Chapter 19

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Returning to the dungeon...

Extracting the Monarch's heart caused the Demonic Castle's energy to enter a chaotic state. It began to close like a normal dungeon. Aesil felt it too and her face turned pale with horror. The girl realised that this world was about to die.

- Master... please take me with you! - She blurted out. - I will serve you faithfully!

- Hmm...

I held out my hand to her.

I also had the idea of trying to take her entire clan with me. But with the speed at which the dungeon is closing, we won't be able to go twenty floors down. You can only move to the right floor when entering the dungeon, but not in the dungeon itself. Besides, I wasn't sure that bringing an entire clan of demons into the human world was a good idea. Right now, the Radir are being docile, but who knows what they might pull upstairs.

And even Aesil...

She seems to like me. But she's a demon, for what it's worth. And back in the very beginning of our acquaintance, she already tried to kill me after she gave up. I can still understand her, though. But at the end of the day.

- You can serve me as one of my shadows.

The demoness who was about to take my outstretched hand suddenly froze like a statue. Swallowing nervously, she looked up and met my cold gaze. She had seen me turn demons into my servants before. It always looked painful, and, the rebels were only similar to the ones I had raised. Still, it was something I wanted to try. And in terms of this experiment, Aesil was perfect.

- You will be my eternal shadow.

- Y-yes, I agree. - She took my hand with a tense sigh.

- If you really want to leave with me, you should want it with all your heart, reach out to me....

- Ghhh... - A painful impulse swept over the girl.

Scarlet flashes of distorted mana burst from her body.

And at the same time, my mana was filling her, touching the demoness' soul. But, while normally my magic would just rip a cast out of the soul, here it took a different path. Already understanding how shadow extraction worked, I expected a similar result, and I wasn't disappointed.

I didn't pull the shadow out of Aesil.

The darkness itself began to cover her, turning the girl into a shadow demon. Her very body was changing. All because I didn't rip the cast from her soul to fill it with the power of darkness. Her soul itself reached out to me and plunged into the darkness. The voluntary oath filled her body with the power of the Shadow Monarch, turning the girl into a servant of the highest class. She had not lost a single drop of her own power, but had only reached her possible limit and surpassed it. In her lifetime, she was at most a strong elite knight, but now Aesil was reborn as a...

- Master... - The shadow turned reeked of genuine happiness.

And, in a burst of emotion, she knelt down and bowed her head.

- Aesil, your name is Aesil. - Clarified.

- Yes, Master...

But, this was no ordinary naming. The demoness didn't lose her name when being turned into a shadow, so even now, there was no change in her status.

Aesil

General

By now, the chaotic energy of the collapsing dungeon was becoming increasingly unstable. Scarlet discharges were splitting the heavens.

- That's it... let's leave.

The girl plunged into the shadows, and I used the lock key to leave the dungeon.

In doing so, the key itself scattered in my hands.

The fire gate closed behind me, and I was back in Korea. Night reigned all around, and I finally breathed in the clean air. Well, not that clean air in the city. But compared to the stale air of hellfire, permeated with the smell of sulphur and ash, the city just seemed like the very ideal of cleanliness, where you could breathe freely.

- Kysel. - I breathed out.

The shadow beneath me spread its wings, and the next moment I was standing on the back of a shadowy wyvern that flew into the air. A cloak of darkness connected me to the shadow, allowing me to stand safely without fear of falling off the flying monster.

- Beautiful. - I grin into the night sky.

Another shadow appears behind me, crouching on one knee, right on Kysel's back.

- Thank you, my Lord, for accepting me. - Exhaled a happy Aesil.

She was now clad in her shadow-coloured royal armour, but from the eye sockets of her helmet the girl's eyes shone with delight, radiating an otherworldly light.

- I'm glad you decided to follow me. - I smiled.

- Y-yes...

Also, now I have a... shadow girl....

Some perverted thoughts popped into my head. But for now, I just shook my head. It's a little out of the way right now. Still in the air, I opened the system's item creation function. And used the available recipe. Just in the inventory I had all the ingredients I needed.

A short wait and there you go!

Creation successful!

Holy Water of Life x9

To my surprise, as many as nine vials of the elixir were created in one go.

- Inventory.

