Devouring Monarch: Rebirth of the Profane Phoenix

From the moment his monoliths entered the end of phase one, Asura felt lost.

He could not proceed, and the more he killed, the greater his cultivation grew while his monoliths remained silent, which caused more irritation.

"I have two hours before Celine will arrive."

While looking at his deeds, Asura shrugged his shoulders and unfurled his wings.

No matter how hard he thought here, he knew nothing would happen, so with a burst of dust and debris, he shot into the air and flew towards the cave. He would take a bath before she arrived, and while bathing, he would examine himself clearly.

***

He lowered himself into a blistering hot bath. The feeling of extreme heat was like a comforting tingle to him now. Asura leaned against the stone wall, swishing in the water, before closing his eyes.

The beautiful world of his soul seemed solemn, fractured. A huge crevice where his mind broke in the tower of death destroyed the beautiful landscape.

Asura approached the entrance, his hand tracing the smooth black gate, and pushed through. This was his place now. He was the only one able to fix things.

Now ready to face some facts.

"I hate this place."

Since Helliana reverted to a bird and the upper realm psycho, he tried to avoid entering the spirit palace. He felt powerless, and Asura didn\'t want to feel this way again. So he stopped entering.

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"The cracks remain, hidden by the light."

Asura traced the small cracks along each monolith from when he died, the energy pulsating from their gaps. A strange feeling welled up inside him.

"These monoliths do not answer my call."

He felt it—a subconscious feeling that reverberated in his mind. These monoliths should obey and submit to him, yet something stopped them. Asura realised that something was impeding his path forward.

"No matter how I feel or think. These monoliths will only guide me along someone else\'s desired path!"

Anger, resistance and desperation.

Asura felt that someone was toying with his entire life and world. This existence from the upper realms. A simple flick of their fingers and his body, like a puppet on strings, acted to complete their bidding without a clue.

"Hmmm? Here is..."

He found himself standing before the monoliths; these huge things changed his life and gave him the bloodlines that allowed him to break free of his powerless husk.

\'They don\'t feel like my enemy; rather, the monoliths themselves don\'t feel as if they belong to something else at all.\'

No, only one of them gave the eeriest of feelings.

The black monolith.

\'Does the key to my freedom linger in solving this mysterious feeling?\'

With each step towards the black monolith, Asura remembers Helliana, her actions, words and how she saved him many times.

"Wait..."

His body arrived at the entrance at the back of the monolith, a place where he knows Helliana spent millennia or longer waiting for the right time.

\'In all those years, are you telling me the Cult\'s creation didn\'t pollute her mind?\'

Lost in thought, his hands clenched tight.

Asura spent the longest time reliving the memories he shared with Brian and Helliana and realised something upon seeing a deep scar scratched into the inner wall, where Helliana must have been sleeping in the darkness.

A story, the view of this world from her eyes.

"Helliana knew and realised something wasn\'t right long ago!?"

Because the final words at the end of her story described many events leading up to the tower of death from her eyes.

—I have discovered something within the Phoenix Monolith that corrupts anything that comes into contact with it.

Asura seems to be subconsciously resisting that feeling and fighting back. However, many times, it influenced him to change his mind subtly and no longer seek an alternative path.

There were more scribbles and thoughts before the writing seemed to become hasty.

—I can only hope Asura one day feels something is wrong and checks inside my tomb. In order to set him free, I will carry most of this dark infection and end my life, but I don\'t know how to separate it from the monolith that seems to be part of Asura himself!

Did I ruin Asura\'s life by having him activate the monoliths, fusing him to these things and changing the man I\'ve grown to love?

Some time between the messages passes as if she wrote her thoughts in a rush.

—Time is on my side!

An enemy from the upper realm attacked Asura—they fractured the monoliths! I can take most of this vile infection.

With my death, I will cleanse the taint that tries to alter my actions to trap my beloved man, along with the source of the distortion.

Her handwriting became messy, and small cracks from the damage destroyed several lines except the final three, which caused Asura\'s eyes to widen. A flood of emotions flowed into his chest.

Asura!

The Soul Shards Are a Trap!

I will return one day, born again, only to love and support you!

Forgive me, it\'s my fault! The mutation was because I entered while dying full of corruption!

While he read her message over and over, tracing his fingertips across the messy letters, her desperation for the last messages seemed to have her blood staining them.

\'These monoliths are mine; the bloodlines are mine, but this control tower forcing me to obey its will silently?\'

"It can vanish. I will destroy it."

