Re:Ant Lord-Chapter 156: Second Roar

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The storm above boiled.

Essence lightning spiraled upward, not down but crackling toward an unseen point in the sky. From the whirl of silver clouds, three distinct forms began to emerge, etched in arcs of raw energy:

To the left, the Void Mandible crown, a colossal chitin jaw suspended in emptiness, vibrating with silence so intense it seemed to swallow the thunder itself. Its sharp edges glimmered like obsidian blades, and Kai could feel it gnawing at his thoughts, his sense of self.

To the right, the Titan Plate crown, massive iron segments rotating around a molten core, grinding like a broken world trying to put itself back together. Its presence pressed against Kai’s ribs, urging him to endure, to carry the burden of everything, every death in the valley beneath him.

And in the center, the Crimson Crown, weaving lines of ruby light into fractal patterns, threads branching outward like veins. Each one pulsed with memory, emotion, bond. It was beautiful. Terrible. Alive.

And then—they began to merge.

Not into one crown, but into something else.

Something twisted.

The obsidian silence of the Void Mandible slithered into the molten pain of the Titan Plate. The radiant threads of the Crimson Crown tethered the fusion together—not to stabilize, but to bind it into something neither dream nor nightmare. A crown of ruin. A monarch’s madness. A god-killer born from darkness itself.

Kai felt his knees falter. His aura raged, demanding to leap free, to rise and claim that monstrous inheritance.

His heart wasn’t beating anymore. It was roaring with pain and agony of darkness.

In that moment, he could see it—what he would become if he chose to take everything. The end of worlds. The devourer not of flesh, but of hope. A being even gods would fear. And worship. Or burn beneath.

The red lightning bent toward him.

The jaw opened. freewebnøvel.coɱ

The plate screamed.

The threads reached.

And then— <<Papa, don’t lose your mind.>>

A whisper. A child’s voice. Familiar, soft, and impossibly warm. The vision fractured.

The crimson threads recoiled as if slapped. The void jaw snapped shut. The iron plate cracked.

It was Miryam’s voice.

Kai blinked. The storm was still there, but the merging forms had gone. In their place, only three crowns remained again—hovering apart. Separate. Balanced. Waiting for their owner.

He gasped. The hunger was still there but no longer out of control. His hand closed tighter on the spear.

"I see it now," Kai whispered, each word a shard of ice carried on his breath. The air around him crackled with tension, the storm howling overhead as though the world itself strained to hear his thoughts.

"What I could become... if I forget my sanity..."

He looked up once more at the spectral crowns circling above like vultures of fate. The Void Mandible’s hunger, the Titan Plate’s burden, and the Crimson Crown’s endless tethering of souls. They weren’t just choices. They were the will of this world. But combined they become the darkness itself.

Three was a more sinister darkness inside Kai, the darkness of devouring. If he takes the combined crown and it’s darkness merge with his devouring darkness then he will lose his soul to the darkness. Or rather the darkness will trap his soul for eternity.

"If I lose myself to that darkness... I will become its puppet," he said, voice harsher now, tinged with something close to fear. "But if I want to control it, master it, I need more than strength. I need to give up the three crowns. I will create my own path... my own crown."

His eyes narrowed. "I need to find the three... the rightful bearers of these crowns. For some reason, the crowns are link to me. So, I will give them to rightful owners."

Each crown needed an anchor, a soul strong enough to keep it from pulling him under. Alone, he would break. But if he could share the burden, if he could link the path of silence, endurance, and connection to three unshakable wills—then maybe, just maybe, he could hold the darkness back.

Only then could he wear the fused crown without losing himself.

"Only then... can I become something greater without becoming something monstrous and mindless."

He raised his chin. Wind lashed his face. Lightning traced the old runes of ruin and fate across the clouds.

"I am not alone," he said again, louder now, this time a declaration, not a whisper.

His aura pulsed outward, rippling in concentric rings of dark crimson, each band echoing the names that grounded him.

Luna, who gave him her trust, her heart, and a reason to rise each dawn.

Miryam, who called him papa, even as she showed him glimpses of tomorrows stained in fire and choice.

Together, they were his north stars. His tether to sanity. His reason to control his hunger rather than be consumed by it.

Forged not in prophecy, but in love.

Forged in bonds.

He lowered the tip of his spear for a heartbeat, letting its shaft hum in rhythm with his racing pulse. Then, with renewed clarity and composure, Kai lifted it high once more.

"I’ve got only one choice," he said under his breath. "To save them all... I have to use that move."

Even as the words left him, the battlefield twisted.

Across the far ridge, the guardian’s grotesque form hunched forward, its dozen fused faces chanting as one, their voices a language older than blood. Molten essence spun between its gnarled claw-palms, coalescing into a sun-bright sphere, swirling with trapped souls screaming silently from within.

It was preparing to unleash annihilation.

And the savage rabbit clan, ever opportunistic, mistook the guardian’s stillness as favor. They shrieked in twisted triumph, blades raised high, certain that the predator beast would crush Kai and his forces. They will took the opportunity to kill the six star rank guardian.

They never saw Kai’s eyes.

Not truly.

Because in that moment, Kai’s eyes were no longer like before.

A crimson corona bloomed from his irises, monarch glyphs cascading outward in perfect spiral formation, inscribed not with ink or blood but with will.