DKIE CH95: Got a Handle On It

Luka flagged down a large black van. When the driver learned they were going to the place with the most frequent natural disasters recently, his brow furrowed deeply.

“I heard a meteorite fell nearby not long ago. Are you young people risking your lives just to shoot a video for money?”

Luka interrupted, “Are you going or not?”

The driver: “It’ll cost extra.”

Luka was in a hurry and hadn’t exchanged any foreign currency. Fortunately, the driver was also from his home country and didn’t refuse when he offered triple the price in their native currency.

The twenty-two-kilometer journey was accompanied only by a DJ.

Rio: “Change the song.”

He wanted to hear “Far in the East, There is a Dragon.”

As the familiar melody filled the car, Luka rolled down the window and stuck his hand out. A large amount of ash floated in the air.

The ash was exceptionally cold to the touch, like a dense cluster of needles.

Quill rubbed his palm for him. “There’s the aura of the undead in it. Try not to touch it.”

The driver finally stopped the van in a small town. He wasn’t willing to go any further, not even for more money.

Luka’s group got out and walked for some distance.

Some of the islanders had already evacuated. Those who were still willing to stay were either there to chase internet fame, or were the old, weak, sick, and disabled who couldn’t bear to part with their property. Everyone stayed behind closed doors. The once-lively tourist town now looked like a ghost town, with some areas charred black, as if they had been through a fire.

The sun and moon were obscured, the smell of dead fish from the coast wafted over, and the ground’s surface was as thin as a layer of paper, looking as if it would collapse at any moment.

The relaxed atmosphere from before boarding the plane was completely gone.

Everyone put away their smiles. The Saint said to Luka and Quill, “Later, we’ll hold off the Demon King. You two find a way to stop the altar.”

The Demon King, with no other choice, had descended in person, while they were only here with a portion of their divine sense. They had to fight together.

Luka: “Okay.”

Destroying the altar might be quite difficult; they would have to try to cleverly destroy the magic inscriptions on it.

Quill suddenly said, “Luka, two o’clock direction.”

With his divine sense inconvenient to use, Luka could only vaguely see the mountain peak a thousand meters away, where the smoke and dust were particularly thick.

The crimson sky and the black energy below repelled each other, creating a spectacular natural landscape.

Using a translation app, Luka managed to communicate with a passerby who was filming a video. He quickly returned and said, “The locals say a meteorite did fall recently. Since then, the sky has been red.”

The Saint, undoubtedly the most knowledgeable one present, said, “The world’s will is protecting itself, trying to bring down natural disasters to snuff out the root of the trouble.”

This protection was undoubtedly effective; at least it had held on until they arrived.

But Luka’s expression changed.

When he spoke again, his tone was strange. “Can I understand it as this plane tried to kill the Demon King with a meteorite, or smash the altar, and it had some effect?”

The Saint nodded.

The altar couldn’t be too far from the world’s origin and had to be placed there for a while. The Demon King couldn’t leave it unguarded, so they would have to endure this damage.

Luka fell into deep thought.

That familiar feeling was back, like he had overlooked something. The last time he felt this way… was less than twenty-four hours ago.

Back then, he had forgotten to consider the radiation when entering the airport.

He couldn’t have been struck by lightning and gotten a shrunken cerebellum at such a young age, could he?

“Demon King, natural disaster…”

Sparse daylight fell on his eyelashes. Just as Quill was about to say something, Luka eliminated the first two words and focused on the last one: meteorite.

Suddenly, he clapped his hands hard, his eyelashes trembling. “Boulder City!”

The moment those three words were spoken, the Saint was stunned.

Then, everyone seemed to have thought of something.

Luka looked at Quill. “During the auction at the Firestone Pavilion, didn’t you tell me about it?”

A long time ago, two giant blood-red stones fell from the sky. Boulder City was built on the foundation of these stones, and the leftover material was used to build the Pavilion of Rare Treasures.

That meant the original temperature of the stones’ surface was only suppressed by magic runes; the energy of the stones themselves was still there.

Perhaps the Saint-Demon Continent had faced a similar crisis in the past. Whatever happened then, it could be of great use now.

Once unsealed, this stone would be a massive weapon.

Luka: “Two Boulders. If we move one here, it could be useful if dropped at a critical moment.”

A meteorite from the sky to smash his old man. Just thinking about it made him feel great.

For Luka, these were all new memories, but for the natives of the Saint-Demon Continent, they were so commonplace they had almost forgotten them, so it was naturally difficult to connect them to the history of Boulder City.

The Saint said with admiration and praise, “That is indeed a good idea.”

