Chương 194: Lux Vult (24)

Euphemia smashed Helel in the chest with thunderous rage. While Simon didn't fully understand all the Judge's abilities yet, he knew they received a damage bonus against individuals who had broken their Laws. A blow like that one had slain Vouivre, yet such was the Maiden's power that she barely flinched. Still, a drop of blood dripped down the thin wound on her chest that appeared at the impact; a tiny cut near her crystal heart that marred the perfect beauty of her pristine skin.

Anna's fair face twisted with rage.

"You dare strike me?!"

"I do!" Euphemia replied, her jaw tightening in anger. She would not forgive the way she hurt her children." Bounty Order!" A floating number appeared over Helel's head, representing a millions-strong bounty the empire had now issued for her head. Most importantly, the bounty would also ensure all attacks against Helel would be counted as critical hits and inflict additional damage.

Helel retaliated with an elegant yet furious roundhouse kick that sent Euphemia flying back, then unleashed a wave of red miasma that struck everyone nearby.

The bounty number disappeared, and Simon sensed his Darkflight and other buffs being stripped away from him. Tehom negated all effects! All buffs have been nullified! Your marriage contract has been nullified! Acedia status! All elemental attacks will inflict supereffective damage unless nullified! Only his connection to his Party and his Devil Brands remained active. Still, Helel chose to fly upwards rather than hold her ground.

Simon and Louis both gave pursuit with their respective mounts, with Euphemia regaining control of her flight and following far behind. Louis fired multiple swords and spears from his Armory at the Maiden with uncanny accuracy, but all of them shattered or bounced off her skin. Helel let out a wail that reverberated across the battlefield, with angels and brainwashed slaves carried upwards by their thorny crowns answering her call.

Their bodies gathered into compact masses of flesh the size of houses and buildings, which Helel then telekinetically threw at her pursuers as if they were meteors. When Simon attempted to blast her with Hellfire Gaze from a distance, she moved them in the path to block the attack. Helel was turning her thralls into literal meatshields. Simon quickly hastened himself, the effect extending to his dracozombie mount through the bond they shared, and proceeded to dodge the projectiles coming at him.

Louis didn't even bother to avoid the attacks. His mount blasted the masses coming at him to cinders while he continued to nail Helel from afar. He switched from flinging swords to spears and javelins carved with runes of elemental power, but none of them worked.

"I have checked all elements, brother," Louis warned him.

"Her Shekhinah ability blocked them all, but I do not think it is a blanket elemental immunity."

"I don't think so either," Simon agreed. Euphemia's lightning hammer attack had drawn blood, and Hellfire Gaze hurt her too.

"It must be some conditional immunity. Either one fulfills it and they can harm her, or she'll straight up ignore everything."

"I am wounded that you and our stepmother appear to fulfill this condition, while I do not." Louis pondered the problem and put forward suggestions.

"It cannot be faith… Euphemia is a Visionary and you are the Overlord… this false goddess could be vulnerable to individuals with a strong connection to the Light and Dark." Simon hesitated a moment, then decided the situation was simply too dire to waste time on. This was the kind of battle he had to survive at any cost and worry about the consequences later.

"Let's check." He opened his Inventory, summoned the Mana Sword, and tossed it to his brother through the air. Louis grabbed it immediately with a smirk on his lips, having expected such a gesture. All of that effort to achieve peace, only to find myself relying on madmen. There was something deeply wrong with a world that rewarded the likes of Louis and stymied the efforts of the peaceful. Strength is all that matters in the end.

Helel stopped her ascent near the firmament where only the strongest of airships could reach, and where the light of the stars could still pierce through the darkness of Simon's Edict of Endless Night. The Maiden briefly basked in their radiance and then raised her hands. Simon immediately sensed a flow of mana and miasma coursing towards her.

