Dragon King: Throne of Demons and Gods
Chapter 136: A Promise of Ruin

Chapter 136: A Promise of Ruin

A sound like a scream from the sky tore through the air.

A torrent of light and pure destructive pressure surged like a wave, striking the land below, erasing the ruined village with cataclysmic force.

A pillar of destruction shot across the horizon. From the capital, people turned their heads to the south. The sky had lit up, and the ground beneath them trembled.

"What is that?" a knight gasped.

"W... What now?" someone whispered. "This hell never ends..."

The New Horizons members paused, glancing toward the horizon where the shockwave had echoed.

Crest knelt beside a corpse, his hands trembling as he looked up. Arkel stood frozen, eyes wide in disbelief, while Cassandra shielded a child behind her cloak.

"What... was that?" Crest whispered.

Back at ground zero, nothing remained of the village. The land was black and orange, a paint of molten rock and scorched stone.

Puddles of glowing magma dotted the ruins.

Belzerion stood in the center, wings unfurled.

He looked down.

"Only a demon would find magnificence in the art of his nature. But only a fool... would force it on others."

He raised his massive head.

"I know this won’t kill you. Get out. Now."

He beat his wings.

A shockwave surged through the air, a hurricane of power rippling outward.

Mammon was thrown from the edge of the melted crater, rolling across the torn earth. His cloak was in tatters, and his body was steaming. He groaned, pushing himself up.

"This is the worst," he thought. "This is simply the worst."

He remembered her words...

"Lord Ravager must be dealt with like a human, with emotions, empathy, and respect," she had warned. "He was one of them, for a long time. Act like a demon and we’ll lose him."

He had laughed then, but he wasn’t laughing now. Belzerion had chosen, and he wasn’t on their side.

Even worse, now he was working for their annihilation.

Mammon’s hands trembled. His thoughts were racing.

Escape, that was all he could do.

If he stayed impassive, he’d die. If he fought back, he’d seal Belzerion’s wrath against all demonkind.

And then... The world flared.

A dome of burning aura spread from Belzerion’s chest. A sphere of devouring force, erasing everything. Where it passed, the land ceased to exist. Trees turned to dust. Rocks vanished.

The area changed. Colors warped. The sky above dimmed, turning a deeper red. The wind died.

Mammon tried to teleport, but the aura disrupted space. He stumbled backward, screaming in his mind.

"No... this power. This isn’t like the Slumbering King’s finesse... this isn’t like my precision... this is... this is more like the Devourer... Maybe worse."

Every attack Belzerion launched was apocalyptic. Blasts that vaporized the distant horizon, wings that summoned storms.

There was no rhythm, no strategy.

Only destruction.

"How do you fight that?!" Mammon thought. "I have so many blades, so many techniques... but even if I hit him, what would it change?"

He turned. Tried to run.

"I have to find her," he thought, desperate. "Only she can calm him. Only she can give him—"

But Belzerion had already seen him.

Light.

A blast from deep within the abyss caught Mammon mid-air.

The light of the blast faded, leaving behind silence and scorched ruin.

Belzerion growled, low and rumbling. He watched the devastation, his colossal wings spread as embers drifted through the air.

He was disappointed.

"What a waste," he muttered, voice dragging through the heat. "My first test with this form... wasted on a puppet."

The molten land below bubbled and hissed.

"No resistance, no will. Just revival."

He narrowed his glowing eyes.

"You’ve died so many times. It feels like every version of me could’ve crushed you."

His massive head turned slowly to the right, where the lava shimmered.

"That means... the secret of your revival isn’t demonic resilience..." he growled. His voice dropped into something primal.

"It’s a skill."

In the silence, something shifted. Hiding in a puddle of lava, Mammon’s eyes widened.

No... He... knows? He knows that too?!

Belzerion’s eyes gleamed.

"And a skill..."

The dragon exhaled a breath that moved the heat above the ground.

"...can be drained."

A wave of darkness spread out from Belzerion like mist. The atmosphere pulsed.

Mammon’s mind cracked.

First, the magic around him failed. His cloaking ruptured like brittle glass.

The lava that had hidden him became cold and black, and the sky above him stretched open like a beast’s jaw.

His heartbeat increased.

The skin on his arms blistered. His lungs remembered how to breathe, but with the worst possible location, he filled them with lava. His soul screamed.

Biologically, his body hit critical shock. Magic burned in reverse through his veins. His regeneration twisted and failed. Mentally, every instinct tried to flee. But magically...

He drowned.

There was no up, no down, just the weight of Belzerion’s attention pressing into him.

And then he was out.

Face to face with death.

Belzerion stood like a god of destruction, mouth charging another breath, light gathering in his jaws. It wasn’t heat, this time, it felt like oblivion.