The question was who would do it.

The round trip would consume a huge amount of energy and require extremely strong spatial abilities to be able to locate the current coordinates upon return.

The Saint gave the answer in a second. “I…”

“Have a safe trip” was already on everyone’s lips.

The Saint: “I’ll have the ferret go.”

The two had a special blood contract. Even on different planes, they could communicate simply through divine sense.

“…”

Luka was surprised. “Even trickier than me.”

What a clever angle.

The ferret could represent the Saint and have the Lord of Boulder City carry out the order. It was also skilled in spatial magic, making it a perfect fit.

The Saint glanced at Quill不動聲色 (without showing any emotion).

The latter’s movements seemed casual, but he was rapidly creating an animal puppet for the ferret to use upon landing.

As the puppet took its initial shape, the Saint once again produced two chess pieces out of thin air.

One black, one white. They were different from the ones he had just given Quill for materials. The Elf King looked at the black and white pieces with a thoughtful expression.

Luka was close enough to clearly detect an aura of slaughter within the pieces.

But now, the chess pieces that could be used as weapons became little x and little y.

Commonly known as coordinates.

They simultaneously shot towards the sky and lodged themselves in a spatial rift. During this, the Saint’s divine sense seemed to disappear for a moment, and some cold sweat appeared on his usually calm and gentle face.

Even with a blood contract, cross-planar communication was still extremely difficult.

When the chess pieces successfully lodged in the spatial rift, the Saint seemed to feel something was off. The vibration from one direction was particularly strong.

At this moment, Quill also suddenly looked towards a certain direction in the distant mountain forest, where the roars of the undead could be faintly heard.

His gaze fixed, and he said, “It seems to be to the south.”

The Saint also nodded at this time.

Leaving the coordinates, he said, “Let’s finalize the strategic deployment. We’ll go find the Demon King first.”

The message had been sent. Whether the ferret could successfully make it over was still unknown; anything could happen during a cross-planar journey.

They still had to fight, they couldn’t just wait.

Following their earlier discovery, the team headed towards the dense vegetation to the south.

This island was mainly composed of mountains and hills. The further they went, the more abnormal the climate became.

Quill’s tone became slightly heavy. “The aura of the undead is getting stronger.”

There were still unextinguished forest fires in the distance, and the path was littered with strange broken stones, suspected to be remnants of the meteorite fall. After walking in a circle, they seemed to have encountered a ghost wall.

The Elf King craned his neck and chirped a few times. The birds in the forest also chirped back twice.

After communicating, the Elf King said, “We’re walking in circles.”

Amid everyone’s surprised gazes, he said very calmly, “Bird language is pretty much the same across all planes.”

The Elven race itself had the ability to communicate with nature.

Learning their lesson, everyone slowed their pace. Luka had the strongest spatial sense. When he reached a certain spot, he suddenly stopped and closed his eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, his pupils were tinged with red, and he silently recited an incantation.

Nothing happened.

Luka’s steps became slower and slower. In the chaotic airflow, the focus of his pupils strangely dispersed, the patterns seeming to be branded on all the surrounding flowers and trees.

Every place near a spatial rift was examined multiple times. The birds on the branches took flight under the uncomfortable sense of invasion.

Luka was extremely patient, constantly repeating his previous actions.

Until the space finally changed. He grabbed at the void, and a strange sound of tearing plastic film was heard.

It continued in wisps for about a quarter of an hour, and the world before them suddenly changed.

The illusion was completely broken, and a crimson light poured out like a rainbow.

The crimson sky was so dazzling that the sun couldn’t be seen. The long-missing Demon King was high above, his long hair loose, one arm completely solidified from black energy.

His arrogant and disdainful temperament had not changed from beginning to end.

The altar was about a thousand meters away from him, covered with the remains of the latest sacrifices. Directly below it, there was a fissure in the ground about ten thousand fathoms deep, and a mixture of multi-colored substances was being sucked up by the altar.

This was the first time Luka had glimpsed the shape of the world’s origin, and it was nothing short of shocking.

It somewhat resembled the five Platonic solids, corresponding to different elemental forces.

The Demon King glanced down, his emotions not showing much change, but anyone who knew him slightly could sense his surprise from the subtle movements of his body.

For the Demon King, it wasn’t surprising that they could find him, but they had come too quickly.

He looked at his long-time adversary.

He had overlooked what was right under his nose. Iliad wouldn’t have thought so quickly to check other planes. The aura of the chess piece had clearly been suppressed, so how did they locate him so fast?

The Saint: “Even to this day, you still underestimate him.”

