THE VILLAIN'S POV

Chapter 669: The Nightmare (5)

After the earth-shattering battle that saw the First Seat, Crimson, annihilate every other High Seat, the world of Helmond lay in ruin—its surface fractured, its air burning red beneath the expanse of the Red Domain.

Now, Crimson knelt upon one knee amid the silence, as the sound of applause echoed across the desolation, filling the void left by the war.

The clash between Crimson and the upper demons had utterly destroyed Helmond. His domain had spread across vast distances, bringing complete devastation to the dead world. The First Seat’s power existed on a level beyond comprehension .. far surpassing even what it had been before he ceased fighting to serve at Agaroth’s side.

Clad in his crimson armor, his long red hair flowing like fire, Crimson looked every bit the image of royalty .. a monster draped in the regality of annihilation.

And yet this mighty being now knelt before another .. a presence greater still. ”A marvelous performance.”

The voice rang softly, intimately, as though it whispered directly into Crimson’s ear .. yet its source sat far, far away.

In the distance, the shape of a dark cloud flickered into view. Two red eyes glimmered through the void .. one of them the King’s Eye, the eye that saw fate and all possible futures.

There was no mistaking who it was.

The Devourer of All.

The King of Demons.

The Great One .. Agaroth.

He had been present from the beginning, silently observing the battle between Crimson and the rest of the High Seats.

But aside from Crimson ..and perhaps Wesker, who had sensed something .. none of the others had realized that the Demon King himself had been watching.

Agaroth seemed pleased, impressed by the spectacle his First Seat had delivered. ”Let us set things right,” he murmured.

With a mere flick of his hand, the King’s dark fingers shimmered, rippling the air.

That ripple spread outward, expanding .. until it erupted as a wave that swept through the battlefield in every direction.

Reality itself shattered .. like glass breaking into a thousand pieces.

And then, in the next heartbeat, came the impossible.

The ruined wasteland vanished. The battlefield was gone.

The sky cleared. The ground rebuilt itself.

Cracks sealed, craters disappeared, and the Nightmare Hall reformed around the throne where Agaroth now sat.

Moments later, fourteen figures materialized from nothingness .. the High Seats, from the Second to the Fifteenth, each standing once more, alive and whole, confusion written across their faces. ”What... what just happened?”

They all muttered the same words at once.

Seconds ago, they had been fighting Crimson .. and losing, horribly. His Red Domain had crushed them beyond recovery.

They had died. There was no doubt of it.

So how... how were they alive?

Kneeling before them, Crimson’s eyes flared a blinding red as he spoke, his voice thunderous and commanding: ”The King stands before you. How dare you avert your gaze?”

The sheer weight of his aura crashed down like a tidal wave.

At once, every demon turned their eyes toward the throne .. toward the being seated upon it.

The dim light of the candles faltered further in his presence.

The shadows deepened.

Only the glow of his crimson eyes illuminated the hall now.

And when the High Seats finally beheld him with their own eyes .. their bodies gave out.

They collapsed to the floor in unison, prostrating before the throne.

Unlike Crimson, who knelt like a knight before his lord, the others pressed their foreheads to the ground, unable even to lift their heads.

Not because they chose to .. but because they couldn’t.

The presence of Agaroth was unlike anything else.

Even with his vast, crushing aura restrained, its sheer gravity bound them completely.

He had been sitting behind them all along, yet none had sensed him until Crimson’s words made them aware.

Now that they had seen him, the truth of his presence was unbearable.

It was often said that Crimson’s aura matched the King’s own .. and that was true.

But the difference was profound.

Crimson’s presence was immense, terrifying...

Agaroth’s, however, was otherworldly .. something beyond all reason and comprehension, a power that exuded an unfathomable terror, as if the universe itself bent beneath it.

Crimson was a monster.

But the being before them .. was the very concept of fear itself.

As they knelt, thoughts raced through the minds of the High Seats.

The Demon King was here.

The being who had secluded himself since the war against Nameless, unseen for eons .. was now in their presence, right after their battle with Crimson.

They tried to understand what was happening .. especially Wesker, the Fourth Seat. ”Was what just happened one of the King’s abilities?” he wondered. ”Did he... reverse time?”

Observing the surroundings through the King’s Eye, Wesker quickly denied the thought. ”No... time never reversed. It never even paused.

The King possesses no temporal powers.

Reversing time is impossible.”

His eye did not merely see fate; it perceived the flows of aura and the distortion of energy in perfect clarity.

