Imp to Demon King: A Journey of Conquest-Chapter 340: Clench Your Teeth, Cerberus!

Achilles’ arms groaned, healing and shattering in succession under the Styx’s water influence. If not for their goal, he would have taken his time to maul down the beast. But this strategy was also fine—pain was his oldest friend. "Adam, now!"

The second his words left his mouth, the flames swirled. Like dancing tendrils, they passed him by, disappearing into Adam’s crevices as he squatted on the beast’s lips and gripped the closing fangs.

The pressure crushing him weakened, and the suffocating heat vanished. Seizing the opportunity, he hurled his round shield upward.

BAM

As if stamped, the intricate engravings carved themselves onto Cerberus’ flesh. The tremor travelled through its skull, shattering its snout with a terrifying crunch. Blood poured from its nostrils in two scarlet jets before its eyes wobbled and lost focus.

The momentary daze further weakened its bite. But its right head, still intact, snapped to devour Adam.

Yet, another crunching noise reverberated as Achilles attacked a second, then a third time before it could.

Damage stacked, bloody tears trailed down Cerberus’ middle head, the impacts causing its brain to collide like jelly against its skull.

Meanwhile, Adam’s tensed arms throbbed. He was powerful, but Cerberus was no weakling, either. In fact, its biting pressure was as horrifying as its mythical depictions. He could hold on, but not when another head would devour him in a split second.

"Get out, Achilles!" He roared, preparing to dodge.

Not needing a second command, Achilles retrieved his spear and bolted out. The moment he emerged, Adam gripped his hand and pulled.

Carried by the momentum, his vision spun along Adam’s backflip.

SNAP

Cerberus’ colossal head flashed on their previous position the next second, the fangs snapping against each other reverberating in a show of horror.

A fleeting sensation of dread scratched Achilles’ heart. Even alone, he could win by lacerating the beast for several days until the blood loss killed it. But the slightest lapse of judgement, a second of inattention, would spell his death in gory letters.

Meanwhile, Adam’s eyes flashed with cold calculations. Impressive as it was, Cerberus was nothing more than an additional prey he would add to his hunting board along with the several-kilometer-tall Leviathan, other eldritch horrors, and Hrimgar.

He crouched horizontally in mid-air with a simple sentence. "Finish the job!"

Simultaneously, his hands lashed on Achilles’ ankles like coiling snakes. He brought the man’s feet against his as he bent his knees. Like a compressed spring, he released, launching Achilles toward Cerberus’ dazed head.

Achilles smiled softly, any doubt melting like ice. If he had considered Adam a decent student and an unconventional warrior in the past, they were now brother in arms through and through. After all, they were facing death in the eyes, relying on each other to overwhelm a mythical creature of Cerberus’ caliber.

"Watch me knock it out!" He yelled, finding unexpected pleasure in fighting side by side with someone as powerful as him instead of against.

Despite his newfound delight, he doubted Cerberus would let him end its central head without retaliating. Yet, his smile broadened.

As he split the wind, his arms crossed behind his raised shield, Adam’s wings unfurled.

Gales, producing explosive noises crashed down with their flaps as he blurred in a gray line that crackled like a thunderbolt. His hammer drew a silvery arc, the flat side roaring as Cerberus’ right head indeed moved to stop Achilles with an enraged growl.

"The rules can whistle. I’m not losing against mortals again!" The orange fire in Cerberus’ mouth shifted to a misty, ethereal sheen. Its maw snapped wide open, the breath erupting like a horizontal pillar as icy as Tartarus’ most desolate pit.

Who was it? Who had bent the rules to make his son’s name thunder through Olympus against the underworld’s rules? Zeus! And if this bastard could bend the rules, so could he!

"Impure souls, vanish before the underworld’s guardian!" Heracles? Defeat him? What a joke! What a humiliation!

If that brute’s trial didn’t permit weapons, so did his duty with its dangerous abilities. A single whiff of his soul flames would have been all it took to vaporise his soul into half-divine sparks and let them drift to his father’s grand palace.

However, the expected screams didn’t register. Instead, the pillar of soul flames swelled in the middle. Its eyes widened. It wasn’t just some natural swelling. It moved toward him!

Before it could make sense of the situation, the answer emerged in the most surreal manner.

A swirling tunnel formed in the very heart of his strike. Inside, his own flames coiled around and above Adam into a celestial ribbon as if he had stolen their very essence.

An icy shudder ran down his spine. This was no mortal’s power. Only an ancient mythical beast of the highest order could hope to match it. And even then, his flames were the same ones used to curse the devil realm eons ago. Distilled into the wind to draw any demon mad, they had proved their efficiency, so what was happening?

His pupils constricted as the hammer zoomed in its eyes, while Achilles continued to bolt towards its central head. Leviathan’s authority! Adam could steal his flame attributes. Wait! Didn’t it mean he siphoned his mouth using Mamoon’s earlier?

A terror it had never felt in its long existence engulfed its limbs, the shadow of a dragon resembling Nidhogg appearing behind Adam. But there was something else... Odin’s eye, Tyr’s hand, and... No...

"WHO ARE YOU?" It roared in horror—humiliation, mortals, irrelevant in the face of the primordial power sleeping in Adam.

Adam’s hammer crashed down like a meteor as he smirked. "The one who’ll put you to sleep. Shut up, or you’ll guard Hades from the inside as a soul among billions of others."

Simultaneously, thrilled beyond words, Achilles roared the first thing that came to mind as he slammed against the central head. "Clench your teeth, Cerberus!"

BAM

Two deafening collisions rocked the vicinity of the underworld’s gate. Winds blasted the souls against the crystalline walls. The Acheron’s water recoiled hundreds of meters before rushing back like a tide that outflanked its bed.

Lightning zapped Cerberus’ right head, instantly forcing it unconscious. But the center one, the nexus of its being, endured Achilles’ weaker impact and witnessed the ebb about to swallow the souls.

This defeat... It’d accept it! No, a budding sense of respect for Adam already bloomed in its heart. But even about to lose consciousness or even if it were to gaze at Thanatos’ raised hand, its duty came first—protect the souls.

Ignoring Adam and Achilles, it forced its wobbly legs to carry its frame before the flow.

SPLASH

The water of the river of woe drenched its fur, unable to pass through the unshakable mountain of flesh.

Sprawled on the ground or sliding down the walls, the terrorised souls behind it sighed in relief. A first roared before a cacophony of grateful chants filled the chaotic scene.

Yet, Cerberus had already lost consciousness.