The moment his voice fell, the Demon King saw the large words Luka had left in mid-air with magic:

Mandarin Duck Jade Pendant [WhiteChrysanthemum.jpg].

The flower was drawn exquisitely.

The Demon King’s pupils finally moved.

Having successfully staged a dramatic realization for the other party, the moment Luka lowered his eyes, several figures attacked simultaneously.

Not a moment to lose!

The moment he took off, Luka didn’t even look at the Demon King’s side. Following the previous arrangement, he went straight for the altar.

Behind him, the Elf King attacked from a distance. After the Saint and the Dragon Clan got close, Rio immediately stirred up a hurricane, and Berlanie’s frost breath, coordinated with Grover’s freeze, hindered the Demon King’s movements.

The Demon King, having descended in his true form, dealt with the group attack with ease.

In the evenly matched battle, a lock of his blood-red, waterfall-like hair began to turn white.

The Saint didn’t have this problem; the puppet’s hair was silver-white to begin with. However, from the cracks on his neck, it was clear that the backlash from a single exchange was not light.

Unlike the great war with the Holy Court, suppressed by the plane, the fluctuations from their battle this time were much smaller.

After only three or four rounds of combat, each of them became weak.

The altar continued to greedily absorb the world’s origin.

Scorching magical attacks continuously stacked into heat waves, rolling towards the altar one after another.

Despite this level of attack, the altar still stood firm.

Luka’s side was progressing slowly, like scratching an itch through a boot.

Quill was holding back the skeletons on the altar, but neither of them could get any closer to the altar itself. They could only try to destroy it with brute force from a distance.

“This is a bit troublesome,” Luka said to Quill.

The altar’s temperature was hot on the outside and cold on the inside. Getting too close required casting a protective spell. Their current magic output was very limited. No wonder the Demon King had kept his distance from the altar earlier.

The world’s origin was being devoured bit by bit. This whole process would bless the Demon King, replenishing his rapidly draining life force.

Quill said coldly, “The altar is feeding him back.”

It looked like a siege, but it was actually a battle of attrition.

The Demon King only needed to stall for time.

Luka cursed “damn it” with genuine feeling. Was this altar the grandson of the Tree of Life? They both loved to play the supply game.

Regaining the upper hand, a smile returned to the Demon King’s face. “With only a portion of your divine sense, you think you can stop me?”

While dealing with the siege, he even thoughtfully offered a plan. “If one of you is willing to self-destruct, there might be a chance. But… are you willing to suffer the loss of your divine sense?”

Amidst the clash of magic, the Demon King looked at the Saint with a faint smile.

The Saint said nothing. With a raise of his palm, countless black and white intertwined chess pieces converged in the air to form a longsword.

Actually, the Demon King didn’t know what the Saint’s weapon was. In their past battles, the other party mostly used spells.

Who would have thought it was a sword made of chess pieces.

So was his weapon the sword, or the chess pieces?

The Demon King’s smile completely vanished. He seemed to realize his line of thought had been skewed by Luka, often leading to pointless thinking.

“No.” Subconsciously, his attention was drawn to the sword. This was a natural crisis warning for a strong person.

The Demon King immediately took a closer look and belatedly noticed a notch on the sword’s blade.

He couldn’t help but think of the chess piece that had wounded him. If that was part of the other’s flying sword, it was very likely…

Before he could finish his thought, a powerful sword energy erupted from within his body.

The Demon King retreated several steps, blood spurting from his spine. His arrogant aura weakened considerably. The sword energy raged within him, constantly causing destruction.

“You did it on purpose,” the Demon King said, his face grim.

Knowing he would suppress the chess piece’s aura, which in turn concealed the sword energy’s presence. This old sly bastard!

The Saint pressed his advantage. The Elf King and the Dragon Clan switched positions in a second, appearing behind him and attacking the bloody hole.

Blood gushed out, and half a wing was almost a tattered, broken kite.

But it was the Saint who frowned first.

The altar’s absorption was speeding up, and the Demon King’s recovery speed was faster than imagined.

In this process, the altar’s own power was also growing stronger, which would increase the difficulty for Luka to interrupt it.

When he diverted his attention to check on Luka’s situation, he was almost stunned.

Luka had disappeared at some point, leaving only Quill to hold back the altar alone.

Looking around, he saw the latter darting high and low, holding up his arm, doing something unknown. He even seemed to be trying to repair some broken lines on the ground with magic.

After a lot of fussing, Luka finally stopped at the edge of a giant rock on the mountain peak.

From the high ground, a familiar voice came—

“Family, I’m Luka, I’m awake.”

