Chapter 1209
Unrivaled Under Heaven, Enemy from Beyond the Heavens.
Chapter 1209 Unrivaled Under Heaven, Enemy from Beyond the Heavens.
The next day.
Before dawn, a layer of gray-green poisonous cloud still hung over Ash Slope City. Braziers and warning lights were still burning throughout the city, and the stench of blood, medicine, and death from last night had not yet completely dissipated.
Mortalius had already emerged from the stone building where he was temporarily resting.
He rested overnight, and his injuries had mostly healed. This was the terrifying physique of a perfect embryo; a mere fatal wound could be recovered with just a breath of fresh air.
Deputy Carax and a group of officers were already waiting outside.
They had failed to persuade Mortalius last night, and clearly had no intention of giving up easily today. So, as soon as their commander appeared, the crowd surrounded him again, sticking to the same old story.
"Please do not climb the peak alone, Commander. At least bring your elite troops with you, and at least send your guards and the Bone Dragon Cavalry up with you."
"At the very least, we should scout out the road ahead before making any decisions."
But Mortarius still didn't change his mind this time.
He listened calmly, then rejected everyone's requests again, leaving his deputy in Ash Slope to continue reorganizing the army, repairing defenses, and taking over the various outposts and poison mist towers, while he himself went to Pale Peak alone.
It's not that he didn't understand everyone's good intentions.
Rather, the road leading up from Ash Slope City is no longer a place that can be pushed forward by numbers and morale alone. It is the core area that Nikel truly controls, a death zone covered by peak poison fog, necromancy arrays, and the Overlord's Domain.
Sending ordinary resistance fighters up there is no different than sending entire groups of people into a meat grinder.
Even the undead forces that fought alongside him all the way up, once they reached that place, would only have their control stripped away layer by layer, and eventually become material in Nikel's hands.
Therefore, Mortarius did not intend to bring anyone.
Before challenging Nikel, he needed to create another bone dragon. He actually had three sets of specially made undead bone dragon steam exchange pumps, as well as two well-preserved dragon skeletons that were kept specifically for this purpose.
The skeletal dragon that crashed during yesterday's battle with Uzbekistan used the first set of those weapons.
Now, it's time for the second set.
Mortalius stood on the open slope outside Ashhill City, raised the [Silent Scythe], and slammed the end of the scythe handle heavily into the ground. Black necromantic patterns immediately spread outwards along the ground, and several bone stakes that had been buried in the strata beforehand were activated at the same time.
Immediately afterwards, a pre-drawn array of summoning rituals slowly lit up against the gray sky.
The next moment, the ground cracked open.
The dragon skeleton buried beneath the slope outside the city was dragged out bit by bit, its massive frame scraping against the gravel and soil, producing a low, grating sound.
The pre-made second set of undead bone dragon interaction pumps also flew into the dragon bone ribcage under Mortalius's control, and steadily embedded itself in the power position between the main spine and the sternum.
As the interactive pumps began to operate, large amounts of death energy, poisonous mist, and ritual energy were forcefully injected into the keel's interior.
The bone dragon, which had been a static corpse, quickly reignited with a pale white soul fire. Its wing bones unfolded inch by inch, its neck bones slowly rose, and finally, with a low crack, it stood up again.
The deputy and a group of officers stood at a distance, watching this scene with complicated expressions.
Soon, Mortarius flipped himself onto the dragon.
"Remember, stay in Ash City and do not disobey my orders." He repeatedly instructed his rebel subordinates not to follow his orders, and then ordered the bone dragons to advance.
Splash~~~
The bone dragon flapped its wings and took off, sending large amounts of dust and gravel flying outwards. It took one last look at Ash Slope City and at the rebels below who wanted to follow but were ultimately left behind. Then, it stopped and rode the second bone dragon directly toward Pale Peak, the highest point in the world of Abalus.
……
……
The higher you go, the more strange things seem.
At first, the poisonous fog at mid-altitude mountain ranges was only thick, but as the altitude increased, the corrosiveness of the air began to intensify significantly. The edges of the bone dragon's wing bones emitted a constant, subtle burning sound, and even the anti-corrosion layer on the surface of the Mortalius armor began to lose its luster little by little.
Further up, the wind changed.
The compressed air, carrying the smell of high heat, dryness, and disease, blew against his body like tiny but continuous hooks, drilling into the gaps of his breathing mask, the seams of his armor joints, and every exposed edge of his senses.
