Chapter 265

Chapter 265
## Chapter 265

King of Madness (4)

The streak of light, targeting the colossus’s midsection and vital core, was intercepted by an enormous palm.

Right after, five massive digits, each dwarfing Heinrich’s entire frame, lunged forward to ensnare him…

Flash—

…Yet enveloped in a dazzling radiance, he dissolved from that spot.

The colossus, having lost its quarry, bared its teeth in frustration but did not pause.

It whirled rapidly, swinging its opposite arm…

Koooong—!

…And smashed into Harley’s advancing shape, unleashing a violent shockwave.

“Khahaha! Where are your eyes wandering, buddy? Let’s scrap!”

The atmosphere quivered, and the earth shrieked, buckling and fracturing under the impact of their catastrophic powers.

Yet the onslaught didn’t cease there.

A volley of phantom arrows and arcane spells cascaded from above, unceasingly striking the colossus’s countenance, scrambling its senses.

Simultaneously, several True Blood vampires, their velocities pushed to the absolute peak, darted around the colossus, ripping away chunks of flesh and retreating before it could strike back.

“Ugh, these irritating pests!”

Groan—

As the relentless bombardment persisted,

The colossus attempted to divert its gaze to the others, but Harley promptly locked onto its giant arm, anchoring its movements.

Just as he had been doing.

The disparity in their dimensions was so immense that the vulnerability he forced wasn’t massive, but it provided sufficient time for the rest of the party to shift positions and ready their subsequent strike.

Swish—

In that fleeting instant, when the colossus’s concentration faltered,

Heinz the Second emerged like a phantom, capitalizing on the lapse in its awareness.

He manifested above the colossus’s arm, drifting in mid-air.

Slash—!

A blade composed of blood, resembling a whip, tore through the atmosphere.

Concurrently, Briki’s strike, rising from the earth, battered the opposite face of the colossus’s arm.

An isolated strike wouldn’t have sufficed to deal meaningful harm… but their unified assault, intensified by their intertwined consciousness through their blood bond, generated an astounding harmony.

Koooong!

And at last.

The colossus’s massive left arm, already scarred with fractures, was cleaved away.

“Kyaaa—! You vermin!”

The colossus howled in rage, its utterance reverberating across the terrain.

A ferocious gale, akin to a tempest, buffeted the environment.

As if reacting to its fury, the madness permeating the region converged upon it, pulled in by its malice.

‘Khehehe… Curse it… This isn’t unfolding as intended. This marks my demise. If it must conclude like this… ’

He had anticipated a grueling struggle, but this surpassed his calculations.

It appeared he would fail to realize his ambition personally.

The Revolutionary accepted his impending end, but at the same moment, he solidified his intent.

‘I won’t simply perish. I’ll serve as the germ for the succeeding age.’

With that resolve,

He severed the remaining tethers of command within the colossus’s frame.

To transform into pure, unadulterated madness.

—

Heinrich, having repositioned behind the colossus,

Concentrated on his objective, discounting the colossus’s metamorphosis.

He serenely lifted his holy blade.

Wooong—

“Blessing: Holy Blade”, bolstered by the Saintess’s enchantments and divine energy, expanded into a colossal shaft of light, exceeding 10 meters in length.

He infused the edge with the property of “Space Slash” and cleanly parted the colossus’s momentarily static leg.

Koooong—!

The titanic form toppled, the concussion rattling the terrain like an avalanche.

The strike force seized the vulnerability, unceasingly battering the colossus’s uncovered skull, its primary vulnerability.

Like scavengers tearing at a felled leviathan.

‘Its mending velocity… ’

However, their features soon grew grim.

The colossus’s recuperative traits, driven by the massive torrent of madness, had outpaced the speed at which they were dealing damage.

And at last.

[————!]

The colossus bellowed, every remnant of its lingering sanity evaporating, swallowed by madness.

Aside from Harley, whose massive mass pinned it down, the remaining fighters were hurled backward by the shock of its release.

“Kuh—! What is it executing?!”

“Hold on, that…!”

Goooo—

A grand, crimson maelstrom manifested around the colossus, a spinning tempest of madness.

It was unmixed, concentrated madness, pulling in all the surrounding madness in the sector.

“Kuh—! Kyaaa—!”

“Ugh… High Lord…!”

“Psychic degradation…”

Inevitably, those trapped in the gale began to endure its toll.

Even those who had attained the realm of mastery couldn’t entirely withstand such a severe density of madness.

“Creator, shield your flock!”

The champions’ group, insulated by the Saintess’s divine grace, rapidly steadied themselves… but the vampires on the field had no alternative but to fall back.

As creatures of shadow, they were far more vulnerable to madness.

‘And this thick aura is disrupting other forces.’

He executed a few strikes, but they were drained and scattered by the volatile aura, or dissolved entirely.

Such diminished strikes were futile against the colossus, whose mending traits and shielding had scaled to an extreme.

Crack—! Crunch!

While he weighed his subsequent action,

The colossus commenced its alteration.

Its severed appendages mended in a flash, its musculature rippled and distorted, expanding and condensing, and its frame persisted in inflating.

[Khehehe—! Khahaha!]

An empty laughter, stripped of all intellect, radiated from its maw.

Similar to the prior Immortal Kings, its consciousness had been devoured by the overwhelming madness, its intellect dissolved.

Yet that wasn’t the primary concern.

‘…Even for a transitional state, this is… ’

It was virtually impervious.

Even if an individual managed to draw near, their strikes would be diluted in this domain, failing to breach its dense hide.

And even if they succeeded in wounding it, its mending traits would instantly close the wound.

