Chapter 2403: Behemoth power

The Miserable World Array is completed by torturing every living creature on an entire planet, forcibly extracting the power of their souls while they are still alive and fully conscious, causing the extracted soul force to become thoroughly infused with the negative emotions produced throughout that torment—terror, regret, despair, and all the other filth that naturally accumulates within a suffering soul.

Every single one of those arrays that had helped raise the Cursed Tyrant to his current lofty standing represented, by itself, the death of at least one entire planet and all the living beings upon it.

And now... Hedrick had just been struck squarely on the forehead with the concentrated life force of fifteen planets.

Wooooosh

Hedrick was hurled backward for dozens of meters under the tremendous impact, yet strangely, there was neither pain visible on his face nor any obvious trace left behind by the strike.

Instead, his brows were merely furrowed slightly as his attention remained fixed on Darvion, watching the wound over his heart close and heal at an astonishing speed right before his eyes.

In fact, with nothing more than a quick sweep of his gaze, Hedrick began observing the rest of the sons who were currently working together to maintain the encirclement around him, and almost immediately, a faint smile appeared on his face as he noticed their condition.

Every single one of them was still alive, breathing normally enough and continuing to move, but their complexions had clearly grown somewhat pale compared to before, while one of them had even reached the point where blood was almost beginning to leak from his nose.

"So that’s what you’ve been doing with this pathetic little encirclement of yours? You’ve been taking the blows in your father’s place?" Hedrick turned his head toward one of them, locked his gaze onto him, and immediately charged straight in his direction. "Then I’ll simply kill you first."

"Stay where you are, Hedrick!" Darvion shouted sharply, immediately raising both of his hands.

Hooooom A massive black sun suddenly appeared above his head, then continued rising higher and higher until it seemingly disappeared into the endless darkness of space overhead.

Then Darvion shouted loudly, "Planetary Gift — Soul Phenomenon — Tempest!"

WHOOOOOOOSH

"...?" Hedrick suddenly felt as though he had somehow transformed into an ordinary mortal standing helplessly in the middle of a raging tropical storm, as monstrous winds erupted from nowhere around him and struck with enough force to compel him to alter his trajectory.

"Hah!" Hedrick swept his hand forcefully through the air and forcibly brought the raging winds around him to a halt, but by then he had already been pushed some distance away from his original target, so without wasting any time, he simply selected the son closest to his current position and advanced directly toward him instead.

"Soul Ebb!!" Darvion shouted once again as he pulled sharply in Hedrick’s direction.

Hooom The distant star above suddenly emitted an ominous dark gleam, and immediately afterward, Hedrick’s entire body began to be dragged backward with tremendous force, as though a small black hole had suddenly appeared directly behind him and was trying to swallow him whole.

"What?!" Hedrick shouted at the abrupt and unexpected change in the forces acting upon his body.

Then, from directly ahead of him, he suddenly heard a voice: "May your sight weaken."

From his left came another voice: "May your energy consumption increase."

From his right: "May your liver twist."

And from directly behind him: "May your attention scatter."

Hedrick immediately began looking around with open hostility, only to find that all thirteen sons had started muttering curses in an incomprehensible language, each of those curses being empowered by the tremendous soul force supplied through the Miserable World Array, while every long and obscure incantation eventually ended with a few simple, clearly audible words that struck Hedrick’s soul domain from every direction and attacked him through every conceivable avenue.

"..!!" Hedrick was already beginning to feel some of their effects taking hold despite his strength; a faint haze began clouding his vision, his sense of balance became slightly unstable, and various strange physical effects started appearing both inside and outside his body at almost the same time. "Damn this cowardly way of fighting!"

Then Bzzzn the golden pentagonal seal suddenly appeared and shone upon his forehead, and almost immediately, every single one of those abnormal effects disappeared from his body as though they had never existed.

But the thirteen sons did not stop. Their tongues never ceased moving for even a moment, continuing to mutter at an eerily rapid pace, while the sheer number of curses being thrown at Hedrick every passing second became terrifying enough that he could clearly feel the golden seal continuously repelling dozens upon dozens of curses every single second.

"How damn annoying!!" Hedrick raised his left hand and pointed his open palm directly toward the nearest son, then muttered in a low voice, "Destruction Pulse."

DROOOOM

The ebbing force drawn from the planet’s soul and the relentless tongues of curses surrounding Hedrick from every direction were still nowhere near enough to stop the Path of Destruction from continuing its work.

Craaaack

"EEEEEEYAAAAAAAH---" That unfortunate son immediately began screaming at the top of his lungs from the unbearable agony as he felt his entire body coming apart from within, every part of him rapidly losing its cohesion while his cells burst and collapsed one after another.