Mortalius quickly summoned his avatar, Nergal.
The towering avatar of the Underworld King hovered behind him, shielding him from some of the external attacks and adding a layer of protection to the bone dragon's outer layer, a blend of necromancy and plague. Even so, he still began to feel distinctly uncomfortable.
My breathing is getting heavier.
It felt like my lungs were being wrapped up by layers of something. Even with the mask and the avatar in front of me, the dullness, burning pain, and subtle feeling of suffocation still pressed up little by little.
What's more troublesome is that not only his lungs, but also his blood and spirituality are beginning to show subtle sluggishness, as if the entire realm is rejecting him as an intruder and trying to push him back down the mountain little by little.
Mortalius knew that this was not simply a matter of environmental degradation.
He has entered Nikel's true territory.
——【Burning lungs, a hundred gates, plague fog, the underworld】.
As Mortalius approached the Pale Peak, the surrounding air was no longer normal. The poisonous fog was so thick that layers could almost be seen. It was not simply a mixture of sulfur poison and death gas, but a higher-level conceptual virus with an infectious field effect carrying the will of the crown.
They float like spores, attach like a fever, crawl into the body through breath and spirit like neurotoxins, and spread within Mortalius like a curse.
What you inhale is mist, but once it enters your lungs, it transforms into clusters of poisonous curses carrying disease.
The wind blowing on your face is just dry heat, but if it seeps in through the gaps in your mask, it can become a precursor to fever, coughing up blood, lung sclerosis, and spiritual stagnation.
Even the gusts of wind stirred up when the bone dragon flaps its wings will be contaminated again within the domain, circle around, and then turn into new poison arrows to be fired back.
Therefore, the most terrifying thing about this place is that Nikel himself has not yet made a move.
Mortalius rode on the back of the bone dragon, silently continuing his ascent.
His breathing grew heavier and his chest heaved more and more noticeably, but his gray-amber eyes remained fixed on the ceiling, never looking away.
Because he knew that the pale peak was not far away.
And he saw his adoptive father, the Pale King Nikel, at the summit.
The other person was incredibly tall, yet his body was so thin it resembled an elongated corpse. His skin was deathly pale, his hair was gray, and his body was tightly wrapped around an unusually large skeleton. His limbs were long and thin, with prominent joints. Just standing there, he exuded an inhuman sense of oppression.
That face could hardly be called a normal face anymore; it was just a skeletal outline with sunken eye sockets, like two endless black holes, inside which burned a cold, greenish will-o'-the-wisp.
The most striking feature was the dark green crown behind his head, layer upon layer, like a halo woven from poisonous mist, will-o'-the-wisps, and decaying authority, hanging behind him and slowly rotating, making the entire mountaintop seem to be immersed in an aura of death.
Behind Nickell, his avatar appeared.
【Resheph】
This avatar is entirely crimson and dark, like an ancient statue forged from plague, fever, and war. It is humanoid in shape, yet possesses a strong exotic divine outline.
Behind it hangs a structure that resembles a combination of a quiver and a feather ornament, while the longbow it holds is so slender as to be almost exaggerated, with a metallic sheen of dark red and dark green.
This is the embodiment of Nikel—a being who brings death to the world with arrows, fever, and plague.
Mortalius rode on the back of the bone dragon, looking through the churning poisonous mist at Nikel atop the peak.
The Pale King was also watching his adopted son, who had finally come to kill him.
After a moment, Nikel spoke.
His voice seemed to come from the bottom of a rotten well—cold, slow, yet each word was clear.
"I have already said that the next time I see you will be the day you are beheaded."
As soon as he finished speaking, [Leishefu] behind him had already drawn his bow and nocked an arrow.
The movement was incredibly fast, giving Mortalius no time to hesitate. The bowstring was drawn taut, and a calamity arrow, crimson with a dark green tail flame, was already formed.
The arrow was compressed from fever, bloodstains, and poisonous miasma, and the surrounding air was scorched and twisted with ripples.
[Guaranteed Hit in the Domain - Crimson Arrow]
The arrow was released from the bow in the next instant.
The entire poisonous domain at the summit simultaneously compressed forward, forming a death line. As soon as the arrow left the bowstring, the atmosphere around Mortalius seemed to come alive instantly. Poisonous fog, heat currents, pathogenic spells, and necromantic aura were all drawn up by this arrow and pressed forward together.
Mortalius reacted extremely quickly.