If it were me, the real Jin Woo would have been racing towards the hospital. But I decided to put it off until later. In the meantime, after activating a new skill, I decided to move straight home. Kysel and Esil instantly melted into shadows, disappearing into my vault. And I immediately found myself at home, while a shadow warrior appeared in my place, but immediately disappeared, returning to me.

- Not now! Wait for the towers to reduce the health of the creeps and just finish them off! - The girl grumbled irritably. - Their Kerry is already outclassing you! I'm lucky to be on a team with bronze!

When I emerged from Jin-A's shadow, I found my sister playing. She was wrapped in a blanket and had a board with a keyboard and mouse in front of her, and she was also holding snacks and a bottle of soda nearby. Absorbed in the game, she didn't even notice my appearance.

- You're a support, and you've already had six kills. Stealing?

- Hyah! - The girl shrieked, jumping off the couch.

In doing so, all of her organised decoration was destroyed. The bag of crisps fell to the floor and its contents scattered. The soda spilled and a mouse fell on the sweet puddle.

- Jin Woo! - Jin-A exclaimed furiously after realising what was happening.

- What's even going on? The time is already three o'clock... why are you awake?

- I... it's...

- What? You couldn't sleep without your favourite little brother?

The girl stomped her foot.

- You fool! You're the reason I'm losing here...

When she came to her senses, she quickly settled back on the sofa and arranged her mouse and keyboard. And somehow she didn't even notice that the mouse was covered in soda.

- Tsk...gaming addiction. - I shook my head. - You need treatment.

- So... when did you get back from that raid of yours? - Sis grumbled irritably.

- About five minutes ago.

- Huh?" The girl looked round dazedly.

- Yes, and straight home. I was worried about you, wondering if you'd starved to death while I was gone. And you seem to have got lazy around here.

- I'm not lazy. - Jin-A objected.

- Yeah, yeah, you're not lazy, you're just too lazy to fight laziness.

- Umm... well, if you look at it like that....

- Okay, you finish your skating and go to sleep.

- Yes! The girl smiled.

And sighed with relief. She had imagined that I would tear her away from the game and put her to bed. But I'm not an abuser. I let her finish the game in peace. Her team still lost, though. I didn't follow up on it, though. After that Demon Castle raid, I was tired as hell myself. I thought about checking what I could do with Aesil, but once I was in my room, I just collapsed on the bed and fell into a dream world.

A combined army of demons and monstrous beasts doing fierce battle with an army of shadows.Except, the demons and beasts were dying, while the shadows, even after receiving mortal wounds, continued the battle. Moreover, the fallen beasts also rose as shadows and joined the battle against their former comrades, fighting in the name of their new lord.

And in the very centre of this carnage, three Monarchs fought in battle... three Monarchs.

But when one of them was badly wounded, he fled. The other was too proud to retreat, and in the end.

- Why did you betray me, Baran? - A sinister voice rang out in steel.

Behind the splintered part of the helmet, the familiar face of the White Flame Monarch appeared. The Demon King grinned maliciously in Ashborn's face.

- Antares. - He uttered a single name.

And in anger, the Shadow Monarch crushed the Demon King's head.

With my hands down and a puff of breath, I stepped back from my dead foe and looked up into the sky. The messengers, aka Rulers, were descending from the heavens. Anger surged in me, a desire to tear the traitors who had so sneakily chosen the moment of weakness when I had been weakened by the battle with the Monarch.

But contrary to expectation, the angels did not attack.

- The greatest shard of light..." The majestic angel descended to the ground with a flap of his wings.

And knelt down.

- I beg your forgiveness.

And the others began to descend after him.

Pain flashed brightly in my head, and I suddenly realised I was in a completely different place. In the middle of a desolate, scorched plateau. My father's sword falls out of my hands, and my gaze falls on the grinning face of the archmage. The Dragon Monarch is grinning, rejoicing in victory. My servants disappear into nothingness, and then the gates behind the Dragon King open, from which his troops emerge, at the same time as Messengers descend from the sky.

- You have lost... - The dragon god in human form scowls.

Already vaguely, as if through a fog, I see the Messenger with a bowl in his hand, leaning over me.

The next moment I woke up abruptly in my bed.

My heart was pounding furiously in my chest. Not my human heart, but another heart. The dark heart pulsed with power, breaking the system's restraints.

Effect obtained

Black Heart + 1000% mana.

What was that?

I remember...

The first part of this dream, Ashborn's memories. His battle against the White Flame Monarch and the Beast Monarch. But, what happened after that? Jin Woo's memories?

