Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 347: Champion (3)

The clash tore the air. Power met power with a shriek of pressure, and the Demon King slid backward across the shattered flagstones. His face twisted, and he let out a harsh snarl.

“Is this how far you have fallen, gods?” he shouted toward the empty heavens. “I am the Demon King, and you are gods. If you mean to kill me, you should stake your lives and come yourselves!”

He struck the ground with his heel, fury crackling from him like heat.

“Then why?” he roared, “why did you hand your power to this outsider?”

He hurled a fist like a black star, and Ketal met it with the full sweep of his axe. In the past, every time their blows had met, the Demon King had forced Ketal back ten steps while yielding only five himself. There had always been a gulf between them—a difference in raw, unrelenting power that Ketal could never deny.

Not this time. The impact thundered through the world, and the ground itself buckled. The ruined castle groaned as the shattered plains of Hell folded like paper under the weight of their clash. Ketal met the blow head-on and did not give an inch. His wrist turned, the axe handle rolling smoothly through his palms as he guided the Demon King’s fist past him and slipped into the opening. His step bit into the ground, and the follow-through carved a sharp curve through the air—the axe flashing straight for the throat.

The Demon King swayed away. It was not a casual slip; it was a true evasive step.

“If you dodge, it means a clean hit would hurt,” Ketal said, smiling.

With the gods’ authorities burning inside him, he could wound the Demon King. The realization delighted him. The Demon King’s expression soured into a hard mask.

“Gods,” he said, voice low with contempt. “How could you choose this? You gave every burden to an Anomaly and still call yourselves gods?”

The Demon King could not let go of the shock. He kept flinging his anger upward, as if the heavens would answer him. Ketal tilted his head.

“Is it truly so hard to accept?” he asked the Demon King.

It was not impossible to understand for Ketal. Heaven and Hell had been born in the same instant and had spent their long lives trying to erase each other. For the Demon King, seeing a non-god appear at the final hour had to feel like a stranger barging in to steal the last duel. Seen that way, the reaction was natural.

“Even so, I would appreciate your attention. I am the one standing in front of you,” Ketal said as his eyes cooled. “Shall I help you focus?”

The Demon King had spent his rage howling at the gods. Ketal chose to show him what the gods truly were. He took a single step, and his body flickered forward. A fist came down like a hammer, and Ketal did not lift a guard. The blow landed, and his skull shattered. The Demon King’s expression changed—only slightly, a faint disturbance across the mask he wore.

“You—”

Before the Demon King could finish the thought, a blade kissed the back of his neck. Ketal had reappeared behind him with no footstep to mark the turn. The Demon King dropped his centerline and slid out as his fist lashed back.

The blow drove straight through Ketal’s abdomen, and his flesh burst apart, scattering like a storm of dark petals. Yet none of it fell. Each fragment twisted midair, reshaping itself into Ketal’s form. Hundreds of Ketals—born of lies and deception—charged as one, their axes converging in a single storm that sought the Demon King’s heart.

The Demon King stamped. A ring of pressure burst out and rolled over the vaults of Hell. The illusions shattered in waves and blew away like smoke.

“Oh,” Ketal said, standing a short distance off as if they had been exchanging polite touches. “You answer it that way.”

His manner was relaxed, which was not how someone who had just lost a head and a gut should look. The Demon King’s voice dropped. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

“That trick,” he said. “That’s Kalosia’s—”

“The authority of lies and deception,” Ketal answered cheerfully.

He had not merely borrowed the strength of the gods; he had taken their authorities into himself. In the truest sense, he had become a delegate of Heaven. And that meant one simple thing—he could wield their powers as his own.

“It was my first time with that one,” Ketal said. “It moves more smoothly than I expected. I like it.”

The Demon King’s reply was barely a breath. “Gods... How could you—”

“Then watch me,” Ketal said. He lifted his palm toward the sky.

Something descended—a colossal golden blade, falling like judgement itself, and it struck the Demon King square in the chest. He caught the blade’s edge in both hands, the force of impact shaking the air around him.

“The God of the Sword’s authority,” the Demon King mumbled as he gritted his teeth.

He clenched his hands, and the golden blade shattered, crumbling into dust beneath his grip. Ketal was already in motion. His hand closed into a fist, and within it, the authority of the God of Strength gathered and pulsed beneath his skin. His own might joined with that divine power, the two forces merging into a single, devastating strike.

The Demon King met him with a punch of his own. The air turned white from the impact, and the shockwave swept across the plain so swiftly that the sound came after. Both staggered back five steps, neither gaining nor losing ground.

“So it balances even with that,” Ketal said, his eyes narrowing. “You are a monster.”

The Demon King advanced, each stride drawing the space between them tight, closing it like a fist. His punch tore a hole through the air, but Ketal slipped aside by the width of a breath and placed his palm against the Demon King’s chest. The impact sent a tremor through that iron body. The Demon King grunted, raising an elbow to smash Ketal away, but Ketal pressed in closer, letting the strike sweep harmlessly past his back.

“What are you—” the Demon King began, then stopped.

His tier was shifting, tilting under an unseen weight. It felt as though gravity itself had seized him, dragging him down. The taste of the force was unmistakable. He knew it. It was Ferderica—the authority of the God of Hunger.

Ketal spoke in a tone that could not hide his satisfaction. “They are the only one I did not part well with. So I wanted to try their power once.”

“You...,” the Demon King began, and then shook violently.

Waves of power surged upward, tearing Ketal loose. He shook his head, steadying himself.

“It does not take well,” Ketal said. “At your tier, the fall is difficult to force. Less useful than I hoped, Federica.”

