"I will ascend the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the most High." ~ Lucifer.
POV: Haruki
He halted in his path, his wings fluttering slowly as the wind tugged at his coat. Below him, clouds drifted like pale seas, and above them hung his destination, a vast floating island suspended in the open sky.
The city spread across it in layered terraces, each ring slightly higher than the last, as if the island itself had been sculpted into a rising crown. Glass towers stood beside spires of pale stone carved with runic seams, their surfaces alive with quiet light.
Roads of polished alloy curved between districts in wide, floating arcs, not quite touching the ground, held aloft by humming gravitic anchors etched with sigils.
Veins of blue and gold energy pulsed through the city's bones. Some were cables as thick as train tunnels, others were streams of raw magic guided through transparent conduits.
Trams glided without rails, their hulls inscribed with spell arrays that adjusted their course in smooth, soundless motions.
Drones drifted between buildings like tame fireflies, leaving behind faint afterimages that dissolved in the air.
At the island's edge, massive stabilizer pylons reached down into the clouds. Each one was a fusion of arcane altar and industrial machine: rotating rings of enchanted metal, rotating in opposite directions, keeping the island perfectly balanced against storms and gravity alike.
Between them, waterfalls poured from artificial reservoirs, vanishing into mist before they ever reached the world below.
For a moment he simply hovered there, dwarfed by the sight of Agares Island. Utterly enchanted by the city they called Agreas.
Beautiful.
He wondered if humanity would create such beauty when they finally gained access to unrestricted magic. He hoped they would. Otherwise all of this would be pointless.
There would be no meaning without beauty.
Haruki had always been disgusted by definitions that tried to trap beauty in symmetry, proportion, or utility. Those were tools for architects and engineers, and Agreas possessed them in abundance, yet none of that explained why his chest felt tight as he watched the island breathe with light.
The city worked, of course. Power flowed, transit systems aligned themselves with invisible currents, weather wards peeled storms away before they could touch the skyline. It justified itself through function.
Still, function alone never stayed in memory.
What endured was the excess. Towers shaped with care far beyond structural necessity. Gardens suspended where a plain maintenance deck would have sufficed.
Energy conduits colored and patterned even though a dull pipe would have carried the same current. All of it consumed time, labor, and resources that could have been saved.
That waste was the point.
To him, beauty was proof of agency. It meant someone had stood at a drafting table or a ritual circle and decided that efficiency was not enough. That the world deserved to be more than to be merely optimized.
Agreas existed because someone had wanted it to look like this. Leave behind traces of personality in structures that did not need them.
Some people may perhaps criticize it for being useless. For being wasteful.
The point was that there was no point.
Simply beautiful.
He flew to the tallest tower in the middle of the great city and landed there in the blink of an eye. He looked at the trembling sky that was being held by Ajuka Beelzebub from collapsing.
Super-devils are really scary.
Katerea and her companions have executed his plan almost perfectly and now he simply needs to finish it. The end result of all his schemes and plans. His success here will be the foundation upon which all his future plans will be fulfilled.
He clapped his hands together and a magic circle snapped into existence, its rings locking into place with a muted chime. Light flooded the center, and four silhouettes formed at once within the glow.
The haze thinned, revealing Selvara, Vaelith, Rossweisse, and finally Valerie, all standing inside the same circle.
Selvara and Vaelith took a bow first, and Rossweisse stared at them in confusion for a moment before following suit and bowing as well, while Valerie merely giggled at their earnestness, taking no bow herself.
"We are here to answer your summon, great Master!" Selvara and Vaelith said at the same time, urgency in their voices.
"You don't have to bow or call me master every time you see me, you know," Haruki said exasperated, having told them this countless times before.
They seemed determined to ignore his suggestion and were now trying to teach Rossweisse the same behavior.
"They would take your suggestion more seriously if you didn't always look at them with that scary face," Valerie said, giggling at the discomfort evident on his face.
Fortunately, Valerie had become much more comfortable around him, enough to not always refer to him as 'my lord' or 'master'. She no longer acted as though he would incinerate her for failing to kowtow every time she was near him.