The moment his words sounded, the spirit palace trembled, debris and rocks dropping around him like he angered something. However, this let Asura know he was on the right path! This was the correct choice for true freedom.

He didn\'t believe that Azoth, Auros, or Sura had any connection to this consciousness. No, this reeked of upper-realm bullshit!

With his hand pressed against the inner control panel of the monolith, Asura focused his entire Animus, a swirling hurricane of magic flowing through his body like an ocean tide ebbing and flowing from his abdomen to his palm, leaving only the most powerful black flames.

Those flames compressed into a small orb of destructive fire.

"You should not take this path. Asura Fenix."

Asura felt a presence behind him suddenly, the voice deep and creating pressure upon his head as if able to change his thoughts.

However, he did not turn nor stop his surging fire; instead, closing his eyes and gritted his teeth, dragging all available Animus while condensing the ball of flames until it reached his limit to manage.

"I take it you are the fifth soul shard? Sorry, but I cannot obey that order."

—Destra Flare!

"I have already made my choice. It\'s not like I can do much now."

The dark ball of flame seemed to gobble up the world itself, appearing the size of a soccer ball, while Asura could feel his body, even in this state, ready to be torn apart.

\'Focus!\'

In a desperate moment, the final fraction of Animus in his body gathered in his right palm, flooding out the final drops to ensure he brought this world to a fiery end.

A beam of condensed flame burst from his palm, the heat and force tearing the flesh as the black ray shot towards the control system of the black monolith, vaporising anything in its path.

BOOM!

A sharp crack of stone rang in Asura\'s ears, and the world became darkness. His ears rang with a constant howl while feeling the intense force from the beam still being shot from his burning palm.

\'Was I successful? No, did I fail?\'

Pain. That was his answer.

Every part of his body burned, flesh peeling away as his soul lay injured on the floor. In a serene moment of silence, Asura could finally see.

All around him lay the broken world of the monoliths, cracked in half. The moment Asura focused on the broken fragments of black stone, his body slammed to the ground, his energy spent and his strength gone.

On their hands and knees, he looked towards the black monolith, its beautiful obelisk cracked and crumbled, revealing a strange rune that hovered, wrapped in chains, a pair of hearts etched with runes and strange markings, one white and the other black.

The source of his two bloodlines!

"You ungrateful insect! Her holiness allowed a lower being like you the chance to become a god!"

Before Asura could address the elderly voice, an impact smashed into his chest before sending his body flying into the castle walls like a comet.

Crash!

"Can you feel her holiness anger?! You will fall!"

The voice belonged to a man with a scowling face, a dark grey beard, and dark eyes that seemed to gaze into his soul. Yet this elderly figure stood without a single blemish on his perfect skin.

"As the Patriarch of the Phoenix Order created by your family\'s ancestors! I COMMAND THEE, KNEEL!"

With a flick of his hand, Asura felt invisible chains wrap around his arms and legs before holding him against the wall, crushing his body against a stone. He struggled but could not break them, which made the old man cackle like a madman.

"HAHAHAAHAH, look at yourself, boy. Do you really think you are worthy of challenging the Upper Realm? To become the true heir? We let those pathetic lesser souls confuse you because WE are still alive and waiting. Only a small piece of my soul is inside you. You are merely a fledgling, a disgusting rat with no power in this world."

He watched as the old man stepped closer, his beard stroking with each step. The words and realisation caused Asura\'s mind to enter shock; this old man called Auros, Azoth, Sura, and himself nothing because they were from the lower world.

"The slut able to resist us has vanished from your sea of consciousness, and those rats died when you bound them to the monoliths. Now, you are powerless to resist us! I have already contacted my true soul. So have the other three! Hahaha! Your world, Your Kingdom, Your family and Your Lovers will ALL die!"

This old man now approached and held out his wrinkled palm.

"So give up, let me take over your body. I will make sure they are all happy."

"Tsk!"

"Well, except that disgusting dragon and devil, I will kill them when I take control. Whoops! So what will it be? Submit to me, or I will forcibly take over!"

Asura couldn\'t stop the old man now, feeling him forcibly pressing his consciousness. His body ached from the terrible injuries while fighting this force to enter his mind.

\'Was my attempt pointless? I destroyed the source of corruption, but my past selves tricked the cultivation technique. Or did the upper realm cult get to them?\'

A thought suddenly entered his mind, which made his heart race.

\'The last thing Helliana wrote was Soul Shards were a trap! Then Helliana must have taken her own life and eradicated most of her soul to set herself free and give him a clue!?\'