Time on the dark side of the moon accelerated within the palm of Zoran's hand, compressing millions of years of relentless wear and tear into a single, fleeting instant.
Enveloped by the irresistible, grinding force of absolute darkness, the Cosmos Fiend slowly ceased to think.
She was a conceptual fiend, possessing an undeniably potent ability, one that claimed to drive targets entirely mad by flooding their minds with the collective knowledge of the universe. Yet, stripped down to its core essence, her power was merely a manifestation of humanity's primordial dread regarding the vast, incomprehensible cosmos.
The infinite volumes of knowledge contained within that cosmic library were exactly the same; they were nothing more than the absurd, fragmented projections of mankind's existential fears.
How could a power born entirely from the collective anxieties of a single planet's population ever hope to contend against a force derived from the absolute laws of nature?
As the sea of stars shimmered around him, Zoran closed his palm completely.
The moon over the horizon faded into darkness at a dizzying speed. Piercing through the physical limits of space, Zoran's keen vision locked directly onto the island nation of the vibrant, azure planet stretching out beneath him.
Down below, Denji and Reze had successfully torn open an escape route, accompanied by a non-stop chorus of thunderous explosions and the violent revving of a chainsaw.
Kobeni had finally managed to track the two of them down just in time.
Staring at the pair of absolute lunatics, she poked her head out from the shattered window of her vehicle, waving her arms frantically as she yelled, "Get in, hurry!"
Glancing at the naive assassin behind the wheel of the getaway vehicle, Denji and Reze didn't hesitate for a single second. They launched themselves forward, diving headfirst into the car.
Kobeni's beloved automobile was already a battered piece of junk. She was relying almost entirely on the gravitational pull of her Moon Demon Chi to forcibly hold the crumbling chassis together; yet miraculously, the vehicle was still functioning perfectly.
As the dark lavender mists of the Moon Demon Chi swirled tightly around her arms, Kobeni slammed her foot onto the accelerator, and the car shot forward with a violent lurch.
She pushed the vehicle's horsepower to its absolute limit, plunging headlong into the surging torrent of human puppets.
Denji sat squarely in the center of the back seat, white-hot vapor exhaling from his jagged, monstrous jaws. Spreading his arms wide, he sat down in a commanding, wide-legged stance. Extending his chainsaw arms straight out of the windows on both sides of the car, he let out a manic, booming laugh: "It's a chariot!"
His roaring chainsaws extended horizontally from either side of the compact car, spinning with absolute fury. Guided by Kobeni's frantic steering, they plowed directly into the crowded streets. Countless human puppets were instantly sliced clean in two by the spinning blades.
The erratic thought process of absolute madmen could never be measured by normal human logic.
Just like at this very moment, three distinct lunatics had gathered together, tightly crammed inside Kobeni's tiny vehicle. One was naive, one was detached, and one was utterly berserk. Each possessed their own unique flavor of insanity.
The vehicle they proudly proclaimed a "chariot" had completely lost its original shape. To call it a car at this point was absurd; it was far more accurate to describe it as a mobilized, speeding meat grinder.
Before long, a look of deep worry washed over Kobeni's face, and she began to anxiously mutter under her breath, "We're out of gas, we're running out of gas..."
She scanned their chaotic surroundings frantically. Where on earth was she supposed to find a gas station in the middle of this mess?
The puppet assassins were surging forward as if they cost nothing at all. They resembled a swarm of bees pouring out from a compromised hive, attempting to smother an invading hornet to death by tightly encasing the tiny car in a dense, claustrophobic mass.
Feeling the vehicle's mechanical power grow increasingly sluggish, Kobeni suddenly felt a wave of frustration. The absolute thrill of violently plowing through a mob just moments ago had felt incredibly satisfying, and she wasn't about to let this ride end so quickly.
Fortunately, Reze stepped in to provide the final, missing piece to this motorized engine of death.
She smashed straight through the rear windshield, hauling herself up to stand atop the trunk. Extending her bare hands out toward the rear of the vehicle, a colossal explosion suddenly detonated behind them.
The violent kinetic back-draft of the blast propelled the car forward a massive distance, allowing the rotating chainsaws to instantly rip through another wave of the obstructive crowd.
Reze seemed to grow quite exhilarated by the thrill of it all. Whenever she assumed her form as the Bomb Devil, she relied heavily on the explosive propulsion of her own blasts to move at high speeds; now, she had simply adapted that exact methodology to this modified chariot.
