Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 348: Champion (4)

The Demon King drove his fist forward in a brutal arc, and the ground beneath them threatened to split. Ketal caught the fist and set his weight. A thunderclap burst outward. The shock tore through the air, tossing Ketal’s hair back in a dark wave. He brought the axe down with his free hand.

The Demon King caught Ketal’s wrist. The backlash shook the world. They stood locked together, each gripping the other’s arm, each pouring force into the clinch. It looked quiet, almost still, yet the pressure between them was savage.

Stone groaned and the bedrock collapsed. The ground could no longer bear their weight and gave way, dropping them both like falling stars. The Demon King tried to tear himself free, but Ketal’s grip held firm. Choosing not to struggle, the Demon King drove his knee upward, aiming to drive it straight through Ketal’s solar plexus. However, Ketal had already read the motion. He stamped down on the rising knee before it could crest.

Power detonated. Hell lurched and folded in on itself. Both fighters sprang away as if flung by a catapult. Ketal righted himself first. He set his stance and fed the axe until Aura, the monstrous thing within him, and the borrowed holy power braided together into something thick and terrifying. Across the ruin, the Demon King packed both arms with force and charged.

One meeting. One sound, like a mountain being struck. Axe met flesh, and the world burst apart, then strained to pull itself back together. Ketal had never been a delicate wielder of power; he used strength in its purest form—direct, unflinching, and certain. The Demon King was no different. Born in strength, he chose dominance over subtlety. Their battle shed all pretense. It became nothing more and nothing less than force against force.

Each collision shook what remained of the plane. The broken continent of Hell could endure no more. From the Mortal Realm, the Tower Master watched the crimson-black world unravel and let out a pained breath.

“Marvelous,” he whispered.

Hell, that once coherent world, was collapsing. A star lost its shape and became a drifting band of stone. Even if this battle were to end at once, Hell would never again be what it had been.

“In the past, they said half the Mortal Realm burned,” the Tower Master murmured. “That might have been mercy by comparison.”

The Demon King’s power did not fit within the world. During the old Divine-Demonic War, only the gods’ frenzied protection had kept the damage to half a continent. And Ketal was facing that power alone.

“I do not know which of them is the greater monster,” the Tower Master said softly.

In Hell, the exchange did not slow. Fist and axe crashed and drove each other back by equal measure.

“Even with the help of the gods, our powers are almost the same!” Ketal said, laughing in honest wonder.

The Demon King was strong. Even with the gods’ authorities inside him, Ketal could not simply overwhelm him. Ketal’s judgment that the Demon King was above the Primarchs had not been wrong.

And while Ketal admired that strength, the Demon King found himself thinking the same as he watched Ketal.

“The authorities from the Hall of the Gods...,” the Demon King said under his breath. “You took them all.”

He understood the shape of Ketal’s current state completely. That was why it seemed absurd.

“After consuming all that power, you still remain perfectly intact,” the Demon King said.

Dozens of gods had lent him their power, and dozens of divine authorities now resided within a single body. Ketal bore them all without strain, appearing no more burdened than a man donning a cloak. Even the Demon King would have felt the crushing weight of such power.

“Your essence stands far above mine,” the Demon King said, narrowing his eyes. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Perhaps Ketal had already surpassed even the Primarchs whom the Demon King once faced. He understood it instinctively.

“You have a surprising number of deficiencies,” he said, “and yet you are still strong.”

Against the Ketal standing before him, the Demon King could no longer promise himself an easy victory. However, he did not waver.

“I will be the one who wins,” the Demon King announced.

Being placed higher on the ladder did not forbid defeat at the hands of the lower, just like how demons fell to mortals often enough.

“Your power,” he said, voice low, “was given by the gods. It is not yours.”

Even if Ketal had kneaded those lights and made them behave, they were still a gift. Borrowed power tended to burn fast. In truth, Ketal’s pressure had already diminished from their first clash.

“You will lose to me.”

“If we continue like this, yes,” Ketal said, not bothering to deny what was true.

The Demon King watched him with level eyes. “Then bring out what you carry.”

“Oh,” Ketal said. “You noticed.”

“I would be a fool if I had not.”

The first time they met, Ketal had been about to draw out something else. In that instant, the Demon King had felt fear. He, who had killed gods and had not feared even when he fought the Oldest Ones, had felt it for the first time.

Ketal held something that could shake even a king of demons. So the Demon King spoke without hesitation.

“My enemy is not the gods,” he said. “It is you, an Anomaly from somewhere else. Stop leaning on Heaven’s power. Use your own. I will crush even that.”

“Then I am grateful,” Ketal said sincerely.

The Demon King was seeing him, not the chorus behind him. The shock Ketal had given with the authorities had done its work.

But Ketal shook his head. “Forgive me. I cannot use that power.”

“You look down on me,” the Demon King said, voice cold.

“Hardly. It is respect,” Ketal said. “What I carry is less meaningful than you imagine.”

The opponent was the Demon King, a sovereign of fantasy. Ketal would not answer fantasy with something that denied it. Ketal would not touch that other power.

The Demon King’s brow tightened and said, “You mean to beat me while sealing your strength. You are arrogant. Die here.”

“I do not intend to die,” Ketal said, smiling. “But you are right about one thing. What I hold now is borrowed. It burns quickly.”

The solution was simple—force the opponent to burn faster. And there was a way to do it. Ketal moved, kicking off the ground.

