Titan King: Ascension of the Giant - Chapter 1217

Chapter 1217: The Third Domain

The Unforeseen Variable

“I know you haven’t given up, Zareth,” Alveron said, his voice a silken thread of psychological warfare. “You’re trying to stall, aren’t you? Hoping for some unforeseen variable to disrupt my plans. Go ahead. Sacrifice your Divine Kingdom. It makes no difference. As long as you are trapped here, their essence will simply be reabsorbed, becoming fuel for the Springhead.”

He was methodically dismantling Zareth’s hope, piece by piece.

But Zareth’s will, forged in the crucible of the Abyss for millennia, was unyielding.

“Perhaps you are unaware,” Alveron continued, “but before I became this, I saturated the entire northern region with my fifth-stage demigod aura. Any other demigod who senses it will flee in terror. And if, by some miracle, one is foolish enough to enter, they will simply become more fuel for my ascension.”

CRACK!

The sound of shattering space, sharp and violent, ripped through the chaotic silence.

Alveron’s brow furrowed. A figure had appeared in the distance. The Curse Avatar. An unexpected variable. He felt a flicker of unease, but it was quickly suppressed. He had accounted for contingencies. With his own power, amplified by the Abyssal Springhead, he could handle any interruption.

“HAHAHA! Alveron! My hope has arrived!”

Zareth’s triumphant laughter boomed through the shattered space. In a decisive, final act of defiance, he sacrificed everything within his Divine Kingdom, pouring that last, desperate surge of power into resisting the Springhead’s pull. A wave of pure Calamity energy erupted from him, momentarily blanketing the entire Abyssal Springhead in a shroud of darkness.

His goal was simple: seal the Springhead, even for a moment, and cut Alveron off from his power source. It was his only chance.

“Friend!” Zareth’s voice, now warm and urgent, echoed in Orion’s mind. “Whoever you are, whatever your purpose here, our goals are now aligned! If this so-called ‘virtue knight’ is not destroyed, we will both become stepping stones for his ascension!”

His words came in a frantic torrent, as if he were being chased by some unspeakable horror.

“Stranger! I will seal the Springhead for you! KILL HIM! KILL HIM NOW!”

And then, silence. Zareth, now sitting cross-legged in the void, had gone still. He had used the last of his borrowed time to give Orion an opening, and now he had to focus every last ounce of his being on maintaining the seal.

ZZZZZT!

A bolt of pure, holy light lanced out, striking the Curse Avatar. The agony was immense. It was Alveron’s [Discipline] strike, a holy attack that was anathema to a creature of the Abyss.

But the pain was clarifying. Orion now knew who the enemy was, and who might be an ally.

The moment he had entered this space, he had seen the Abyssal Springhead. He’d never laid eyes on one before, but he knew, with an instinct that transcended knowledge, that this was the object of his quest. But its power was terrifying. The instant his avatar had appeared, it had been caught in the Springhead’s gravitational pull, unable to move, forced to tank Alveron’s first attack.

Now, thanks to Zareth’s sacrifice, that control was broken. He was free.

The trident, Flame of Will, materialized in the Curse Avatar’s hand. An aura of pure, killing intent radiated from it as countless curse runes swarmed across its surface, twisting the weapon’s gray-white flames into a sickly, gray-black inferno.

With a roar of fury, the Curse Avatar charged. He could sense it now. The attacker was a mere first-stage demigod.

This was no time for caution. Orion poured everything he had into the attack, the dual powers of the curse and the trident augmented by a torrent of burning faith.

“You dare ambush me? DIE!”

He closed the distance in an instant, a living embodiment of murderous rage.

BOOM!

Trident met knight’s lance in a cataclysmic explosion of power. It was the first time Orion had ever gone head-to-head with a true demigod.

The result was a stalemate. Both were thrown back. Orion was sent hurtling through the void, shattering countless unstable fragments of spacetime. In the distance, Alveron, cut off from the Springhead, was in a similar state.

But as Orion stabilized himself, a jolt of genuine shock went through him.

The knight before him was a fortress. Lance in his right hand, tower shield in his left, a longsword at his hip. Every inch of his body was covered in perfectly articulated plate armor—helm, vambraces, greaves, sabatons. And every single piece of it, Orion realized with a dawning horror, was a relic.

An entire, perfectly matched set of relic-grade gear.

Against that, even his advantage of wielding two separate domains of power felt hopelessly inadequate.

“Interesting,” Alveron’s voice echoed, calm and appraising. “A demigod who wields two domains. You are worthy of a true battle.”

He was relieved. The intruder was powerful, but still only a first-stage demigod. The familiar, predatory instinct of a cat playing with a mouse began to surface. But it was only an instinct. Alveron was an ancient being who had clawed his way to the fifth stage; he knew better than to underestimate any opponent.

A brilliant, holy light began to radiate from him, growing in intensity until he shone like a miniature sun.