The last piece of the puzzle was officially in place.
The calculations of madmen defied all conventional wisdom.
Kobeni's eyes lit up instantly. Though the initial recoil of the blast had very nearly thrown her straight through the shattered front windshield, the vehicle's driving power had officially returned!
She gripped the steering wheel with newfound excitement. Behind her, a rhythmic sequence of explosions detonated one after another, the brilliant flashes of fire igniting the exhaust stream into a roaring afterburner. This makeshift chariot spewed a long, blinding trail of jet-fire, looking remarkably radiant under the moonlight.
"It's a chariot!" the three of them bellowed almost simultaneously.
They tore through the streets in a chaotic, reckless rampage. The chariot occasionally went airborne, leaping over obstacles before crashing heavily back onto the asphalt. At every given second, it felt as though the vehicle was on the absolute verge of falling apart into a million pieces. Yet, time and time again, Kobeni used her abilities to forcibly pull it back together.
Three individuals who barely knew one another were operating in absolute, flawless synchronization.
High above the chaotic streets, standing atop a building not far from the careening chariot, a pair of assassins, a master and her apprentice, gazed coldly down at the bizarre vehicle plowing through their forces.
As a fellow assassin, this entire chaotic sequence was her handiwork.
The entity known as "Santa Claus" was not actually that old man from Germany; it was her. She was the true mastermind who had arrived explicitly to assassinate Makima.
Regrettably, she had absolutely no idea that the very target she was so desperately trying to eliminate had already been banished to the Netherworld by Zoran.
Even so, her core plan remained entirely unchanged: drag Denji and his companions straight into Hell, thereby forcing Makima to show her face. Once that happened, even if the Darkness Devil failed to kill Makima outright, she could still harvest a fragment of the Darkness Devil's flesh from Hell, granting herself supreme, unmatchable power.
The woman cast a detached glance down at the street below and raised her hand, issuing a silent command.
Countless human puppets immediately threw themselves directly into the path of the oncoming vehicle, tightly congregating together to form a thick, solid wall of living flesh. Within her line of sight, the chariot slammed violently into the barrier, sending a massive shower of severed puppets flying through the air.
This was precisely the opening she had been waiting for, the exact moment the chariot was forced to a grinding halt.
She extended her hands, forming a bizarre, grotesque mudra to begin her prayer and sacrifice. A colossal, suffocating pressure instantly descended upon the sky above.
"I sacrifice four lives to fulfill a contract with the Hell Devil. Cast every last one of them directly into the Hell of this world!" she muttered in a low whisper.
In an undisclosed location, a massive, invisible finger swept across the figures of three young children, leaving nothing behind but a series of horrific, blood-splattered stains.
The woman cast a subtle, placid smile toward her apprentice standing beside her. At that exact moment, a thick, grotesque finger manifested directly out from the void, completely obscuring half of the apprentice's body. The finger swept past, leaving the ground drenched in fresh crimson.
Four distinct lives. The sacrifice was complete.
The sky tore open in an instant, revealing a massive rift. A colossal, muscular arm descended straight out of the heavens, its massive palm spreading wide as it slammed downward, enveloping the entire battlefield.
Inside the chariot, everyone's vision plunged into absolute darkness for a brief fraction of a second. When they finally opened their eyes again, the scenery had changed completely.
Their compact car lay completely ruined on the ground beside them, thick plumes of black smoke billowing from its engine bay.
"Where... are we?" Kobeni murmured, her entire body trembling uncontrollably.
When she looked up, the sky was no longer there. In its place hung a bizarre, unsettling celestial canopy constructed entirely out from countless, interlinked doors of every imaginable shape and size. From the vast distance, an ancient, primordial aura of absolute danger wafted toward them, causing their very souls to shudder violently.
"This place... it's Hell!"
Reze felt a deep tremor of fear strike her heart. They had actually been banished directly into Hell?
"Someone invoked a contract with the Hell Devil to cast us down here," she reasoned quickly, her voice tight with panic. "When a devil dies in the mortal realm, they are reborn here in Hell. But dwelling within this abyss are also certain primordial fiends, entities that have never once experienced death, possessing a power so ancient it defies all human comprehension!"
All Reze had ever wanted was to escape to a quiet life in the countryside, not to be dragged into the absolute depths of the underworld.
That unsettling, deeply malicious aura in the air was growing exponentially stronger by the second. Whatever was approaching was an undeniably catastrophic entity.
And its gaze had already locked onto them.
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