"I don't have a scary face. Do I?" he asked the assembled girls, hopefulness creeping into his tone.
"No, not at all, master."
"Of course not, master."
"No at all, master."
"..."
The girls said it simultaneously, much to Valerie's increasing amusement. Haruki did not think he had a scary face. He rarely became angry, and he made a point not to let negative emotions show on his face.
His early interactions with Selvara and Vaelith had been slightly cruel out of necessity, having to impersonate their deceased brother by wearing his skin, but after that he had been courteous and mindful in his dealings with them.
As for Rossweisse, he only interacted with her during her Rune magic lectures, remaining polite if somewhat distant. Odin may have suggested she was his to command, but Haruki had no intention of following that absurd idea.
He had avoided any behavior that might make her uncomfortable, and outside of lessons, he left her to her own activities. She had quickly struck a friendship with Valerie and the others, and he had done nothing to hinder it.
Could it be because I have been spending more time with Valerie than the others? he thought.
His time was mostly consumed by his plans, ensuring they went smoothly. When he was not working, he trained with Cain, and if not that, he studied and learned magic.
Valerie's importance in his plan had required him to devote significant effort to training her to the level he needed. The others had not required the same attention.
Yes, that must be it. It's not because I have a scary face.
"Anyway," he said, ignoring the awkward silence. "Rossweisse, this is Agreas. I want you to teleport every living organism, devil or otherwise, away from this island. Selvara and Vaelith will assist you."
"Understood, master," Rossweisse answered, immediately gathering her magical power to create a teleportation array, her concentration precise and unwavering.
Rossweisse, much to his surprise, had proven to be an immensely talented magician and a true prodigy when it came to sealing and structural magic, surpassing even him in those two disciplines, which was a delightful surprise and a source of quiet admiration.
He needed Agreas to be emptied for what he was planning, and he needed it done quickly. That meant the entire population of the city had to be teleported instantly, but a teleportation of that scale was extremely complex and enormously taxing on magical energy.
One had to account for the precise movements of every individual, their energy signatures, the mass and volume of each being, the ambient magical field, temporal synchronization, gravitational and spatial vectors, the interference between overlapping mana, environmental factors like terrain and structures, and even magical inertia to prevent catastrophic collision or feedback.
In truth, it was far too complex for him, even if energy consumption could be mitigated through careful preparation. He was still, in many respects, a novice at a feat of this magnitude.
Therefore, it was decided that Rossweisse would perform the teleportation spell, and even she had to be guided by Cain, step by step, to manage the intricacies of the incantation.
Haruki could not help but reflect on Cao Cao's use of a miracle through the True Longinus to achieve a similar teleportation feat, feeling a mix of envy and respect. It drove home just how extraordinary the power of a Longinus-tier Sacred Gear truly was.
Rossweisse, along with Selvara and Vaelith, began chanting while he and Valerie observed with keen interest.
After five minutes, a glowing magical array emerged on the ground, expanding slowly at first and then accelerating, engulfing the entire floating island of Agreas in a luminous network of magical lines.
Selvara and Vaelith clasped their hands in unison, their chants growing louder and more resonant.
Their role was straightforward: while Rossweisse managed the spell itself, functioning as the "software," the two vampires acted as the "hardware," supplying the enormous amounts of energy required for the spell to function.
For the past two months, they had been storing energy in a vacuum dimension specifically prepared by Cain, and now they drew it forth, feeding it seamlessly into Rossweisse's spell to maintain stability and amplify its effect.
Thud.
Rossweisse clapped her hands together, producing a sharp, resounding sound, and the magical array disappeared instantaneously, leaving behind only silence. Haruki scanned the empty island with his senses and could not detect a single living being.
He exhaled slowly in relief at the flawless execution of the teleportation.
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…
Several kilometers away from the floating island, countless people found themselves suspended in the air where just moments ago there had been nothing but empty sky.
"What the!?!" many shouted in incomprehension at the sudden and inexplicable change of location.
