High above Itogami Island, the Devil's towering, hideous, fearsome body had fully manifested in the real world. Across the distance, it stared down the angel radiating an eerie sense of holiness, a crimson eye open upon the surface of every wing.
"Boom..."
One second.
Just one second.
The instant their gazes met, a tremendous blast of air erupted between them, collided, and exploded outward, sweeping across the skyscrapers on the island below.
Against such overwhelming force, buildings of reinforced concrete collapsed like blocks stacked by a child. Huge chunks of masonry broke away from the upper floors and came crashing down toward the pedestrians fleeing through the streets.
Seen from space, a white point surrounded by vast masses of churning black cloud appeared on the planet's surface. Ripples spread outward from it, sweeping across the skies of the entire world in only a few seconds.
In the sky, the angel, now completely twisted and deformed, did not immediately attack the Devil whose presence had provoked its descent into the world.
Instead, it raised two of its wings.
The crimson eyes embedded at their centers looked down upon the people below with a gaze of judgment.
The sacred hymn surrounding the angel seemed to sense that something had changed as well. Its lofty, holy melody gradually became grave and solemn, like an execution hymn passing judgment upon sinners.
After sweeping its gaze across the world, the emotionless eyes embedded within its wings slowly closed.
The countless other eyes among its thousand wings followed.
Then...
They snapped open.
"Aaaah!!!"
A piercing scream, inaudible to ordinary humans, erupted from the angel with its unnervingly holy presence.
The sound waves pulled at the air itself, leaving trails of white ripples along their path.
As the wave swept outward, it was as though some unseen switch had been pressed.
The strange phenomena that had already covered the entire globe, yet had remained poised and motionless until now, ignoring even outside attacks as though everything were perfectly calm...
Began to move.
The swollen sea of blood started to churn. Flecks of blood-red foam rose across its surface.
Along the coastlines of every coastal city in the world, the sea of blood that had already assimilated all the world's oceans suddenly began to recede, revealing dry, pristine seabeds beneath.
Just as people everywhere stared in confusion...
A blood-red tsunami tens of thousands of meters high rose before them, towering into the heavens with enough force to swallow everything in its path.
"Aaaah!!!"
Shrill screams continued pouring from Kanon Kanase, who had already transformed into a high-dimensional angel.
The thousand eyes that had opened across the angel hovering high above Itogami Island all locked onto the Devil at once.
In the next instant, both the Devil and the angel vanished from the sky.
Two bottomless trenches exploded across the ocean from the points where they had disappeared.
Waves thousands of meters high were blasted from the depths by sheer overwhelming force, while violent currents of air detonated outward in every direction.
A deafening roar followed.
A mushroom cloud rose over the ocean.
A mass of seawater heavy enough to sink an island in an instant was reduced to nothing more than scenery before the heat and impact of their clash. Vast quantities of seawater vaporized, and blinding white steam engulfed the entire surrounding sea.
When the water finally crashed back down and the steam cleared, the angel and Devil could be seen at the center of the mushroom cloud, locked against one another like two opposing horns.
Endless, overwhelming pressure poured from both of them.
The black seawater beneath their feet retreated on its own, forming a vast semicircular abyss nearly ten thousand meters deep.
"Boom, boom, boom..."
Layer upon layer of thunderous explosions erupted from where the two clashed.
Above them, the black clouds twisted into a vortex and expanded outward at tremendous speed.
Deep within the endless darkness, the heavenly fire of judgment was kindled.
These were the very flames that, in the mythology of the God of the Bible, had destroyed the city of Sodom. Divine punishment sent by God to cleanse the world of sin.
Across the black clouds covering the entire globe, thousands upon thousands of flames of divine retribution poured from the scattered patches of rich pale red within the darkness and fell toward the earth.
It was a sight worthy of the end of the world.
"Is this... the apocalypse from mythology?!"
Everyone who looked up and witnessed this genuine scene of world destruction found the same realization forming in their minds.
The rules of the world, which had previously crashed because a group of outsiders had recklessly interfered with them, were beginning to revive.
An immense amount of energy, seemingly even greater than the strongest power in the world, was drawn from the angel and Devil and poured into the reboot ceremony that should have taken place long ago.
At that moment, whether people had already been anxious because of the sudden upheaval, were still asleep and unaware of the chaos consuming heaven and earth, or simply knew nothing of what had happened for some other reason...