Then, he shot forward, a golden meteor of righteous fury, streaking toward the Curse Avatar. He was confident. The holy power of a virtue knight was the ultimate counter to a creature of the Abyss. It was one of the core pillars upon which his entire, millennia-long plan had been built.

“An unfamiliar aura. A bold intruder. Coming here will be the last mistake you ever make.”

Alveron’s original self had been the fifth-stage Abyssal Ruler of this entire layer. He knew every demigod in this corner of the Abyss. The being before him was not one of them.

Alveron didn’t even bother with a warning. He went straight for the kill.

CRACK!

The sound was not one of impact, but of two opposing forces violently repelling one another. It was followed by a wave of rolling explosions that tore through the shattered space.

ZZZZZT!

But through the deafening roar of the explosions, a new sound emerged: the sharp crackle of lightning. A third domain of power flooded the void.

The Curse Avatar, trident in hand, stepped out of the swirling debris. Branded on its brow was a new mark, a dense, crackling sigil of lightning—the sign that the relics known as the Thunder-Core had fully merged with its body.

Orion hadn’t come to the Abyss unprepared.

“You’ve got a lot of relics,” Orion’s voice echoed through the avatar, laced with newfound contempt. “But the quality? They’re all cheap knock-offs.”

He had to admit, the full suit of relics had been intimidating at first. But after that first clash, he saw them for what they were. True relics, like his Thunder-Core or the Deathly Soul-Reaper’s war scythe, each possessed their own unique domain of power. They were specialized, focused instruments.

Alveron’s entire set, however, was mass-produced, all of it imprinted with the same, single domain. They were technically relic-grade, yes, but individually, each piece was pathetically weak compared to something like the Thunder-Core.

It wasn’t even a fair comparison. The Thunder-Core was an auxiliary artifact, designed to amplify a demigod’s existing power.

Now, with the domains of the trident, the curse, and the lightning flowing through him, Orion felt no fear.

This time, he was the one who attacked.

The Curse Avatar’s form dissolved, becoming the weapon itself—a living trident forged from a swarm of shrieking, intertwined curse monsters, the entire construct wreathed in crackling lightning.

“Aegis of Virtue!”

Something seemed to rupture within Alveron. With eight successive booms, eight concentric rings of holy light flared to life around him.

But just as the last ring appeared, Orion’s attack connected.

The halos shattered like glass. The relic shield was punched clean through. The living trident impaled Alveron, sending him hurtling backward through the void, crashing through countless spatial fragments.

In that single, devastating blow, Orion knew he stood among the top tier of first-stage demigods. But it came at a cost. An insane amount of faith, burning like high-octane fuel. A resource he couldn’t afford to waste.

I have to press the advantage. Finish him while he’s down.

But just as he gathered his power for the final blow, the dark energy sealing the Abyssal Springhead vanished.

The terrifying pull returned, yanking the Curse Avatar back toward the vortex’s core. Orion was forced to redirect his power, bracing himself against the cosmic tide and watching for another attack.

His gaze flickered to the calamity lord, Zareth, who was sitting even closer to the Springhead than he was.

A cold knot of dread tightened in Orion’s gut. So much for ‘kill him.’ Who was feeding me that line of bullshit just now?

The timing was too perfect to be a coincidence.

“How touching!” Alveron’s mocking voice echoed as he drifted back from the void, his wound already closing. “Zareth, anyone would think you just saved me out of some lingering affection! Or… could it be that you’re afraid?”

He wasn’t trying to drive a wedge between Zareth and Orion; there was no relationship there to break.

“Heh… I can only imagine how it feels,” Alveron continued, his voice dripping with venomous glee. “You want me dead more than anything, and yet, you were forced to save me. Why is that? Are you afraid that if I die, the delicate balance shifts, and you’re next on the menu for this intruder?”

His goal was simple: sow paranoia. Make them second-guess each other. As long as they were divided, the board was still tilted in his favor. The Abyssal Springhead beneath them was constantly churning, constantly draining their power as they resisted its pull. Even Alveron himself didn’t dare get too close; ever since his essence had become the Springhead, he no longer had absolute control over it.

His strategy now was to wait. The longer he dragged this out, the weaker Zareth and Orion would become, until they had no strength left to resist at all.

Zareth’s move had, in fact, saved Alveron’s life. And his own. If Alveron had died, nothing would have stopped Orion. And with no connection between them, Orion would have simply watched as the Springhead consumed Zareth, then swooped in to claim the prize.

The situation had become a three-way standoff.

To survive, Zareth had to forge a true alliance with one of the other two. Alveron was out of the question, which left Orion.

But first, he had to ensure that after Orion killed Alveron, he wouldn’t simply be abandoned to his fate. He needed Orion to weaken Alveron, but not so much that Orion himself became an unstoppable threat.

Alveron, on the other hand, had the simplest goal of all: he wanted them both to die.