Chapter 292: Chapter 291: Violence
"Now we are talking..."
Atlas’s grin cracked across his face like lightning ripping the sky. The hall stank of mana and pride, of venom masked as diplomacy.
His gaze raked across the three so-called kings, and he saw them not as rulers but as animals fattened on their own fiefdoms, their egos stitched together with scraps of blood and fear.
They had summoned him here to negotiate. But Atlas knew the truth—kings never came to share. Kings came to take.
Every throne, every crown, every smile across the ages had hidden the same rot. This council was no different. This meeting was no different.
He leaned back, boot still propped on the black table, and thought: They don’t want peace. They want to weigh me, measure me, and carve their slice of me before the feast begins.
Aurora, staff tapping softly on the floor behind him, whistled as if she were watching a carnival.
Her eyes, though, betrayed calculation. Three demon kings against one brat. Can he hold? She knew his scars—Titus’s name still carved on his skin, blood still drying from his last conquest.
He looked unbreakable. But she had seen unbreakable things splinter before.
The scars on Atlas’s cheeks burned faintly, as if remembering the last battlefield. A ghost pain. A warning.
Yet pride was thicker than fear.
"So..." he drawled, voice thick with mockery. "You all coming at once? Or one by one? Doesn’t matter. Makes no difference to me."
The silence cracked.
"I will take him!" the lion-headed king roared, crimson mane bristling, saliva flying with every syllable.
"No! He is mine!" Jenny Shade’s yellow slit eyes narrowed, her staff glowing faintly blue, her voice vibrating with hunger that was half battle, half lust.
"He belongs to me. My prey...I need his seeeeed." Galiath’s twin to Aurora stepped forward, her gown whispering across the floor like blades unsheathing.
Their words clashed like steel.
Atlas smirked. Predictable. Dogs snarling over a bone.
But before any of them lunged, Atlas moved.
Doom!
The sound ruptured the hall.
He was no longer at the table. The air itself screamed as he broke the sound barrier. Stone split beneath the force of his movement.
In a blink, his hand was clamped around the lion’s throat. Hot fur singed his palm. The beast’s crimson eyes bulged, and a guttural roar turned to a strangled gasp.
Atlas did not stop. He shot upward, dragging the king of demi-humans like a ragdoll.
One ceiling shattered. Then another. And another.
Each impact thundered like a falling mountain. Shards of stone rained. The lion’s armored back took the brunt, every layer of rock exploding into dust as Atlas drove him higher, higher.
Through the final roof they burst, the palace vomiting debris into the poisoned sky.
Sunless clouds churned, the air electric with mana, and Atlas hung there, suspended in the heavens, his grip unrelenting.
The lion thrashed, claws scraping at Atlas’s arm, drawing blood. Atlas only squeezed tighter.
"Quiet, kitty," he spat.
Below, the hall reeled in shock.
Aurora had stopped whistling. Her eyes glittered now, unreadable. "Reckless as always..." she muttered, though her lips twitched into something dangerously close to admiration.
He knows pride won’t let the others join in. One on one... he can break them.
Jenny Shade licked her lips, her split-pupil eyes following the trail of dust. "So fast. So... violent..so fearless. I want a taste of him..." she spoke with her succubus need.
Galiath, however, smiled the same smile Aurora sometimes wore—the smile of one who had seen centuries turn to ash. "Let him dance. It will be the last waltz he gets."
Up in the storm-thick sky, Atlas slammed the lion downward once, then wrenched him back up by the neck.
"Tell me, King," Atlas growled with mockery, his voice rasping with something primal. "Do you prey? If yes...then it’s okay, prey. Prey for your dear life."
The lion gurgled, spittle flying. His four arms flailed, but Atlas drove a knee into his gut, the crunch of bone echoing.
Blood flecked Atlas’s face. He tasted copper. He remembered, unbidden, the first time he’d ever tasted blood—his own, when he was still mortal, teeth broken on cobblestone by men who laughed at his weakness.
That was the moment he learned weakness was a debt. One he would spend a lifetime repaying in screams.
He squeezed harder.
The lion’s roar broke into a whimper.
Far below, Jenny Shade whispered spells of her dark magic, "He’s breaking Bane authority already....." Her thighs clenched around her chair. The room stank of her desire and fury intermingled.
Aurora, arms folded, snapped, "He’s testing him. Don’t be fooled. Atlas enjoys the struggle more than the kill."
But in her heart, Aurora wondered. ’whats his goal here, I am sure it’s not just to rein chaos, or he intends to talk with violence first?
The question burned like a thorn under her skin.
Atlas drove Bane higher, their bodies a streak against the gray smoky sky. Wind tore at him, his own blood whipped into his eyes.
For a moment, suspended there, he almost laughed. The sky seemed endless, yet he knew even the sky was just another ceiling waiting to be broken.
That’s all this is, isn’t it? Layer after layer, ceiling after ceiling. Smash through one, and another waits. Kings, gods, fate itself—they’re all just ceilings.
His grip faltered, not from weakness but from thought. A crack in his focus.
Bane seized it.
Four fists slammed into Atlas’s chest. Bone splintered, ribs screaming. Atlas coughed blood, his vision flashing white.
The lion roared, his voice clawing back strength. "I AM BANE GLADIUS DON! KING OF DEMI-HUMANS! YOU WILL NOT—"
Atlas’s head snapped forward. Skull met muzzle. Bone shattered. Teeth flew.
"I don’t give a flying fuck who you are."
He twisted, then hurled the lion down.
The body fell like a meteor.
Suuuuu....
Boom!!
The palace shook when Bane crashed through the roof, stone collapsing in waves.
Dust swallowed the hall. Demi-human servants screamed, their lifeless eyes wide with something that looked almost like fear returning.
Bane’s body crumpled against the round table, unconscious. Blood spread like ink across parchment.
Jenny Shade rose to her feet, staff trembling with her grip. Galiath already pounded.
Aurora’s eyes flickered, unreadable, staring at jenny. If she acted, she would gladly take part on Atlas’s gamble.
Atlas descended through the hole, his silhouette framed by lightning above. He landed on the fractured table, one boot pressing into the lion king’s chest, pinning him down.
Breathless, bloodied, grinning like a devil, he looked at the succulent queen.
"Now," he rasped, licking blood from his lips. "Who’s next?"
Silence pressed like a blade.
Jenny’s nails dug into her staff until it splintered. Her eyes gleamed with fire and want. "Me," she whispered, voice shaking with lust and hate entwined.
Aurora, behind Atlas, whispered too softly for others to hear: "violence and more violence, you are following that code well."
And Atlas, standing over a broken king, grinned wider.
"Indeed "