Every living person could clearly sense a Sword of Damocles hanging above their head.
And now...
That sword had begun to fall.
"Ssss... crack..."
The first wave of the flood had already fallen.
Yet like a flower reflected in a mirror or the moon reflected upon water, it passed around every living being without touching them.
Some people even deliberately tried to touch the vivid, blood-red seawater, only to remain completely unharmed. The sea itself pushed them away.
But no one took that as proof that the blood-red tsunami was harmless.
Because once the first wave withdrew from the coast and began gathering momentum for a second, people heard something echoing through the void.
A shrill scraping like glass being ground together.
The stuttering grind of gears that had jammed in place.
Across the earth, people heard the planet beneath their feet vibrating with something that sounded like both a lament and a cry of joy.
Within the void, the realms that had arisen from the planet and been established to provide places for the subjects and races of the various major factions to survive were forcibly pinned back into the laws of the world by the sea of blood.
Those who had seen the danger unfolding in the mortal world and immediately fled back to their faction headquarters found that it made no difference.
Now, every living being rooted in this world stood beneath the Purifying Fire of Judgment burning in the heavens.
Who had done this?
That holy God?
No.
He was already dead.
This was the power of the world itself.
"Who?! Who in the world activated the laws of the world?!"
The moment the great powers of the various factions felt that absolute force coming from the world itself, locking onto every living being in existence, some of them immediately turned pale and cursed in fury.
They wanted to find the culprit.
But the oppressive pressure from the flames descending from the sky gave these gods and demons, each powerful enough to rank among the strongest beings in the world, no time to investigate.
Grinding their teeth, they were forced to bring out the hidden foundations of their respective factions.
Vast amounts of resources were consumed.
One defensive barrier after another rose around the edges of their territories, with additional layers stacked within. Every concealed defensive measure they possessed was brought out.
But...
It was useless.
These hidden foundations were costly enough that merely activating them could drain every last resource from a smaller faction. Even the strongest powers standing at the summit of the world would feel the loss.
Yet before the descending heavenly fire, those defenses might as well have been illusions.
The flames passed straight through them without slowing in the slightest.
The two forces simply did not exist on the same level.
Its descent had shaken heaven and earth, yet when the Purifying Heavenly Fire finally passed through those barriers and reached the ground, it was as gentle as a spring breeze.
Almost as though it were merely a projection.
The flames were scorching, yet caused no immediate destruction.
One pillar of heavenly fire after another rose from cities across the world.
There was no fuel feeding them, yet the flames spread visibly along the streets.
Buildings, shops, roads, and crowds were all engulfed by the fire of Sodom.
"Aaaah! Fire! Fire! I'm on fire...!"
"Help! Help me! It's so hot! My body's burning!"
"Put it out! My house! My car!!!"
Caught completely off guard by the sudden inferno, people screamed and desperately tried to fetch water to extinguish the flames spreading everywhere.
Those whose bodies had caught fire lost all reason. Overwhelmed by the agony, they screamed and ran wildly through the streets.
But people soon discovered that the water they brought did nothing to stop the flames.
The endlessly burning fire did not seem to be consuming physical matter in the real world at all.
And although the flames covering their bodies caused intense pain, they did surprisingly little actual damage.
Not even their clothing showed signs of charring.
But that was not true for everyone.
Every so often, someone could be seen rolling madly across the ground and screaming in agony.
Scarlet flames burned around them with a violent hiss.
Within the firelight, those people writhed and twisted in unbearable pain, as though enduring torment beyond imagination.
The Purifying Fire.
It was the flame of divine retribution engraved into the rules of the world, the fire that had destroyed Sodom as the world developed according to the mythology of the God of the Bible.
It was also the flame that burned away all sin.
Apart from infants, it was almost impossible to find anyone in this world who had never committed any wrongdoing.
But for most people, their sins were not enough to warrant death.
However...
That only applied to ordinary people who possessed no power at all.
"Crackle!"
White lightning erupted from the Vajra, illuminating the sky beneath the black clouds.
Dense plasma dripped downward like water.
Indra unleashed the full force of the terrifying attack and sent it crashing straight toward the world-destroying heavenly fire descending from above.
The two collided.
The blow, infused with an enormous amount of Indra's power, managed to slow the heavenly fire for only a few seconds before it was crushed apart and swept aside.
The flames then struck Indra's massive body head-on.