She drained her thralls below of their power the same way he restored his own reserves with his Devil Brands, their combined strength allowing their mistress to cast the highest of sorceries. It's now or never, Simon thought, as his trap's jaws snapped shut on Helel. The Maiden's head snapped to her right as a cloud of miasma erupted nearby, solidifying in the form of a great crab monster floating by his own power.

Lotan the Isolator blanketed his sister in his Crushing Loneliness, while his Roguish summoner became visible next to it. Voltobauta.

"I usually do not take so many risks," the pirate king had admitted to Simon back when they were drafting plans,"but to defy a goddess… now that's the kind of challenge you change your plans for." And for all of his faults, he was a man of his word. As befitting a pirate king, Voltobauta had almost as many levels in Rogue Vassal Classes as he did in his Necromancer one. While not as talented as Silk and Velvet, he was the best inheritor they had on short notice.

He had lurked nearby, waiting for the perfect opportunity to summon Lotan in close proximity to their enemy and hopefully break her hold over her army. It failed. The surprise attack didn't interrupt the flow of prayers and mana reaching Helel, nor break her hold over her troops below. All it did was piss her off.

"You think a lesser Zodiac's power could affect me? Me?" Helel's eyes burned with merciless radiance.

"No stars can outshine the sun!" Two beams of searing light surged from her eyes, each brighter than the fiercest dawn. They vaporized Lotan, annihilating its projection, and then aimed for its master. Voltobauta's immense agility allowed him to dodge by flying to the side with the grimoire still in his hands. The beams turned and pursued the vampire.

The surprised Voltobauta failed to dodge the rays and was incinerated on the spot for his trouble, his two Noble Crestones falling into the void below alongside the Crab's crystal. Her Shekhina protects her from the other Zodiac Fiends' power, Simon realized. Lotan could cut her followers off from their patron, but its power couldn't affect Helel herself. No, no, if that were the case she would have enslaved the likes of Asterion and he was confident we could take her on. What was the chink in her armor?"

Grand Convergence," Helel said as she completed her incantation, her words reverberating across the heavens. Reality itself shuddered, and space ripped open. A rift widened as the world's very dimensions unraveled, revealing a portal into some distant solar system. Seven planets of various colors and textures—some coated in earth and magma, others in water and clouds—appeared on the other side, floating in the void in a cross formation. Then they flew out of the rift and into Brimir's atmosphere.

Simon could only blink in sheer disbelief as the solar system materialized above his head. These replicas were nowhere near the size of the real planets, but they were still the size of entire airships and falling rapidly towards them. The biggest of them, a massive chunk of rock and swirling gas, cast them all in its shadow. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Behind me!" Louis ordered with a tone that brooked no opposition. Simon followed through and positioned his mount behind him, as did Euphemia. The Warrior raised his Mana Sword and swung it faster than the eye could follow." Spaceslash." He cut through reality itself and cleanly sliced the planet in two, causing both halves to fall on either side of them. However, beams of light surged from the interstice in a surprise attack. Louis leaped off his mount as it was struck in the face and swiftly beheaded.

Simon and Euphemia moved out of the falling corpse's way, while Louis summoned shields beneath his feet and kept himself afloat by creating a stairway of them.

The other false planets continued their descent in their cross formation down onto the battlefield below, smashing airships out of the sky and falling into the sea with such power as to trigger tidal waves that reached the clouds. One struck Helel's own floating islands and the resulting impact could probably be felt all the way to Cocagne. She's a nation destroyer, Simon realized. She could do as much damage as an empowered Nodens on her own, if not more so. She must never escape her seal.

For Anna's and everybody else's sake. Helel continued to strike at them from afar with beams of light surging from her fingers, using her immense speed to keep them on the defensive. She would have struck Simon had his wife not moved in front of him, the beam bouncing off her.

"Stay at range and cover us," Euphemia ordered him.

"You are highly vulnerable without our marriage contract and my Binding Vows." Simon nodded in agreement.

"For all it's worth, I think our marriage could have gone much worse."