“During the time I was in a coma, I dreamed my dad was here, so I came to fulfill my vow as soon as I could.”

The two groups fighting in the distance both paused for a moment.

Having successfully set up a live broadcast signal, Luka quickly and emotionally connected with his fans.

In modern society, news travels fastest. Under the celebrity effect, any small movement seems to be known by the whole world the next second.

Less than a minute after Luka started his broadcast, his phone began to vibrate continuously.

Push notifications popped up like crazy, with all sorts of headlines bombarding him—

“Luka is awake?”, “Is it an internet celebrity’s malicious imitation or the real person? Vegetative patient comes back from the dead!”, “Anniversary event brings back the soul”… abstract headlines that seemed AI-generated.

But this also represented one fact: the topic was already trending like crazy.

Along with the trending topic came the number of viewers in the live stream, soaring by the tens of thousands, and the continuous influx of faith power.

【Current viewers: 30,000】
【Current viewers: 50,000】
【Current viewers: 70,000】
…

Suddenly remembering today’s date, Luka’s heart surged. Great, it’s the weekend, even the students are home from school. We’re saved!

Combining miracle and reversal, the effect Luka brought just by waking up was incredibly shocking, and the feedback was mostly positive.

The faith power was still pouring in, and his body, which had felt drained, was filled with hot blood again!

Allowing time for public opinion to ferment further, Luka briefly exited the live stream.

His gaze met the Demon King’s cold and unfriendly one from across the distance. The ball of light gathering in his pale palm grew into a small sun visible to the naked eye.

“Fans are the best feedback, a great buff!”

So it’s a battle of supplies? Let’s both get a mid-battle top-up.

Under the operation of the Traction Method, the golden light flowed even more intensely. Luka launched his truth with a thwack.

With a loud boom.

The altar shook violently right under the Demon King’s nose.

Dozens of the skeletons on top were shattered, making it more convenient for Quill to control.

Never mind the enemy, even his allies were shocked.

To use the Saint’s viewpoint, the ghost wall in the forest wasn’t a real ghost wall; the one before them was.

Changing planes doesn’t change Luka’s fans.

“Luka’s fans are eternal gods,” Luka muttered to himself, not sure what he was so fired up about.

The altar was already teetering, but it wasn’t enough!

He opened the live stream again, his eyes red:

“Family, the signal was bad just now. I miss you all too…”

“As you all know, I’ve had no parents or relatives since I was a child. In my most difficult times, only my fans were willing to believe in me…”

No parents?

The Elf King glanced at the Demon King opposite, who was affected by the attack on the altar, and thought to himself, it’s not that he lost them as a child, he lost them as an adult.

…More accurately, it was happening in the present tense.

Luka was still vividly describing his tragic life story.

Countless messages of “Brother, don’t cry,” “Brother, we’re always here,” “You’re the best” flashed across the screen.

He received even more emotional feedback.

In the distance, the Demon King watched as Luka made a heart sign with one hand and, with his left hand behind his back, prepared a second bomb, going from weak to full of life in three seconds.

Even after exiting the live stream, Luka’s eyes were still red.

As a single crystal tear fell, he stood high on the edge of the rock and coldly bombarded the altar.

“…”

This contrast was difficult to describe with words. Fighting with Luka, not swearing was definitely a testament to one’s civility.

While provoking the Demon King, he never stopped firing.

With Luka’s current strength, he could perfectly avoid the weakness period caused by using the Traction Method, plus the supplement of faith power.

“I’ve finally gone from a cannon to a machine gun.”

Luka thought with immense pride. In the future, his fans could add another line to their resumes: Saved the world with their idol!

Truly, fans follow their idol.

On the other side, Quill was controlling the skeletons on the altar. With the writhing skeletons suppressed, he moved his index finger and singled out one skeleton emitting black energy.

Compared to its surroundings, this skeleton was clearly filled with much more resentment.

“Luka,” Quill suddenly said, “your grandmother.”

Luka was astonished. He could recognize a piece of the family portrait even from this?

Quill: “Looking at the bone structure.”

He was very familiar with Luka’s bone structure. Direct bloodlines of the Demon Clan had commonalities.

The other aspect was identifying the aura. Because he loved him, he could recognize his family even if they were turned to ash.

“…”

Excerpt from the World’s Will’s Diary:

Down below, they’re fighting. Someone’s playing chess, someone’s counting to eight in their head, someone’s live-streaming, someone’s idly wondering how to donate, and someone else is studying another family’s bones.

@The one who wants to sacrifice the world’s origin, you deserve it.

Demon King: [Angry][Angry][Angry]

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