Since they appeared midair without warning, several began to plummet toward the ground, but as devils, they instinctively reacted, spreading their wings and halting their fall before reaching danger. All they could remember was a sudden magical array forming at their feet before they were transported into the sky.
"What the hell happened!?!"
"Who dares!?"
Voices of confusion, frustration, surprise, and anger rippled through the crowd. Being magical beings, they quickly deduced that a teleportation spell had been used, though no one could imagine anyone capable of casting one at this scale.
As they looked around, they saw countless devils hovering in the air, wings spread wide like a massive flock of bats, so numerous that they darkened the ground below.
"Could it be Lord Beelzebub?" someone asked, prompting a chorus of nods and shouts of agreement.
"Most likely," another said. "Lord Beelzebub is the only one with the energy efficiency to accomplish such a feat."
The crowd murmured in speculation, wondering at the reason for this sudden mass teleportation and the purpose behind the mysterious event of Agreas.
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…
Rossweisse fell to her knees, exhausted, blood trickling from her nose and eyes. The strain of the spell on her body was immense, and she would likely need several days of rest to recover fully from the ordeal. The vampires, on the other hand, showed no signs of fatigue, likely because they absorbed some of the energy, which further empowered them.
"Well done, everyone," Haruki praised, his voice calm and carrying a soft smile. "You three have accomplished a magical wonder that will be remembered for the ages."
"All thanks to you, master," Rossweisse said humbly, bowing her head.
"I had nothing to do with it," he replied evenly. "It was all your work. No need for humility here, Rossweisse. Stand proud. You are amazing. All three of you."
A soft smile appeared on Rossweisse's face, while the vampire girls pretended modesty at his compliment.
"Your work here is done, and you can go rest, Rose," he said, turning to her. "Selvara, Vaelith," he gestured to the girls. "You will go with Valerie and protect her during the ritual. She knows when to act, so follow all her orders."
"Understood," Selvara answered, then hesitated. "I-If I may be permitted to ask, my lord, what ritual will you be performing?"
That was understandable. They were not informed of all his plans, only the portion in which they would be directly involved. Only Valerie and Cain were aware of the full plan among those present. He had not even told Odin or Thor the full scope of what he intended.
"You will find out shortly," he said calmly.
"M-Master Haruki," Rossweisse called shyly. "May I be allowed to be present to witness the ritual?"
"If you are not too exhausted, you may follow them," he replied.
"Thank you, master," she said, relief and pride in her voice.
The three of them took to the air, flying away from the city and appearing half a mile or so away from the floating island, following Valerie. Haruki, however, ascended into the sky, a mile above the great city, and began to dance.
His eyes closed, deep in focus and passion, his movements impossibly graceful, wings slicing through the air with equal elegance in all directions.
The magic circle beneath him expanded until it could engulf the entirety of Agreas. He began to chant, his voice thunderous and commanding, shaking the heavens. A massive, tyrian-purple magic circle formed beneath him, filled with pupil-less eyes and contorted lines that writhed like living shadows. His words cut through the air, resonant and absolute:
O light that was before the first throne was raised,
O silence that drowned the screams of creation,
Answer me.
By the breath that parted heaven from abyss,
By the name no demon may utter,
By the weight of every forgiven sin,
I call you.
Let corruption be measured and found wanting.
Let false eternity crumble into dust.
Let this sky remember purity.
Unmake the anchors.
Unravel the lies that bind stone to sky.
Return what was stolen to the grave of nothing.
I offer will for flame,
Flesh for radiance,
Existence for judgment.
Fall, island of blasphemy.
Fall, memory of defiance.
Fall, and be erased from every future.
So it is spoken.
So it is sealed.
"Cleanse it all, Morningstar!"
The final word left his lips and the world answered.
The massive circle above Agreas contracted, every ring snapping inward toward the pupil-less eyes at its core. For a breathless instant nothing happened, as if reality itself had drawn in air.
Then the eyes opened.
A column of holy light tore downward from the circle, wider than the grand plazas of the city below, a cataract of white-gold radiance edged in faint violet scripture.