"I agree." There was a hint of softness in Euphemia's voice.

"Mayhaps we can start on better terms once we win this." Once we win this. Her words brought a smile to Simon's lips. We are House Magnos. There's no god we cannot destroy. Following Euphemia's strategy, Simon engaged Helel in a long-range duel, switching between casting Ruin in an attempt to debuff her and Ectoplasmer to keep her on her toes. He had no idea whether the Maiden's Shekhina could shield her from ailments, but the fact she focused on dodging suggested it wasn't foolproof.

His wife used the Judge's Binding Vows to increase her speed manyfold until she became a blur, no doubt sacrificing power in some stats to bolster her Agility. She chased Helel across the sky, and while her speed couldn't approach that of light, she proved persistent enough to force the Maiden to stay on the move. Meanwhile, Louis ran across an ever-expanding bridge of falling shields from another direction.

His blade had become invisible, likely to ensure Helel couldn't see its real length and thus anticipate its motion. Sensing an opportunity to trap the Maiden in a pincer attack, Simon had his dracozombie charge at Helel while he activated Hellfire Gaze. Helel countered with her own sunlight gaze, their powers clashing in a flash that set the Edict of Endless Night alight. Her attack was stronger than Simon's own, even with her element weakened, but Louis and Euphemia exploited the opening to surround her.

Realizing the danger, Helel cancelled the clash of Dark and Light and kicked Euphemia away after dodging her hammer. Her arrogance, and the fact Louis had failed to harm her before, meant she briefly hesitated to dodge when he came for her and activated Spaceslash. He struck her. A slower opponent would have been sliced in two, but Helel was fast enough to avoid the worst of it.

Still, the Mana Sword cut through two of her right wings like a knife through butter and drew a fountain of blackened blood; and when Louis immediately leaped off his current platform to hit her again, she fled out of his reach at lightspeed rather than hold her ground. Her very crystal's radiance dimmed for a second. Simon saw it all over her face, as brief as a shooting star and yet unforgettable. A look of fear. The Mana Sword could harm her, maybe even kill her.

"If you were truly the Light itself, then why would an overmighty dryad's toothpick harm you?" Louis taunted the Maiden as he once again summoned a floating shield beneath his feet.

"A fraud through and through." Helel's expression morphed into one of pure, absolute fury. A wrath as terrible as the radiant sun seized her.

"I suffer contempt from neither lord nor serf!" she said, miasma swirling around her.

"I didn't want to do this… I truly wanted you to live to serve me…" Space folded again, and by the time Simon realized the issue, it was too late. Helel's open Abyssal Domain shrank and closed around them, enveloping the four of them in a sphere of reddish miasma. A weblike pattern of thorny vines encircling mirrors, all reflecting the Maiden herself, formed the walls of their prison. Anna-Helel has trapped you in her Abyssal Domain! Teleportation is negated, and escape is impossible!

The miasma in the air gathered in such a large quantity that it became almost oppressive, and the mirror web vanished to reveal a void of swirling blue and red colors; a pocket universe of aurora lights without air or ground to slow them down. Realizing the danger, Simon immediately used Darkbound to grow to colossal size, consequences be damned. His mount grew with him as an extension of his being, turning into a giant shadow.

Louis summoned an impenetrable cocoon of melded shields around himself while Euphemia charged at Helel with her warhammer.

"But if you would spit on redemption, then all I offer is death's compassion!" Helel's wings furled to cover her whole." Eschaton." Then, there was light. The entire Domain was set ablaze in a torrent of energy, of miasma and mana joined in a bright primordial chaos of burning colors and plasma. Simon fired a Hellfire Gaze carrying all of the Abyss' fury and his mount breathed putrid poison capable of slaughtering thousands, but both were pushed back by the tide of radiance.

Euphemia, Louis, and everything else was swallowed into a blinding flash. And beyond that final light, Simon only found death.

