Villain Awakening: Rising to the Strongest Dragon God-Chapter 79: World of Eternal Night

The demon stood exactly where he’d been before the roar hit him. He wasn’t completely unharmed. His shadow-wrappings showed scorch marks, faint traces where the flames had touched.

The arm Auryn had torn away was back but the regeneration wasn’t quite perfect, the black clots slightly different than before.

"I am the breach, Your highness," the demon declared with a scoff, his voice piercing from hundreds of eyes now open across every black surface.

"You can’t kill me any more than you can kill your shadow," he smirked.

’Shit,’ Auryn thought. He was still perplexed how the demon had survive such a powerful assault. One that left a small hill of rubble and a gapping hole at the point of collision and explosion.

’And at point blank range too,’ his frustration compounded, lines stretching from his eyes to his cheekbones.

’i need to buy time’ he resigned as his lips parted even as they curled into what would be mistook as a confidence smile.

He spoke, "So—whe-"

Auryn couldn’t even start his attempt of buying time when the air thickened even as the temperature dropped exponentially like the normalcy of the space was picked up and flipped upside down.

A powerful surge of darkness exploded from where the demon stood.

His shadow-wrapped body spread outward in all directions, darkness spilling like ink across water.

The humanoid torso remained, that mocking human face with solid white eyes and the cruel smile. But everything below the waist dissolved and reformed into something that made Auryn frown, subconsciously.

"Ahh... shit, here we go again!"

The lower part of the demon reformed into massive spider limbs, thick as tree trunks, composed of solid darkness. There were about eight of them, maybe more that writhed and shifted.

The transformation sent shockwaves through the damaged cavern. The ground heaved, pillars cracked even further.

But—

Auryn launched himself forward during the chaos, his blade glowing with draconic essence, aiming for the point where humanoid torso met spider body in a bid to severe the connection.

Before his plan could see the light of day, one of the limbs caught him mid-leap.

The impact felt like hitting a stone wall as Auryn was thrown backward, crashing into the ground that cracked and caved inwardly.

He rolled slightly and came up with his blade still ready, but the demon had already completed the transformation.

The spider-form settled, with limbs perched on the walls and ceiling simultaneously, defying gravity as they cast a looming canopy over Auryn.

The human torso sat atop the mass of darkness like a rider on a devilish mount.

"Let me show you what it means to face a true Demon-Knight," he whispered, his voice felt like the breach itself now had a voice.

Suddenly, the demon’s body shifted, it’s limbs didn’t just move, they flowed, extending and contracting like liquid, reaching from impossible angles with speed that was invisible to human eyes.

Auryn dodged the first through pure dragon instinct, his enhanced reflexes carrying him sideways as the darkness formed limb smashed through the space his torso had once occupied.

The limb burrowed into the ground, disappearing beneath the surface and immediately erupted behind Auryn’s new position.

Branching tendrils shot upward with hundreds of tiny spikes launching toward his exposed back.

Auryn threw himself forward into a roll, dragon scales forming an armor, manifesting as partial transformation kicked into overdrive.

Most of the spikes missed but three didn’t, piercing and sticking into his shoulder and left thigh with sharp, deadly stings that immediately spread numbness.

The system responded instantly.

[Poison detected]

[Lethality: Extreme]

[Effect: Nullified]

The numbness faded as quickly as it arose. Auryn ripped the spikes free, and his healing factor closed the wounds in an heartbeat.

The demon’s white eyes narrowed fractionally. He observed Auryn closely.

The branching tendrils dissolved but the main limbs shifted tactics, moving in coordinated patterns like a predator hoping to entrap it’s prey.

The darkness flowed through the cavern in waves, crashing with the force of ocean tides as they chased after Auryn.

A wave swept toward him from the left, it towered above him and moved with inexorable force.

Auryn dodged to the right but another wave materialized there as well, cutting off his escape.

Reacting in a single fluid motion, he launched himself upward, reaching one of the few remaining pillars.

The two waves collided where he’d stood. Stone shattered, the floor depressed like a well.

Auryn landed on the pillar’s top but it offered no sanctuary. In the blink of an eye, one of the demon’s limbs wrapped around the base and squeezed.

