He and It Chapter 88: Dark Sky Sanctuary (23)

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Addis note: This book ends with chapter 104.

Chapter 88: Dark Sky Sanctuary (23)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: GeaeTiamat

 

Time seemed to freeze.

Yu Mengzhou looked up at the Demon Prince on the high platform, and Angola looked down at the human standing on the ground.

What should I do? Should I do it? How should I do it? I have to kill him, but where should I start? This thing is as big as a Demon Horse, it could run me over just by charging…

At that moment, Yu Mengzhou’s mind was a mess, thoughts flew, and countless chaotic and messy ideas converged and dispersed. He was calm on the surface, but inside he was already panicked to death.

He had killed chickens and ducks, had seen the splendor of the countryside when organizing red and white wedding ceremonies, and had gone to the market to help the village butcher. After coming to the Demon Realm, he had killed a number of lesser demons, and his record in front of the fortress was nothing less than brilliant…But those were either forced or desperate attempts at resistance, and he had no experience with preemptive strikes.

In the silence, Yu Mengzhou’s eyes trembled slightly, and he suddenly looked at the wound on Angola’s waist and stomach, just at the junction of the human and the horse’s bodies. It was like the horns of a mad cow had picked through it. He still retained the fresh look of when he was first wounded, and it didn’t seem to have healed at all.

Falchion! That must be Falchion’s mark where he seriously wounded him! No wonder he sounded sickly. Ha! That makes my chances of winning a little better!

In that millisecond when his gaze was slightly off, Angola suddenly unfurled his huge bone wings and swiftly rose up from the high platform, and Yu Mengzhou was finally able to get a glimpse of the Demon Prince’s full appearance.

–Half-man, half-horse, horns hideous, bone wings surrounded by the wind, while behind him there was no horse’s tail, nor a Demon Horse’s like long, powerful, entangled and wandering serpent’s tail. Instead there was a black and gold scorpion’s tail, like an ancient blood-letting spear. The sharp edge at the top was flowing with thick golden poison, enough to skewer an elephant and tear it apart.

Was he trying to run, or was he trying to make the first move?

Whichever speculation, it didn’t matter. At that moment, Yu Mengzhou seemed to have spent the good fortune for the rest of his life. His brain was blank, but the muscles of his body moved at a high speed like a conditioned reflex, and his right hand, which had fiercely grasped the single-bladed hoof trimming knife to his bosom, instantly threw it in the air!

In order to adapt to the size of the demonic warhorse, the hoof trimming knife had been reformed with great effort. He had hammered the curved surface of the blade, making it sharper, and the cutting area was also larger, so that it looked like a small curved moon.

At the moment, the curved moon was like quicksilver light, and it struck the Prince’s soaring figure impartially. There was a silent echo when it entered flesh and blood, but Angola’s voice roared like a thunderclap.

“Ah!” Angola hissed, then plummeted to the ground, his sharp, bony wings twisting and struggling to hold up his heavy demonic body as he savagely destroyed the statues of Falchion and Deathstar, shattering the marbles’ solidity. “How dare a man as low as an ant fight against Heaven’s destiny!”

His furious scorpion tail coiled like a crazy snake. Yu Mengzhou seized the opportunity. His hands gripped the long alloy hoof clippers as he rushed over to deliver a heavy blow!

The loud sound of metal colliding with metal was deafening. The front end of the scorpion tail was like a piece of hardened steel that had been soaked for too long at low temperatures, and after it suddenly snapped, it flew into Crusade’s stone statue as venom splattered in all directions, before spinning around and plunging into the back of the statue.

Angola’s hiss was filled with fear and anger.

The scorpion’s tail was drenched in blood, and Yu Mengzhou pursued his attack. He raised his arm above his head and struck with all his might, directly cutting the loathsome tail into several pieces. He stepped on the erupting debris, as the human rushed close enough to get in front of the Demon Prince’s honorable face as well.

“This one’s for Radiant Angel!”

His forehead blossomed with veins, and his clipped hoof pincers blasted down on top of those bony wings. With the first blow, he took off the thick humerus that connected the left wing to his back, and with that blow, he also shattered the vital joints of the right wing that was still struggling to hold on.

Angola’s hissing almost turned into a scream. His sternum was bulged hideously, then erupted, leaving a creepy depression. Hot magma, spiteful death spells, as well as countless mutated fatal spells, like a surging and raging tsunami flood, exploded towards Yu Mengzhou in a devastating manner.

No matter how seriously injured he was, he was still the Supreme King of Hell, and every syllable spat out of his mouth was a mystery that could not be deciphered by mortals. Instead of words and language, it was a kind of iron law and will that could not be disobeyed, a hegemony that ruled over the world.