It enveloped the floating mass in a roaring flood of sanctified energy. The air screamed as demonic wards met absolute purity, layers of protection unraveling in luminous spirals.
Agreas was judged and found wanting.
Buildings lost their color first. The neon veins dimmed, then went transparent, then simply ceased to exist, leaving behind silhouettes of formation that collapsed into drifting motes. Runes embedded in the city's foundations screamed as they were destroyed.
Gravitic pylons flared, their enchantments unraveling into raw symbols that burned themselves into nothing. Towers split along their seams of demonic formation, dissolving from the inside out, their substance converted into drifting motes of sanctified dust.
Waterfalls froze in midair, transformed into columns of crystalline light before bursting into vapor. Gardens curled inward, leaves turning translucent, veins glowing as the holy energy passed through them.
The great stabilizer rings at the island's edges spun faster and faster, then tore themselves apart, each fragment shedding sparks that fell away like dying stars.
Haruki kept dancing, every motion now mirrored by seismic shifts in the city below. His wings cut sigils through the sky. His eyes remained closed, face calm, distant, as though he were conducting a symphony.
He danced and danced. His movement vigorous and brisk.
Then the core collapsed inward, folding through itself, and vanished.
With nothing left to anchor its existence, the remnants of the floating island lost cohesion. What remained was pale dust drifting through sanctified air, every particle cleansed of its former purpose.
The beam faded. The eyes in the circle closed. The rings unraveled into harmless sparks that winked out one by one.
Where Agares had ruled the sky, there was only open space and falling motes of light, descending like slow, reverent snow.
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…
Far from the island, the evacuees who had been removed from Agreas slowed, then stopped in mid-flight. Tens of thousands of devils hung in the air, wings beating in stunned unison, forming a vast ring around the empty space where their city had ruled the sky.
From several miles away it looked like a colossal arena, its only spectacle the death of everything they had known.
They watched as holy light rained down upon the greatest creation in devil history. The city born from Lucifer Morningstar's genius, the technological heart of the underworld, the engine that had driven centuries of progress, now stood beneath a deluge of sanctified radiance so intense it turned entire districts into drifting halos.
No one spoke. No one could speak.
Spells died on their lips. Thoughts stalled in their minds. The sight reached past fear and into something more primitive, a wordless awareness that reality itself was not making sense.
Towers that had stood since the ancient wars unraveled into glowing filaments. The sigils that had once governed energy, gravity, and matter burned away as if they had never been allowed to exist.
Some devils clutched their chests as though struck by phantom blows. Others forgot to flap, caught mid-air by shock alone.
Many simply wept, their tears evaporating before they could fall. Many laughed in madness, their voices breaking apart as the sound carried nowhere. Most remained silent, held in place by a terror so complete it robbed them even of the will to scream.
This was the center of their world. Their pride, their future, their proof that devils could shape the heavens to their will. Now it was being erased by a force they had been taught to treat as a distant myth.
They remained there, circling the hollowed sky, watching an event no language could ever hold, aware that even as light poured into the underworld, this would endure as its darkest night.
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"Incredible!"
That was the reaction of the company accompanying Haruki. The girls, beholding the spectacle unfolding before them, could do nothing but stare in awe, their expressions a mixture of wonder and comprehension that they were witnessing a moment that would be remembered in legend.
After the destruction of the floating island and the dispersal of nearly all the holy light into mere flickers, they beheld the figure responsible for it all, hovering above the ruin, radiating an intensity that pressed down on them even from a distance.
Haruki floated there with his wings fully spread, moving through the air with uneven, staggering motions, as though he had lost all sense of orientation, reminiscent of a drunken man stepping unsteadily from a cabin.
Valerie blinked rapidly, shaking herself from the trance the sight had induced.
"Selvara! Vaelith, follow me, it's time to play my part!" she shouted, her voice cutting through the awe-struck silence.
Without waiting for a response, she shot forward, her wings propelling her with precise speed and confidence, fully trusting in the loyalty and skill of her companions. The vampires did not hesitate, matching her pace instantly, trailing behind her with unerring coordination.
