Night Ranger
chapter-502

Chapter 502: Harvest [Two in One]

When the Devil Horsemen appeared, Balkh was already panicking.

Marvin didn’t give him enough time to prepare. This Demon Wizard had Legend level casting abilities and could link up to the Abyssal Blood Pond. Who knew what kind of magic he could use if he had time?

Under the lead of Blackhand, the Devil Horsemen launched a relentless attack on the Demonic Altar!

For Devils, attacking a Demonic Altar was something very familiar to them.

The battles they experienced during the bloody war that had been raging on for a thousand years had forged their instincts.

If these Devil Horsemen went one by one, then Balkh would be able to deal with them with his magic.

But because the 24 Horsemen split into three groups to attack from three different directions, the Demonic Altar seemed to be unable to handle it.

Death Rays were shot out frantically, followed by a great number of weaker spells.

Devil Horsemen collapsed one after the other under the rain of flames and dark spells.

But none would retreat.

The Devils’ pride wouldn’t allow them to compromise with Demons, and Marvin’s absolute command wouldn’t allow that anyways!

They could only charge!

“Thud thud thud!”

The Skeletal Warhorses rushed through the sky, their hooves resounding with a soul-shaking sound.

Marvin knew that this wasn’t just a mere sound. It actually had an intimidation effect!

The beat of the echoing hooves even disturbed several of Balkh’s casts!

Even the Demon Wizard on the altar wasn’t completely immune to it.

After all, he was fighting on his own, and the strength of a single person was limited!

The aura of destruction kept spreading, but regardless of how fast Balkh cast his spells, he couldn’t stop all the Devil Horsemen!

When Blackhand Bard stepped in the Demonic Altar, its defensive system had already been shattered.

They stabbed the green spears in their hands at the altar’s floor!

At that time, a sharp shattering sound burst from under the altar!

Balkh showed a look of despair.

He crazily shouted, “Die!”

“Crash!”

Thunder Purgatory!

The terrible lightning bolts made no distinction between what it targeted as it fell from the sky in the area around Balkh, even hitting some of his previous experiments. The Devil Horsemen who had stepped on the altar had were crushed!

But the impact of such a powerful Legend Spell also destroyed the last foundations of the altar. As for Blackhand Bard, the Leader of the Devil Horsemen who had the fastest reactions out of them, he managed to jump away from the altar and dodge the calamity!

“Crash!”

The base of the altar was completely shattered.

That banner and the Cyclops’ bony it was hanging from loudly collapsed!

A pale blue light floated out from under the base.

Balkh seemed to be feeling a bit sluggish.

In that short but fierce confrontation, the Devil Horsemen were almost completely wiped out!

Only Blackhand remained, and he had lost his mount and his weapon.

As long as Balkh could get his soul back, he would be able to successfully escape.

But at that time, a shadow appeared between him and his soul.

Balkh crumbled!

Marvin.

He didn’t charge toward Balkh, dashing toward that pale blue light instead.

There was a stone in the center of the light.

This was Balkh’s soulstone.

He sealed his own soul there and bound it with the foundations of the altar, thus making the altar more compatible with his soul. If had more time to keep developing here, this valley would one day become a terrifying stronghold.

Unfortunately, that day would never come.

Marvin was a lot faster than him!

He had already made his preparations when he ordered the Horsemen to assault the altar.

After using up his Hell Corps Contract, he definitely wouldn’t give Balkh the chance to flee!

Marvin grabbed Balkh’s soulstone and turned to look at the Greater Demon.

The latter forced himself to stay calm. With the sheep-head staff in his hand still aiming at Marvin, he gently coaxed, “Give it back. I’ll give you a generous reward.”

“I’ll let you know in advance, my soulstone is made of the hardest stone. It would take at least a week for you to destroy it.”

“I know you aren’t a pure Devil. We aren’t natural enemies.” Balkh started being polite.

But Marvin didn’t care for his words.