Mammon’s brain raced.

The battle against Lloyd.

How many times had he died?

How many puppets were available after?

He couldn’t remember; he just knew there were many, too many.

His fingers trembled... no, they were melting. Just being in Belzerion’s aura was lethal. He looked at his own hand, degrading, like paper in fire.

How long had he been here?

Did he die without realizing?

How many times?

How many lives had he lost?

His eyes fixed on the glow inside Bel’s jaw. That glow...

It reminded him of the light at the end of a tunnel.

The final one.

[Dragon Fear successfully inflicted]

[- Hostile target’s stats reduced by 75%] [- Movement and reflex capacity critically impaired] [- Mental stability collapsing — panic state imminent] [- Warning: Target approaching full paralysis due to fear]

His limbs refused to obey. Time slowed.

And then... Mammon’s eyes widened.

Equivalent Exchange

Belzerion roared.

The blast descended, and the land was no more.

The blast howled through the sky, a beam of cataclysmic power that scorched the horizon.

The land cracked, for long, endless seconds, the roar of destruction continued, a straight line of annihilation carving the landscape until nothing but molten ruin remained.

And then, silence.

The roar stopped with a deep, thunderous boom, like the final exhale of a god. It echoed for miles, pushing the last gust of burning wind across the razed ground.

Smoke curled into the sky, black and thick.

The world trembled in the aftermath.

Belzerion’s wings slowly lowered. Colossal and imposing, his eyes narrowed as he stared into the crater. Steam hissed up from the abyss. His breath slowed, his massive chest rising and falling like a living mountain.

Then...

thump.

A heartbeat.

[Equivalent Exchange]

Belzerion froze.

His body jerked. The enormous muscles under his scales seized up, and then... he ignited.

Yellow light surged across his form like wildfire. Lines of golden flame cracked along his wings, his legs, his chest. His horns flared, glowing too brightly to look at.

Heat roared off of him as if he were combusting from the inside.

His maw opened in a roar that shook the sky and ripped through the air like thunder, but the fire surged faster.

In an instant, Belzerion was consumed.

His roar echoed like the end of the world, a monstrous sound that carried across the wind, racing all the way to the capital.

There, in the shattered streets, adventurers, knights, Sacred warriors, and citizens alike paused, breath caught in their throats.

They felt it.

A sound too vast to understand, but impossible to ignore.

They stood frozen, unaware of what had just happened.

In the molten ruins, steam curled from the scorched earth as the last echoes of destruction faded.

In the center of the devastation, Belzerion’s body trembled and shrank. His draconic form disintegrated, and his massive limbs degraded into ash and molten bone.

Scales sloughed off like burned parchment, wings folding in and withering into smoke. Piece by piece, the godly form collapsed, until what remained was barely more than a shadow.

Above him, hovering in the toxic air, Mammon emerged.

Mammon floated with his full, grotesque form revealed.

Horns twisted skyward from his cracked skull, and golden veins pulsed beneath transparent, waxy flesh. His eyes looked down at the shrinking dragon with a cruel gleam.

Below, Bel’s form continued to change. His body reduced further, sinew and flesh unraveling until he collapsed to one knee.

He took back his human form, pale as milk, long white hair now charred and clinging to his back. His flesh was scorched, raw, and peeling, still glowing faintly with emberlike cracks.

But it healed rapidly.

His face, half-melted, began to regenerate. Fingers twitched.

Mammon observed from above.

"As I thought... It’ll take more than raw power to end you. But now... now I know what it takes to put you in that state."

Bel rose slowly. He touched his face, the new skin soft and raw under his fingers. His expression was dazed, more confused than injured.

He looked up.

Mammon met his gaze.

"How does it feel," Mammon sneered, "to be the one looked down upon for once?"

Bel’s eye, the one that had finished regenerating, widened. The pupil narrowed into a slit.

His aura erupted violently, the pressure knocking debris across the ruin.

"How many lives do you have left?"

Mammon grinned.

"It doesn’t matter, Ravager. I’m up here. You’re down there. I got the last word."

His body gleamed like fractured crystal.

Bel flinched. He sensed something.

Crack.

The glass body splintered.

Bel moved instantly.

[Bolt Mode]

A flash of motion, he was already above.

His hand pierced through Mammon’s abdomen, only for it to shatter, like striking a mirror.

The glass body cracked apart, dispersing into shards, but Mammon’s voice echoed through the air.

"You lost your magnificent form... against me. Remember that, Ravager. I—Mammon—put you in a corner."

Bel stood there, hovering among drifting shards. His eye twitched. A vein pulsed at his temple.

"Cornered?"

The shards fell. With them, the last trace of Mammon’s final, cowardly gambit: infuriating the 8th Demon Lord and making him an enemy, forever.