A month ago.
"What about Ajuka Beelzebub?" Cain asked, sliding his bishop across the board. He studied Haruki over the carved pieces, curiosity sharp in his eyes. "You have been focused on a way to remove Sirzechs Lucifer from the game, and I agree with the necessity. Yet the way I see it, Ajuka Beelzebub is the one who can render every one of your schemes meaningless even if you succeed."
Haruki did not answer at once. His gaze lingered on the board, unmoving, as if the pattern of black and white might whisper a solution.
"That has been troubling me as well," he said finally, exhaling slowly. "I was hoping you would have an idea."
"I might," Cain replied.
…
POV: Shalba Beelzebub
"The power of a super devil is incredible," Katerea said with naked awe. "It's a pity he has to die. Had he learned a bit of humility before his betters and not dreamt above his station, he would have been the perfect tool for dealing with the other pantheons."
Shalba agreed with her assessment, though for reasons she would never grasp. The power of a super devil was indeed terrifying, operating on a level that made hierarchies meaningless.
"Heh, trying to use a super devil as your puppet? ~Naughty, naughty, naughty~" crooned a sinister voice, chuckling with lazy amusement.
Shalba turned his gaze to the silver-haired figure lounging beside Katerea, legs crossed, popcorn in hand, eyes fixed on the battlefield below as though it were a stage play. The pretender was fighting in the Second Circle of Hell, completely unaware of his true audience.
Katerea had no idea.
She could not see him. She could not hear him. She could not smell him or sense him in any capacity. As far as Katerea Leviathan was concerned, only Shalba and she occupied this hidden dimension.
The power of the Prince of Hell was beyond comprehension.
Shalba had always known that. He had never labored under the illusions that once blinded Katerea in her earlier years. He understood the true nature of the only son of Lucifer.
Rizevim Livan Lucifer was the Antichrist.
He viewed everything as a game, with the capricious cruelty of a child overturning ants simply to see them scatter. More terrifying still was his morality, if it could be called that. A rigid, absolute binary. To Rizevim, the universe consisted of only two categories. Good and evil. Heaven was good. Hell was evil.
There was no space for nuance, no tolerance for evolution, no allowance for deviation. Devils were meant to remain evil. Redemption was an offense to the design. Their sole purpose was to cause corruption, suffering, and decay.
Shalba still remembered the incident clearly. One of Rizevim's sons, conceived after the violation of the virgin goddess Artemis, had attempted to save innocent children caught in one of Rizevim's games. The child paid for that error with his life.
"Hmmm… let's see… ah, yes. I killed him. He was loud. Very annoying."
That had been Rizevim's answer when the Goddess of the Hunt and Moon descended into the Underworld to demand her son's return. Her rage and disbelief had been magnificent to witness. Had her twin brother Apollo, god of the Sun, not restrained her, she would have charged the Prince of Hell in blind fury, and the world would have been left with one fewer Olympian.
One of Rizevim's powers was illusion, absolute and inescapable. The domination of perception so absolute that even a Satan-class being like Katerea remained entirely unaware while standing at his mercy.
Terrifying did not begin to describe him.
Though Rizevim might fall short of Sirzechs Gremory in raw power, Shalba regarded him as the more frightening entity.
Before Rizevim Livan Lucifer, free will meant nothing. Divinity meant nothing.
"I beg your forgiveness for her ignorance, my lord," Shalba said as he bowed his head. Katerea was a close confidant and companion, and he had no desire to see her killed on the whim of a man-child.
"Aww, is little Shalba trying to protect his girlfriend?" Rizevim replied in a childish sing-song tone, the kind one used when teasing a pet. "That's so adorable. Right, Euclid?"
"Indeed, my lord," Euclid Lucifuge answered calmly.
"But don't ever beg me for anything again," Rizevim continued, his voice sharpening into something edged and poisonous. "It's disgusting."
