CHAPTER ONE
NO REALM
THE HELL TRIAL
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Two figures ran.
Not walked. Not fled.
Ran like the world behind them had already decided they were dead.
The battlefield stretched endlessly, a broken wasteland screaming with explosions. Blazing beams tore through the sky. Shockwaves followed seconds later, slamming into the air like invisible fists. Even from far away, the residue of war reached them.
Then it hit.
A shockwave crashed into their backs and lifted them off the ground like toys. Their bodies spun through the air before smashing down hard, rolling across shattered earth until flesh met pain and pain begged for mercy.
They did not stay down.
They could not.
Groaning, bleeding, bones screaming, they forced themselves up and ran again. Fear gave them strength. Desperation gave them speed.
They burst through thick clouds of dust and smoke, and finally, they were seen.
They looked human. Almost.
Horns curved from their heads, different in size and shape. One had a tail that lashed violently as he ran. The other bore demonic wings, torn and scorched but still attached. Their faces were unreal. Too perfect. Too sharp. Beyond mortal beauty, shaped by something crueler than nature.
Their scarlet eyes glowed.
Not with power.
With terror.
They ran because their lives depended on it. Because existence itself was hunting them.
Behind them, a massive sphere of darkness rolled forward, swallowing everything in its path. Land vanished. Energy died. Even sound seemed to choke near it. The air reeked of corruption, death, and absolute destruction.
The stillness was worse than the explosions.
This was not a war.
This was slaughter.
And they were losing.
They dove behind a massive jagged red boulder and collapsed against it, chests heaving violently. Blood stained the cracked stone. One of them, the devil with a single horn, clenched his fists until his nails cut into his palms.
He turned to the other, voice hoarse, broken.
"How did it come to this?"
The question tasted bitter even as he spoke it.
He knew the answer.
He just could not accept it.
Extinction.
So fast. Too fast.
The truth was unbearable, almost unreal.
The world they stood on was Reticon. A vast plane of incomprehensible size. And yet, even this was nothing more than a fragment. A fraction so small it barely deserved a name.
This was the Hell Trial.
Hell was never what lesser beings believed. Not fire. Not torture. Not screams. Hell was a concept. Vague. Infinite. As difficult to understand as existence itself.
Within the No Realm, two absolute forces coexisted.
Heaven.
Hell.
And within Hell existed a region feared even by devils.
The Hell Trial.
Beings who wished to reincarnate before their destined time could enter the trial. Almost none succeeded. Fewer survived. Those who did were no longer what they once were.
This was the 30th gate.
Gate Thirty.
Reticon.
This was only one of the trials.
The 50th Gate of the Hell Trial.
Reticon.
A world where hellish devils ruled absolutely. Devils born here were nothing like their kin outside the No Realm. Their bodies were built for slaughter. Their strength was versatile, layered, almost immeasurable.
Most who reached this gate failed.
And those who failed did not die.
They became slaves.
Their existence twisted into endless torment, used however their devil masters desired. Eternity. A few eons. Or only a moment. It depended entirely on the whim of their owner.
Millions upon millions of beings from countless races had reached Reticon.
Only double digits ever made it past.
So when another challenger arrived, the devils erupted in excitement. Their faces twisted with greed. Another slave. Another toy. Another soul to break.
Then the figure looked at them.
He raised his sword.
Black flakes drifted from its blade like falling ash.
"You are next."
Chaos followed.
The stranger moved once.
And several billions were erased in seconds.
The devils reacted instantly, enraged by the provocation. They surrounded him, each one determined to make his suffering greater than the rest. Pain beyond imagination. A lesson carved into eternity.
That desire became their doom.
The stranger flashed forward. He grinned.
Then hell broke.
Literally.
The hell they ruled shattered.
What followed could only be called a nightmare.
More than seventy percent of Reticon's devils were wiped out in less than a single cycle. The elite joined the battle personally, confident, furious, proud.
They were erased without mercy.
The worst part was not death.
