Chapter 417

Chapter 417
## Chapter 417

The Great Demon World War (4)

Crackling—

The dense compression of power, which had manifested as a colossal blade, dissolved into nothingness, its potency vanishing completely.

Hella, feeling slightly disoriented by the residual shockwaves, gazed down at her open palm.

The very hand that, moments ago, had held the entire fabric of the Demon World in its firm grip.

‘…This is truly… astonishing.’

Because she had channeled that immense force herself, she could comprehend its nature now.

This authority, a vast web of intertwined spiritual channels, magnified by her elevation to the Demon King, the unyielding devotion of her subjects, and the web of countless karmic threads… it was fundamentally a celestial authority, a privilege reserved solely for divinities.

‘…This phenomenon is likely only viable because the denizens of the Demon World are inherently magical lifeforms, akin to elemental spirits.’

It was highly probable that this unique existential framework explained why the residents of this realm possessed greater innate strength than those dwelling in Auterica.

If she could command this energy without restraint, governing the Demon World with the authority of a deity would be an effortless task.

‘…But naturally, such freedom is non-existent.’

A faint, self-mocking grin touched her lips, producing a soft chuckle.

Not even a reigning Demon King possessed the right to simply deploy this sovereignty at a whim.

When all was said and done, this dominion was an asset loaned to her by the Demon God, a mechanism intended solely for the stewardship of the Demon World.

‘…There is no reality where such a gift would come without stipulations.’

It was an absolute decree, an ultimate supremacy bounded within the borders of the Demon World… yet it operated under strict boundaries and prohibitions.

Krushaior, along with the entity he had attempted to pull into this plane, had been obliterated precisely because they stepped past those sacred parameters.

“Ah, my joints feel so… rigid. This really inflicts quite a burden on the physical form, doesn’t it?”

She mumbled under her breath, rolling her shoulders back to stretch while her lips formed a slight pout.

Given her current realm of power, the physical backlash she experienced must have been exceptionally severe.

Then again, surveying the devastation stretching out before her, such bodily discomfort felt like a trivial grievance.

The desolate expanse known as the Abandoned Lands, previously a barren desert, was now riddled with deep hollows, resembling a territory that had undergone a massive artillery strike.

…In fairness, an artillery strike of sorts had occurred, though that was a minor detail.

“Huh, did I perhaps… push it too far?”

A slender, unyielding fracture lines split the terrain, tearing away from a singular epicenter on the soil all the way to the edge of the horizon—a permanent wound upon the geography.

And looking upward, a matching injury marred the heavens, a dark, fractured line cleaving through the violet atmosphere.

Hella, observing the damage, raised a hand to awkwardly scratch at her face.

‘…Well, it marked my inaugural attempt, so there wasn’t an opportunity to properly… calibrate the output… ‘

Furthermore, it had been a desperate junction. Delaying her response was an luxury she did not possess.

‘…Though, visually speaking, it actually looks somewhat enhanced this way, doesn’t it?’

Tilting her shoulders in a shrug, she appreciated the intersecting cosmic wound in the vault above, where the brilliant stellar river of the Milky Way gleamed vividly through the rupture.

She wasn’t merely being flippant or casual about the destruction.

The fracture, broader and more defined than its previous iteration, allowed the luminous path of the Milky Way to become far more apparent, markedly elevating the visual grandeur of the dark sky of the Demon World.

Even for someone like her, who had spent countless hours gazing up at the firmament, it was impossible not to be captivated by the sheer magnificence of the display.

‘…All right, time to organize the aftermath.’

Scanning the surrounding area, she lightly clicked her tongue.

In truth, there wasn’t a single thing left to tidy up.

The region of the Abandoned Lands was completely barren to begin with, and Krushaior, the target of her wrath, had been utterly reduced to ash by the force of her strike.

‘…Even if a stray fragment remained, nothing of value would be left to retrieve.’

Her eyes pivoted back toward her remaining allies.

A practitioner of the dark arts shrouded in obsidian fabric, a noble vampire concealing his visage behind an opera mask, a massive canine with three heads lazily using a back paw to scratch its neck, a fair-haired youth sniffing softly while dabbing at his nose,

…and finally, a figure encased in a mechanical exoskeleton, maintaining his position high in the heavens above.

“Be that as it may…”

As their forms dissolved into the shadows one after another, their duties concluded, she moistened her lips, her concentration locking onto the final entity—the single individual who had abstained from entering the fray.

“…When a pet inflicts devastation, the owner bears the full obligation to make amends to the aggrieved parties, isn’t that correct?”

He was required to cover the costs of the ruin left behind.

He would not be permitted to simply slip away in silence.

Lifting her eyes toward the stellar river, she anchored her sight onto a solitary, brilliantly glowing celestial body, and then, allowing a dark, knowing smirk to cross her face, she spun around and departed.

Her companion from another life would ensure the invoice was settled.

Her primary obligation was to return to her seat of power.

A mountain of responsibilities awaited her attention.

As the recognized 16th Demon King, the uncontested monarch of the entire Demon World.

—

“…Located.”

Heinrich, maintaining his flight via shimmering wings of brilliance, whispered quietly.