Rizevim gently caressed Katerea's hair, his fingers crawling from her scalp to her face, intimate and invasive, while Katerea remained entirely unaware. "Besides, she gave me a wonderful gift. It is only fair that she gets rewarded. That is how you train dogs, right? With tricks and sticks."
"I believe the correct expression is carrot and stick, master," Euclid corrected with his usual composure.
"But that makes no sense at all," Rizevim said, frowning in genuine confusion. "Dogs don't eat carrots."
"No one has ever accused humans of being particularly intelligent," Euclid replied, contempt faintly coloring his tone.
"Still," Rizevim said brightly, his mood shifting with alarming ease, "I am so excited to meet Haruki. He is simply amazing. Do you not agree?"
He was not familiar with Haruki Yamashiro beyond the idiotic rumors circulating among the unwashed masses of the Underworld, claims that the man was the father of devils themselves. He had never given those rumors any weight, nor had he expected anyone with even a modicum of intelligence to take them seriously.
Evidently, he had been sorely mistaken, if even Rizevim found the man amazing.
"He brought about the extinction of vampires," Euclid stated calmly. "And judging by the current state of affairs, he also prepared the perfect conditions to kill the strongest devil alive while throwing the Underworld into unprecedented chaos. Amazing does not even begin to describe his achievements. He is a true devil through and through."
What are they talking about? Shalba thought. He didn't know that Haruki had been involved in the fall of the vampires as well.
Could he reali…? No. That was impossible.
Devils did not reincarnate after death. That was an immutable fact. And yet Lucifer himself had not always been a devil.
"Yes, he is a devil after my own heart," Rizevim agreed, showing more enthusiasm than he ever did for anything else. "So far, everything is going exactly as he planned them. When will he make his appearance, I wonder? Is this what it feels like to wait for the main character to arrive for the climax? It's so thrilling."
"My lord," Shalba asked carefully, "is Haruki Yamashiro… the reincarnation of Lord Lucifer? Are the rumors true?"
"Pfft. Of course not," Rizevim answered with open annoyance. "Don't be an idiot. Father was never that exciting. He only wanted to rule the world in his image. It was so …lame."
"Then what is Haruki's goal?" Shalba asked hesitantly, dread coiling in his stomach as he wondered what Rizevim might consider exciting.
Pain exploded along the side of his head. It was sharp, sudden, and wet. Shalba staggered as something warm poured down his neck. He raised a trembling hand and felt torn flesh, ragged edges, and the slick heat of blood where his ear had been.
The sensation was nauseating, a mixture of burning agony and hollow absence, as though part of him had simply been erased.
"That is Lord Haruki to you, vermin," Rizevim said menacingly. "You are not worthy to speak his name with such insolence."
Shalba slowly covered the bleeding wound with demonic energy, forcing the flow to stop through sheer will. His teeth ground together as the pain throbbed.
"I apologize, my lord," he said through clenched teeth. There was nothing else he could do.
"Now ask me properly," Rizevim said, irritation seeping back into his voice.
Shalba hesitated, momentarily confused about what he was even supposed to ask. "What is Lord Haruki's goal, my lord?" he said at last, choosing each word with care.
"I don't know," Rizevim replied, his tone disturbingly joyful. "And that's the point. Maybe he massacred the vampires for no reason at all. Maybe he did it because it was hilarious. I cannot wait to find out."
Creuserey, what have you done?
Rizevim had not known about their plans at first. Katerea had been meticulous in ensuring that he remained unaware. However, Creuserey believed that if they concealed the truth and Rizevim discovered it later, he would inflict a biblical amount of suffering upon them all.
So he went behind both Shalba's and Katerea's backs and informed Rizevim of everything.
Rizevim had been amused by the plan. He found, what he called, Katerea's unusual level of competence suspicious and decided to investigate. He extracted the truth directly from her mind and then erased all memory of having done so.
"It is time for me to play my part, Shalba," Katerea said as she stood. "I must go now. I leave the rest in your capable hands."