In truth, they could not truly die. Their souls were anchored to Reticon by the trial itself. They would revive. Again and again.
That did not make dying any easier.
Pain was still pain.
Fear was still fear.
But even that was not the worst part.
The worst part was this.
The devils were known across the No Realm, even among the Eight Realms, as the most wicked race in existence.
And yet, every single one of them believed the intruder was far worse.
Who slaughters limitless devils and their enslaved armies with nothing but a dark, amused grin?
If not a lunatic, then what?
The duo's hearts would have stopped if they still needed them to survive. Tension crushed their minds.
Then they noticed something.
The battlefield had gone silent.
No space tearing apart. No reality collapsing. No unfathomable destruction.
Only silence.
That silence made them relax.
And tense up even more.
The one-horned devil finally spoke, voice heavy with disbelief and desperate curiosity.
"What do you think?"
A pause.
"Do you think the battle is over?"
Another pause.
"Do you think we won?"
The winged devil did not answer.
He stared into the distance, crimson eyes glowing brighter.
Then he spoke with certainty.
"I do not know."
A beat.
"But there is only one way left."
They vanished.
Teleporting across countless gazillions of miles in a blink, reaching their destination in an instant.
Reaching their destination in the blink of an eye, they expected to see a mortal battered and exhausted. After such a battle, after wasting that much energy, he had to be tired.
He had to be.
What they saw instead made their unease sink deeper than anything they had imagined.
The battle was not over.
It was at its peak.
Before them stood devils by the millions. The number was smaller than before, but each one remaining brimmed with pure destruction. Hell essence saturated the air, thick and violent. Some shaped it into weapons. Others forced it into their bodies, strengthening flesh beyond reason. Many did things so absurd that even the duo could not fully comprehend them.
The combined aura they released was enough to make the very fabric of Reticon tremble, as if existence itself was about to tear apart.
And yet it did not.
This was a world altered by the Wardens of Hell themselves. It would not collapse from mere pressure or overflowing power.
Still, the sight was overwhelming.
Millions of overlord devils gathering for battle was enough to chill even the spine of an emperor. Yet they had not assembled to face angels, celestials, or their ancient rivals.
Their eyes were locked on a single target.
Several miles away, in a field buried beneath corpses of devils and countless others, a man stood. Mountains of bodies surrounded him, piled so high they looked insurmountable.
He was humanoid.
He looked human.
Half human, to be precise.
And yet everything beyond his appearance shattered the very concept of humanity.
Covered in blood, he laughed like a madman. The sound echoed across the battlefield until it finally stopped. He tilted his head upward, gazing at the cracked purple sun. His laughter twisted into a devilish grin, one that sent fear crawling through the spines of devils who had never known fear.
His eyes opened.
They glowed with an ethereal blue light.
He glanced at the army from the corner of his eye.
Then he looked away.
As if they were not worth his attention.
He continued staring at the broken sun.
"Is he ignoring us?"
Fury erupted.
"Get him."
The roar shook the land. They might have been slaughtered in the millions, but that did not give this arrogant warrior the right to look down on the mighty evil race.
They charged.
Their speed was monumental. In an instant, they surrounded the man from all directions.
He did not move.
He kept staring at the cracked sun.
Then he spoke, his voice dripping with disdain.
"Foolish morons."
Everything stopped.
A blade of pure darkness formed in his hand, as if summoned by the void itself.
He struck.
Agonized wails and dying screams tore through the air. The devils fought ferociously, unleashing everything they had, but they were outmatched in ways they could never have imagined.
They had lived for millennia.
Some far longer.
Yet in all their existence, this was the first time they understood fear on an entirely different level.
How could they not?
They were not facing a random warrior.
Not a god.
Not an angel.
Not a celestial.
Not even a supreme monarch.
They were facing their worst possible enemy.
An usurper.
And not an ordinary usurper.
They were facing the strongest of them all.
The most ruthless slayer in existence.
To be continued....