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Haruki Yamashiro screamed.
The sound tore out of him in ragged, broken waves, stripped of any dignity, a raw animal cry that echoed across the emptying sky. Pain flooded every thought, drowning memory, reducing existence to a single, endless moment of death and rebirth.
It felt as though his body had become a battlefield where incompatible laws were being forced to coexist. Holy energy poured through him in overwhelming volume, far beyond anything a devil frame had been designed to contain.
His wings convulsed violently, joints locking, then releasing in spasms that bent his form into angles no living thing should endure. His nerves burned with light, each one lighting up as if set ablaze from the inside, sending cascades of agony through his spine and skull.
He could feel his demonic nature unraveling. As though being peeled apart in layers, remade by a power that ignored his resistance. His vision fractured into blinding shards of white and violet. The air itself felt sharp, every breath slicing down into his lungs like fragments of broken glass made of radiance.
He tried to draw in power to stabilize himself. The moment he did, the holy current surged harder, forcing itself deeper, filling every channel, flooding every seal, crushing every internal organ he had ever relied upon.
His muscles seized in place, trembling so violently that he lost all sense of orientation, no longer able to tell where his body ended and his soul began.
The pain exceeded memory. His ascension to high-class had nearly broken him. His rise to the ultimate-class had scarred him in ways he had believed incomparable. Those moments returned now as faint impressions, swallowed instantly by what was happening to him.
The pain he felt then had been trivial, like a light slap on the wrist or the bite of a toothless infant - barely worth noticing compared to the agony he endured now, which felt as though a pack of hyenas had sunk their jaws into every inch of his body, tearing him apart piece by piece.
Haruki thrashed in midair, clawing at nothing, voice shredding as he screamed himself hoarse. His magic flared out of control, then was crushed flat by the pressure of godlike energy force moving through him like a living tide.
His senses dissolved into static, every thought reduced to a pulse of unbearable awareness.
Somewhere within the storm consuming him, something old was being erased.
Something new was being carved into its place.
And until the transformation decided it was finished with him, Haruki existed only as pain given shape.
He sensed something trying to hold him together, the faint impression of a grasp closing around his drowning self. A fragile spark of clarity appeared within the crushing void, a distant glimmer that promised salvation. His soul leaned toward it by instinct alone, every remaining fragment of will drawn upward.
He tried to reach it. He felt the darkness below pulling him even lower to the pit. Invisible currents dragged at his essence, tugging him downward with persistence, as though the dark had decided he belonged to it.
He strained against it, forcing himself to move through the weight pressing on his being, each effort tearing more of himself loose. The light hovered just beyond his grasp, close enough to define, distant enough to deny him, a presence that filled his awareness while retreating from every attempt to claim it.
Still he fought, pulling against the descent, stretching himself thinner with every desperate motion, driven by the certainty that if he stopped, even for a moment, there would be nothing left to reach for the light at all.
He heard voices, the distant cries of countless souls whose faces he could not make out. They shouted at him, accusing him, condemning him.
"You let us die!"
"You murdered us!"
"Murderer!"
"Killer!"
"Blasphemer!"
The weight of all his guilt fell on him at once, a suffocating pressure pressing on his chest, crushing his resolve. He felt the exhaustion of a man who had surrendered his principles, discarded his values, betrayed himself, only to find the reward for such compromises far less than he had imagined.
Now, in this moment, confronted with all his failings, his soul laid bare, he could not help but recoil in disgust at the thing staring back at him: a hideous creature grinning with wicked, self-assured malice.
This was his soul, the grotesque reflection of his actions laughing at him. But what else could it be? It was only a mirror of what he had done.
We are the sum of our actions.
And were his actions not truly those of a hideous monster? Manipulated others for his gain, incited chaos to achieve his ends, killing, stealing, scheming.
Had he not struck down people with unceasing blows, and in fury subdued nations with relentless aggression?
He should not have agreed to dance with the devil. He should not have compromised his soul, even for the illusion of a greater good. He should have known that when one begins to dance with the devil, the dance lasts forever.