"You can count on me," Shalba replied quietly. "Sirzechs Lucifer will not live to see tomorrow."
As Katerea departed, Shalba could only hope that, when the Prince of Hell finally finished playing, at least one of them would still be alive in his wake.
…
POV: Sirzechs
This is annoying.
Sirzechs measured his chances against the three figures before him. Kokabiel and Creuserey had both undergone a sudden, unnatural rise in power, yet even so they did not truly threaten him. The problem was the third presence.
The three-headed dragon, Azi Dahaka, Serpent-King of Tyranny.
He was a dragon so formidable that an entire army of gods from the Zoroastrian pantheon had once been required merely to seal him, and even that confinement had been temporary. More troubling still, Azi Dhaka was numbered among the most powerful of the evil dragons and could challenge Sirzechs on his own. The creature's ability to manipulate the laws of physics promised to be particularly irritating.
While he was still gauging their capabilities, he sensed an attack descending from above. He looked up to see a beam of red fire pouring down from a dragon's jaws. Sirzechs dodged and put a considerable distance between himself and the blast radius.
The moment he reappeared at a far remove, another torrent of fire struck from his flank. This one he annihilated outright. The flames vanished in an instant, and he spotted another dragon hovering high in the heavens.
Those two newcomers began to circle him slowly through the air before drifting back to join Azi Dhaka, Kokabiel, and Creuserey. Sirzechs recognized them immediately, and with that recognition he felt his odds of winning diminish.
The Hall-Haunter of Heorot, the evil dragon Grendel. And the Corpse-Gnawer Beneath the World, Nidhogg.
Great. Just my luck, Sirzechs thought, his irritation deepening. Then he sensed another presence approaching at a leisurely pace. This dragon did not attack. It descended with casual indifference and took its place among the others, studying Sirzechs with open boredom. He recognized this one as well.
The Serpent of the Hesperidean Dusk, the evil dragon Ladon.
Then the air grew cold without warning, as if death itself had arrived. The bright skies of the second circle darkened in a heartbeat like a sackcloth made of goat hair, as though all light were being drained away. Within seconds, night had swallowed the Underworld, and Sirzechs felt the hairs on his arms stand.
This darkness stirred a primordial terror embedded in every living being, the fear of the unknown, a fear even Sirzechs could not entirely suppress. He stared into the black void and the void stared back. Silhouettes of eyes emerged everywhere, intangible feline shapes fused with the darkness itself.
Their gaze was dispassionate and sinister at once.
This can't be. Why is he here?
The embodiment of chaos and shadow bore countless titles. The world-encircling serpent of chaos. Eater of the Solar Barque. Enemy of Ma'at. The night that devours dawn. The Primal Eclipse Dragon. Apophis.
This is bad. Very bad, Sirzechs thought. How in hell had someone managed to gather some of the most infamous and unmanageable dragons into a single alliance?
Even in the midst of the crisis, he found himself marveling at the sheer impossibility of it.
Azi Dhaka and Apophis alone were beings of overwhelming might, each capable of challenging him on their lonesome. Together, his chances collapsed toward hopelessness. And the others, while they might not defeat him individually, could as a coordinated force present more than enough obstacles.
"Where is my son, Kokabiel?" Sirzechs demanded, his voice stripped of all warmth.
"Now, why would I tell you that?" Kokabiel replied with a laugh.
He heard a buzzing sound charging at him at insane speed, several times the speed of sound. He saw creatures rushing toward him at a size that should not have been possible for beings of their kind. There were eight giant flies, each at least a hundred meters in size.
The buzzing of ordinary houseflies was now multiplied thousands of times, louder and more nauseating, and it could still be heard even within the all-consuming darkness of the eclipse dragon.
That must be the work of Shalba. The House of Beelzebub's ability, concluded Sirzechs while flying away from the pursuing flies. Suddenly one appeared directly above him and nearly impaled him with its long legs before he dodged.