However, the usefulness of this hegemony was minimal for Yu Mengzhou. A spell enough to destroy a country or a world, only left deep and shallow bloody marks on his body. An eruption of magma enough to drown a civilization barely touched his body.

Angola was completely dumbfounded. There was no bigger insult in the world…He was actually an even match for a human!

Yu Mengzhou didn’t cry out in pain. In fact, the amount of pain a human could feel under extreme agitation was minimal. He ignored the curses that exploded everywhere like fireworks, and was indifferent to the wounds on his body, as he continued to wield the hoof clippers, one hit at a time, as he struck Angola’s lower back and abdomen, at that constantly fresh wound.

“This one…for Crusade!”

Crimson color shot out in all directions, and in the confusion it was impossible to tell if it was his blood or the Prince’s. He struck Angola’s lumbar vertebrae with shattering cracks, but still the demon tried to fight him in that beastly grapple.

“Pathetic, betrayer!” Angola used his sharp long armor, sinking it deep into Yu Mengzhou’s arms, even his palms, while the blood of the Innocent One stirred violent rotting sounds on him, “Your herd failed you, but you are going to fight for them?!”

In the next second, Yu Mengzhou swung his arm heavily and broke the demon’s right arm with the hoof clippers, and sent the archdemon staggering backward.

“This time, it’s for Ether!”

“Imagine, how can a mere heart-eating demon conceal itself from a Demon Horse that reclaimed its authority? It’s obvious that they deliberately sent you to me, and like they betrayed me a thousand years ago, they betrayed you too!” Angola cried out mournfully. “Their empty backs are their heaven!”

“–And I never wanted to be theirs!” Yu Mengzhou shouted back. “Don’t try to judge others with your pathetic small-mindedness! This one is for Bloody Butcher!”

The indestructible, heavy as Tarzan, hoof clippers were a divine weapon that the Demon Prince had never seen before, and in severe pain, his two front hooves broke with a cracking sound.

The face of the powerful Prince was twisted like an evil spirit, while the eyes of the human who faced him flashed with anger at the same time. He had seen such a look too many times in the past, but none of them had ever given him the chills like at that moment.

One after the other, blood burst in all directions along with the sound of cracking bones. No matter how much rhetoric the demon used, how much he hissed, screamed, or begged for mercy, Yu Mengzhou was unmoved.

Angola promised eternal life, wealth, supreme power and the throne of a world…the youth’s perseverance was tougher than diamond. He had never seen such a human with a heart like a stubborn stone.

Stall, he must stall! Yes, his killer weapon didn’t work, but it was close, it was close!

The demon’s pure gold horns cracked and snapped. He was covered in blood, his tail was scattered, the bones of his entire body shattered like mud from the heavy blows. Yu Mengzhou’s body was also soaked through, with Angola’s demonic blood as well as his own, but the beating never stopped, and from the beginning it was a raging storm of attacks, that caused his arms to tremble violently, his heart beat like a drum, and he tried to concentrate his vision so that he wouldn’t lose focus.

His palms were a mixture of blood and sweat, so slippery that he was about to lose his grip on the clipper handles in his hands.

“…Your core,” he rasped as he sat on his knees in the midst of the blood and fire, holding high the weapon he’d sworn to use to sanction Angola. “I watched.”

The Demon Prince’s chest was shattered beyond recognition, but within it, a flickering, fire-colored, twisted and entwined heart struggled futilely. It tried to run, but the randomly inverted, spine-filled sternum around it trapped it.

“No…No!” Angola tried desperately to spit pleading words out of the pus and blood that filled his throat. “Please, think carefully! We’re the ones who are on the same page, we’re the ones who are on the same page! Why did I bring you here so easily…? It was those traitors who deliberately neglected their duties, trying to make us fight to the death…Please think about it…”

Yu Mengzhou’s face was covered in blood stains, and sweat poured down his forehead like tears that had dripped through a mask, sliding down his cheeks and crashing to the ground.

“It’s time…It’s over,” he murmured hoarsely, exhausted and impatient. “This time…On behalf of Falchion, here!”

Angola’s pupils quaked and he hissed, “No! No way! I will not die at the hands of a human…It’s impossible!”

The deathbed defiance caused the Demon Prince to explode with power, and the demon slammed into Yu Mengzhou so hard that the bloodstained hoof clippers crashed to the ground as they slipped out of his hands.

Yu Mengzhou gasped for breath. His eyes were blurry and his mind was stagnant due to the loss of blood, which made it difficult for him to control the balance of his body. He struggled to his feet, picked up the hoof clippers, and stumbled toward Angola, who was desperately trying to crawl forward.

