Chapter 637: Demon God vs the Abyss
The Crimson light split the world in two.
The Ray of Sanguine Devastation carved a perfect path through sky and stone alike, a searing column of crimson that drowned out every colour until even the emerald light of Mephisto’s dying core vanished. The air screamed with a high-pitched howl, like metal tearing apart as the beam devoured mana itself, rippling away everything it touched.
For a moment, there was only silence.
As if the land died.
"Haa..." Asmodeus breathed out, a thick mist floating from the corners of his mouth.
The plains buckled and peeled open like molten scars, as the battlefield sank into a smoking trench, black stone and earth liquefying under the heat.
Towers along the outer wall collapsed as if kicked by a god. His army of orcs, elves, knights and beastkin were thrown to the ground by the shockwave, their ears ringing from the unholy shriek that followed.
The crimson light faded.
Ash fell like slow rain.
Something moved inside the smoke.
At first, it looked like a mountain lifting itself from the grave.
A distorted shape, which created a disgusting wet grinding, with each movement as the monster appeared from within the smoke. A huge jaw hanging loose, filled with sharp teeth, curved claws attached to tendrils slicing stone like breath.
From the heart of the ruined land, a thing that might have once been Mephisto rose.
No longer a man nor a god.
A horror.
"It’s undamaged?" Asmodeus frowned as he examined the abomination.
A massive torso of obsidian flesh split by emerald cracks. A gaping mouth tore across its chest, lined with teeth the length of spears, drooling light that burned the earth wherever it dripped.
Dozens of tendrils
unfurled from its back, each ending in hooked claws slick with green fire. Its face, if it could be called that, looked stretched and warped. Mephisto’s tiny figure fused with the friend’s chest. Half swallowed by shifting, howling flesh.Its roar was not sound but vibration — a pulse that made hearts seize and stomachs lurch.
The Abyss had awakened.
And trapped inside, half consumed Mephisto screamed from within it, a voice warped beyond human hearing, yet still laced with hatred.
"I... will not... die... to YOU!"
The giant mass lunged, the ground quaking as tendrils lashed forward, tearing trenches through armies that scattered like insects.
Above the chaos, Asmodeus hung in the sky, wings spread wide, Blood Reaver glowing with hungry red veins. His new body still pulsed with unfamiliar strength, with an unfamiliar yet intoxicating thrum.
His golden eyes watched Mephisto’s tragic state with a hint of sorrow in his voice.
"So this is your choice, Mephisto?"
He gripped his axe tight, gathering his power as the massive beast began to tear apart his land.
***
The monster didn’t give him time to understand it.
The lumbering fiend shambled forward.
I can’t let it get closer to my girls!
A tendril thicker than a tower swept across the battlefield with a sound like tearing continents. It lifted whole ranks of elves and knights were lifted and flung aside as if caught in a tidal wave; walls split where it struck, sending stone blocks screaming into the air.
The shockwave alone turned siege engines into splinters.
Asmodeus vanished.
One heartbeat, he hovered in the sky, and the next, his silhouette blurred, slipping beneath the strike. A black streak streaked upward along the tendril’s length, Blood Reaver carving a glowing red seam as he ran along the living flesh.
The beast shrieked with a thousand overlapping voices, each a warped echo of Mephisto’s former self, but it didn’t slow. Another arm crashed down, missing him by a breath and leaving a crater wider than a small village. The impact hurled even the orc warchief end over end, forcing the armies to retreat further.
"Fall back!" someone screamed, but soon vanished under the monster’s bellow.
[Asmodeus, it’s too dangerous!]
Serena’s voice came through his mind, but he couldn’t agree. Aurelia, Tsukihana and Velmina were inside the citadel. He looked around, spotting Vinea and Velvet, both fighting the tentacles, but struggling.
He focused his mind and sent his thoughts into their minds.
"Go to the keep, take the girls and run, this isn’t a battle we can win without losses. Take them to safety!"
Asmodeus reappeared high above the swinging mass, wings beating once, twice. He swung Blood Reaver in an overhand arc.
The axe met the creature’s hide with a noise that was less impact and more collapse. Flesh and emerald fire burst outward, splattering the ground below in caustic rain. A gap opened in the monster’s armour of abyssal flesh only for it to writhe and knit itself shut with green-lit sinew.
"Tch..." Asmodeus clicked his tongue. "Instant regeneration."