Almost at the same time he released the arrow, he yanked hard on the reins, trying to deflect the bone dragon's flight path.
At the same time, [Nelgal] unleashed several necromantic defense spells in front of him, with a gray-black death aura barrier, a plague fire shield, and a soul deflection layer stacked on top of each other.
But it's no use.
That arrow was something that ordinary defenses couldn't block. It seemed to be naturally imbued with the infallible logic of the Peak Domain. As soon as the bone dragon turned, the arrow's momentum pressed down on it.
Soon, the magical barrier in front was torn apart, burned through, and shattered layer by layer, finally being driven deep into the bone dragon's chest.
boom--!
The massive bone dragon was pierced through by an arrow.
The steam extraction pump inside its chest cavity, which was already barely functioning, exploded on the spot, sending large pieces of bone armor and necromantic steam bursting apart. Mortalius had crashed again.
The dragon tumbled violently in the air, Mortalius was thrown out, and the skeletal dragon plummeted from mid-air like a burning mountain of bones.
Boom!
The next moment, Mortalius himself crashed heavily onto the rocky ground at the summit.
The rubble exploded, the toxic ash swirled, and excruciating pain surged through his limbs and bones. Before he could even regain his footing, a pale and towering shadow silently loomed over him.
Without uttering a single word, the Pale King raised his leg and delivered a kick.
boom--!
The kick landed hard on Mortalius, sending him flying. His body crashed through several boulders like a broken string, shattering the rock layers one after another. He finally managed to stop, spitting out blood, and almost dropped the [Silent Scythe] from his hand.
"Cough cough cough~~~"
Mortalius gritted his teeth, forced himself to sit up, and tried to summon [Nelgal] again to counterattack.
But this time, the other person was faster than him.
[Reshev] took a step forward and instantly pressed down in front of [Nairgal]. The moment the two avatars faced each other, the difference in strength was already clear.
[Leishefu] moved faster and with greater force. He bent over and turned to strike down with his staff, followed by a series of punches, the shadows of which carried the power of fever and plague.
Thump thump thump thump—!
[Nelgal] had barely raised his hand to defend himself when he was brutally beaten. His breastplate and shoulder armor were smashed open on the spot, and his entire avatar was trembling violently.
In just a few exchanges, [Nelgal] was instantly suppressed.
Meanwhile, Nikel himself stepped forward, grabbed Mortalius by the neck, and lifted him up.
Those inhuman eyes looked down at their adopted son from such close range.
Mortalius struggled to grip the scythe, but couldn't muster any strength at all, and Nikel, seeing him like this, finally revealed a hint of cruel coldness.
"With this level of ability, you think you can rebel against me?"
"Motalius, you have indeed gone further than I expected, but that's all."
"You think I can't see through your plans?"
"You think you can get away with risking your life and seeking death all the way, hoping to rise from the dead in front of me and use the accumulated plague and death to put yourself in the so-called chosen position? Do you think I don't know that?"
As Nikel spoke, he tightened his grip slightly, making it difficult for Mortalius to breathe.
"But even if you really become the chosen one, so what?"
"You think that by changing to a uglier, more rotten, and more like-minded beings, you can defeat me?"
He looked down at Mortalius, his voice growing colder.
Don't be naive.
“On this pale peak, in my domain, you lost the moment you stepped in.”
Nikel held Mortalius by the neck, suspending him halfway in front of her. In his deep, black-hollow eye sockets, ghostly white flames with a hint of green burned eerily.
"Motalius, I once thought you would be my most prized creation."
“You are not one of those lowly creatures in the valley who are born only to wallow in the mud, nor are you one of those useless people at mid-altitude who barely survive on poisonous fog and the stench of corpses.”
“You were born on the peak of Pale Mountain, and lived in a land of extreme poison. Before you even uttered a word, you had already surpassed 99% of all living things in this world.”
“It was I who lifted you up from the mountaintop, it was I who granted you your life, it was I who taught you to identify poisonous fog, control the dead, lead armies in battle, and traverse mountains and valleys, it was I who broke down the higher laws of Abalus inch by inch and fed them to you.”
"All your skills, your vision, courage, techniques, and military strategies—weren't they all given to you by me?"
“Without me, Nikel, you would be nothing more than a lump of mud in the valley's pile of corpses, a piece of flesh to be slaughtered on the altar, a short-lived ghost among the lowland people whose name wouldn't even live long.”