The searing heavenly fire fell upon him.
This attack ignored all defenses and possessed power on the level of the strongest forces in the world.
Indra's golden divine armor was effortlessly burned into molten metal.
As one of the strongest beings in existence, surpassed only by the world's greatest powers, Indra had never suffered an injury this severe even when the Asuras came to cause trouble.
For a moment, even he could not stop himself from letting out a pained roar.
In the end, his immense strength allowed him to endure the attack.
Indra raised his head.
In the skies above India, another heavenly fire, twice as large as the one he had just faced, was being desperately resisted by a trident.
But it lasted only a few seconds longer than Indra had.
Then the heavenly fire crushed through the trident and descended toward a black-haired youth.
The young man wore worn animal-hide clothing. His expression carried a savage fighting spirit, and his fierce eyes glared directly at the world-destroying flame rushing toward him.
He was the owner of the trident.
Shiva, the God of Destruction among the Trimurti.
Yet at that moment, the deity who embodied destruction within Indian mythology was struck head-on by the heavenly fire descending from above.
With a scream of pain, Shiva plummeted to the ground.
"Even the Lord of Heaven couldn't stop it?"
Indra, the Heavenly Emperor, stared in shock.
As far as he remembered, Mahashiva had not looked this miserable even when confronting Shadow head-on more than a year ago.
Within Asgard, the celestial palace of the Nine Realms of Yggdrasil, Gungnir streaked across the sky.
Odin, the Meteor, watched with his one remaining eye as the heavenly fire shattered his defenses head-on.
The Runes did not slow it in the slightest.
But what truly shocked Odin was what his Power of Omniscience revealed to him.
Amid this world-ending disaster, the Norse Ragnarok known as "Örlög" had awakened.
And then, while resisting the heavenly fire specifically targeting "Örlög," it had quickly fallen asleep again.
"The rules of the world are evolving once more. Those two beings from the Old World are trying to reenact the world and drag everything back onto its proper course. And we, mythical heretics who exist outside that intended path, have become obstacles to the world's development. It really does suit the style of that radiant chief God's Pantheon..."
Odin's remaining eye, which represented omniscience, granted him powers of observation and Wisdom far beyond those of others at his level.
Using the opportunity created when Örlög fell dormant, he had already understood the cause of this apocalyptic disaster.
But what difference did knowing make?
Faced with such an enormous disparity in power...
He could do nothing.
One after another, gods and demons renowned throughout the world were struck by heavenly fire as they stood high in the sky.
They exhausted every method available to them.
None could stop it.
There was, however, a difference in how the flames treated them.
Those who were merely heretics and had not accumulated serious sins had a good chance of surviving.
But those heretics burdened with grave sins, those who had spent their lives causing trouble wherever they went, were knocked from the sky and cast into the sea of blood.
No matter how powerful those gods and demons normally were, once they failed to stop the heavenly fire and fell into the blood-red sea, layer after layer of salt crystal began spreading across their bodies.
Their expressions of despair remained frozen on their faces until the very end.
Then they became pillars of salt, just like those from the legend of Sodom.
Empty.
Silent.
Pitch-black.
Within the Dimensional Gap, the passage that had once connected the various worlds, the great and majestic Great Red Dragon drifted leisurely through the void, enjoying the eternal silence that had once belonged to Ophis.
Then, in the next instant, the Great Red stopped.
Its enormous, single-horned dragon head turned toward the Real World.
There, an unprecedented flame of atonement, vastly larger than any of those descending upon the earth, had locked onto the Great Red's presence and was rushing straight toward it.
The illusory bubbles surrounding the Great Red, which normally allowed it to enter the Illusory Realm at any moment and evade an attack, were burned away completely.
A fierce glint flashed through the enormous dragon's eyes.
With its means of evasion destroyed, the Great Red showed no intention of retreating from the attack coming from reality.
Its majestic dragon body twisted through the void and charged straight into the flames.
The two forces remained deadlocked for several seconds.
Then, for the first time, the heavenly fire that had swept aside everything in reality was blown apart.
The Great Red's enormous body burst free from the flames.
Yet a small portion of its sturdy dragon scales, normally capable of ignoring most forms of damage in the world, had been scorched and twisted.
The pain made the Great Red bare its teeth.
But almost immediately, the Great Red turned its gaze back toward reality.
It had stopped the first wave.
What about the second?
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