Devouring Monarch: Rebirth of the Profane Phoenix - Chapter 159

Chapter 159: Touching The Boundaries
Asura’s momentary relief ended with sending Vela into the portal while packing everything away and reflecting on himself.

‘I do not know what I will face next.’

He felt anxious about a small amount of sweat dripping from his forehead. His mind raced to who could be next. Asura’s cultivation technique and bloodline had changed the tower’s boss.

To think he would fight someone so powerful with their memories and thoughts. Asura could only brush his hands through his hair, worried for the next person.

“Vela said she fought an image of her first swordsmanship trainer. While I fought one of my past lives…”

Asura’s lips curled upwards on one side as he sighed, a feeling of bitterness.

“Don’t worry, Asura, I am here to support you.”

Lucia’s voice made him feel like two arms wrapped around his chest and cuddled him, soothing his stress. Asura appreciated her support, feeling better as he sucked in a long breath, holding it and feeling a sense of relief.

“Thank you, Lucia. Thank you for everything…”

Asura opened his eyes and realised he was sitting on the floor of the eleventh floor. “So here I am.”

He stood up, brushed himself off, and waited for whoever would appear next. It was only a moment’s passing before the enemy appeared in front of him. Asura frowned. The enemy wasn’t a monster. It was a group of humans wearing the Shang clan emblem.

“Looks like they finally want to leave their little home.”

The man who stood at the forefront looked Asura up and down before shaking his head.

“Pathetic,” the man said with a voice full of condescension. “A no-mag dares to covet the woman of our prince. Look at how desperate you look right now?”

“Your clan attacked my people and killed my family. Am I supposed to look at you with respect? You can try to take them from me if you have the confidence.”

This time, Asura wasn’t the no-mag—these floors seemed related to his previous life and felt strange as he grasped Lumeris Nova and stood opposite the men. “I will not hold back. I am Asura Fenix, Earl of the Phoenix Glade and son of Garrett Fenix!”

The Shang members drew their weapons with savage expressions. Asura’s words had upset them. They surrounded him instantly, leaving no opening despite them being an illusion based on his memories—they felt too real.

“Dare to be arrogant—let us punish you, worm!”

The first man swung his sword at Asura’s head.

Unlike the monsters on the last floor, he didn’t perform wasted movements that were easier to defeat.

These soldiers were clearly at a stage four level.

‘If this is what they truly are capable of, then it means that in my previous life, I was very sheltered!’

His thoughts passed in a blink of time—thanks to the four parts of his mind thinking in tandem, he could consider things much faster than a normal human. The moment the blade came close to his face, he twisted his hips and lunged forward with his sword lance, piercing the Shang warrior’s chest.

Asura twisted his hips and slashed another soldier’s arm clean off. They were no longer surrounding him. A group of six was down to four in one flowing move. The others looked at Asura with a bit of fear in their eyes.

‘There is no chance for them to surrender… eh?’ At that moment, Asura felt the mana that made them flow into his body, just like when killing a monster and devouring it. It was unexpected as his body refused to absorb normal humans after the bandits and that knight.

However, these Shang members differed.

‘That’s an interesting thing,’ Asura thought and focused on his new opponents, who were wary of his abilities.

“Am I a mere No-Mag now, you uncultured swine?” His lips curled up, a heroic look on his face as he confronted the misery of his last life without a moment’s thought.

“Even if your cultivation is higher, it won’t save you from death!” A Shang warrior trembled before shouting, his stance uneasy while his weapon rattled.

“We’ll see about that!”

Asura instantly closed the distance between them and swept his lance low, taking the man’s legs off.

“AARRRGGGGHHH!”

He didn’t allow the soldier to recover and instantly beheaded him before retreating with a beautiful twirling back-step like a ballroom dance and a black shadow following his steps, avoiding the soldiers’ attacks.

“I will not let you win! We must do whatever we can to protect the clan, or else all of us will die.”

The remaining soldiers’ eyes had turned red and charged at Asura, but his attack was too vicious—and they would never reach him.