His sacred radiance, burning like a guiding flame amidst the gloom, actively repelled the corruptive miasma of the Demon World, drawing the focus of nearby fiends… yet he remained entirely indifferent to them.

He had penetrated an elevation that few living beings could ever hope to attain, a hidden coordinate completely cloaked from ordinary perception.

“So, this is the sanctuary where you chose to hide.”

Suspended far above the theater of war, higher even than the altitude where Hesperon had been raining down his mechanical salvos, right at the outermost perimeter of this reality.

‘…Gaining access to this threshold would have been impossible without the activation of “Grand Blessing: Wings of Radiance”.’

The reality of the Demon World was merely a secondary domain, a peripheral offshoot branching away from Auterica.

It was fundamentally not an expansive universe where a true cosmos or the Milky Way could naturally materialize.

‘…The view is far more breathtaking up close. To think that all of this… ‘

This coordinate marked the absolute terminus of the Demon World, its structural perimeter.

The stellar river of the Milky Way waiting on the other side, visible through the tears in the conceptual shroud, was an ancient vestige of the Main God’s initial architecture, its illumination piercing through the great emptiness, its genuine shape masked by the thick concentrated ether clogging the atmosphere of the Demon World, giving it the illusion of ordinary stars when viewed from the soil below.

“Your cunning is remarkable. Tracking this down without your guidance would have eluded me.”

And positioned there, at the very boundary of creation,

…’the object’ rested.

The threshold leading to the sanctuary of the Human God, which had previously vanished from the subterranean ceremonial chamber of the Dark Nest.

‘…You truly refuse to abandon your designs, don’t you?’

The moment he had committed to the pursuit of Krushaior,

…his entire focus had shifted to tracking this specific anomaly, identifying an intrinsic tie, a spiritual alignment that the remaining combatants had failed to notice.

After all, the allied forces possessed more than sufficient destructive capacity even without his presence.

‘…I harbored concerns that it might have been unmade alongside the demise of Krushaior… ‘

However, the Demon World operated under the dominion of an entirely separate deity.

Establishing a gateway to one’s personal sanctuary within this territory was an incredibly arduous task.

A steep toll must have been extracted, an offering far too precious to simply discard, even after his machinations within the Demon World had crumbled to pieces.

Consequently, he had concealed it here, anchored to a threshold where no common eyes would ever seek it.

‘…Now then, let us begin.’

Stepping closer to the unyielding barrier of the entrance, he wrapped his fingers around the handle.

Zzap—

The structure fought back against his touch, its exterior spitting arcs of volatile energy…

…yet such defenses were utterly insufficient to halt his progress.

Boom!

With a violent surge of strength, he forced the barrier open, his execution aggressive and unrelenting, before propelling himself into the interior.

The architecture within the sanctuary appeared to have undergone a complete spatial realignment, likely a consequence of its sudden relocation. The coordinates he had painstakingly documented back in the subterranean chamber were completely invalidated.

And should the structure shift its location once more, any current readings would similarly become obsolete.

However, now that he had successfully breached the perimeter… evasion was no longer an option.

————!

He could interpret the temple’s intense indignation, its deep-seated malice, its profound fury, radiating outward through the warped and violently fluctuating ether within the halls.

It felt as though the very walls were demanding to know how an uninvited presence dared to step foot inside such a hallowed environment.

“I intend to conclude this swiftly, so I suggest you remain cooperative.”

Yet Heinrich paid no heed to the spiritual pressure.

He accelerated his flight deeper into the heart of the structure, his trajectory rapid and unhesitating.

‘…The atmosphere here is exceptionally vibrant. I can feel the energy prickling across my skin… ‘

A consecrated sanctuary was a highly distinct anchor point, even for an immortal entity.

It possessed the immediate capacity to identify any trespassing presence, even that of a diminished, fallen deity.

This exact danger was the reason he had previously delayed invoking the presence of Hans within these walls.

“…There it is. The focal nexus.”

But what would occur if the intruder was an instrument of the Main God, an entity possessing a status vastly superior to that of a cast-out immortal?

Heinrich, recognized as the Hero of Light, the chosen instrument of the Main God, who reigned as the architect and ultimate arbiter of this creation, the progenitor of the entire pantheon…

‘…And the authority I command is drawn directly from his divine favor.’

Furthermore, the cast-out immortal was presently in a severely diminished state, having been violently ejected from the boundaries of the Demon World following the ruin of his alliance with Krushaior.

He lacked the immediate capability to mount a counter-offensive, at least for the time being.

Thus, in stark contrast to their prior encounter, this sanctuary stood entirely unprotected, stripped of its overseer’s presence.

Sparks—!

Groan—!

The final threshold, which had remained rigidly locked, fighting off every single one of his attempts to breach it, abruptly yielded and swung wide.

And stretching past the colossal corridor, its proportions designed for gargantuan entities rather than mortal men,

…the object of his search appeared.

A massive raised dais, its surface bearing a heavily fractured divine sigil.

“That is the target, the central hub of the sanctuary.”

————!

As if responding directly to his proclamation, the ambient energy inside the structure erupted, its pressure mounting exponentially.