The stone crumbled as the pillar toppled and Auryn had to leap again, searching for more stable ground that was disappearing faster than his eyes could see.

Auryn was in mid-air when another wave caught his side. The impact was like being hit by a battering ram.

Auryn felt ribs crack, the pain was sharp and bit into his brain, hard enough to make his vision flicker.

He was thrown into one of the eyes on the wall by the momentum, against all odds, he rose instantly, wincing through the pain.

He bled from a gash along his torso where the wave’s edge had cut through his scales.

But the injuries faded fast. His healing factor already working, he hadn’t felt more satisfied than now for absorbing the dragon god’s tears.

With his constitution handling damage that would have crippled normal beings, he noticed something.

During all the chaos. Darkness was accumulating at the cavern’s ceiling.

This wasn’t ambient shadow but concentrated darkness, gathering and compressing like storm clouds with the possibility of lightning.

The demon was preparing something and Auryn couldn’t tell what it was but one thing was certain.

He wouldn’t let it be completed.

Heat built in his chest while he clapped his hands, and stretched them out to shape and condense fire magic into lances.

These lances were larger than before, combining techniques into singular projectiles as he fused it with his anti-magic properties.

Four of them materialized around him, spinning slowly as draconic essence reinforced their structure. A golden shimmer flickered across his form as he held them ready, preparing the trajectory.

The darkness at the ceiling continued accumulating, now visible as a sphere of absolute black that seemed to pull light into itself.

Auryn could feel its weight, its hunger, its promise of finality and the horror from the demon who’d stopped attacking the moment he knew Auryn saw his growing attack.

Auryn didn’t allow the unknown dissuade him as he launched the two fire lances upward in sequence, spiraling toward the sphere.

The demon’s limbs quickly snapped back into action and moved to intercept, coiling upward to form a barrier of solid darkness.

The lances slammed into the barrier and detonated in a crimson explosion that bloomed like crimson flowers against shadow.

The sphere remained intact behind the demon’s defense. Auryn’s head nearly popped a vein but he kept building heat inside his body while his eyes focused on the demon knight.

With his consecrated blade humming with raging draconic essence. Auryn blitzed forward, feigning a beheading, seemingly in desperation but his goal was a horizontal swing aimed for the creature’s torso.

But then—

The sphere cracked.

it opened from within, spiderwebs of fracture spreading across its surface like ice on a winter pond.

The demon’s smile turned radiant with triumph. "Did you think I wouldn’t recognize a feint," he paused for dramatic effect.

"Now die to my World of Eternal Night"

The sphere split open in that moment and darkness poured out.

It didn’t fall like liquid or spread like gas. It erupted in all directions simultaneously, a spherical explosion of solid shadow that filled the cavern from ceiling to floor and wall to wall.

They came as spikes. Thousands of them, manifestations of condensed darkness extending from every surface.

They all emerged in the same instant, creating a three-dimensional prison of death with Auryn trapped at the epicenter.

His Author’s Eyes tracked them all, enhanced perception processing everything. But calculation didn’t matter when there were no gaps to exploit, no safe spaces to reach.

Auryn moved anyway. He twisted mid-air and brought his blade up to protect his head as the rain of shadow descended.

The spikes hit almost every inch of his body. From shoulders to torso to limbs. No where was safe.

He felt the darkness intruding his body with coldness that make his skin crawl even as his healing tried sealing the wounds with the spikes literally still embedded in his body.

The spikes were powerful but none went completely through. His scales and enhanced durability from consuming an Elder dragon kept the spikes from penetrating fully.

Auryn found himself suspended three meters above the cavern floor, held immobile by countless points of solid darkness. Blood ran down the spikes from across his whole body, crimson contrasting absolute black.

The demon’s spider-form approached slowly, savoring the moment like a painter inspecting his work.

His blind white eyes gleamed with satisfaction at the trapped Dragon Prince.

"I told you, Yo—"

Auryn’s vision flickered. The demon’s voice seemed to drift, growing distant. His body felt heavy, awareness slipping as his consciousness barely hold on. He could hear past the demon’s first words.

The streams of blood painted the black canvas of the suffocating darkness as the injuries caught up despite his healing factor working overtime.

His eyes started to close.

"Is this it?"