Asura scoffed, his mouth opening slightly to show his fangs, before pushing out his palm as a black flame began flickering, the magic pouring from his core through his body like a serpent dancing around towards his stomach, then through his chest and into his left arm.

‘Condense and burn them to cinders!’

With the four minds working together and his constant practice of using anima and magic, Asura had learned how to cast elemental spells without complex chants.

Instead, he relied on his intense visualisation as the flames condensed into a tiny ball of flames, spinning rapidly before he crushed the orb as the remaining men attacked.

“Argh!?”

“Waa!”

They never stood a chance, and the moment he closed his hand, the flames burst out in a blast of intense heat with a temperature of a thousand degrees centigrade.

Asura watched as their bodies burned and screamed until the energy was exhausted, their muscles contracting as they all hugged each other visually and fell dead on the floor.

After he wiped out the Shang warriors, Asura came close to reaching the fourth level of each monolith.

“Hmmm?”

He felt a strange sensation—the moment he killed them, the entire tower’s surroundings began transforming from a normal tower to a vision from his past. The place was his homeland, which seemed to be during the period Shang and the Demons attacked the Phoenix Glade.

The memories were too familiar and painful for him to look at, but the surrounding place shifted to the streets he lived on while growing up and the inn where his father would take him when they surveyed the city and lands undercover.

He moved through the empty streets and saw a food cart, which was one of his favourite spots to visit. He inhaled deeply and could smell the aroma of a delicious stew that made his stomach rumble.

“Please, no!” A shrill scream sounded. “I will do anything, please!”

It was a woman’s voice and filled with absolute fear. Asura could sense her magic density weakening and rushed towards the screams from a nearby alleyway. When he arrived, Asura’s face blanched. The woman, who looked identical to the food cart owner, was being held down by a Shang member.

The enemy looked like an officer of the clan as he leered at the woman.

“Anything? Alright, strip for me.”

The Shang member removed his sword from the woman’s chest and leaned back to watch. “I’m waiting.”

“Ummm…”

“Stop right there, Shang scum!”

Asura didn’t wait or take time. A dozen ice shards flowed from his palm towards the man. He felt outraged, blood rushing to his head, a stern gaze, and his right arm shaking with fury at this moment, and he didn’t hesitate to attack this criminal.

“Hah!”

The Shang member slashed the shards away, but the amount overwhelmed him, with dozens of them tearing through the air before they shredded his leg as Asura lunged forward, standing behind him, landing a crushing blow to the back.

“You bastard!”

“Stay still.”

Asura raised his left hand, and a massive shadow formed behind him as the Shang member struggled to turn around.

“Fenix!? You were supposed to be a No-Mag!”

Before he could speak more, the black shadowy hand penetrated the skull of the Shang captain, grasping his brain as magic flooded into him from Asura’s body, creating a strange circuit and connection between the two as Asura learned of the plans that this captain knew.

‘In this world, my father is still alive!’

At first, he felt a sense of delight, whether a fake illusion. He was happy to avoid seeing his father suffer.

However, a gut feeling, the sensation of his stomach dropping, caused him to worry. What other scenes might he see? This is the life he felt betrayed after all.

“I’m sorry,” Asura said as he released the now lifeless body.

He looked at the woman’s frightened expression and moved next to her, sitting on one knee as he pressed his right hand against her wound to heal it.

Yet instead, he devoured her when he touched her, becoming a mana that empowered him…

‘Even if it is an illusion, I can’t save anyone, not even myself, from back then.’

Asura stood up, dedicated to learning everything this world presented to him on this floor, no matter how painful.

After the first instance, he wandered around the city, finding the Shang warriors and people of the Phoenix Glade. Asura stopped lamenting that he absorbed Shang and Fenix humans to become his power…

No matter how much it hurt him deep down to feel so helpless.

He descended to the twelfth floor and again faced another challenge.

Determined to complete this journey through the hell he survived in his memories, he tried to keep an open mind and accept the differences between his memory and this strange chain of events that seemed different from his view.

“I won’t surrender to these false images and events… My father will not die this time!”

Asura vowed to keep walking and enduring, become stronger, and face the person responsible for such a bleak and depressive illusion.