Does one such as him even deserve to live?
"How the oppressor has come to an end!" the voices cried in exultation.
"How his fury has ended!" They sang.
"The realm of the dead below is all astir to meet you at your coming; it rouses the spirits of the departed to greet you."
"You have also become weak, as we are; you have become like us," they said, jubilant.
"You are cast out of your tomb like a rejected branch, for you have destroyed your land and killed your people."
The thought of continuing seemed pointless. The temptation to rest, to surrender, clawed at him. He was so tired. So unbearably tired.
"What of Hikaru?" A voice pierced the suffocating darkness, soft yet unyielding, like sunlight breaking through a storm.
"Will you leave her alone again? Will you let her suffer alone in this cruel world? Did you not promise your parents that you would save her? Make her happy?"
"Are you going back on your words yet again?"
The fire ignited within him, sudden and searing, a force that refused to be snuffed out by despair. He would not let children grow weak. He would not let his sister suffer. Humans were fragile and alone, and he would not abandon them.
What were his principles compared to that?
What was his happiness compared to that?
What was his humanity compared to that?
No, he would live. He struggled, thrashing against the darkness that clawed and pulled at him, aiming to drag him down into the abyss, the accusers' voices rising into a maddening frenzy.
"Murderer!"
"Blasphemer!"
"Filthy!"
"Abomination!"
He struggled to escape the darkness intent on dragging him lower, yet he could not. He felt himself weaken, the spark of his soul dimming.
"Don't give up, Haruki!" a feminine voice cried. "You can do this! I am with you! You are not alone!"
He recognized the voice, beautiful and angelic. Power surged back into his soul, his aimless form now finding direction.
"Take my hand, Haruki!" the voice said. "I am here for you!"
Yes, he was not alone.
He stretched his trembling hands toward the sound, and for the first time in endless moments, he felt the darkness relent. He was being pulled from the abyss, toward the light, toward life.
His eyes snapped open. His body convulsed as though it had returned from death, lungs heaving, vision hazy, senses burning.
"Shhh! It's us, Haruki," said the voice. He looked to see Valerie, her face filled with relief. "You are okay now. You made it, Haruki!"
He looked around. He was still in the air where Agreas had once stood, the three women holding him aloft to prevent him from falling.
He felt his body transforming, ascending.
"Get as far away from here as possible," he commanded, still hazy, feeling the rising ache of his injuries. "It will become too dangerous for you now."
They obeyed without question, quickly flying away without looking back, leaving him alone.
He felt his body convulsing, his demonic energy rising at an unimaginable speed. The hardest part had been overcome with Valerie's help; now he merely needed to stay sane as his body was constantly torn apart and remade as it evolved. Ascended.
If he was to take God's place, he needed power. More power than he could ever attain through training or natural growth. His ability, Sacrementum, was specifically designed for this: by sacrificing something, he gained an increase in demonic power.
However, the problem was that the quality of the sacrifice had to match the increase in power. He could not simply kill a thousand people as an ultimate-class being and expect to reach the realm of Satan-class.
Killing a thousand people was as easy as breathing for an ultimate-class being; there was no risk involved, no true price to pay.
When he ascended from high-class to ultimate-class by sacrificing hundreds of vampires, the sacrifice was deemed acceptable because they were all high-class in power, each capable of posing a threat to him individually, and together they made victory impossible.
Thus, when he managed to kill them all, Sacrementum considered it a fair exchange. The same principle applied when he ascended from mid-class to high-class.
The question that had troubled him for a long time was simple: what could he possibly sacrifice to ascend from ultimate-class to Satan-class?
He did not have a holy artifact capable of annihilating hundreds of ultimate-class beings at once, and even if he did, where could he gather such beings? They were extremely rare and would never fall for the manipulations or tricks that had worked on the vampires. It simply was not realistic.
So he schemed. He wanted to improve the lives of reincarnated devils, that was true, but how could he achieve that?
