Apotheosis – Ascension to Godhood Chapter 120: The Demon’s Holy Fire

Chapter 120: The Demon’s Holy Fire

Zen was trapped in the transparent enchantment. The space was too narrow for him to move his head, let alone to dodge.
Suddenly, the demon king attacked, and it was directed at Zen. The attack was so strong that it could rip Zen's body apart.
Zen was in a critical situation right now. Even if he could move, it was hardly possible for him to dodge Aldrich's bone spur with its speed. Even if he could see it, there was no time for him to react.
“I don't have enough power to destroy this transparent enchantment. But I bet for Aldrich, this would be like smashing a fragile egg. This might be the end of me!” Zen brooded resentfully as the bone spur attack got closer to him.
The moment the bone spur nearly stabbed him, Zen suddenly felt that a force lifted him up and slightly tilted him to one side.
The bone spur brushed past him and left a small graze on his face.
“A narrow escape!”
Zen breathed a sigh of relief. Though he was grateful, Zen was still surprised at Yolande's gesture of saving him in this very critical moment. He thought she didn't care for him at all.
But if Yolande did care, why did she bother to bring him along with her?
It was hard for Zen to decipher Yolande's mind.
But in fact, Yolande's mind wasn't complicated at all. She didn't have much consideration on things and only had one simple purpose.
Zen was undeniably guilty in Yolande's perspective. She thought he should be handed to the Military Office for trial and punishment. However, she was worried that the Military Office would eventually let Zen go, thus she decided to bring him along instead.
Her way of thinking might be considered odd by any other normal person.
Especially now that she was fighting the demon king, bringing Zen would be a burden to her victory.
Despite that, Yolande still believed that Zen's fate must be decided by the Military Office alone and not by the demon king Aldrich. Thus, she had no intention of leaving him behind to die.
Not only that she had to face the demon king Aldrich's attack, but she also had to protect Zen from being hurt.
Yolande would find it a strain even to handle an one-on-one fight with demon king Aldrich. Now she was under a greater pressure that she had to protect Zen at the same time.
As a demon king, Aldrich not only had unimaginable strength but also great wisdom that could compare to humans'. From his previous attacks, he assessed that Yolande's attention was diverted to protect Zen.
He used this to his advantage and launched simultaneous fatal attacks to both Yolande and Zen.
In every situation, Yolande had always been calm and composed.
Even a deadly situation wouldn't ripple Yolande's mind and heart. But at this moment, the situation was different because she had to handle two things at the same time – dodging Aldrich's attacks and protecting Zen from the bone spur shot.
In no time, Yolande and Zen were now at a disadvantage.
Aldrich took the opportunity and fluttered his two big wings, causing strong winds. Yolande could feel the mighty strength of the attack from the beast, and the nearer he got to them, the more ferocious he became. She was almost overwhelmed.
Being in Yolande's entrapment, Zen watched with horror as the attack unfolded to them.
Yolande grabbed Zen and dodged Aldrich's attack at the right moment. She flew, dived, and swerved left and right to avoid Aldrich. Zen was just there clinging onto Yolande and doing nothing.
The bone spur attacks missed him. But if one of those hit him, he would be dead on the spot. Anyone who was on his situation would tremble in fear and would have already given up.
“Hey, you can just let me go. Don't worry, I won't die from falling to the ground,” Zen said. He knew he was slowing Yolande down. She had a better chance of winning over Aldrich if she wasn't carrying Zen. But she was stubborn and refused to let him go.
Zen was no ordinary man. He could withstand a fall from a high level and still live.
“No. I know you'll run away as soon as I let you go,” Yolande said seriously as she struggled to dodge a blow from Aldrich.
Zen didn't know whether to laugh or cry at Yolande's remark. He sighed, “Really? That's what you're worried about in this situation? I should be the least of your priorities now. There's no use of you keeping me alive when you're dead.”
Yolande thought for a while. Her eyes narrowed with determination as she said, “You're right. Even if you run away, I can still catch you anytime. Get ready! I'll release you!”
But before Yolande could release Zen, Aldrich launched another fatal blow.
The demon king stretched his arms and legs and a black energy mass started to accumulate in front of him. It was the demon core of the demon king.
The moment the demon core appeared, it started to emit evil spirits. Instead of spreading randomly, the spirits seemed to be manipulated by some invisible force and they formed into certain figures like water being poured into a vessel. They finally became magic runes.
The runes were far from the characters used by the humans and each seemed to symbolize something. In no time, there were already hundreds of runes slowly spinning around the demon core.
“Yolande, watch out! It's the holy fire of the demon king Aldrich!”
Spencer called out to her from not so far away.
