dark Lord chuckled. “Backing down already, Diablo?” His voice was deeper and sounded dual-toned.
I took a step back.
“A change in approach?” Nyx said.
I can’t take him on at close range, I realized. I haven’t been the Phantom Lord for long, but I need to play to my strengths.
I put my hand in the air, and my mind delved into the names of the spells I’d unlocked. I dropped my arm toward Azmuth and spoke. “Elenir, Ivaldeon, Uhilios, Sakh.”
And then there was chaos.
Waves of fire and blades of shadows surged out of my palm and toward the Dark Eternal. Beams of red, white and black intertwined in the air and shot at him.
He stood silently and threw his hands up. “Elenir.”
A massive beam of darkness blasted out. It dispersed all my attacks and thudded into me. I went flying, and the attack kept pushing me back, through the enemy ranks around us. A second later, it cut off and I slid to a stop.
I straightened and my eyes widened at the sight of death before me. Hundreds of bodies lay on the floor, in both dark and white clothing, dead and broken. They’d all been caught in the Dark Lord’s attack, and none of them had managed to get away alive.
He doesn’t even care for his own people, I realized. I can’t let him keep going like this.
“There might be a way to beat him,” Nyx said.
The Dark Lord looked at me from afar, and I could almost hear the chuckle on his lips. This man infuriated me—his presence did, his overconfidence did, and everything about his personality did.
Nyx, what’s your plan? I stepped forward, toward the Dark Lord.
“It needs the Void Blade,” he said.
Okay? I said.
“And you’re not going to like it.”
I listened for a few seconds, concentrating the spirit’s words as he spoke. And when he was done, I realized he was totally right.
I didn’t like it one bit.
“Diablo, it’s fine if we don’t do this,” Nyx said. “There will be other ways to—”
“I’ll do it.” My voice was soft. “I don’t like it, but I’ll do it.”
The Dark Lord shot toward me. He was a hundred yards away one moment, and right before me the next. He placed his hand on my chest, before I could even react. “Elenir,” he boomed.
I dove down to the floor, and a massive beam of darkness surged out of his palm, missing me by inches. The attack passed over me and through both armies, taking out a large section of their forces once again.
Damn it. My shoulders tightened.
“It’s now or never, Diablo,” Nyx said, tension in his voice. “Even if they will judge you, you must do it.”
I exhaled. I know. I surged forward and headed right at the Dark Lord. The man readied himself to strike me, but I diverted, running past him instead. I held my sword tight and approached the clash of the armies.
My chest tightened. I am sorry, I thought. But I have no choice. This is the only way.
I slashed into the first soldier I saw. Cries of anguish and pain resonated around my blade as I blast through the battle field, taking down people of either faction, either ideology, either Alliance.
The laughter of the Dark Lord echoed through the air. “You have given in to your true nature, haven’t you, Diablo?” he said. “Beautiful. This is the man I knew!”
A few seconds later, I stopped in front of my last kill, a young Knight of the Alliance of Light. His body trembled, and his eyes looked up at me.
In fear.
“Forgive me.” I slashed and severed his head right off his shoulders.
Pain shot through my nerves, as though lightning was coursing through them. The purple crystal on Dawnbreaker began glowing, and the deep purple turned a bright white. My blade vibrated, and the black metal was now illuminated by an aura of deep purple, as though the shade had shifted from the crystal and onto the weapon.
DING!
Blood Drive activated.
I turned to the Dark Lord and lowered my body. I held my blade up and gripped it tight, struggling to wield the vibrating weapon as its tremors grew in strength. I tightened my muscles and blasted forward. I activated every Agility boost I could and put every drop of motivation I had into my final attack. A shockwave blasted through the field as I surged to the Dark Lord, with my blade already midswing.
“Eternal void,” I whispered and swung Dawnbreaker.
The weapon broke through the Dark Lord’s armor and slashed into his skin. He gasped as pain struck through him, and he dropped to the floor, heaving. “You,” he grunted. “You!”
A circular outline of white lit up under him, and messy lines formed within it, drawing runes of mysterious shapes. A hum sounded a second later, and a blast of pure silver light shot up from within the circle, surging high into the air and into the depths of the sky.
The Dark Lord’s silhouette trembled within the white, and his body quickly began dissolving.
“You haven’t gotten away with this, Diablo,” he yelled as the last bits of him began to disappear. “The Dark Lord never forgets a grudge. I will come after you, and when I do, you will—”
He dissolved away. The blast cut off a second later, and when it did, the circular runes on the ground were no more. The light had vanished from the earth and sky, disappearing to a place I did not know of.
I collapsed to the ground, my lungs heaving, gasping for air. Blood slid down my hands, and coated my fingers in red. Tears stung my eyes, and my chest ached, more so than my sore body.