- What was it, Ashbourne? - I whispered.

There was no answer.

But, instead, I felt a maddening power pulsing through my body. The system was still working, but it was no longer tightly restraining Ashborn's powers, but as if it were dangling ballast on me. Virtually all of the Shadow Monarch's power is flowing through my body, filling it with power. The effect only speaks of an insane increase in mana, but I feel it differently. This amount of magical energy in the body simply can't help but affect its power. Even if it's not reflected in any way in the system's stats, I can feel it...

Every unit of any of my characteristics now means several times more.

The Monarch's power pulses in my eyes, I can feel it in my muscles and nerves.

And, that's not all...

I feel like I can throw off the shackles of the system at any moment and enter into full power.

But, along with that comes a slight sense of disappointment. Is this really it? One more step and I will reach the top, without the ability to pump further. Or is it? My new shadows are getting stronger though, gradually extracting more power from the darkness that beats within my Black Heart. And that power seems simply infinite. It is limited only by my body, my ability to channel it into this world. And that thousand per cent mana bonus is very arbitrary. The power just overwhelms me, and it seems that no matter how much mana I use up, it will be restored immediately.

And yet...

What was that vision?

Jin Wu fighting Antares... and losing to him.

- Was it the Rebirth Bowl?

A particularly strong pulse of black heartbeat was my answer. So it turns out that the Rebirth Bowl had already been used in this timeline? The real Jin Wu with the Shadow Monarch's strength failed to deal with Antares and was sent back... but why not for ten years? And why did I take his place? And do the Monarchs themselves remember what happened there?

No, if they remembered, they would have already killed Jin Wu before he became dangerous.

Then I'm back to the question - what was it all about?

- They don't remember... I hear a familiar voice.

The same voice I heard in the dream.

- You... - When I look round, I see...

Me.

Sitting on a chair by my desk was my doppelganger with eyes glowing bright with violet fire.

- Ashbourne...

- Perhaps... in a way... - He answered not very confidently.

- Well, yes, I see.

- The cup of reincarnation has been used for the last time. This is the last attempt, and you have become... our advantage.

- I don't quite understand...

- Jin Woo erased himself from this world to completely destroy the lost future. That's why the Monarchs don't remember him and don't know about you.

- And the Architect?

- He doesn't remember either. - Confirmed the Monarch. - Only I remember.

- Yes, by the way, now that we can talk... why exactly did I end up here? And how did that happen?

- By accident. - Ashbourne answered simply. - You weren't chosen, but... Jin Woo saw you die and thought you could take his place.

- Damn...

- His potential was combined with yours. You had to become stronger than he could ever be. And you almost achieved that...I know we won't have another opportunity...and, I gave you everything I had.

- You want me to protect this world from the Monarchs?

- That's what Jin Wu wanted. - Ashbourne replied calmly. - But... I don't care about that. What you decide. Will you fight them, protect the people, or will you run away. I forged a sword from my heart, which contains my essence as Ruler. And I have given you my second... Black Heart that the Creator gave me. I gave you everything. And now... I'm too tired of all this shit. I'm out.

That last phrase, with its sarcastic resentment, was a direct outburst from the image of the ancient dark deity. My mouth dropped open in shock, and the room suddenly went dark.

And I wake up in my bed again.

You know, it's such a strange feeling, like you're dreaming you're waking up in bed, and then you actually wake up! It's such an ambivalent feeling. But at least I knew it wasn't a dream. Ashbourne's last words. He's really gone.

The Black Heart was still beating in my chest, in unison with the human heart.

But, it no longer had the alien feeling, the presence of the Monarch that watched over me. At the same time, the threads of the system loosened even more. I had already squeezed almost everything out of it that it could give me. It wouldn't give me any more quests, though level ups were still possible. Also, the system shop is still pretty useful for now. After all, the thing can still pump my human body. But it seems like it's going to be harder now.

The first thing I did upon coming to my senses....

I found the parts of the system responsible for limiting my skills and just ripped them to shreds. They were needed before to limit the power of these abilities, otherwise they could just destroy my body. But now I could withstand their full power, and the system restriction became ballast.

