"What do you mean by 'Earth might not have much time left'?"
Compared to Petra—who couldn't fully grasp what Orsaga meant—Elsa, having once witnessed one of Orsaga's blood rituals, felt an ominous chill rising in her heart.
As he stirred the mushroom cream pasta in front of him, Orsaga said plainly,
"An alien warship is currently heading toward Earth. The Mars base was destroyed yesterday."
Then he casually twirled a bite of pasta and popped it into his mouth.
He nodded in satisfaction.
No doubt about it—Petra's cooking was excellent.
Seeing his leisurely demeanor, and thinking about the grim news, Petra's face turned pale as she asked,
"…Are you serious?"
Orsaga nodded.
"I don't like lying."
Then, seeing her expression worsening, he added offhandedly,
"You two don't need to worry. You'll be fine."
Elsa, looking unsettled, asked in a trembling voice:
"You're not… taking us to hell, are you?"
Given that she believed Orsaga was some kind of demon straight out of the underworld, her fear wasn't exactly surprising.
"No," Orsaga replied calmly. "That place doesn't really suit me."
From what he knew, while there was something resembling "hell" in the Abyss, it was just a niche subregion controlled by a minor demon faction. It consisted of nine adjacent layers, forming a closed system.
Similar organizations did exist among demons—several of them, in fact.
For example, human-born demon lords tended to gather with other human-born lords. Elf-born ones grouped with other elves...
Even though their origins might be completely different—some evolved from monkeys, others molded from mud—they would still seek out others similar to themselves.
Apart from sharing a label like "human" or "elf," they often had nothing in common.
But even so, there was a certain shared identity they found comfort in.
Among the native-born Abyssal demons, however, this behavior was often mocked.
To them, such alliances were nothing more than weaklings huddling for warmth.
True power, they believed, required no allies.
The strong demon lords would simply beat their rivals to death, seize control of their Abyss layers, and merge them into their own territory.
After all, if you could kill your allies and take everything they owned, why would you cooperate?
That was the dominant philosophy of the Abyssal demons.
And it was through this relentless cycle of war, betrayal, and conquest that they remained the most battle-hardened beings of their rank.
Relying on overwhelming numbers, they made up more than 90% of all [Demon Lords] and [DemonPrinces], dominating the entire Abyss as its most powerful species.
---
After denying that he was from "hell," Elsa shifted her thinking.
"Then… are you an alien?"
"Not quite," Orsaga said with a shake of his head.
"In my understanding, 'alien' refers to beings native to this universe—but from other planets or regions."
"I don't belong to this universe at all."
"I'm what you'd call an outsider from another world.
Does that make sense?"
Elsa's eyes widened.
Listening to the two of them speak, Petra felt like her mental state was a canoe adrift in stormy seas—rocking wildly with every sentence.
Her boyfriend suddenly telling her he was from another world?
That was… well beyond anything she had imagined.
---
The Next Day
At the heavily fortified lunar base…
The alien flesh warship approached openly—making no attempt to hide its advance.
Once it entered range, the human forces launched their full-scale assault without hesitation.
Due to the logistical ease of transporting resources to the Moon, the lunar military was over ten times stronger than the Mars base.
In just one second, tens of thousands of missiles rose from their silos. Artillery and railguns roared.
A blinding cascade of explosions lit up space—so intense it rivaled the sun's brilliance.
Even civilians on Earth noticed the sky glowing brighter.
This was the might of human civilization—the full force of its most powerful weapons.
But when the explosions faded…
And the flames slowly cleared…
The flesh warship remained, completely unscathed, at the center of the blast.
Despair swept through the human command.
The technological gap was simply too wide.
Inside the warship, the Warp Demon felt the wave of hopelessness from the enemy and broke into crazed laughter, preparing to counterattack and annihilate them.
Just then—
A powerful energy fluctuation surged in from the nearby blue planet.
Sensing the intensity of this force, the demon's expression instantly shifted.
"What?! There's a Psyker on this world that strong?!"
He could feel it clearly: this opponent's power was on par with his true body—far beyond what his current projection could handle.
In the next instant, his connection to his true form in the Warp was violently severed.
His projection, cut off like a lagging game character disconnected from the server, immediately began to destabilize and collapse.
"Damn it...!"
---
On the Moon, the soldiers—who moments ago had been resigned to death—watched in stunned silence as the horrific warship, seemingly invincible, suddenly began to crumple in on itself.
Like a tin can crushed by an unseen hand, it folded in seconds into a lump of mangled flesh—
Then violently exploded into countless fragments.
"?"
"What just happened?. Did… our weapons actually work?!"
The lunar commander couldn't believe it.
Since when did their missiles have the ability to flatten an enemy into a meatball?
---
Earth – United Kingdom – Villa Garden
After channeling a bit of power, Orsaga managed to borrow a fraction of his true body's vision.
Through it, he had clearly seen the alien warship near the Moon—and the strange lifeform inside it.
'Looks a bit like an Abyssal demon... but it doesn't carry the scent of an outsider. Native to this plane? A demon subspecies? Or something else entirely?'
What intrigued him even more was that the creature, like him, was operating in a projection state—only a fragment of its real form.
Whereas Orsaga's true body was lurking in the Abyss, this being's real form was hiding in a subspace pocket within this universe.
Following the trail of its energy signature, Orsaga quickly located that hidden dimension.
Even without close inspection, the moment he touched it—
He felt an overwhelming surge of negative emotion.
As if the entire universe's malice, fear, and despair had pooled into that one place.
He lit up in delight.
'This world actually has such a prime spot of spiritual energy?'
But before he could dig deeper, the projection he was using to trace the signal suddenly withered and died—its consciousness forcibly ejected back into the subspace where the demon's true form resided.
Moments later, the hundred-meter-long warship began to collapse.
Orsaga frowned slightly at the sight.
Then, with a casual gesture, he reached out from Earth—
And plucked the barely alive Purgators squad leader from the remains of the ship.
Based on earlier data he'd reviewed, Orsaga identified the man as one of the rescue crew from the Lewis and Clark expedition.
At first glance, nothing seemed unusual about him.
But standing face to face, Orsaga could feel something strange.
A trait that set the man apart—perhaps the very reason the demon had kept him alive.
After examining him briefly, Orsaga—with his vast experience—pinpointed the anomaly.
Then crushed the man to death without hesitation.
He removed the device from his wrist.
Then turned around—his gaze locking on the figure standing quietly behind him.
A tall man, around two meters in height, with long black hair and a muscular build.
His face looked as though it had been sculpted in ancient Greece—sharp and godlike.
Though he appeared to be in his thirties, and exuded a pure human aura, Orsaga could sense the presence of an immortal—an ancient being with centuries, perhaps millennia, behind him.
In fact, it was quite possible that this man was even older than Orsaga himself.
More importantly, Orsaga could sense the immense power hidden within him—vast and unfathomable, like a still, deep sea.
Slightly weaker than Orsaga's true form, perhaps…
But stronger than nearly every Greater-Ranking Demon he'd ever encountered.
A being capable of casually destroying planets.
This was the one who had crushed the alien demon from across the void between Earth and Moon—shattering its connection and cutting short Orsaga's exploration.
Now, under the man's calm, piercing, and clearly hostile gaze, a red light flickered in Orsaga's eyes.
He raised an eyebrow, genuinely surprised.
"…I didn't expect a being like you to exist on this planet."
It felt like discovering a whale hiding in a shallow backyard pond.
Completely inexplicable—given this world's environment, how could someone like this possibly be born here?
__
T/N:
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