TBR CH37 [Arc 2]

Chapter 37: Tarksius

The Dark God, Tarksius, slowly descended the steps made of pure gold. Behind him, the youth who had just been sharing a tender moment with him, surrounded by gold, silver, and jewels, had a flicker of confusion and disappointment in his eyes.

But the Dark God had always done as he pleased. It wasn’t strange for him to suddenly withdraw from a moment of warmth.

I must be prepared for the slow progress of the conquest, he thought. I must have patience.

He wouldn’t be as impatient as some other guys.

The young Holy Son, Noah, calculated in his heart. At least, reaching this step had been smooth enough.

He had successfully piqued the Dark God’s interest, been rescued by him at just the right moment like a damsel in distress, and under “coincidental circumstances,” had stayed in the Dark God’s palace, spending day and night together, enjoying the ambiguity and affection.

Under the influence of the harem aura, he had no doubt about his own beauty and charm.

And of course, he had to maintain his persona. As the Holy Son of the Church of Light, he was gentle, pure, and beautiful, enough to arouse the deepest protective instincts in any race, becoming the light in the depths of their hearts.

The Dark God had almost fallen in love with him. He definitely would.

The fragrance of success was intoxicating. Noah swirled the wine in his glass and didn’t think much more of it.

Until a beam of pure black magic suddenly pierced through his heart.

A wine glass carved from a large piece of pure crystal rolled onto the floor. The crimson liquid spilled out, looking like fresh blood on the Holy Son, as red as the blood gushing from his heart.

The Holy Son reached out to clutch his heart, his eyes filled with disbelief. He stared intently at the god who was gradually walking towards him, the Dark God, Tarksius.

His gold-threaded boots tapped against the floor tiles, one sound after another. A pair of dark red eyes looked down on him, like dried bloodstains.

After a long moment, he finally remarked with a sigh, “This looks better.”

Before losing consciousness, Noah barely managed to activate the life-saving pendant given to him by the Church of Light.

The last thing he saw, blurry and indistinct, was the Dark God before him seeming to want to deliver a final blow, but then suddenly retracting his hand as if he couldn’t bear something.

Flames were quenched in Tarksius’s dark red pupils, which were now painfully torn in two.

Wh-what on earth happened?

Noah tried to make sense of the situation, but to no avail.

With the system’s alarm blaring in his mind, Noah’s figure gradually disappeared from the Dark God’s temple.

And far away, at the Church of Light, they were about to receive the bad news of the Holy Son’s grave injuries and faint breath.

A wave was about to rise from this.

Tarksius was a deity of this world, on par with the God of Light, wielding all the power of darkness.

In terms of raw power, he was not inferior to the God of Light, and even had a slight upper hand. But the God of Light could absorb the power of faith offered by his believers, so the two gods were considered evenly matched and wouldn’t bother to clash head-on.

Two months ago, he had chanced upon the Holy Son of the Holy See in distress, rescued the stunningly beautiful youth, and allowed him to enter his own dark temple.

The Holy Son, Noah, had expressed his immense gratitude and wanted to stay to repay his kindness.

And he had agreed.

Before the incident, Tarksius had suddenly sensed an abnormal fluctuation of magical power in the dark temple.

At that moment, the hall was resplendent. The incomparably beautiful youth had a watery mist in his eyes, looking at him as if playing hard to get.

Under such a flawless appearance, the Dark God felt a strong emotion welling up from the depths of his heart. It was a strange emotion that dominated his actions with an irresistible force, inducing him to dote on the person before him.

Some people might call this love. But even if it disguised itself as love, Tarksius could still feel something strange. He tried to fight against this force, but as soon as he had a little success, he would suddenly lose the ability to think under the Holy Son’s gaze.

He tried his best to delay this process, but…

If this continued, he knew he would fall in love with Noah.

Tarksius was not always clear about what was wrong. On the contrary, most of the time, his every move was like being in a fog. It seemed he couldn’t think deeply about anything.

He could only be aware that the youth before him had so many beautiful qualities, and a kindness and light like a beam of light. Even if he suppressed the speed of his heart’s stirring, the Dark God could not control the direction of things.

Until in a side hall, on a magnificent stone table paved with a single block of marble, the Dark God found a book.

A strange book with a black cover. The abnormal magical fluctuation came from it.

This was somewhat interesting.

It took Tarksius about half an hour to finish reading the black book.

As he read, his mind cleared up bit by bit. The emotion that had been unquestionably dominating him and disguising itself as love was now gradually stripped away from the depths of his heart.

The Dark God’s slender fingers held the last page, his dark red eyes clear, yet terrifyingly cold.

Harem aura, system, transmigrator…

Being controlled, being deceived, sharing thoughts, power, and authority with a liar.

The World Consciousness had written a plea for help in ink at the end of the book. Tarksius stared at the page for a while, then inexplicably showed an inscrutable smile.

“Wait a moment,” the evil god’s fine black hair fell. Frost and thunder seemed to be in the depths of his dark red eyes. Although he was smiling, his expression did not change much.

