Exiled Prince: I'm the Unexpected Extra in the Novel-Chapter 157: The Clash of Princes [7]

The War for The North [45]

Chapter 157: Borrowed Hell

Seralya was racked by a bloody cough that tore from her lungs.

Kneeling on the ground, atop ashes and vitrified soil, she looked up at this mad boy, trembling.

The unshakable balance, the divine serenity she had felt for thousands of years, had been shattered. Fear had seized her entire body with its cold, clammy fingers, penetrating to her very marrow.

It was all that foolish, arrogant Aethrax’s fault. Luin had warned them repeatedly, ordering them to stay in the shadows no matter what.

"That boy is an anomaly," Luin had said. "Outside the flow of time, beyond the rules." But that flame headed dwarf couldn’t sit still the moment he felt the dense, chaotic presence of the Prince of Nothingness.

Despite all of Umbrelion’s cursed whispers and attempts to stop him, Aethrax had rushed toward his own apocalypse.

Seralya had followed him, at least to keep things under control and get that fool out alive.

Her plan was simple: In a bad situation, she would tip the scales, grab Aethrax, and flee. But things hadn’t gone according to plan. Aethrax had lost. And now, she too was on the brink of death.

She knew that if she didn’t fight here and now, pushing the very limits of her existence, her thousands of years of existence would end; she would truly die.

This was no longer a game. It wasn’t even a matter of balance anymore; this was a war for pure survival.

Her white, irisless eyes widened. The serene gray aura radiating from her body began to change, ripple, and turn savage.

Cassian narrowed his eyes the moment he felt this sudden shift in the woman before him. The mocking smile at the corners of his lips widened.

"Hoh..." he said, his voice competing with the howling wind. "So you finally decided to do something instead of running away. Let’s see if your balance can save you."

Seralya didn’t answer. She opened her arms wide, and a blinding white light radiating from her palms covered her entire body.

The light liquefied and solidified, trapping her inside a flawless, smooth sphere.

Cassian licked the blood seeping from the corner of his lip. Baring his teeth, he waited with the sadistic grin of a predator watching its prey struggle. "Show me," he whispered.

The next moment, the white sphere cracked under pressure from within and exploded into thousands of shards of light. The figure that emerged was not Seralya’s delicate, nun like form.

Standing before him was a majestic being, over two meters tall.

Curved, ivory colored horns rising from her temples stretched toward the sky.

Her long, snow white hair waved, defying gravity. In the center of her white eyes burned a pair of embers, just like Cassian’s, but composed of white flame.

Her entire skin was covered in pearlescent white scales that reflected the light, and a magnificent pair of white dragon wings had unfurled from her back.

The aura radiating from her body was identical to Cassian’s state at the peak of his Sovereign Form.

It was even purer, more intense, more... divine. Seralya had used her Balance ability to copy the greatest power before her, Cassian’s destructive form, and blended it with her own divine energy.

Any living creature would have gone weak at the knees and fallen into terror at this sight. Seeing one’s own power mimicked even more perfectly by a demigod should have created despair.

But Cassian... was not afraid. He didn’t take a step back.

Instead, he burst into laughter that tore through the silence of the crater.

"PUHAHAHAHAHA!"

Clutching his stomach, tears streaming from his eyes from laughing, he laughed until he was doubled over. It was as if he were witnessing the funniest joke of his life.

He pointed his index finger at Seralya, standing before him in all her divine majesty. He was breathless from laughing.

"Y you..." he said, his words barely distinguishable amidst his laughter. "You really are an idiot!"

"Ahahah!"

"I thought that dwarf was a fool... Ahaha! But you... You are the stupidest of them all!"

Cassian straightened up, wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand, but the savage joy on his face didn’t fade.

"I seriously thought you had a dangerous ability or something. A trick that would shift the balance, that would push me... But the only thing you did was turn into me? And without even knowing what you turned into?"

Cassian’s red eyes shone like two demonic lanterns in the darkness of the night.

Seralya didn’t understand what he was talking about. Was this boy crazy? What was so funny? Wasn’t he aware of the situation he was in?

Right now, Seralya could feel the immense power flowing through her veins. She possessed such power that even Mystic Beasts wouldn’t be a match for her.

Her muscles were harder than steel, her senses perceived even the finest vibrations of the universe.

The power bursting from within was the pinnacle of all the hidden abilities, reflexes, and destructive force Cassian used in that form.

And most importantly, there was absolute peace and serenity in her mind; the power was under her control.

Despite this, the boy in front of her had only an exhausted, 2 star mana core.

He was drained from his battle with Aethrax, barely standing. Logically, he should have ceased to exist with a single snap of Seralya’s fingers.

Yet still... deep within that divine power, Seralya felt an undefined unease.

Cassian took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Then, with the casual attitude of someone at a picnic, he sat cross legged on the ground. He rested his arms on his knees, exposing his chest vulnerably.

He fixed his red eyes on the bewildered Seralya hovering in all her glory.

"Come on," he said, his voice inviting. "Come on, attack me, princess. Use an attack as strong as you want. Use your new, shiny claws, the dragon breath you copied. I promise... I won’t defend myself. I won’t even lift a finger."

Seralya froze in place. What kind of games was this boy playing now? Was this a trap?

Cassian wasn’t someone who would just let her kill him. That madness in his eyes, that cunning... He was plotting something again.

But Seralya couldn’t figure out what it was. It was impossible to understand what lay behind those red eyes, what plans that mind was concocting.

She stood there for seconds. Suspended in the air.

"What’s the problem?" Cassian asked with mocking impatience.

