Were he able to do it over, Asser would definitely pay any price to kill Salas instead of letting him into the Godhunter Alliance. It was a shame that it was but a helpless plea. The moment they appeared from the dark corner, he knew that there was no longer anything he could do about it.
Ossora was now heavily injured; even if he could still fight, there was nothing much he could do to help. Before Han Shuo came, Asser and Ossora had spent too much energy fighting one another. Now that they were up against three people at their peak, they felt that death would be soon upon them.
“Any last words?” Han Shuo looked at Ossora and decided he would not waste time talking with him anymore.
By now, Ossora seemed to have realized his true predicament. When he saw Han Shuo about to act, he stomped to the ground and caused an earthen wall to appear. At the same time, he took out a Portal Scroll, intending to tear the spacetime to escape.
However, Han Shuo didn’t act. Instead, he watched Ossora mockingly as he attempted to use the scroll. The scroll shone brightly for a moment, but stopped right after before it could do anything.
“This…” Ossora truly despaired this time. His eyes now looked dead.
“Nobody can leave anytime they want within Pandemonium without my say so!” Han Shuo smiled and prepared to kill Ossora himself.
Wasir and Salas exchanged glances before smiling and heading for Asser…
……
Meanwhile within another formation, Dagmar couldn’t move at all. The clouds around him were all dark and many colorful creatures combined to form a gigantic monster that danced beside him.
Dagmar could see many blurry, but bloody figures in his vision. They looked like dead people he knew that had returned from the dead and leapt at him, clawing away with their rotten arms incessantly.
All sorts of sights manifested in his mind. He seemed to remember all of them, and now, it looked utterly real to him. If he couldn’t relinquish the vacant thoughts in his mind, he wouldn’t be able to break free of the hallucinations.
After who knows how long, Dagmar’s mental state recovered. He had been feeling a little burdened by his years of mad slaughter, but he concentrated the death energy in his body into a death scythe and cut them all apart, properly dispelling his hallucinations with physical attacks.
All of a sudden, a familiar figure holding a bone spear came walking out of the heavy fog. Dagmar’s mouth curved into a disdained smile when he determined that it was but another illusion. Using the death scythe he had formed before, he swept it towards the approaching figure.
However, something utterly weird happened; he lost control of his scythe halfway through that swipe. The death energy that formed the scythe was so chaotic that it could no longer support the sweep. Not only that, all the death energy in the surroundings no longer seemed to be attracted to Dagmar but to that figure instead. When he realized that he had lost control of the death energy, he knew this wasn’t an illusion. “Han Hao, it’s really you?”
The one wielding the bone spear was indeed Han Hao. An odd glow flashed across his eyes as one odd rune after another appeared on his irises. The irresistible force of death emanated from his bone spear. As the pure death energy that came directly from the Quintessence Shard washed over Dagmar, he couldn’t help but want to prostrate himself in worship.
“Dagmar, you’re no longer my match. Pledge to serve me and reveal your divine soul unprotected to me. Then, I will spare you,” Han Hao said.
“Hahaha… Hahahaha…” Dagmar was laughing so hard that tears were coming out. Pointing at Han Hao, he said, “Me? Submit to you? Haha… On what grounds? Han Hao, you are my subordinate, my inferior! Always have been! You want to take over? Well let’s see if you’re capable of that or not!”
Back in the Death Domain, Han Hao had worked under Dagmar for more than fifty years. Yet, now Han Hao wanted Dagmar to submit to him. That was not something the prideful Dagmar could accept.
Han Hao looked Dagmar over and sighed, before nodding slightly. “Let me show you then!”
One odd tombstone after another came out of the bone spear and levitated to Dagmar’s side, invoking his desire to fight. However, he noticed that the energy of death within him was influenced by the tombstones, causing him to be unable to let out even a single ounce of it.
“Why… Why did your body not have the Quintessence Shard back at Omphalos?!” he cried unyieldingly.
He could tell that the tombstones had come from the Quintessence Shard itself. Compared to what he had experienced previously, the power of the Shard now was far more mysterious and insidious. Originally, he could still resist when facing off against Han Hao, with the latter not being able to do much to him.
Yet, this time around, he felt totally and utterly helpless. The death eenergy he had cultivated over millennia wasn’t of any use at all. He now knew that Han Hao had probably truly absorbed the Quintessence Shard, which meant that from now on, he was unparalleled when it came to controlling death energy aside from Overgod Nestor, a bearer of Quintessence.
“Dagmar, submit to me! I will not harm even one hair on you if you do!” Han Hao coldly said, seeing Dagmar so dejected.
“I’d rather die than submit to you!” He yelled and willed the remaining death energy in his body to implode, immediately crushing his organs in the process. Then, some weird undulations came out of his divine soul, forming into dissipating lights of darkness.
Dagmar knew that facing Han Hao, the bearer of a Quintessence Shard and fellow cultivator of death energy, he couldn’t even take him down with a suicidal attack of his own. Before his attack even landed, the death energy contained within would be dissipated by the Shard.
Dagmar was a prideful man. Though he knew lowering his head just this once would see him spared, he still didn’t do it. As someone who used to lord over Han Hao, he couldn’t bear to bring himself to yield, so death was the preferable option.
Sensing Dagmar’s soul undulations, Han Hao knew that he was about to vanish from existence for good, something which surprised him considerably. He didn’t know why Dagmar would choose death instead of submitting to him.
Looking at Dagmar’s corpse, his eyes glowed. After a while, he tossed a ghostly flare he summoned to the corpse and burned it to ash.
Though the overgod Dagmar was now dead, his divine body still had lots of uses. His bones could be used to make even stronger bone spears or spurs, while his skull and brain could be used to make some impressive demonic artifacts. In fact, even his skin had its uses.
But for some reason, he didn’t harvest Dagmar’s corpse and cremated him instead. He only stopped the flames when everything was reduced to ash.
A simple white-bone ring fell to the ground. After hesitating for a bit, he stepped forwards and picked it up. When he sent some death energy into the ring, a gigantic white bone throne appeared.
Stunned, Han Hao took a deep breath and slowly sat in it. He sent some divine energy into the throne and it moved however he willed it to. Some strange undulations came from the throne and mingled with Han Hao’s soul undulations. When he sent some more death energy into it, the bone throne seemed even more terrifying than it was when Dagmar used it. It seemed to have changed after reacting to Han Hao’s energy somehow.
Han Hao felt that the throne was now part of his body, much like the seven bone spurs on his back. He then stepped off the throne and looked at it as it levitated in mid air.
With but a thought, the throne moved and swerved in the sky like a remotely controlled drone. A smile appeared on Han Hao’s face as he played with his new toy. The throne moved through the air as he willed it, gaining more and more speed.
After a while, he jumped into the throne and sent more death energy into it, causing it to rev up and activate the white-bone blades around the throne. From a distance, he looked like a skeletal monstrosity that was able to perform many agile offensive movements in mid-air.
Han Hao wasn’t in a rush to leave this place. He relished the sensation and had a feeling that the throne never belonged to Dagmar, for he wasn’t able to use it to its full potential. However, Han Hao’s own energy was able to unlock the forbidden seals on the throne and bring out even more of its mysterious functions.