“It’s finally over,” I whispered. “I ended it.”
“Indeed, Diablo,” Nyx said. “You can finally live in peace again.”
“Peace?” I looked up the cloudless skies. “Peace is something I will never have.”
***
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I’d like to say life went on, that everything returned to normal, that everyone lived happily ever after.
But reality hardly ends that way.
Though the battle with the Dark Lord ended in a flash, it took me quite a while to get over the fact that I’d used such a terrible move to defeat him. Sure, I had made one bad sacrifice to prevent a worse one, but I wasn’t happy about it.
I was thankful to Nyx, though. He was the one who had told me about Dawnbreaker’s Blood Drive mode—a mode where the weapon obtained the ability to execute its apex special moves.
The way to activate Blood Drive was a little sic
k, though. A hundred people had to be slain by the weapon in order for Blood Drive mode to activate. It felt evil, it felt wrong, but I told myself it was okay. It was the only way I could have defeated the Dark Lord and prevented even worse horrors from occurring.
The events right after our battle were quite a mess as well. Freya and I made a break for it the moment we knew everything had ended. I didn’t want to risk giving the Alliance of Light another chance to come after us and make things worse for everyone.
Viola never realized Freya was actually “Frey.” I secretly wondered if she knew and just didn’t bring it up. But either way, it didn’t really matter. Since I’d attacked the Alliance of Light at the very end, to activate Blood Drive, I was absolutely sure I’d dirtied myself in her eyes forever.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Viola came after me soon. Markus Goodfield was yet to make a statement on all this, and I wasn’t even sure if he was going to, given how disastrous the whole event had turned out for his side. Freya contacted a few friends she still had in the Kingdom, but they hadn’t heard anything from him either.
There hasn’t been much news on the Dark Lord either. I knew my final attack was strong, and that it had killed him, but it was obvious the man was not yet dead. He was the same as me—an Eternal with a Resurrection ability. He had probably weakened quite a bit, but him being dead was an impossibility at this point.
I found it weird that both the Alliance of Light and the Dark Alliance had kept quiet about his existence, especially since they were the ones who had witnessed him reappear.
Then again, if they admitted that he’d come back, it would cause a lot of problems. As far as I knew, both the Dargonian Empire and the Kingdom of Aingard were still facing repercussions for announcing my existence. It always put a smile on my face to think of how either side thought I was with the other, while in reality, I was with neither. It put an amusing twist on what was otherwise quite an intense tale.
The Dargonian Empire still had to face the fact that Asterion had been killed in battle, but with the kind of leadership changes they usually made, I figured it wouldn’t be too big of a problem.
In the end, Freya and I decided to come back to Ijyela’s house. It was the only place we could go, since we were unsafe in both the Kingdom and the Empire. Well, I was unsafe. Freya’s normal form was still not under threat by anyone. Either way, we decided to stay at Ijyela’s place, simply because we weren’t really sure where to go at the moment.
“So that’s what happened,” Ijyela said, sitting in her chair as usual, listening to our entire story from beginning to end.
“You seem quite…comfortable with all this.” I scratched my cheek. You’d think a story that has the Phantom Lord and the Dark Lord suddenly coming back to life would trip people up a bit. I smiled.
“Ijyela is always like that.” Freya sighed as she walked into the room. She was no longer in a hooded tunic and pants, but rather a dress of pristine white, with intricate patterns of golden flowers woven into them with a beautiful delicateness. Her dark hair flowed down her back, and a flower of radiant purple was tucked behind her ear, the petals glowing dimly.
I stared at her for a moment, taken aback at seeing the sword-carrying, hard-hitting elf dressed like this.
“That looks beautiful on you, Freya.” Ijyela smiled.
“It’s comforting to wear an elven dress after so long.” She smiled and sat in the chair beside the elven witch.
“Well, what are your plans after this?” she asked.
“Us?” Freya looked at me. “I don’t think we have any plans for now.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We don’t even know what to do. There are still a ton of questions that we need to have answered, but we don’t really know how to even begin looking them up.”
“I believe time is the best solver of problems,” Ijyela said. “Just live long enough and you’ll get all the answers you need.”
“Sure.” I grinned. I had lived the longest by far between the three of us, and even then, I was the one with the least knowledge of anything going on.
“Well, you were stuck inside a seal for most of that time,” Nyx chuckled.
I know, I know. I smiled.
“To me it’s pretty clear what we have to look at first,” Freya said. “We still don’t know anything about that seal of yours, or of this Phantom Lord rampage Asterion spoke about.”
Ah, I thought. Is what I heard about that rampage true, Nyx?