“It’s your…” He stepped on Angola’s broken tail. “Fate. How proudly you flaunted to me that the Demon Horses were destined to be unable to get rid of you, then, with the same proud destiny, I am bound to kill you.”

Once more he half-kneeled on the blood-stained ground, and raised the hoof clippers, above the usurping Prince, casting the shadow of his despair.

“No, no!” Angola’s voice changed rapidly, and with heartbreaking weakness and whimpering, he told Yu Mengzhou, “Please, please! Don’t hurt…hurt me…”

Yu Mengzhou’s movement stopped for a split second.

…It was Catastrophe’s voice.

And in front of his eyes, at the same time, a realistic vision – Catastrophe, dripping with blood, collapsed in front of him, the leg bone that was vital for horses was broken, as tears streamed from his eyes while he begged him not to hurt him…

“It hurts, I really hurt…” The vision immediately turned into Striker. He was no longer that vibrant, silly optimist, the Demon Horse lay in a pool of blood, eyes filled with fear and cowardice, which made Yu Mengzhou hate that cry of fear and cowardice, as he couldn’t stop coughing up blood. “Save me, save me…”

“I trust you, please don’t do this to me…”

“I’m dying…Do you want to kill me?”

“You hit me. I can’t stand the pain anymore…”

“Please…Really please!”

The pleas of the herd were endless. Yu Mengzhou’s arms trembled, his eyelashes trembled, and if he wiped away the bloodstains covering his face, onlookers would see that his face was as white as paper, and his lips were ominously purple.

His brain was dizzy from the loss of blood and oxygen, and his mind wavered between stupor and lucidity. For a moment, he could distinguish the visions, and then he was cold, sweaty, and panicked by the real scene. He did not look at Angola’s expression, nor did he pay attention to the soft thuds that passed through the fragments of the statues along the hall – the tail-hook, which had been the first to fly and fling itself away as if it were a vicious, living snake, was already very close to him.

The illusion suddenly collapsed. All the tragic demon horse images dissolved like a mirror, leaving behind only the demon’s bloody spiteful smile.

Angola gently, “A profound lesson….A demon’s severed limb will not die immediately, it will…live a while longer, oh…”

The watery sound of flesh and blood splitting was faintly audible. Yu Mengzhou’s shoulders shook violently, and his throat gave out a short gasp. He lowered his eyes and looked at the black and gold intertwined barb that had broken through his chest where his heart was.

“I did it!” The demon let out a loud laugh. “I killed you! I killed you! I…!”

“Okay, I’m conscious,” Yu Mengzhou. “You can go to hell.”

With one final blow, he heavily mashed Angola’s heart, and with a howl that resounded through the Demon Realm, the usurper’s body finally crumbled into an indistinguishable mass of detritus.

With the man gone, the realm Angola controlled began to disintegrate and collapse. Yu Mengzhou touched his chest, only to feel a handful of black blood, like asphalt.

He heard the sound of hoofbeats like muffled thunder, fierce and furious from behind, but he really couldn’t turn around. The hoof clippers left his hands and fell aside, as he slowly supported his body and lay on a piece of messy ground.

It wasn’t the time to be disgusted, he thought in a trance, alas, it was really shameful, from the beginning to the end it was so steady and accurate, but losing in the end…he couldn’t support himself and collapsed. It was good that he didn’t give up, the mission was accomplished well…

Yu Mengzhou couldn’t see what was in front of him. Angola’s fierce poison was devouring his body at an extremely fast rate. Even with the physique of a sinless man, such a direct injection to the heart was still fatal.

The crashing sound of heavy kneeling was all around him. His hearing wasn’t completely impaired, and while he could hear Crusade repeating words he couldn’t understand in an anxious, slurred voice, Ether was shouting hysterically, “I’m transferring the toxin from my body!”, while Deathsta whined, frantic and furious…Was anyone crying? Ouch, I can’t tell the difference at all…

Of course, the clearest voice came from Falchion, who shuddered and apologized, “You won’t die.” However, Yu Mengzhou just laughed.

“Actually, it’s not a fairy tale. Where did you get so much…halo, ah?” Well, this was…now he could understand why Angola’s voice was like that. His throat was melting, so of course it was like pulling a leaky bellows. “I reacted…I had a premonition when I was about to go toe-to-toe with that guy…He’s the Prince of Demons, I’m a human…it’s like a mantis…Well…I didn’t die in vain, right…?”

Falchion pressed his lips against the human’s face, his body shivering uncontrollably. He was willing to give everything…life, power, strength, position…Anything, anything at all, just to turn back time and save his life! It was not the time to cry, not the time to cry…

Yu Mengzhou sighed vaguely, “I really, really want to…Go back to my farm…Take a look…”

 

The last, barely maintained light in the depths of the human’s eyes flickered and went out.