Shadow storage as well as retrieval, these skills no longer have a limit on the number of shadows. Ten thousand shadows? One hundred? A million? All of them can hide in my shadow. It's the same with other skills. Some used to have a rollback, I couldn't use them multiple times in a row, only at intervals. Now that restriction has been removed as well. The new shadow exchange skill also had a rollback of several hours, but from now on I can move with this power more freely. And not necessarily to my other shadow. I can freely disappear and reappear within the Monarch's Domain, which is now capable of expanding to truly vast distances. Honestly, I can't even fully imagine how much more powerful this skill has become.

But, even so, I didn't destroy the system completely, even though only the basic framework was left of it. Just what I needed.

And, in passing...

I had some new memories popping into my head. Things that Ashbourne had left me. His own understanding of magic, and the power of shadows. And I could feel the deep wonder and admiration he felt when he saw what I'd done with his powers. It never occurred to Ashborn to try to raise demons with shadows, nor did he wonder why he couldn't, but simply accepted it as a given. Just like Jin Wu. He didn't use ordinary magic at all, and was again surprised by the way I strengthened spells with the power of shadows.

In addition to the memories, Ashborn left me his confession.

On top of that, my understanding of the nature of the gate had been augmented. I had tried to look around the dungeons before, trying to understand how the gates themselves worked. And now I knew exactly how to open my own gate almost anywhere.

- Lord..." Igris spoke up, rising from the shadows.

- Hmm... you felt it, didn't you?

- My former master has left us. - Bloody lowered his head. - Perhaps you already know... your army awaits you.

- Yeah..." I muttered. - Although, the Monarchs will definitely feel it if I summon them. They've been waiting for so long already, let them wait a little longer.

- Soon they'll come to this world on their own.

- I know...

He was talking about the old Ashborn army. Hundreds of thousands of shadows, including powerful dragon shadows. And a grand marshal. In an army of chaos, there can only be one Grand Marshal, its supreme commander. The only one higher is the Monarch himself, the master of this army. But, in fact, the Monarch can have several armies, in general. I only have one. And that seems to be a lot....

But every Monarch has an army.

And while Ashborn stopped replenishing his troops long ago, disillusioned with the war, the other Monarchs have continued to build up their forces all this time. There will be millions of them. And even if I kill the Monarchs, their armies will not disappear, command will pass to their Grand Marshals. Even with my current forces, I simply cannot survive this invasion. The threat of facing Antares is terrifying. I really don't want to fight that dragon god. Though I do have the perfect weapon against him.

Nevertheless...

Such desperate battles of extreme strength and persistent overpowering, it's so not my style.

But actually, I already have some thoughts on how to deal with this situation. Perhaps Jin Wu was right when he chose me to take my place. In a way, I really could think more broadly than him. Where Jin Wu saw a narrow straight line, I saw a branching road with hundreds of possibilities.

And, by morning, I already had a rough plan in my head on how to confront the Monarchs. Without much haste, calmly....

After stretching, I was about to go for a jog, but....

I slapped myself in the face and just went for a shower.

Yesterday, I didn't shower after the dungeon. I was too tired and passed out when I got to the bed. But now I washed off the sulphur and ash, wiping away the particles of the Underworld from my body. And what a great feeling it was. It was almost the same way I'd felt after the Red Gate raid, when I'd also gone home and just washed myself.

- So... stop... - I felt something strange.

Squinting to the side, I met Aesil's gaze.

The demoness was peering out of the shadows in delight. Well, she was looking out, just shining eyes on the floor in the shadows, looking up at me from below.

- What the hell are you doing?

A surge of panic and the eyes disappeared and the sense of looking disappeared.

Even after becoming a shadow, she was still the same awkward individual.

- Ohhh... but, it's funny. - I grinned.

And, in fact, I'm done now.

Satisfied and refreshed, I left the bath and started to towel myself off when the doors suddenly opened. A yawning Jin-A walked into the bathroom, waking her sleepy eyes.

- What?" she stared at me in surprise.

- Hnn... it seems like you're used to having the bathroom occupied by someone. I've been gone for so long. - I shook my head.

- Ahh... - The girl's eyes widened.

She was looking at me with such panic....

It was like she was trying to force herself to look away, but she couldn't, and it kept sliding down my body.

- All right, look. - I shrugged.

And then Jin-A shuddered and yet broke free of her stupor.

- S-tupid! - Embarrassedly exclaimed the girl, red as a tomato.

After which she instantly escaped, slamming the bathroom door shut.

*** 

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