“I…do not remember those times well, Diablo,” Nyx said. “Forgive me. My memories have also been affected because of the seal.”
That’s unfortunate, I said.
“I will look and see if I can find any documents that can help us,” Ijyela said.
“That would be great,” I said.
“This whole situation is very intriguing, though. I presume you are going to try and break the rest of the seal now?”
“That’s what I hope. Though I’m still not sure how I’ll do it. I don’t even know where to start.”
“I might be able to help with that. Don’t worry.”
I frowned. “What?”
“There is a lot I have to say about where you should begin your search. However, that conversation can wait for later.” The witch stood up. “Freya, it’s time.”
“Already?” the elf asked.
“Time for what?” I blinked.
“It’s a surprise.” The elves smiled and walked out of the house, leaving me to follow them cluelessly. I stepped out, into the pocket of forest that was now filled with darkness.
The corner of my mouth twitched. “This is what you wanted me to see?” I asked.
“Shh,” Freya said, and a teasing smile curled onto her lips.
“Be patient, Diablo.” Nyx chuckled.
Wait, you know about this too? I asked.
“Watch.”
Colors of all kinds sprouted within the darkness—the fiery reds, the lively greens, the paranormal purples, and the enriching blues. Flowers and petals bloomed into existence, their glowing shapes illuminating the shroud of forestry that we were in. They sent the darkness around us into oblivion and replaced it with a rainbow of flowers instead.
I looked past the glow, at the greenery that had been illuminated. At the start of this all, I’d woken up a mile or so from this very spot, alone, hurt and scared. It hadn’t even been two weeks since then, and here I was, in the presence of the lady who had inarguably saved me when it was most important, watching the colors of the forest as they bloomed from within the darkness.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Freya stood next to me, her eyes shining.
I gazed at her. “It is.” I smiled.
My muscles loosened and I exhaled. I thought about all the problems I’d faced, about all the things I’d had to fight through. But I was glad that I’d experienced them, for I could tell I was no longer at war with my mysteries, no longer in conflict with who I was supposed to be. And that peace, to me, was the greatest thing I could have obtained.
A smile curled on my lips, the colors lit up my eyes, and one sole thought illuminated my mind.
My name was Zoran Diablo.
And I was the Phantom Lord.
The Eternal: Dragonborn
A World of Ga’em Novel
By Dhayaa Anbajagane
CHAPTER ONE
A flash of darkness struck the air, like lightning descending the sky. A thunderous blast spilled into the winds, resonating for a second before silence took over. A plethora of goblins collapsed, their bloodied bodies flush against the forest floor, their eyes cold and empty.
“Well, that takes care of that,” I sighed, swinging a sword of black, a glowing jewel of mystic purple embedded where the blade met the hilt.
“What do you mean, that takes care of that?” Nyx said, his voice reverberating within my consciousness. “That was like the umpteenth goblin squadron we’ve had to take on, Zoran. If anything, there’s going to be a lot more of them.”
As if on cue, an impish cry came from beyond the trees, and glowing eyes sprung from the darkness. A pack of goblins rushed out of the shadows, charging at a blazing pace. I casually held up my sword, letting it swing gently just as the creatures jumped at us. The blade went clean through them, throwing severed segments of their small bodies against the trees, killing them long before impact.
“Okay, maybe you have a point,” I said as I flicked my weapon, letting the goblin blood slip off. “These things are going to keep coming at us for as long as they can.”
DING!
A screen of translucent white appeared before me.
Congratulations! Your party has defeated:
Goblin Horde (Lv 70)!
Those poor creatures. They thought they actually had a chance. Rewards: 100000 XP. Rewards 80000 Sol.
Ugh, those XP won’t even get me one percent closer to my next level. I sighed.
My thoughts broke off when more sounds entered the air, and I instinctively looked ahead, the orange of the evening sky contrasting with the darkness I saw before me.
I focused harder on the shadows and activated my Night Vision skill. The black between the trees washed away, showing me clear images of goblins running in from ahead, swinging wooden clubs and thrusting metal spears as they approached me.
I decided to take the attack to them and surged forward, sword in hand, the tip pointed right at the goblins. A few quick swings later, a multitude of bodies lay frozen on the forest floor, lifeless and silent.
“You could just purge them all at once, you know,” Nyx said. “A single spell and they’d all be done for. It’s kind of sad to watch the Phantom Lord go after each goblin one by one.”
“Well, for one, casting a mass spell like that might take down the whole forest, which I’d prefer not to do, and second, I’d rather take the goblins out physically with Dawnbreaker than cast an overpowered spell. I need to work on using all my skills more. It helps to be well rounded.”
The Eternal: A Boxed Set (World of Ga'em Book 6) Page 24