He recognized the runes at once since he fought with Aldrich before and had been possessed by him before. He felt the urge to warn Yolande of this attack.
The demon's holy fire was a technique only Aldrich could perform. Within the range of the demon fire, Aldrich's strength and speed would be immensely maximized.
But Spencer's warning came a little too late.
The demon core in the hands of the demon king suddenly burst into a black mist and immediately filled the surroundings.
“Whirr…”
Yolande tried to evade the mist, but it spread so fast that she was engulfed in it within seconds.
Zen was free falling to the ground when Yolande released him, but when he was about to hit the ground, the black mist enveloped him.
“Wait, what is this thing?”
Zen could feel the thickness of the mist as if he had sunk deep into a mire. There was nothing but darkness when he opened his eyes.
The black mist seemed to have devoured all the light.
Before Zen could adjust to the light, he suddenly felt a searing pain in his skin.
“What is this mist? It's slowly disintegrating my body!”
Zen's body was a spiritual weapon and it couldn't be destroyed by any normal weapon or even the three-corpse poison, which was the most fatal poison from the Eastern Region.
But the black mist was very different. It was like millions of small ants that could hardly be seen by the naked eye, gnawing on him bit by bit. Though his body had the strength of a spiritual weapon, the black mist could still bite his skin little by little.
What could he do about it?
If Zen could not find a way to deal with this, the mist would eventually nibble away his whole body and soon there would be nothing left of him.
But he was already at his wit's ends.
The demon king's technique was immensely powerful and there was no way to escape it. Aldrich was the strongest amongst the demon kings and even an Illuminating Soul Realm master like Spencer was no match for him. If the masters wanted to defeat the demon king, they needed to fight together. So how could Zen escape from the mist?
“I need to find a way to keep away from the mist since my corporeal body can't resist the effect of the black mist,” Zen said to himself.
The mist was so thick that it took Zen tons of effort to move. Nevertheless, Zen had no other choice now. He had to move even at a slow pace in the dark just to get to the rim of the black mist.
As Zen endured the pain in his skin while braving through the mist, he heard fighting noises somewhere above his head.
"Bang! Bing! Bong!
He assumed that it was the sound of Yolande fighting back Aldrich's attacks.
Though Zen could not see exactly what was happening, he could sense that Yolande was in a difficult situation.
Before Aldrich had released the black mist, Yolande was already at the disadvantage. Now that the mist had surrounded everything, Yolande and Zen were in the worst situation.
Though the black mist had little effect on Yolande's strength, it was always the little gaps that would determine the success of an attack in the battle of the masters. And with the black mist enhancing Aldrich's power, Yolande must not put her guard down.
“Bang!”
A loud sound echoed in the surroundings. It was followed by the sound of Yolande moaning out of pain. It seemed that she had suffered a great deal of damage from the attacks.
But he couldn't care about anything else than escaping from this mist and from Yolande.
Although Yolande was a beautiful and sensible woman, Zen could remember how she tortured him and that angered him a lot. He didn't care whether she lived or died.
Zen only hoped that he could get out of the hateful mist. Now that Yolande was fighting with Aldrich, it was the perfect time for Zen to escape.
He struggled through the mist but finally reached the edge of it where he glimpsed a light from the White Emperor City.
When he was about to step out from the black mist into the White Emperor City, he bumped himself onto an invisible barrier.
“What is this? An invisible enchantment?” Zen was surprised and didn't believe that after all his efforts, he would end up being still stuck inside the black mist.
“No! I must not stop! I must break through this enchantment and get out of here as soon as possible. I can't be involved in this battle of the masters.” Zen gritted his teeth and punched the invisible barrier out of frustration.
“Buzzzzz…”
With the power of over one hundred dragon scales inside his body, Zen smashed the invisible barrier again. To his surprise, a small crack appeared on where he punched.
There was still hope. Zen was overwhelmed with joy. At least the barrier was not as tough as Yolande's enchantment where his punches didn't have any effect. The invisible barrier could be broken if he would continue to punch it with all his strength.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
After three consecutive punches, the barrier trembled like the ripples of the river.
The waves flashed and shook more fiercely, but then it stopped. The barrier was still intact despite the powerful punches Zen threw at it.
'This is not good. With my normal strength, I won't be able to break through this barrier. Maybe I could use the demonic life energy and see whether it could break it, ' Zen thought.
Zen clenched his fist and raised it above his head. The demonic life energy started to accumulate in his fist, and he concentrated it to devour the barrier. But to Zen's surprise, the demonic life energy didn't do much damage to the barrier.
It was the strangest thing that Zen had ever witnessed. He had used the demonic life energy often and it had never failed him. So why now?
It didn't work and it was strange.