East Road Quest

Chapter 37: Shackles and Chains

Above the Alvito Valley was a barren wasteland, with only sparse tufts of grass and devoid of any signs of life’s vigor.

As Jade reached the top of the valley, his thigh muscles felt as if they were paralyzed. The boy was quite light, but not weightless, and the slope was challenging enough to ascend even without the burden of carrying anything. The fatigue from being chased around in the caves still lingered.

Finding a suitable rock, Jade laid the boy down in its shadow and sat beside him.

“The color of his hair is truly remarkable. Ordinary red hair would seem bleached in comparison.”

Under the sunlight, the boy’s face was unscathed and clean, his limbs looked like those of a prince who had never known hardship.

He seemed like an ordinary human boy. There were no features that would suggest he was an angel. No white wings, no holy halo…

According to ancient scriptures and legends, angels appear accompanied by light, wind, and flames, and when they depart, thunder strikes from the heavens. However, the light came from the shackles and chains the boy wore, and instead of flames or thunder, curses were hurled.

Curiosity led Jade to touch the chains. He pulled, but unlike before, they did not stretch. They were cold to the touch, even under the sun, and light as wood, yet the power they had shown earlier could penetrate stone.

It was clear they were not crafted by human hands.

“If these are indeed the Umparulton chains made by dwarves, then I must prepare to meet all the races Father Daniel spoke of in his stories, which I thought were mere metaphors and allegories.”

Jade did not wish to stay here. It was dangerous to be in the middle of a desert without water or food, just as it was dangerous to be near the demons of the desert and the bodies of thieves left in the Alvito Valley.

But he had no confidence to move out of the shade either. The sun was still strong, leaning towards the west, and carrying the boy any further would lead to dehydration and death within half an hour.

“Just wait a little longer for the sun to set. The boy might wake up before then. Maybe then I can get some help,” Jade thought as he looked down at the boy and then shook his head.

“What am I expecting from a kid who declared he’d kill me outright?”

There wasn’t a spot on his body that didn’t ache. Touching his neck, where the wounds still seemed fresh, he winced and withdrew his hand.

“The wounds will fester. I need to find proper treatment…”

As he worried, a loud bang erupted without warning.

Jade sprang to his feet and surveyed the surroundings. About two hundred paces away, a monster had burst through the ground.

It resembled a monkey standing on two legs, with arms long enough to reach the ground. It wasn’t as grotesquely bizarre as the two creatures he had encountered the day before, but its size was the issue—it was three times larger than Jade.

Its black body looked as hard as rock, with no fur except for a yellowish mane running down its spine. Upon closer inspection, it had mouths on its forehead and belly. Which one was for eating, he couldn’t know until he was devoured.

After entering the red desert, Jade’s understanding of demons had been shaken. To him, a demon was an entity that dwelled in the human heart, inciting evil deeds, like Mitchel, who had driven Jade into a mental panic three years ago!

As the creature began to charge on all fours, Jade was paralyzed with fear. He had believed that no matter how bizarre the external form, it couldn’t instill fear; true fear came from within… His arrogant confidence shattered instantly.

“The two monsters I met yesterday didn’t scare me because I was brave, but because I was only scared enough to withstand them.”

In haste, Jade pulled out a book from his bosom.

The monkey-like monster covered the two hundred paces in mere seconds.

Jade flipped to the page with the verse to annihilate dark demons. Perhaps he found the page faster than he ever had in three years of practice. But the monster was faster still.

Convinced he was about to die, Jade stretched out his hand in the direction of the approaching monster’s face.

The palm, just beginning to emit the light of annihilation, touched the monster’s nose.

Jade was thrown backward. Whether it was the impact of the monster’s charge or the collision with the light of annihilation that sent him flying, he couldn’t tell.

He rolled several times on the dirt ground. When he looked up, the dust kicked up by the monster obscured his vision.

Through the hazy dust, the monster, touched by the light of annihilation, stood frozen. Soon, it collapsed forward with a deflating sound.

A white flame began at the monkey-like face, traveled down the neck and back, and consumed everything but the bones. Even the remaining bones soon disintegrated.

“Is it over?”

The shock of the fall caught up with him.

Jade clutched his sore shoulder, then recoiled in surprise. His shoulder joint had been dislocated. He pressed the protruding joint back into place, and for a moment, the sky turned yellow with pain.

“Good heavens, did my joint just pop back in? I’ve heard people talk about dislocated shoulders, but they never mentioned the pain!”

Before Jade could catch his breath, another monster burst from the sand.

