After Betrayal, I Awoke as the Game's Final Boss

Chapter 17: They knelt?



When Lloyd smiled at it, the smile was pale, broken, but real… and sarcastic.

Despite his chapped lips, despite the blood clinging to his teeth, he managed a grin that was a challenge to the entire world, as if everything he had been through was merely a prelude.

He raised his middle finger towards Lauran and continued in that same sarcastic tone that had never once changed.

"Come on then… show me your muscles."

Lauran did not delay. It opened its mouth, and from within, it unleashed a fireball… but it wasn't fiery as one would expect. It was black, like a small black hole, emitting waves of primordial hatred, its hum like the weeping of torn souls.

It moved slowly, not because of time, but because of its desire to terrorize everything before devouring it.

And then… it was released.

In a single moment, everything vanished. Silence. Then a black light, dense, irresistible, swallowed the place, and with it, swallowed Lloyd.

***

The void.

The cold.

The heavy stillness.

Then… the pain.

"Where… am I?" he muttered, his voice like the last whimper of a dying patient.

But this wasn't ordinary pain. His very being was being re-formed anew. His consciousness moved through the blackness, screaming, begging for light… but it did not come.

What came instead was a restraint, not physical, but heavier than steel.

He gradually began to feel his body, but every sensation was a curse. The bonds that held him were not chains, but a malevolent, ritualistic energy, carved into his skin in a language that did not belong to this world. He moved, and felt every cell in his body being pricked from the inside by needles of fire.

He forced his eyes open. Fog covered his vision for a moment. Then, the features began to clear.

A cave? No… a dungeon? Yes, stone walls, saturated with a suppressive aura, and a floor simmering with the traces of toxic energy.

Then he saw a familiar face…

"Balberius…?"

He was also bound, his body covered in bruises, the marks of torture visible on his limbs. Despite that, when he saw him open his eyes, he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Chief…" he said in a faint voice, a mixture of surprise and relief. "You're alive?"

Lloyd didn't answer. He wasn't sure he really was alive. Everything in him was broken, his right arm was unresponsive, his breathing was heavy, and his face was disfigured. But he was conscious, and that alone was a miracle.

"What… happened?" he whispered.

Before Balberius could answer, a notification appeared before his eyes, pale and flickering.

[Maximum physical tolerance reached in the "Torment of Beasts" Tower.]

[Tower Supervisor "Gorlam" has intervened to preserve the Host's life!]

[The Host has been forcibly ejected from the Tower domain!]

Lloyd stared at the second-to-last line before whispering, "The Tower Supervisor… intervened?"

He closed his eyes for a moment. That voice… at the moment of the explosion, he wasn't alone. He remembered a voice that seemed to come from the depths of his own body.

A voice that wasn't his, but spoke with his tongue!

But Balberius was more aware of what had happened. He took a deep breath, despite the pain, and said, "An aura erupted from your body. It wasn't just energy… it was something primordial, very primordial… as if it were older than the world itself."

"When that energy exploded, we all heard a voice… not from you, but from within you. As if something had awakened."

"A voice?"

He continued in a more cautious tone, "The voice said, 'You insects… Do you dare touch what should not be touched? Do you wish for death that badly?'"

"..."

"Then the light appeared…" He lowered his head, his eyes filled with awe. "Boss… the two kings knelt."

Lloyd slowly raised his head, pain gnawing at every part of him, "They knelt?"

"Yes. The King of the Silver Sun and the King of the Blackbird… the aura that emanated from you forced them to prostrate themselves."

"But it…" Balberius paused, as if more hesitant.

"But it what?..." Lloyd waited weakly, though he could already guess what had happened.

"It vanished… suddenly. As if it had never been. And that's when they dared."

"And they chained us?" Lloyd said, the sorrow in his voice heavy.

"Yes… you remained unconscious. They decided to imprison us with these negative energy chains in a deserted place belonging to the lower layer of the Emperor's Continent."

Lloyd slowly raised his head, pain wracking his every move. Then he spat blood on the floor.

He looked at his hand, which could barely move… but it was trembling. Then, from between his mangled fingers, a thread of darkness emerged—not smoke, but an entity that moved as if it had a will of its own. The darkness began to wrap around the chains. Feeling them. Devouring them.

"What fools…" he said with a distorted smile, as the shadows grew denser. "They want to bind me with negative energy? Don't they know that I… don't rely on mana? …Heh~ of course they don't!"

And from his body, a black cocoon emerged, breathing, expanding, feeding on the pain. The ground beneath him trembled. The walls cracked.

"What the…?"

From the palm of his hand, the darkness began to seep out, like living smoke, wrapping around the chains, touching them, feeling their composition…

And then it began to consume them.

Inside, Lloyd's body began to glow… not with light, but with darkness.

A cocoon of shadows emerged from his body, moving like a living thing, and began to devour everything around it: energy, air, heat.

The air around him was suffocating, as if something greater than the laws of this world had been summoned from nothingness. The dungeon walls began to bleed, dripping a black liquid, and ancient runes carved themselves into the stones.

The dungeon floor began to crack.

The guards screamed.

"He's breaking the restraints!"

But they were too late.

Within the darkness, Lloyd was seeing strange visions—or perhaps memories—from another world, a world he had never lived in, but knew.

Burnt lands.

Overturned mountains.

One-eyed beings dying with a wave of a distorted version of his own hand.

And a voice… always a voice, telling him.

"You… when you fall, balance falls. And when you rise, chaos is born."

"Who… are you?" he asked.

But the answer was always the same.

"I am you… when you stop holding back."


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