It seems Azi Dahaka manipulated the distance between the fly and me so that it appeared above me, Sirzechs analyzed.
He could feel the fly releasing clouds of spores, parasites, and necrotic bacteria with every beat of its wings. The same thing was happening across the battlefield as all eight giant flies chased him. Sirzechs quickly coated himself in the Power of Destruction so that nothing could touch him.
Below him, he watched mountains rot and collapse under the countless diseases falling from the air. Then, without warning, he found himself in the middle of the swarm, every fly charging at him with reckless speed and hunger. His position had been exchanged with that of a random fly, leaving him completely surrounded.
Sirzechs twisted and dodged through them in a display of acrobatics. The flies were a million times their natural size yet retained the same reflexes as their smaller counterparts, instantly adjusting their trajectories and resuming the pursuit. One suddenly appeared in front of him. Sirzechs finally lost patience and blasted it with his Power of Destruction, erasing it as though it had never existed.
Azi Dhaka was engineering the battlefield, manipulating the laws of nature so that every position favored his allies.
He sensed Nidhogg emerging behind him and unleashing a stream of corrosive poison, which Sirzechs erased. He created distance again, yet wherever he moved another ambush awaited. Magical circles flared into being around him, elemental attacks pouring from them in rapid succession. He expanded his Destruction and wiped out the circles.
I need to overturn the table now. I am at a severe disadvantage as things stand.
He weighed his options and reached a decision. He could not sense his son anywhere nearby, so it should be safe to use it here. The advantage of being alone in the second circle of Hell was that collateral damage did not matter.
In ancient times the Underworld had seven circles, stacked atop one another like the seven heavens, each equal in size. Five of those circles had been annihilated during the Great War, leaving only two.
Of the remaining two, the first was the world of the devils, equal in size to Earth. The second was a wasteland of unlivable conditions, abandoned by all but a few lifeforms that had adapted to it.
So Sirzechs could unleash himself here without restraint. He closed his eyes, stood still, and exhaled slowly. He felt every fly charging at him at once. When they were only inches away, he released all the limits upon his body.
The air collapsed inward, as if reality had lost its coherence. Sound thinned. Color dulled. Even time faltered.
The ground split.
The second circle of Hell shuddered, an earthquake rolling outward in expanding rings across distances that should not have been connected. Mountains screamed apart. Volcanoes erupted. Tornadoes tore across the plains. Lightning fell from the sky, all heralding the release of Sirzechs' true form, one of the strongest beings in existence.
Sirzechs became the epicenter of negation.
His outline blurred, dissolving into something beyond energy or matter. Pure Destruction, indifferent and absolute, expanded in every direction, the final state of all things.
And yet it compressed.
The Destruction folded into the shape of a man, forced into a human silhouette that no law of existence should have permitted. It was like crushing a supernova into a heartbeat.
It expanded on instinct alone, erasing without discrimination. Stone, space, magic, barriers, concepts older than the age of gods. The eight flies vanished without even finishing their charge.
"Sirzechs Lucifer, what the hell even are you?" Kokabiel shouted with manic delight. "How did pathetic creatures like devils create something like you?"
Sirzechs did not answer. He no longer seemed capable of speech. Instead he was suddenly behind Kokabiel. The Grigori had no time to turn. The Destruction wrapped around him, unraveling flesh, soul, grace, memory.
The echo of wings that had once shepherded mankind disintegrated into nothing. Thus ended a relic of the old world, once an angel of the Lord, once a keeper of the stars, now erased without even a scream.
Sirzechs turned to the remaining seven, who stared at him in stunned silence.
One down, six to go.
From his hand he formed several spheres of mobile Destruction that ignored distance and velocity, releasing them at the others. They managed to block the attack in their own ways, but in that brief distraction Sirzechs appeared among them. Darkness surged at him, weaponized by Apophis, dissolving the moment it touched his form.