The World Consciousness immediately realized something was wrong, but the Dark God didn’t wait for it to write new words and directly closed the book.

He had an uncontrollable power, as if from an abyss shrouded in the deepest malice.

He walked towards the main hall.

The black book could do nothing. It had no time to be angry and flapped its pages to follow behind Tarksius. The World Consciousness carefully thought about its communication process with the Dark God using words.

—The Child of Luck is using an aura to gain blind love. You must stop him.

The Dark God raised his eyes, casual yet dangerous. “Of course.”

—But you have to pretend first, you can’t let him find out, otherwise I won’t have time to deal with the system.

Although Tarksius didn’t speak, he looked down at it with a hint of disgust in his eyes. His expression was obscure, but he neither agreed nor objected.

Was he just not going to…

The black book finally realized that it was talking to the Dark God whom the system had identified as the biggest villain in this world. Those settings of yearning for gentleness and kindness were all forcibly added by the harem system to create an opportunity for redemption.

The real Dark God didn’t care if this world would be destroyed. Of course, he cared even less about its dispute with the system, or the fate of other worlds.

The god just calmly walked to the golden palace, and then, with a slight raise of his hand, came the power representing destruction and annihilation.

This power directly pierced through the Holy Son’s chest.

But it was not a fatal blow. The Holy Son, Noah, looked at him in disbelief, while Tarksius just frowned slightly, about to try another attack on him.

This was too disastrous.

The black book had never thought things would develop to such a terrible state in just a few breaths. It was about to go crazy. It frantically thought about what it could do now, and finally, in a moment of desperation, it withdrew its power again, allowing the control of the harem aura to sweep over the Dark God’s mind once more.

This was not an easy task. Chaotic power intertwined in Tarksius’s eyes. He tried his best to break free from the control, but the harem aura swept over him again.

In a trance, attacking the youth before him seemed to be an extremely intolerable thing. The Dark God couldn’t help but withdraw the next wave of magic impact he was about to launch.

It was at that moment that the youth was engulfed by a force of light and disappeared from the dark temple.

Good, now it was too late even if he wanted to kill him.

Tarksius reached out a hand and gently tapped his temple. Even though two different thoughts were clashing in his skull at this moment, causing him a sharp pain like lightning striking, it did not change his expression much.

Once he gained clarity and freedom, the re-spreading confusion was only for a moment before it was suppressed by the Dark God’s rampant power.

The god looked indifferently at the black book floating behind him.

He didn’t ask why. The other party had its own position, although he hated the feeling of being controlled.

However, at this time, the World Consciousness should also understand that they needed to have another good talk.

“This won’t work,” the black book once again showed such a line of words. Since they started discussing the deal, this was the third time it had said so.

It finally realized that the Demon Lord of the previous world was a model of order. The one before it was the representative of chaotic darkness. Using the stability of the world and saving others as reasons to persuade him to agree to help was simply meaningless.

He didn’t even care about the huge waves that killing the Holy Son of Light would cause.

This point alone was enough to make the Heavenly Dao feel troubled.

The progress in the previous world had been smooth, but it had spent a lot of effort to find the new world selected by the system. At this time, the progress was already more than halfway through. The Holy Son had even started to conquer the Dark God. For the system, this was also a good development.

Hoping Tarksius would pretend was so the system wouldn’t find out too early and confront it before it was ready. But at this time, the Dark God’s sudden attack on the Holy Son had pushed the situation to a difficult point.

Presumably, the system was also terrified and confused at this moment.

If not for… in the previous world, most of the system’s power had been stripped away, and it was already at the end of its rope, in urgent need of finding a new world to recuperate. With its cunning, it should have already run away.

This world, for regrouping, was too important for the system. It was still observing for the time being. In addition, the Dark God’s final performance was too direct and clearly went against the Heavenly Dao’s ideas, which somewhat cleared him of suspicion.

Now, the World Consciousness had to come up with a reasonable explanation for the Dark God’s abnormality.

…Before that, it had to persuade the Dark God first.

Tarksius looked at the black book, which was the incarnation of the World Consciousness, noncommittally. He was actually not as unwilling to cooperate as the other party imagined. After all, for him, personally killing the existence that had confused his will was also his wish.

But the method was still worth discussing.

Wasn’t the point of letting the Holy Son’s conquest targets discover his true face to return the lost luck to the world? The Dark God thought with great regret, then why not just kill those unlucky guys directly.

Dead people can’t provide luck.

Unfortunately, his proposals were all rejected. The ink marks that the Heavenly Dao drew on the paper seemed a little hysterical. It desperately wrote a line of words, then crossed it out itself.

The line of words was: Is there a less deranged way to handle this?

Tarksius, however, said softly, “I was thinking, can you…”

The pages of the book trembled alertly, seeming very wary of the suggestion the Dark God was about to make. However, he unhurriedly said the second half of the sentence: “Can you control the torrent of time?”

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