The problem with reincarnated devils as they were now was that they were too expendable. If one died, it could simply be replaced by another, for it was the evil pieces that were the source of their creation.
As long as there were enough evil pieces, more reincarnated devils could always be made.
If the production of evil pieces could be made finite, halted entirely, then every reincarnated devil would become irreplaceable. Peerages would become investments rather than resources. Betrayal would carry strategic costs.
Neglect would translate into measurable loss. Power would have to be preserved rather than harvested.
Only then would reincarnated devils stop being collateral. Only then would the underworld be forced to treat them as something worth keeping.
How could he achieve that?
In theory, it was simple, in practice, however extremely complicated. Evil pieces required special crystals to be produced, crystals that could only be found on the floating island of Agreas.
No other place in the world contained the element essential to producing evil pieces.
Destroying the island completely would halt the production of evil pieces. No more material, no more creations.
The problem was that the rarity of the element made it by far the most important and protected resource in the underworld. That was why it was the seat of House Agares, the second most powerful Pillar House, and the seat of Satan Beelzebub, a super-devil.
Attacking Agreas would normally be considered insurmountable. Even bypassing the countless protective measures installed by Ajuka himself, along with defenses of previous Satans, powerful guards, and the legions of House Agares, would almost certainly end in suicide.
He would have to deal with Satan Beelzebub, a super-devil capable of manipulating reality at will. He would need to be at the level of a super-devil just to have a chance to fight him, and even if he somehow did, he would have to face the other super-devil who would quickly come to aid.
Confronting both Ajuka Beelzebub and Sirzechs Lucifer directly was impossible unless he were the Dragon of Dreams or the Dragon of Infinity. Attempting to destroy Agreas outright was folly.
This impossibility gave him an idea. The sheer unlikelihood of destroying the floating island made it the perfect sacrifice for Sacrementum.
If he could somehow achieve this impossible goal, the increase in power would be enormous, and it would also accomplish his goal of making evil pieces sacred.
It was a hopeless goal. He would have to be mad to even entertain the idea, yet he had never been known for common sense. He would not be in this situation if he were sane.
Thus he schemed. He schemed to destroy the most important place in the underworld beneath the noses of two super-devils and ascend to godhood.
His demonic energy began to multiply in violent cycles, splitting apart, collapsing in on itself, then recombining in new configurations, each iteration tearing through him with a level of pain that would shatter even the strongest will.
The pressure inside his core surged past the limits of ultimate-class within seconds, climbing to four times its former capacity with no hint of stabilization.
Five times. Eight times. Fifteen.
He had reached Satan-class. Yet there was no sign of slowing down in his rapid increase of his demonic energy, multiplying like a cancerous cell.
It continued to multiply, three times that of Satan-class. Six times that of Satan-class. His soul was being torn apart and remade to be able to handle the increase in power.
He was evolving in real time into something more than a devil, more than a holy being, into an unprecedented being.
An impossibility. A paradox. An oxymoron.
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…
The underworld convulsed as though its foundations had been struck by a divine judgement.
Across every layer of its vast dominion, phenomena erupted without warning or pattern. Every part of the underworld experienced an earthquake.
Lakes that had remained placid for millennia rose into mountainous walls of black water, swallowing port cities beneath spiraling maelstroms that refused to disperse.
Storm fronts tore through entire regions, their cyclonic towers stretching beyond any recorded measurement, flaying forests into drifting ruins and hurling warships across continents.
Mountain chains fractured in slow, grinding screams, their peaks folding inward as if pressed by an invisible hand. Rivers reversed their flow. Caverns collapsed into themselves, releasing plumes of sulfurous fire that clawed their way toward the sky.
The purple clouds that perpetually shrouded the underworld began to rotate, forming continent-wide vortices threaded with lightning that fell upward rather than down.
Ancient wards failed in sequence. Barriers belonging to ancient pillar houses failed, their sigils bleeding light before extinguishing altogether. Oracles across the great houses fell silent mid-prophecy, their grimoires turning to blank ash in their hands.
Familiars howled and tore free from their summoners, driven mad by an unseen resonance shaking the fabric of the underworld.