Since the battle with Crimson, time had continued normally .. and the remnants of their unleashed power still lingered in the air.

That meant the King hadn’t altered time at all.

What he had done... was something else entirely.

Something beyond comprehension.

And no matter how hard Wesker tried to discern it .. he couldn’t.

Nor could any of the others.

All they knew .. was that Agaroth had done something that restored them completely.

He had brought them back from death itself... as if nothing had ever happened.

None of them could understand what he had done .. and that only made the King seated before them all the more terrifying, all the more unfathomable.

Now, with Agaroth and Crimson present together in one place, the very air grew suffocating.

Even the weaker High Seats, such as the Fourteenth and Fifteenth, trembled under the crushing weight of their combined presence—barely managing to stay on their feet.

After a short, tense silence in which none dared to speak before their King, Agaroth himself broke it. ”This place... hasn’t changed since the last time I saw it.”

His deep voice echoed through the Nightmare Hall as his crimson eyes swept slowly across the chamber ..the same throne room that had been built for him in the earliest days of his reign.

Turning his gaze toward the High Seats, he continued, ”And neither have you.”

A brief pause. Then, correcting himself: ”No... that applies only to the first eleven. The rest have changed since the last time I was here.”

Indeed, unlike the first eleven seats who had survived through millennia, the others had long been replaced.

The lesser ranks had fallen—some slain in wars against other races, others devoured or erased in ways unspoken.

Agaroth dismissed the thought with a faint gesture. ”No matter. Let us begin the Nightmare.”

At his words, every demon took their seat once more.

For the first time since his arrival, they were permitted to speak.

Some wished to praise their King’s glory, but all knew he despised flattery.

So it was Marvas, the oldest among them, who dared to ask the question burning in everyone’s mind. ”My King... forgive my insolence—but what happened to us? And why did the First Seat attempt to kill us?”

Why that massacre?

And how were they still alive?

Agaroth ignored the second question entirely, revealing nothing about his mysterious power.

But he did answer the first. ”Crimson has been absent from battle for far too long,” the King said evenly. ”He wished to remember the feeling of combat before returning to activity.

So I granted him that request.”

The hall went silent.

That single statement revealed everything they needed to know.

The First Seat was returning to active duty.

Those words alone carried weight beyond measure.

Crimson .. who had withdrawn from the world since Agaroth’s retreat .. had never once interfered in worldly affairs.

His reemergence could only mean one thing: the balance of power was about to collapse.

The factions led by Marvas and Wesker would soon crumble.

Leadership would revert entirely to Crimson.

No one .. not Agares, not Gael of the Infernal Duchy .. could hope to stand against him.

But why now?

Why had Crimson returned at this moment, after all this time?

To that, Crimson himself answered. ”Some of you already know,” he began, rising slowly from one knee, his armor glinting under the faint crimson light. ”This world we live in... is changing.”

He paused, his voice deep and measured. ”We are on the verge of confronting the unknown.

Soon, our steps will tread upon a foreign land .. one no being truly understands.”

At these words, several of the High Seats exchanged glances .. their eyes lighting with recognition.

They knew what he meant.

This was the turning point of the Nightmare Conference .. one that would be remembered in history.

The first to discover it had been Zibar, the Tenth Seat.

Far beyond the known realms, a strange land had appeared .. a colossal continent that had not existed before, materializing from nothing in the endless void of the cosmos.

No one had seen it before.

No one knew what it was.

But it had become the talk of every race, every power, every god.

It was the Unknown Land.

And with its sudden emergence, the Great Ones themselves began to stir.

Agaroth, being one of them, had sensed it immediately.

The appearance of that world .. and the Great Ones’ unusual movements .. meant something was coming.

Something enormous.

Even the mortal races had begun plotting to invade it, to claim it as their own.

And the Great Ones were no exception.

That was why Crimson had chosen to return. ”I fought you all,” Crimson said, his body radiating with a fierce crimson glow, ”because I needed to remember what it means to battle.”

He opened his eyes—twin suns of red fury. ”Because from this moment on...” ”I will begin hunting the Great Ones.”

His final words fell like thunder.

The hall trembled.

Even the strongest among them stared in disbelief.

The First Seat ..Crimson, the Blood of the King .. had just declared war upon the Great Ones themselves.

The demons, like the rest of existence, had decided to march toward the mysterious new continent that had appeared in the heart of the cosmos.

And with that, the Nightmare Conference started .. marking a dreadful omen:

A new catastrophe was about to begin.