That instant allowed the others to scatter. Shalba's insects returned in uncountable billions, each fly shredded on contact with Sirzechs like flesh in a grinder. Grendel and Nidhogg laughed in ecstasy as they wheeled through the air, spewing flames that could not harm him, though harm was not their true objective.
"My law manipulation cannot affect him," Azi Dahaka said with amusement. "All laws in his immediate vicinity are erased. But I can still manipulate the laws around us."
At his words, attacks that had seemed distant appeared before Sirzechs in an instant. He unleashed Destruction across hundreds of kilometers, yet Apophis's darkness swallowed it the moment it left his form, or what still qualified as a form.
I cannot maintain this state indefinitely. They are aiming for a battle of attrition while keeping their distance. I must eliminate at least half of them before my time expires.
Apophis struck.
Darkness surged forward from all directions in layered sheets. The battlefield folded into overlapping depths, space collapsing inward as if stacked on itself. Sirzechs felt his own shadow tear loose from his heels and rise like a living thing, its edges sharpening into a predatory silhouette that lunged straight for his throat.
He raised his hand and expanded the power of Destruction outward. The shadow unraveled at the edges and then ceased to exist, leaving a hollow absence in the air where it had been.
Apophis followed with a breath of anti light. It was an eclipse given form, a wave of devouring midnight that swallowed energy and matter alike. It rolled toward Sirzechs in a steady tide, blotting out the battlefield behind it.
Sirzechs drew inward, compressing the destructive energy leaking from his being and folding it tightly into himself. When the eclipse reached him, it collapsed in on contact and vanished as if it had never been released.
The primordial darkness roared in response. From every patch of shadow, serpentine forms burst forth, made of living night. They spread across the battlefield, jaws wide, devouring the stray threads of Destruction that bled from Sirzechs.
In answer, he released a detonation of destructive energy that erased everything within a kilometer. Space tore open, terrain vanished, and the swarm of shadow serpents was consumed in a single expanding void.
Then the world dragged him downward. Gravity increased by thousands of folds and Sirzechs was pulled from the air and slammed into the ground. The instant he made contact, the ground beneath him was erased into nothing, leaving a widening cavity where the land had been.
He looked up at Azi Dahaka and understood the source of the pressure. Sirzechs erased the distance between them and emerged behind the dragon. He turned, prepared to strike, and found Azi Dahaka still standing before him.
A loop, he realized. A time loop. Azi Dahaka had shaped a coil of space and time as the medium of repetition, forcing the same moment to recur.
Sirzechs inhaled and expanded the power of Destruction outward from his core. He did not aim for the dragon, nor for the battlefield. He devoured the coil itself at the conceptual level, erasing the space that anchored the loop. The structure failed at once. The repeating moment unraveled, and the flow of time resumed.
Ladon moved first. Barriers of non-euclidean geometry formed around Sirzechs, layer upon layer, glowing with archaic runes. The constructs pressed inward, resisting the spread of Destruction with stubborn defiance, New layers forming every time one gets destroyed. For a few seconds the barriers held, compressing the pressure into a blinding core before being torn apart piece by piece.
Grendel followed with a bellow of ecstatic madness, charging directly into the collapsing field. His talons reached Sirzechs' form and one wing was severed instantly, erased from existence. Apophis' darkness engulfed him, pulling him free before he could be completely annihilated.
Creuserey raised his staff and summoned concentric magic circles that locked Sirzechs in place. Pink flames poured forth, feeding on desire, memory, and longing. They reached him and vanished immediately, consumed by his Destruction.
Apophis struck then with colossal tendrils of shadow that wrapped around Sirzechs and tightened. For an instant, pressure overwhelmed even him. His form flickered as the darkness gnawed into his core.
He tore free.
Sirzechs condensed every fragment of his power, compressing himself into a vast sphere of destruction that began to shrink rapidly.
"Stop him," Creuserey shouted in panic, understanding his intent. "He is going to cause a singularity."
Sirzechs laughed as everything began to be drawn into him.
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