[Defeating this monster will be difficult... even the gods struggled because it can devour mana and divine aura!]
"Then what should I do?"
Thanks to a bizarre spine, the monster twisted unnaturally. Tendrils snapped upward toward him, three at once, each moving faster than a siege ballista. He darted aside, wings slicing the air in a blur of black and scarlet, but even he was forced backwards by their combined weight.
He landed atop one thrashing arm, used it as a springboard and launched himself again — closing the distance to its chest where Mephisto’s warped upper body still clung.
"Then I’ll rip you out myself," Asmodeus growled.
The beast answered by opening the massive chest-maw.
"Wha....!?"
Energy rapidly gathered as a spherical orb deep inside the abyssal beast’s mouth, the low rumble of energy vibrating before a massive energy wave shot in the space of two seconds, the rumbling howl of the green beam devouring the sky.
The beam fired.
Asmodeus grunted, his axe buried in a tendril to anchor him as his ears burst with blood dripping from each side.
Emerald and black light ripped across the sky, swallowing clouds and turning day to a blinding hell. It wasn’t fire or magic as mortals knew it.
It was annihilation... raw annihilation, a devouring tide of abyssal might wrapped in what little remained of Mephisto’s divine aura.
Asmodeus hurled himself sideways an instant before impact. The blast screamed past, shearing the top from the inner wall and erasing whole battlements in a single sweep. Knights and orcs who hadn’t retreated fast enough vanished, silhouettes burned into dust before the shockwave blew them apart.
The ground where the ray struck didn’t exist anymore. It left a glassy trench boiling with green-black sludge.
[You can’t meet that head-on!]
Serena’s voice cut through the ringing in his skull, sharp and urgent.
[Its mouth draws energy to form the abyss itself. Even gods were wary of that beam!]
"I noticed!" Asmodeus shot back, teeth bared as he snapped his wings and climbed higher, leaving burning afterimages. He could barely keep stable after losing half his body to the green light; now his ears and eyes struggled to repair themselves.
"It’s relentless!"
The monster followed, a mass of tendrils whipping up like a forest swaying in a brutal storm. Each tip lanced at Asmodeus’s back, trying to impale the demon god with enough force to crush a fortress.
He dodged, rolled, and wove between them, but the sheer volume threatened to drown him. One brushed his wingtip, and the membrane tore with a hiss just from the aura, barely healing but leaving a stinging line of pain.
Below, the allied armies scrambled to escape the monster’s reach.
Duke Qwass and King Avandar helped the Grigorian knights to focus and guide the elves and beastkin out of the danger zone, with most of Asmodeus’s wives flying towards the castle to save those who couldn’t fight. Yet some stayed behind, loosing arrows or spells that vanished against the beast’s hide.
"Pull back! Pull back to the keep!" Vinea’s voice rang out as she and Velvet fell back in sync, their bodies covered in filth and wounds, but eyes locked on Asmodeus above. They hated leaving him.
However, they obeyed his command.
Another beam began to swell in the horror’s maw.
Asmodeus couldn’t wait this time and hovered in front of the beast.
He ignored Serena’s ideas and gathered his power, matching the beast’s action. He prepared a sanguine beam with one hand, and in the other, he gathered his power, pulling back his axe with a twisted grin from the sheer pressure weighing down on him.
Blood Reaver glowed until it seemed made of living fire, the axe-head splitting into writhing threads hungry for the abyss. At the last moment, he twisted, wings snapping tight, and hurled the axe like a spear.
It struck just as the monster fired.
The collision was cataclysmic.
The thrown Blood Reaver dug into the roof of the mouth and exploded in a blossom of red and black aura. The beam veered wildly, slicing across empty plains instead of the keep. Mountains on the horizon flashed white-hot and crumbled under the stray shot.
The recoil ripped the weapon free and flung it back to Asmodeus. He caught himself with a hard snap of wings, coughing black smoke, but alive.
[Good! That’s it. The only way to defeat an Abyss is to shatter its core!]
He could see the huge green orb deep inside the flesh that rapidly healed, causing Asmodeus to point his fingertip at the glinting orb.
[If you widen the fracture enough, the abyss will devour itself!]
"I can try," he muttered, eyes narrowing once again, gathering his Demonic Aura into a tiny, crimson orb... no larger than his thumb.
"Mephisto, let me put you to rest."