He only faintly laughed, “A week, you say?”

The next moment, the sound of the soulstone shattering exploded from his hand!

“Crash!”

Two light grey rays of light had burst out of Marvin’s eyes and hit the soulstone.

That soulstone, which Balkh had been so sure was nearly indestructible, was shattered just like that!

It turned to ashes as the Demon gazed on in disbelief.

His soul had been destroyed!

…

Only Blackhand and Marvin were left in the altar surrounding after the fierce battle.

That solemn middle-rank Devil’s mood didn’t change one bit despite the deaths of all his subordinates.

In fact, they had already been prepared to sacrifice themselves when they signed the contract.

The day would come sooner or later; it was only a matter of time.

Thus, he was very calm.

Marvin glanced at him and asked in a soft voice, “Many thanks for all your help. But I have a question, I wonder if you can answer it for me?”

Blackhand faltered for a bit before grimly answering, “I’ll do my best to help you, but there are some things that I am unable to talk about or do.”

Marvin nodded. “Can I see Diross?”

After a moment, Blackhand shook his head.

Marvin frowned in displeasure. “Why? You should know that my contract came from him.”

Blackhand thought for a bit before ultimately saying, “Lord Diross told us to listen to your commands, but as I said before, there are some things I cannot divulge. I can only tell you that Lord Diross thinks highly of you and is now attacking a very important place, he doesn’t have time to see anyone.”

“If he wants to see you, he will appear before you at any time.”

Marvin inwardly sighed.

It was like this, as he’d expected. He didn’t get any useful information about his grandfather from the Devil Horseman.

He then asked questions about the side effects of the Molten Bloodline and the Hell Corps Contract.

And Blackhand’s answers about those things were also very vague.

He was unclear about the Molten Bloodline. As for the contract, the only side effect was that by using it, he had now chosen a side.

Devil and Demons were arch-enemies, and Marvin using the contract meant that he had sided against the Demons.

This could be considered as a side effect.

Marvin didn’t care much about this. He originally had a Devil Bloodline and naturally didn’t have a favorable opinion of Demons. He didn’t expect to work with the Abyss’ lunatics. On contrary, although the Devils were known as destroyers, they were a group of artistic destroyers. Although they were sly, they were very particular about rules.

In any case, he didn’t have much more to ask Blackhand, so Marvin let him go.

He still had the ashes of Balkh’s soulstone in his hand.

He looked at the powder and checked his interface.

‘This ability’s destructive power is truly effective on souls. Even this soul receptacle suffered so greatly!”

Marvin silently looked at the [Spirit Orb] line.

After killing that last Trapper and 29th, his Spirit Orb value reached [200/200].

After the Spirit Orb was filled, a new soul skill called [Harvest] appeared.

[Harvest: Soul attack. Completely annihilate an exposed soul receptacle and greatly harm the soul.]

This was a very simple and vicious skill.

It was similar to the Legend spell [Soul Scatter]!

Of course, it was weaker.

After all, Soul Scatter was an unconventional spell even among Death Spells. It was exempt from Death Magic Resistances, and the target could only hope that the spell would fail.

As for Harvest, it was a very fierce spell when targeting a soulstone or a phylactery.

Even in an ordinary battle, using Harvest was like casting a powerful soul attack that could perturb the opponent’s mind, reactions, thoughts, and even their physical brain itself, since the body could be considered a protected soul receptacle.

And for battles where every single moment of distraction could change the outcome, Harvest was very useful.

The only problem was that this skill needed to gather soul.

Only through a great amount of slaughter could he get the previous data to power the ability.

Marvin noticed that after he used Harvest, the Spirit Orb returned to [0/200].

If he wanted to collect 200 soul points again, he would need some time.

This skill should be kept as a trump card.

…

Marvin got considerable benefits from killing Balkh.

There was no need to mention experience points. In this realm, the amount of exp gained was huge, but it was also largely useless.

The truly useful gains from the fight were those 5 points of Comprehension!