This time, it was a creature resembling a crab. Not just its pincers, but its entire body was that of a giant crab.

Then, a third monster emerged from another spot. This one resembled a frog with an exceptionally large mouth.

The crab-like monster charged at Jade first, making a loud noise with its steps. Unlike a crab, it didn’t walk sideways but charged straight ahead on ten legs.

“Stop, stop,” shouted the frog-like monster.

The crab-like creature halted with a screech, and the red sand on the ground shifted, covering its feet.

“Why?” asked the crab, shaking off the sand.

“We’re ordered to kill a guy named Jade, kill Jade. I got the orders directly from Yol, so I know, I know,” said the frog-like creature.

“I know. That’s why I’m trying to kill him.”

“What if he’s not Jade, not Jade?”

“I saw him use light magic. Yol said Jade would have a demon-annihilating weapon and to kill him on sight.”

“Not every light mage is Jade, is Jade.”

“So what? If he’s not, we’ll just eat him!”

“If we eat him without knowing if he’s Jade, we won’t know if we’ve completed our orders to kill Jade, to kill Jade.”

The crab-like monster flicked its antennae-like eyes back and forth and said, “That’s true.”

“Besides, there are two of them there, two of them. We don’t know which one is Jade, so we must check before killing, before killing.”

For some reason, the frog-like creature repeated everything twice and pointed behind Jade. Turning around, he saw the boy who had been lying in the rock’s shadow was now awake and sitting up.

“Which one is Jade, is Jade?” asked the frog-like creature with the large mouth.

Jade held out his hand with the dark annihilation verse open but did not read it. Facing two creatures at once was impossible.

As Jade remained silent, the boy asked, “What if he’s Jade, and what if he’s not?”

“If he’s Jade, we kill him and report back. If not, we just eat him,” replied the crab-like demon.

“Hmm, I see,” said the boy.

He looked at Jade, who was still holding out his hand, and asked, “What are you doing?”

Jade, gasping for breath, couldn’t answer.

The boy realized on his own, “You know how to use light magic? Well, that must be how you unlocked my chains.”

With a smug retort, the boy shouted at the demons, “He’s Jade, alright.”

“Why would you say that?”

Jade exclaimed in surprise.

“To draw them out.”

The boy answered nonchalantly.

“Draw out? What?”

Suddenly, the ground began to rumble.

Monsters started emerging from the red desert sands. Jade counted up to five, but beyond that, the dusty haze made it impossible to count.

“Is Jade here?”

“It seems that is indeed Jade.”

The monsters appeared, each calling out his name.

“Is it Jade that Yol wants dead?”

“We will carry out Yol’s orders.”

“Kill him.”

With the monsters’ voices, the once-quiet desert became noisy.

The boy asked Jade with amusement, “You’re quite popular, aren’t you?”

Jade replied, terrified, “This isn’t what I wanted.”

“More importantly, who is Yol?”

“I don’t know.”

The boy chuckled and said, “Let’s deal with these creatures first, then we can talk.”

“Deal with them?”

“Yes, deal with them.”

“The demons?”

“It means to kill them. Don’t you know metaphors?”

“So, you can use the light of annihilation too?”

Jade asked.

At that moment, the boy forcefully pushed him down.

“Get down.”

A monster charged from behind Jade. It was so close that all Jade could see was its gaping mouth.

The boy punched the monster’s snout. Its mouth snapped shut, and its face plunged halfway into the dirt floor, showering hot soil and sand onto Jade’s face as he lay beside it.

The boy reached into the monster’s mouth and yanked out something. In his hand wriggled a black tongue, flailing like a snake. Following the direction of the writhing tongue, black blood sprayed upwards.

“I don’t know magic. But I’ve hardly seen anyone survive after being beheaded.”

The boy flung the extracted tongue aside and hurled the monster away. Its massive body soared high before crashing down later with a dull burst, its body bending at odd angles.

Suddenly, the sky darkened momentarily. Looking up, a boulder the size of a house was flying towards Jade’s head. It was the same rock that had briefly shaded them.

“Ah…”

Jade could do nothing but cover his head and lie down.

The boy caught the incoming boulder with one hand as if it were nothing and threw it back in the direction it came from. The four-armed monster that had thrown the rock was crushed beneath it, buried in the sand.

“You don’t throw what you can’t catch.”

The boy laughed.

The next moment, the surrounding monsters charged at them.

“Stay down. This is my first time using this weapon, so I might not control it well.”

As the boy extended his arms, chains rattled and lengthened.