"I told you I wouldn’t defend myself. I won’t even use my mana. If you want..." Cassian opened his arms wide.

"I can chain my arms and legs. Maybe that will encourage you, huh?"

Seralya grit her teeth. Her honor was being wounded. She made her decision. This boy was just bluffing.

Since he had no strength left to defend himself, he was trying to make her hesitate, to buy time. But Seralya wouldn’t fall for this game. She would use this power and wipe this anomaly from the universe.

The aura around Seralya changed. The veins beneath her white scales bulged. She ignited her mana to unleash her immense power, the destruction she had copied.

And... The very first moment she used her mana...

Seralya’s eyes bled. Black blood gushed from her mouth and nose.

Her divine stance broke like a puppet having its strings cut. Her body went rigid, she couldn’t stay suspended in the air, and she crashed hard onto her knees on the ground.

Her knees wobbled, she tried to support herself with her hands, but her arms were trembling.

She looked at Cassian with panic and terror.

Cassian was watching her calmly. He still didn’t move. He was still in his cross legged, relaxed position.

In fact, as he said, he hadn’t even used his mana. He was just watching.

Seralya felt boiling lava, acid, and shards of glass circulating in her veins instead of blood.

Her entire body, every single cell, was burning in agony. She ran her clawed hands over her body as if wanting to tear off the scaled skin she had copied, desperately digging into her own flesh.

"W wha... is happening..." she groaned, blood foam spraying from her mouth.

When she looked at Cassian, he had tilted his head slightly to the side, looking at her like a scientist observing an interesting experiment.

The next moment, Seralya felt a strangeness in her mind. The physical pain turned into mental rape.

First, she heard a single whisper. A distant, weak, pained whisper.

Then two.

Then four.

Then ten.

Then hundreds!

With every passing second, the whispers began to increase rapidly.

And after a moment, the whispers turned into screams. Thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps millions of different voices were screaming simultaneously inside Seralya’s mind.

Seralya buried her hands in her hair and clutched her head. She felt as if her skull were going to explode from the inside.

The voices didn’t cease. They were all fighting for control over the body, all screaming their own pain, their own desires, their own deaths. That orderly mind had turned into a marketplace of chaos.

"MOM IT HURTS!" a child’s voice screamed. "Give me your body!" a demon snarled. "God, protect my people..." a knight prayed. "Surrender your body, mortal!" an ancient being commanded. "Sister, what’s for dinner tonight?" an innocent girl asked. "Father, will our race ever find salvation?" "Ahaha, this apple tastes so sweet..." "Soldiers! Hold the line!" Monster growls, sword clashes, baby cries, death rattles...

"Will I ever be free?"

These voices were the souls Cassian had consumed. The lives he had eaten, the curses he carried within, the memories etched into his body.

When Seralya copied Cassian’s power, she had also copied his body, his existence.

But Cassian’s body wasn’t an empty vessel; it was a dungeon where thousands of souls were trapped. And Seralya had opened the doors of this dungeon into her own mind.

Seralya screamed in a tone so high she couldn’t even hear her own voice in desperation.

"SHUT UP!"

But the voices didn’t stop. On the contrary, as if sensing her desperation, they became even more violent, even more mocking.

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT YOUR MOUTHS! LEAVE ME ALONE! SHUT UP!"

Seralya fell to her knees and dug her claws into the vitrified soil. She scratched the earth, digging until her fingernails broke. But the voices weren’t outside, they were inside.

Then, unable to bear this torture, she began to bang her head against the ground.

"THUD! THUD! THUD!"

She struck her head desperately against the hard ground, hoping physical pain would drown out the mental noise, hoping the sound would stop.

Her forehead split open, her face was covered in blood, but the voices didn’t stop. They had infiltrated every crease of Seralya’s consciousness.

She couldn’t cancel her ability either, because she no longer even had control over her body.

Her will had been split into hundreds of pieces, looted by thousands of foreign souls.

The princess of Balance had now become chaos itself.

Seralya lifted her bloody and teary eyes. Her vision was blurred. She saw Cassian, still sitting in his calm, expressionless stance before her.

Desperately, casting aside her pride, her princess status, her duty, she reached out a trembling, bloody hand toward her enemy, the boy who had reduced her to this state, and begged.

"H help..." she moaned, her voice hoarse. "I beg you... stop this. They are inside my head... They won’t shut up..."

Cassian sighed deeply. There was the disappointment of someone who hadn’t found the entertainment they expected on his face. Slowly, without rushing at all, he stood up.

"I hoped you’d last at least more than a minute," he said, looking down at Seralya. "You really are a disappointment, Princess."

Cassian walked toward Seralya, who was crawling before him, floundering in her own blood and tears, and stopped right in front of her. He didn’t bend down, he just looked.

His red eyes shone with a cruel understanding. He knew that pain. He knew those voices. He was born in this hell, raised in this hell.

"Confusing, isn’t it?" he asked in a soft, almost educational tone. "You don’t understand why you’re in so much pain. Or how you ended up like this..."

Cassian took that trembling, bloody, scale covered hand Seralya reached out to him in both of his own hands. As if holding something precious, he gently hid it between his two hands.

"But don’t worry," he said and smiled. This smile was more terrifying than all those demons in Seralya’s mind. "I am a merciful person! I will explain it to you. It is your right to know before you die."

Cassian squeezed Seralya’s hand a little tighter.

"Let me start by explaining the pain in your veins, that carnival in your mind," he whispered.

"I am not just an ’anomaly,’ Princess. I am a graveyard. I possess a curse!"

His eyes flashed.

"LILITH’S CURSE!"