Then Bam a burst of power suddenly erupted from deep inside his body, and in the very next instant, his entire form exploded and scattered into nothing but dust.

One had fallen, and twelve remained.

Immediately, without a single cry of grief, without mourning their fallen brother, and without even the slightest moment of hesitation, the remaining twelve began rapidly readjusting the distances between themselves, reforming a perfect circle around the battlefield as though absolutely nothing had happened, and before the formation had even fully settled, they had already begun muttering together with a single synchronized voice.

"Oh, so damage sharing really is exclusive to you, Darvion, and apparently the connection within that array doesn’t break simply because I disrupt the formation and kill one of its foundations." Hedrick chuckled as he quickly understood what had happened. "Fine, then this should still be easy enough. All I have to do is kill half your sons until the ones remaining can no longer endure sharing whatever damage happens to you, right?"

"You won’t remain alive long enough to reach that point!" Darvion raised his voice sharply, then began lifting both hands with slow, heavy movements, making it obvious from the effort and concentration involved that he was preparing something.

"I seriously doubt that!" Hedrick stomped down violently with one foot. Bang The explosive force momentarily freed him from the ebbing force that had been acting upon his body, and without wasting that brief opening, he shot forward toward another son.

Pa

At that exact moment, the twelve brothers forcefully clapped their hands together, completing the curse they had been preparing in unison, and simultaneously muttered, "Curse of Power."

"Ugh!" Hedrick was suddenly forced to halt in the middle of his charge as the change struck him without warning.

The curses that had been continuously raining down upon him from every direction, only to be repelled one after another by the seal protecting him, had suddenly become noticeably stronger, and every impact against his defenses carried far greater force than before.

And that wasn’t all. With every single second that passed, those curses continued becoming stronger and stronger without showing any sign of stopping!

After several successive amplifications, Hedrick could already feel their existence in an almost physical manner. They now resembled an enormous nest of enraged wasps relentlessly swarming the crystalline bubble surrounding his soul domain, numbering in the tens of thousands, while their individual sizes continued growing larger with every passing moment.

"What the...?" Hedrick began looking around at them with growing irritation, quickly noticing that each of the sons was now using five Miserable World Arrays at once, and every single one of them was pouring the power of those arrays into this one specific curse—the Curse of Power.

"This curse was tailored specifically for you." The eldest son spoke with a heart overflowing with hatred, his attention completely fixed on Hedrick. "The more you resist our curses, the stronger they become. The stronger you yourself are, the greater our effect upon you becomes as well... It is a curse designed to make your own strength turn against you."

"...?!" Hedrick’s expression visibly darkened with annoyance as he finally understood what was happening. He could clearly feel the life force of those twelve sons steadily declining, making it obvious that even the enormous reserves provided by their Miserable World Arrays were not enough to sustain this indefinitely... but judging by the speed at which their life force was falling compared to the terrifying rate at which the curse was growing stronger, there was a very real possibility that he would be the one to collapse first!

If not for the protection of the Pentagonal Seal, which continuously maintained a dome of powerful protection around his soul domain and prevented those countless curses from directly invading it, he would already have died... The thought that he had once seriously considered attacking Darvion after merely breaking through and becoming a Mid Monarch now seemed so ridiculously pathetic that it was almost embarrassing.

But there was another problem, and this one was far more serious. Hedrick himself was not the true source supplying power to the Pentagonal Seal. This was borrowed power originating from his master, and naturally, borrowed power had limits... Just how long could it continue defending him against an ever-growing flood of curses?!

So this was the true power of a Tyrant? Even after Hedrick had completely unsealed his limits and could finally use his full strength without restraint, eliminating a single Tyrant while fighting inside his own galaxy was still this absurdly difficult?

Katcha

The Planetary Gift suddenly struck him again from above, and the powerful currents surrounding Hedrick immediately began pressing his entire body downward as though an enormous gravitational force had descended upon him. Then, almost simultaneously, he felt concentrated soul force mixed with dense natural energy attacking him like continuous bolts of lightning, with every single strike carrying enough power to bring down a Warden!

Then, under these increasingly oppressive conditions, Bam Darvion finally clapped both hands together above his head with tremendous force. At last, the cycle he had been painstakingly working to complete throughout all of this had finally reached completion.

Then he slowly opened his pitch-black eyes, while the veins throughout his body bulged even more visibly against the surface of his skin, making the tremendous strain upon him impossible to conceal.

HoomHoom

The crowns of the planets surrounding the battlefield began glowing one after another with a dark, suffocating light, as though all of them had simultaneously responded to what Darvion had just completed.

Then Darvion spoke in a clear, audible voice, "Final Curse of the Witnesses."