He began to spin in place, creating a sandstorm. The wind was so strong that Jade, even if he wanted to, couldn’t stand up. He couldn’t even open his eyes.

The sound of chains piercing the air and the monsters’ screams filled the air. There were sounds of breaking and shattering.

When Jade briefly opened his eyes, he saw a chain passing over his head. A monster was impaled on the taut end of the chain.

The monster was flung into the air, then fell to the ground, bouncing off its fellow demons dozens of times. Eventually, it was nothing more than a piece of meat tied to the line.

Wherever the chains passed, monsters’ heads flew off, and those without heads were split in two.

In the center of the sandstorm, the boy’s figure was almost invisible to Jade. Only the boy’s shining red eyes were visible.

With each monster he eliminated, the boy cackled with laughter. At first, Jade thought it was just the noise of the surroundings, but even as the sandstorm subsided, the laughter continued.

“Now I’m finally warmed up.”

The boy dusted off his hands as if he had just finished playing in the sand. The elongated chains retracted, and the flesh and blood of the demons fell off. The boy’s glowing red eyes returned to normal.

The boy walked across the sand strewn with demon corpses, waving away the rising dust with his hand.

“Sometimes, even after beheading, some refuse to die.”

In front of the boy was a lizard, missing its head and one of each limb, struggling to burrow into the sand.

The boy grabbed the front leg and pulled the half-buried monster out.

“Like this one.”

Jade approached the writhing lizard held by the boy, recited a verse to annihilate dark demons, and extended his hand. Light emanated from Jade’s hand, incinerating the lizard.

As the boy released his grip, the charred remains were swept away by the wind.

“In cases like this, a mage like you who uses the light of annihilation would handle it,” the boy said, dusting off his hands.

“Has there been another with such a book?” Jade asked.

“There have been. But I’ve only seen one in an era.”

“An era?”

“The span of a human’s life. Hmm, any more left?”

The boy scanned the surroundings.

Jade looked around too. The shattered corpses of demons, severed heads, and broken flesh filled his view.

‘From a human’s perspective, this scene could be described as hellish. But what would demons call it? Surely not a heavenly landscape.’

The boy fiddled with the shackles on his wrist and then said to Jade, “Now, unlock this.”

Since hearing the old tales from Daniel, Jade had intended to speak to the Angel Chief with respect and reverence.

Indeed, that was how he had acted when they first met. But now, he felt nothing of the sort.

“I refuse.”

“…What did you just say?”

“If the reason you’re keeping me alive is to unlock those shackles, then I’m even less inclined to do so.”

“Do you think I can’t kill you because of this? That your brain is as small as a chrysanthemum bud? Haven’t you seen me use this?”

The boy swished the chains, making a clinking sound.

“I know. After killing me with that, it seems you’ll destroy the world too.”

Emperor Benclauss had just entrusted Jade with a mission to head east, fearing that the monsters the boy had just annihilated would appear in the heart of Rome. However, there were already enough demons near enough to destroy Rome. And now, the boy who had shattered them in less than three minutes was threatening Jade.

“Right. That’s what I’ll do.”

“Then what are you waiting for? Kill me with that. And do what you intended.”

“This brat, do my words sound like empty threats to you?”

The boy flicked his wrist lightly.

Chains flew and coiled around Jade’s neck like a whip. She was immediately choked.

“I won’t kill you. It has to hurt more if I don’t. I’ve read every book in this world and know every method of torture. Out of the sixteen thousand methods, how many do you think you can withstand?”

The boy’s voice echoed ominously.

“I can pluck your limbs off more easily than picking petals from a flower. There’s no need for the powerless human antics or creativity. But I don’t want to. Because I’ll kill you with the least pain possible. That’s the least I can do for releasing me.”

“No need for a price. You can kill me painfully. But I won’t do as you wish.”

“You know nothing of pain, do you? Or do you think I can’t do it?”

“Honestly, I don’t think you can. You’re an angel, after all.”

“You’re blooming! I’ve fallen, and a fallen angel becomes a demon.”

The boy’s eyes glowed red as if to prove it.

Jade said,

“That’s not true. I’ve met many demons. Demons don’t just declare they’ll fall and become one. You’re still good.”

“Why, because I don’t look as vicious as those monsters lying around?”

“Not exactly. If you try to do evil, people will see you as a symbol of malice, and your appearance will become a symbol of viciousness. Your current appearance doesn’t matter… it’s… irrelevant…”

Jade’s throat was too constricted to continue speaking. Her vision was also gradually darkening.

‘Oh dear, forget the pain and torture, I’m going to die from being strangled.’