Were the sanctuary capable of vocalizing its torment, it would undoubtedly be screaming furious indictments at his presence.

However, denunciation from an adversary was merely validation of success.

A grin surfaced on his features as his spirits lifted, and he descended through the air, touching down directly in front of the gargantuan holy emblem, a structure so immense it made his own form seem microscopic by comparison.

‘…Does this represent his true crest?’

A monumental creation, its initial design rendered completely unidentifiable, warped and contorted out of shape, its exterior blackened and melted into a form resembling an agonizing visage.

‘…It additionally houses an authentic shard of divinity. It represents a highly logical expenditure, considering his machinations have spanned over millennia. Furthermore, it appears to be serving as a spiritual transmitter linked directly to the Demon World.’

He realized he ought to have performed a far more meticulous analysis when he initially located this sanctuary.

He had conducted himself with excessive hesitation, displaying too much procedural caution, and consequently allowed his initial window of opportunity to slip through his fingers.

‘…I lack the capacity to assimilate a divine shard directly into my being, unlike my alternate manifestations… but my path is that of a holy servant. There exists a far more effective methodology.’

By what means did a cleric ascend in power?

Resting his palms against the massive monument, its malevolent resonance sending sharp vibrations through his flesh, he allowed his eyelids to close.

Hummmmm—

He entered a state of deep invocation, directing the flow of his sacred essence, presenting the defiled emblem—a blasphemous construct that stood in direct opposition to the Main God’s sovereignty—as a grand offering.

Fuuuush!

Immediately following his devotion,

…a magnificent, blinding beam of sacred light, resembling a tempestuous inferno, completely isolated his physical form and the defiled monument.

————!

The sanctuary shuddered as a conceptual scream echoed through it, its foundational matrix breaking apart erratically.

This was not the mere momentary instability he had brought about when shattering the protective ward of the Dragon Marquis.

This was a total systemic collapse, its structural integrity twisting and fragmenting, its fundamental reality dissolving into nothingness.

Sizzle—!

“Kh!”

A dark, pungent vapor billowed outward from the points of contact where his fingers pressed against the defiled crest, his skin searing under the intense friction.

Simultaneously, the celestial luminescence radiating from his wings expanded exponentially, surging far past its historical thresholds.

The spiritual conduit connecting him to the Main God widened and grew vast, pouring an astronomical volume of celestial authority straight into his soul.

And then,

…absolute stillness.

Not merely a sudden termination of noise…

…but a total vacation of all existence.

A great vacuum, a state of complete nothingness, a realm where even the line separating reality from fantasy ceased to possess any meaning.

His core awareness drifted upward, ascending toward an unmapped destination.

And then,

…he perceived it.

An immense and awe-inspiring entity, a manifestation he had previously only caught fleeting glimpses of, a mere fraction of its boundless reality.

‘…This is… perilous…!’

An all-encompassing aura, a vast, unfathomable consciousness that represented the very core of this universe, its architect and protector.

Merely registering a microscopic awareness of its presence was more than enough to completely inundate the processing capacities of his 「Mind Hub」 and 「Soul Firewall」, stressing them to their absolute breaking points.

And the moment that focus, the direct gaze of the Main God, locked squarely onto his being…

“Ah!”

…he was suddenly overcome by the sensation of a violent descent.

Woosh—

…It was entirely real.

The gale roaring past his ears, the freezing atmosphere rapidly drying the perspiration on his flesh, the immense air resistance pushing against his face…

He was in freefall.

Plunging away from the outer perimeter of the cosmos, where he had nearly brushed against the stellar river,

…hurtling back toward the distant ground below.

The intersecting fracture lines slicing through the purple vault, the Milky Way pouring its light through the breach…

…all of it shrank rapidly, becoming smaller and more distant with every passing second of his descent.

“Damn, this experience is… far more severe than prior occasions…”

He had stood in the presence of the Main God a handful of times before, but the encounter had never manifested with this degree of overwhelming intensity.

Though his physical shell was plummeting through space, he found himself entirely unable to initiate movement, his arms and legs refusing to respond, his muscle tissue entirely devoid of tension.

‘…The Prime Architect… He exists on a completely separate plane compared to the other divinities I have encountered.’

A soft exhalation escaped him.

He had certainly not anticipated participating in an unassisted skydive within the airspace of the Demon World.

Stripped of any decelerating equipment, while his entire anatomy remained completely immobilized!

“There is no alternative path…”

Yet he comprehended the underlying reality of his situation.

When all was said and done…

《The subject’s existential classification has been elevated to ‘Angel’. You have successfully unlocked the unique capability “God’s Messenger”.》

《You have achieved a higher state of cosmic awareness through direct proximity to a supreme entity. You have unlocked the unique capability “Great Mind”.》

…his fundamental biological classification had been rewritten. It would be entirely bizarre if his physical form felt perfectly normalized after such a transition.

Even so, he hadn’t truly anticipated being transformed into a literal angel.

And as the seconds stretched into minutes,

…the newly christened celestial being, continuing his rapid descent from the heavens of the Demon World, dissolved from the physical plane without a single trace.

As though he had never occupied a place in that world to begin with.