It was the truth of the world that all lights would die one day, and darkness alone would remain in the void. That dreadful knowledge almost came as a comfort when Simon found himself floating in front of the Crimson Throne again. He half-expected for the reigns to be disrupted like when struck with the Mana Sword, but he received a Title as normal. This is the Twenty-Fourth of your Hundred Reigns. You have earned the Title of Simon the Lightbringer.

The Lightbringer: You have enlightened the world in more ways than one. You can now use your Dreadful Aura when cloaking yourself in a veil of false light. Dreadful Aura will project an oppressive radiance emanating from you, but otherwise work as normal. For all of her overwhelming might, Helel was no true goddess. She couldn't disrupt the Overlord cycle. This gave Simon relief.

As much as he felt bitter over how all of his efforts to achieve peace had gone for naught this reign, he didn't die facing an invincible deity, but a faillible—if very powerful—demon. Helel was beatable. In her base form. A shudder traveled down Simon's spine. What will she be capable of when blessed by Abraxas? Did his father know? He had to. He had located Helel's crystal, so there was no way he hadn't done his homework…

but if he was aware of the threat she represented, why did he allow the Church of the Light to become the empire's official religion? It didn't match the behavior of someone who fully grasped the threat at hand. Or did he know something Simon didn't? Alcyone said the Oracle was confident the Maiden couldn't escape the Light Megalith, and the Cobweb finding Anna was a fluke… Simon could tell he was missing a very important detail.

However, he walked out of this reign with a single, overriding conclusion: peace with the Oracle was, if not utterly impossible, a complete waste of time at the moment. She interpreted overtures as weakness and would rather ally with the likes of Verney rather than entertain a ceasefire. Simon would show her no mercy until he found a way to reliably pressure her. The Cobweb has to die too, as soon as the reigns begin.

Simon wasn't entirely strong enough nor capable of doing that on the first day without some preparation, but he would turn their extermination into a routine given enough time. There will come a time when Valravn dies within an hour of my awakening. As for Euphemia… Euphemia had proved to be a better person and ally than what Simon expected. Strong-willed, somewhat wise in spite of her issues, and capable of going against a being pretending to be her god.

She made for a reliable ally once they grew to trust each other, though it took some effort on Simon's part. Even Louis had been almost reliable. His brutality made him predictable and he was indeed somewhat loyal, or at least honorable enough to stick by House Magnos' side. It just put into perspective how much time they had wasted because of old grudges and Balzam Magnos. Simon's father had no doubt encouraged the rot in their family rather than unite it against the real threat. It just seemed so…

so pointless compared to what they could achieve together. Should he ally with Euphemia again this time around? He had had much success and could avoid the pitfalls that ruined the last reign by keeping Anna away from court and not bothering with appeasing Illusea. He could make their marriage work better this time around and prevent the Maiden's escape… Those questions filled Simon's mind as he awakened inside his room and looked through the window. The night was up, shrouding Marthrone in shadow.

Hundreds of priests prayed for a dawn that might very well rob them of their free will in the future. No, Simon decided after a moment's consideration. I can't build a power bloc centered around the Church of the Light until I can ensure Helel can't subvert it. I have to contain that threat first. He needed to fully access the Light Megalith and confirm the seal would hold, but how could he be sure of that, short of conquering Lore itself in another yet pointless war? Unless…

While the Oracle and Illusea were a lost cause, Alcyone, Alphonse, and the White Unicorn were another matter entirely. Their leader had left them in the dark about the real threats, but they had their doubts. They might listen and focus on the only enemy that mattered, or at least let him study the Light Megalith to ensure Helel wouldn't threaten them all. Still, there was no way they would trust an Overlord sitting on the Crimson Throne.

He could only think of only one way to give them pause, and it meant his family would tear itself apart again in his absence. He would need to throw all this progress aside. Next time, Simon told himself. Next time, it'll be better. One day, it'll be perfect. One day.