The underworld had endured wars between gods, dragons, and devils alike. It had survived cataclysms that reshaped continents. None of those moments felt like this.
This was reality adjusting itself around the birth of something that had never been meant to exist. Should not exist.
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Meanwhile Haruki's demonic energy continued to surge and fracture, multiplying continuously. It had already surpassed twelve times the output of a Satan-class being, a concentration of power without precedent in the recorded history of the underworld.
The excess energy spilled outward and began to coil around his body, thick streams of darkness folding over themselves in tightening spirals. Layer by layer it wrapped around him, compressing, hardening, its surface taking on the texture of starless void.
Within seconds, Haruki vanished from sight, sealed inside a vast cosmic shell suspended in the open sky.
Silence followed.
For several long minutes the underworld held its breath. No storms roared. No wards flared. Only the massive egg remained, floating, its surface pulsing with slow, uneven light as the force within it shifted.
Then thin fractures traced across its shell.
The cracks spread in branching patterns, glowing from within, the pressure behind them rising to intolerable levels.
With a thunderous rupture the cosmic egg detonated, disintegrating into waves of raw demonic energy that tore outward in every direction, announcing the birth of whatever Haruki had become.
…
…
…
Across every pantheon in the world, attention was drawn to the underworld at the same moment.
The Japanese pantheon, the Greek pantheon, the Mesopotamian pantheon, the Egyptian pantheon, the Hindu pantheon, the Chinese pantheon, the Norse pantheon, the Celtic pantheon, the Aztec pantheon, the Slavic pantheon, the Yoruba pantheon and many others, all of them felt the same pressure turning their awareness toward a single point.
The phenomena tearing through the underworld demanded observation. From their divine domains, the chief gods gathered in spirit, watching the formation of the cosmic egg and the chaos surrounding it.
One by one, they fell silent, united in anticipation as they awaited the birth of a new god.
The aura sealed inside the shell made them come to a single unavoidable conclusion. This presence exceeded any ordinary divinity. The new god was several magnitudes beyond the realm of god-kings, eclipsing the authority of Amaterasu, Zeus, Ra, and countless others.
Unease spread through the heavens as even the eldest deities struggled to comprehend what they were sensing.
Light and demonic essence burst outward, and from the dissolving shell emerged a figure that left the assembled gods speechless.
He stood naked in the empty sky, tall and perfectly proportioned, his body sculpted with such precise definition it appeared sculpted by deliberate geometry rather than flesh. Midnight-dark hair framed a face of overwhelming beauty, a presence that embodied seduction and allure as a fundamental property of demonic power.
Fourteen bat-like, dark wings sprouted from his back.
More importantly, he was something else entirely. He was not a normal god, nor was this a mere apotheosis. The countless gods observing the birth of this paradox could find no appropriate term to describe him.
He was a devil who had ascended into divinity, something that had never happened before. It simply should not have been possible.
Even more astonishing, the being radiated holy power as though he were an angel.
What do you call such a being? Abyssal Deity? God of Paradox? Profane Divinity? Blasphemous God? Diabolic God? God-Devil? Devil-God? The Enquiox Deity? The God of the Broken Covenant?
All of these terms could not accurately describe the impossible god before them.
The newborn god turned his head and looked directly into the divine realms. He saw them.
Fear and shock rippled through the pantheons. Divine gazes withdrew, realms sealed themselves, observation spells shattered as the gods tried to hide from his awareness.
Only three did not retreat and met his gaze unflinchingly.
The God of Destruction, Shiva; the Lord of Thunder, Indra; and the strongest evil dragon, Crom Cruach, the Dark Dragon of the Crescent Moon.
Haruki met their eyes, lips curling upward, then offered a slow, mocking bow.
AN: The scene of Haruki destroying the floating island is what inspired me to write this fic in the first place. Everything has been building toward this single moment. It took around 47 chapters to get here, but I'm mostly satisfied with how it turned out. The name of the light attack was suggested by a patron, and I found it very fitting. I hope you like it.
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