‘It’s comparable to an invulnerability aura during a phase shift!’

Heinrich, after discharging multiple strikes utilizing “Space Slash” and his holy blade, grimaced slightly.

As anticipated, the colossus’s frame wasn’t as susceptible to holy power as the restless dead.

He had anticipated some utility, given it was still superior to the abyssal madness…

Furthermore, another complication arose.

The colossus’s progression was problematic, but he had just detected an even grander crisis via his alternate vessels.

‘The localized madness… it’s pooling toward this coordinates. And… ’

A massive legion of aberrations, lured by the aura, was drawing near.

Should they arrive at Tarak, the settlement would be obliterated. And the neighboring settlements nearby would likewise endure severe devastation.

‘Curse it! I must conclude this swiftly.’

Heinrich exhaled quietly.

He couldn’t permit himself to hold back further.

He would need to deploy the final option he had been conserving for a desperate scenario.

‘Huh? Hold on… What’s this?’

Yet just as he prepared to trigger his ultimate capability,

He perceived a detail and leisurely pivoted his gaze.

And focused on a specific point.

Goooo—

The core of the upheaval.

The termination point of the spinning crimson maelstrom.

Where the colossus, devouring all the madness, was positioned… immediately beside it.

‘What? Could this be…?’

More accurately,

It was Harley, standing beside the hunched colossus, likewise immersing himself in the madness.

—

“Khaha! Ah— This is intoxicating!”

Harley, inadvertently trapped in the colossus’s madness downpour, drew a deep breath, savoring the thick aura that coated him.

If the madness he had claimed previously was comparable to vapor, this was fluid, incredibly dense.

‘This is magnificent.’

Even Harley, who perpetually harvested surrounding madness via “Tyrant of Madness”, had never encountered anything of this magnitude.

He peered at the hunched White Giant.

The grand, pale entity was still contorting, absorbing the madness.

It paid no heed to his proximity.

‘Is it so assured that I cannot injure it?’

Or perhaps it was simply incapable of shifting.

The Seed of Madness within the colossus was merely a shred, a minor component of what had been discharged from the void.

Forcibly collecting and merging those dispersed shreds was no simple undertaking.

Rip— Tear— Crunch!

His intuitions were validated as he brutally assaulted the colossus, shredding, rending, and pulverizing.

In spite of his unrestricted bombardment, magnified by the ambient madness, the colossus stayed motionless, hunched in the identical stance.

‘Harley’s strikes aren’t diluted by the madness. Yet that isn’t sufficient.’

It was incredibly robust. Even profound gashes evaporated in under a heartbeat.

He required absolute power, sufficient to shatter its cranium and pierce its vulnerable core before it could mend. Even with the integrated power of his vessels, it appeared unattainable.

…It would have been unattainable.

Under standard situations.

‘But in this place… parameters differ.’

Harley smirked, revealing his canines, as he observed the cascading aura around him.

Without pausing, he applied “Tyrant of Madness” to draw in the surrounding madness.

He didn’t halt there. He directed the capacities of his alternative vessels, bending the torrent of aura toward his position.

Goooo—

The spinning maelstrom now possessed twin epicenters.

In contrast to the colossus, which was passively gathering madness from across the realm, he was actively steering the aura within a restricted zone, rendering his collection far more potent.

The colossus’s frame shuddered a few times, as if objecting, but Harley discounted it.

Crack—! Crunch!

His frame groaned and popped from the massive surge of aura, then instantaneously mended.

In respect to pure physical endurance, his “Ultimate Evolved Lifeform” was superior to the White Giant.

‘Now, we occupy equal ground.’

Harley cracked his neck, sensing the power vibrating within him.

Subsequently, the following phase.

He liberated the accumulated power, funneling it into “Tattoo of the Fighting King”, elevating his traits to their absolute zenith.

Then, he concentrated his madness-saturated “Bio-Aura” into a singular segment of his frame, forcing it past its thresholds.

His teeth.

Crack—

As an immense quantity of power pooled, even his reinforced teeth failed to endure the pressure and began to split.

Yet the impairment was swiftly neutralized by his recuperative traits.

That loop recurred multiple times.

Ruination and restoration.

With every loop, his “Ultimate Evolved Lifeform” progressively fortified his teeth, enhancing their resilience.

Until they could at last endure the concentrated power.

‘Excellent, let’s commence.’

Harley’s supreme asset.

His crunch.

Owing to “Voracity”, he could even splinter dragon scales like crisps.

Naturally, he recognized that solitary trait wouldn’t suffice to breach the colossus’s cranium… but the context was altered now.

Click— Clack—!

Harley snapped his teeth together.

Even that elementary motion fractured space, producing subtle rifts in the atmosphere.

He gestured in approval and, akin to a predator tracking its quarry, leisurely neared the colossus, which remained hunched static, an ideal mark.

As he did, Heinrich and Heinz the Second, having navigated the tempest, likewise assumed their spots, poised for their subsequent strike.

“Khahaha! Easy there, buddy. Be a decent fellow and remain still.”

The colossus shuddered marginally, but that was likely merely his fancy.

Harley’s altered jaw unhinged, exposing rows of pointed, crimson teeth, saturated with madness and “Bio-Aura”.

“This will be brief!”

A gleam of light, a blood-red barb, and then, pointed teeth gouged the colossus’s cranium, precisely where the prior strikes had pooled.

Crack—!

It required merely a few crunches to shatter the dense protection.

And at last,

‘Enjoy your meal!’

…His teeth contacted the Seed of Madness within.

And—.

‘Now… ’

 ‘I am the King of Madness.’