The Demon King saw him approach and clenched his fist. Within it, demonic energy gathered and condensed into a single, perfect charge—his full power, honed to its limit. He released it, and Ketal met the blast head-on with a heavy swing. The collision erupted like a storm, waves of force tearing through the air. Ketal was driven back, his boots carving trenches through the broken ground. He had lost that exchange. The Demon King’s brow twitched, a faint flicker of surprise breaking his composure.

Ketal had shed strength on purpose. He rolled his body and bled the force, stealing the worst of it. The Demon King chased and wound up again. Ketal did not wait for him to crest. He set both hands on the haft and cut through the gather.

The impact rang out like a struck bell. This time, it was the Demon King who gave ground. He had been mid-transition, attacking with his full weight, and could not shift into a solid guard in time. The imbalance cost him dearly.

Ketal was already upon him again, axe lifted. The Demon King raised both forearms. He used his body to attack and to guard in one flow, but never bare. He skinned his frame with demonic energy, packing a momentary reinforcement where needed. He poured everything into his arms to meet the blow. It had been the right answer while both sides hurled only their all.

However, Ketal’s strike arrived deliberately light. The axe kissed the guard and sprang away as if it had struck a spring.

The Demon King’s eyes hardened as he moved to rebuild his defense. Yet the transition from full offense to full guard left a gap he could not close. Ketal seized the opening, his strike crashing through and forcing the Demon King back once more. The King steadied himself, but the composure in his gaze had begun to waver.

“How?” the Demon King demanded.

“Because your strength is too simple,” Ketal said.

There had never been such a thing as restraint for the Demon King. Every strike he delivered was his full power unleashed. The reason for that was not difficult to guess.

“You never needed to do anything else,” Ketal explained.

The Demon King had been born to the summit. He had been stronger than the Primarchs. The gathered force of dozens of gods and all their little lights had not reached him. That meant he had almost never fought equals or near-equals.

When every swing at full power killed one's foes, there was no need to practice withholding. His near-bottomless demonic energy had only encouraged that habit.

“But I am different,” Ketal said.

Ketal had been weak. He had fought stronger beings with nothing but craft and stubbornness, and he had kept doing it as he grew. He knew better than anyone how to portion strength toward victory.

“You have never truly fought someone your equal,” Ketal finished.

The Demon King lunged, answering with iron and will. His fist held enough force to smash a fortress keep in one strike. Enemies had always needed to spend everything to block or evade.

Yet, Ketal did not. He let a fraction of his power meet the fist, turned the line with a small economy of motion, and saved the rest for the next beat. Great power always left a seam; even the Demon King could not escape the tiny delay after a full release.

Ketal drove his attack into that narrow seam. A soft sound of tearing followed. The Demon King hissed as a thin line split open across his forearm. Ketal pressed forward, refusing to let the moment fade. The Demon King stamped down, and demonic energy surged upward in a black tide, rippling out in every direction.

However, Ketal did not break away. He loaded the axe and cut straight down. The fountain of demonic energy opened cracks, and Ketal slid his body through the fault.

It was another clean impact, and the Demon King staggered a step backward. In that instant, he made his choice. Shifting to Ketal’s measured, disciplined style would serve no purpose. He had spent ages crushing worlds beneath his hands; precision of that kind could not be learned in a heartbeat. Even if it could, he would already have fallen behind in the rhythm of the fight.

The answer lay in what suited his throne best—more power, relentless pressure. The Demon King’s aura erupted, drowning the battlefield in raw force until every seam disappeared beneath the weight of constant output. Ketal gave a small nod, as though acknowledging that they had reached a mutual understanding.

“As expected,” Ketal murmured.

More power met power. If one pulled deeply enough, even for a brief moment, it was possible to link full-strength strikes in seamless succession, leaving no opening between them. The price for such force, however, was ruinous consumption.

This meant that Ketal had succeeded in drawing the Demon King into a short battle. What remained now was to win in a contest of pure strength and skill.

Ketal surged forward and brought his axe down in a crushing arc. The Demon King met the strike with his fist, and the opposing forces canceled in a burst of pressure. In the same breath, the Demon King stepped in and struck again. Now every blow he delivered carried the full measure of his power, and he could unleash the next without pause.

Ketal matched his pace. Steel met iron in a clash that rang through the broken air. A kick swept toward Ketal—vicious, direct. Ketal shifted his hips, letting it pass within the width of a hand, then drove his fist hard into the Demon King’s side.

The Demon King ignored the pain and came through the punch to drive another straight line at Ketal’s heart. Ketal’s instinct told him to slip out, but he went in anyway.

He tightened his fist and hurled it forward. Two full measures of power collided, and the explosion reduced the surrounding plain to dust. The shock traveled through their bodies, burrowing deep into muscle and bone until both stood braced against the trembling earth.

Ketal laughed, breathless and bright.

“Hahaha! Let’s do this!” Ketal cried as he laughed, breathless and bright.

“Come,” the Demon King answered, voice thick and low.

Neither yielded. They looked only at each other. The Demon King’s gaze admitted no one else. The hatred and will there belonged to Ketal and Ketal alone.

Seeing it, Ketal’s smile opened like sunlight after a storm. This was what he had wanted all along. He barked out a wild laugh and drove his foot down. The Demon King answered with a savage cross.

They did not stop. They slaughtered the distance between collisions. They smashed islands of stone out of orbit. They tore rifts into the black sky and sewed them shut with light and shadow, then tore them open again.

And at last, Ketal’s fist landed clean across the Demon King’s face.