This allowed Marvin to take another step toward reaching level 2 Ruler of the Night.

With each level in his Ruler of the Night class, he would gain completely new skills. He chose Eternal Night Seal for the first level.

Ruler of the Night skills were very formidable!

And apart from this, the materials he found were also plentiful.

Because Balkh and the Magic Dragon were bonded, he had been able to use his Magic Dragon for storage.

After Balkh’s death, the Magic Dragon exploded, but not all the things amassed within disappeared.

He left many Blood Essence Stones behind. Marvin counted at least two hundred of them. Marvin supposed that Balkh had snatched those from people nearby.

But what Marvin really cared about was a staff that had appeared!

Since it was able to survive the explosion of the Magic Dragon, it was definitely something extraordinary.

Marvin carefully examined the green staff. It looked slimmer than the ordinary types of magic staves that he had seen most often and he thought that it looked more like the wands used by lesser Angels.

But the staff had a powerful aura of Nature. Although Marvin couldn’t properly appraise it himself, he knew that it was an outstanding find.

It might be a Nature-attributed Magic Staff, like the kind that most Druids would use. The reason Balkh himself didn’t use that staff was surely due to him being a Demon, and thus being rejected by the power of Nature.

Apart from this, there was a floating silver funnel as well as a huge black gem. Marvin didn’t know what those were for at all and would need a specialized appraiser to look at them. But they clearly shouldn’t be ordinary items either.

In short, just finding the Blood Essence Stones and the Magic Staff was already a huge profit. Marvin didn’t clean them up as he still had to deal with the aftermath.

There was still someone else in this valley, after all.

…

Marvin kicked aside some crushed rocks.

The man was still alive and breathing.

But what startled Marvin was this man had the same aura as Corrupt 29th, who had attacked him.

“You… Killed him?”

Apparently, not only was this man able to survive the whole fight, but he also witnessed the scene of him killing Balkh.

He gingerly crawled out of the pile of rocks. The left side of his face was burnt black, as was his left hand.

It was clear that he had been hit by the Thunder Purgatory spell.

But he didn’t die.

This meant that he had an inconceivably robust constitution.

“Who are you?” Marvin was very wary of him.

The man was silent for a moment before he looked down at his hands. He then raised his head back toward Marvin and said with a mournful tone, “I don’t know who I am.”

…

In the depths of the valley, there were some Humans were curled up in cages.

“They are my people,” that man lamented to Marvin, “but they already lost their Human dignity at the Demon’s hands.”

“I am an exception. He fancied my background. I was a general in our world.”

“Our world was very old and there had always been rumors of Demons in the past, but no one took them seriously. To be honest, that day, when the Great Prophet issued a warning, I also didn’t take it seriously. We thought those so-called ancient rumors were just stories. How could there be Gods and Demons?”

“But… Disaster arrived swiftly and mercilessly. The Demon army swept through our world, destroying it completely.”

“I drifted around for a while before finally landing in this Demon’s hands. He did some things to my body… Some unforgivable experiments.”

“Honestly, I wouldn’t resist if you wanted to kill me.”

“I felt the huge change happening to my body. I became very powerful. But also powerless.”

After saying this, the man stopped where he was and couldn’t help falling to his knees and weeping.

There was a cage in front of him containing a woman and a child.

They were his wife and child.

They had been unable to survive Balkh’s first round of experiments. Their bodies already smelled bad.

But that man called Baro still looked at them.

Marvin stood at his side, silently shaking his head.

Although he already knew that many planes had suffered from Demonic invasions, he still felt angry seeing this scene before him.

The people of Feinan and Secondary Planes were still the same.

They just wanted to live in peace in their territories.

But there were always some disasters that would come.

“Can you give them peace?” Baro pointed at those Humans who all had blank expressions and clenched his teeth, adding, “And me.”

“I have nothing left.”

Marvin gently drew his Azure Leaf and walked over silently.