As he spoke, his gaze grew colder and colder, and the strength in his hands gradually tightened, but his voice became clearer and clearer, as if he wanted to nail every word into Mortalius's bones.
But you, you betrayed me.
“I will raise you as my successor, as the future master of the peak, and as the person most qualified to stand behind me and take my place.”
“You should be high above, overlooking the valleys, commanding the cities, and ordering the peaks, letting those peasants live like livestock under your feet.”
"But you turned around and became my enemy, the Peak, and the order of the entire plane for a bunch of lowland wretch who are only fit to breathe among mud and poisonous wheat."
“Ridiculous, how utterly ridiculous.”
"You actually gave up everything that should have been yours for those peasants."
"You actually think that you can turn the world upside down just because of those ants that live only a day and die at night, and that you can do it all with the skills you learned from me and the ruthlessness you've developed from suffering?"
As Nikel spoke, he allowed the thick, decaying, and divinely morbid plague emanating from his body to spread out from his palms. It seeped into Mortalius's neck, chest, and limbs, dragging flesh, bone marrow, lungs, and spirit into a slow and lucid decay.
He lowered his head, almost touching Mortalius's pale, bloodless face, and slowly uttered the rest of his words.
"Even if you truly become the chosen one of the benevolent Father, even if you truly rise again from the dead, at most you will only touch the edge of the crown, gaining only an empty title of being close to the crown and close to the overlord."
"But so what?"
“Motalius, you have no idea what you are about to face, nor do you know the power I now wield.”
“I am no longer just the overlord of Pale Peak, nor just the ruler of one of the Abalus Peaks.”
"In this plane, amidst these poisonous clouds, beneath this sky where death and disease intertwine—I, Nikel, am now an invincible being."
"Even if you were to forge that immortal body completely, and crawl back from the pile of corpses while wearing the sick shell of a loving father, you would still be nothing more than a pitiful worm who has lived a little longer in front of me. Nothing would change."
With these words, the plague authority over Nikel was completely suppressed.
Mortalius first felt as if a branding iron was pressing against his neck, and then the burning and cold sensation of illness poured into his chest.
His lungs felt like they were blocked by layers of wet, rotten sludge; he was still breathing through his mouth, but he couldn't get any air in.
His vision began to blur.
The mountaintop, the poisonous clouds, Nikel's狰狞 and pale face, and worse, his consciousness remained clear.
He could clearly feel himself dying, feel his internal organs decaying, feel his nerves going numb, and feel the last pulse in his chest being suppressed to its limit by the illness.
This very clarity of mind makes the approach of death seem exceptionally long.
Just when the epidemic was about to push him to the last line.
He heard a familiar voice, and it carried a distinct air of composure.
"Alright, Lao Ba, you lost."
"Honestly, this bet was unnecessary from the start, because no matter what you think, no matter how far you plan to postpone the bet, I can't just stand by and watch you die in front of me. Let alone being dragged away after death and reincarnated as some kind of chosen one of God the Father."
I know what you're thinking.
"You promised on the surface that if you failed, I would cover for you, and you planned to continue challenging Nikel after you died; only when you lose then will you have truly lost, and only then can I step in."
"Unfortunately, I don't agree with this way of playing."
“I will not let you die here, nor will I let you be transformed into some chosen one of God’s benevolent fathers before my very eyes.”
"You want to risk your life for a second round of gambling? That's your own plan, but since I'm standing here, I won't let that happen."
"So, the bet ends here—now it's my turn."
As he spoke, Xia Xiu's voice, clearly laced with sneer and disdain, carried throughout the entire summit.
"Oh, invincible under heaven?"
"You've got quite the nerve."
As those words fell, it was as if someone had casually torn open a thin curtain in the space in front of Nikel, and Lao Xiu simply walked out of that distorted space naturally.
Then, before Nikel could react, he was sent flying by Xia Xiu's [Sisyphus] punch. [Reshef] tried to retaliate, but was repeatedly whipped by [Metatron] who was wielding twin flaming swords.
Now, the situation has reversed.
Nikel, who was just moments ago ravaging Mortalius, is now being whipped around like a top by Xia Xiu.
"This is invincible?"
Xia Xiu, an enemy from out of nowhere, raised his index finger at the disheveled Nikel and beckoned her like he was walking a dog.
"Suckling sound~~~"
"Come, Mr. Nikel, the invincible one, let me see just how strong your invincible power is."