The Demon King closed in once more, his momentum folding weight and speed into a single strike powerful enough to level a citadel. Ketal’s feet pressed deep into the ground. He drew one short, steady breath. The earth responded. The authority of the Earth Goddess coursed through Hell’s crust like threads through cloth, and the land itself lent its strength to Ketal’s stance.

The shoulder hit, but Ketal did not move. He stood planted like a tree that had spent a hundred summers drinking stone. The axe came up in both hands and fell. The Demon King snapped his torso away, but the cut was too deep to escape. A fine line crossed his chest.

A single drop of blood fell, and it was not red but black. Ketal watched it descend with calm, unguarded curiosity.

“When you are the Demon King, even the blood darkens,” Ketal observed.

The Demon King’s expression froze. Not even during the ancient Divine-Demonic War had his bodies suffered wounds; divine power had never been able to harm him then. The last time he had bled was long ago, in the war against the Oldest Ones. Since that age, he had not known injury.

The Demon King lifted a palm. Demonic energy gathered into a dense black sphere.

“Be crushed,” he said.

He hurled it. Ketal did not move to evade. He reached out, and the sphere struck his hand without bursting. Instead, it began to shrink, drawn inward by an unseen pull, until the final trace of its power was gone. When Ketal opened his fingers, a long, slender device rested in his palm, glimmering with a faint, elusive light.

It was a relic forged by Hephaite, the God of the Forge. It drank demonic energy and erased it. It could not hold past its limit and would break under excess, but it had held long enough.

Ketal seized the opening and brought his axe down in a heavy arc. The Demon King caught the blow on his forearms, the force driving him backward across the shattered ground. His fingers lifted, and between them, a black light began to form—a line that could pierce all things. Even Ketal had never managed to fully dull its edge before.

Yet, Ketal did not evade. He raised his own hand and pointed a finger back. Sunlight gathered at the tip. The Sun God’s day condensed into a beam no wider than a reed. The two lines met and snarled. Light and darkness chewed at each other until a hazy gray burst outward in sheets.

Hell broke apart. What little remained of the plane could no longer hold. Continents split and shattered, collapsing into vast shoals of drifting stone. The world beneath them ceased to be a realm at all, becoming instead a scattering of asteroids adrift in slow, grinding ruin. The black lines faded into nothing. Ketal gave his hand a shake and let out a low, quiet whistle.

“So the strongest god wears that crown for a reason,” he said. “This one I will keep.”

The Demon King gave no reply. He simply stared; the fury once aimed at the gods drained from his eyes. In its place lingered a heavy stillness as he regarded Ketal, silent and unreadable.

“The gods have given you all their authorities,” he said.

“So it seems,” Ketal replied.

“I cannot accept it,” the Demon King said. “It looks like abandoning duty and running away. But—”

He drew his power in and settled it. Every surge and edge smoothed out until the surface went calm.

“—whatever they have chosen, you are my opponent.”

“At last, you see me,” Ketal said, grinning.

“To give you that much,” the Demon King continued, “means they cannot enter the Mortal Realm any farther. If I kill you, there will be no one left who can stop me.”

“Correct,” he said, nodding with bright approval.

“Then I will kill you as the Demon King,” he said. “The punishment for the gods can come after.”

The battlefield shifted in an instant. The raging storm that had once fed on the Demon King’s anger tightened, drawn taut and controlled. His power moved now with the precision of a blade gliding beneath silk. Ketal steadied himself to match it, gathering the gifts of the gods and laying them in perfect stillness within his core.

Divine authorities held immense power. They were exhilarating to wield, their touch electric with creation itself. Yet, to Ketal, they were not truly useful in their given form. The reason was simple—he was stronger than the gods who had bestowed them.

“Borrowed power remains borrowed,” Ketal murmured.

He pressed his will downward, and the foreign lights bent beneath it. They folded and twisted as he crushed them together, kneading their brilliance and drawing it inward until every distinct flavor melted into one. They became his. Holy powers that had existed since the first breath of order in the universe shrank like toys in a child’s grasp. They compressed, compressed again, and changed. Through it all, Ketal felt no strain.

“So this is how it should feel,” Ketal said. He lifted the axe and laughed softly. “Then let us do this properly.”

The gods were no longer part of the equation. The fight belonged to Ketal and the Demon King.

“I am a Champion now,” Ketal said. A Champion had only one purpose—to slay the Demon King and grant the world a chance at peace. His gaze steadied, his voice quiet. “I have come far...”

He had been a barbarian of the White Snowfield. He had been an outsider that the fantasy world had not permitted to enter. He had spent a lifetime clawing his way out of that prison. In the end, he had slipped free and made it to the threshold.

He had walked a long road. Now he stood as the world’s own emblem and faced the Demon King. It moved him, but he kept the tremor out of his voice and smiled.

“Your task is to kill the Champion and break the world,” he said. “Let us both honor our roles.”

He charged forward. The Demon King drew a deep, resonant sound from his chest and clenched his fist. Pressure exploded outward as they collided, the impact shaking what remained of the world around them. Neither yielded an inch. They struck again, force meeting force in perfect balance.

The next impact rolled a wave across the broken plane. They drove each other into motion. The fight turned into a brutal trade of lines and counters. Neither tried to force a clever change. Pride held them to the center. They fought like two towers, striking only to break the other.

The ground folded inward and gave way, while the sky above split into ragged shreds. Hell ceased to exist as a world, breaking apart into a ring of collapsing islands adrift in ruin.

In that ruin, Ketal laughed and stepped forward again.