Myriad Rivers to the Sea

The Demonic Alliance stood before the towering bronze pagoda. The dark metal prison hummed with a thick, sealing energy that had trapped Aquila the Falcon King. The heavy bronze doors were firmly shut and etched with alien runes from the Hive Empire.

Sovereign Malos and Sovereign Ignis stepped forward. They had spent the last several hours absorbing spirit stones and circulating healing pills. Their Qi reserves were no longer completely drained.

"The artifact is a single-use prison." Malos explained while inspecting the spatial lock on the bronze doors. "Lucien cannot control it anymore. The foundational array is stationary and brittle."

Malos raised his sword and channeled his spatial mastery. He drove the blade directly into the seam of the heavy doors. The space around the metal violently warped and groaned under the pressure. Ignis stepped up beside him. Her molten armor was still cracked and dull but she summoned a highly concentrated beam of hot fire and blasted the ancient hinges.

The combination of extreme spatial distortion and sovereign heat shattered the sealing runes after some time.

The bronze doors blew outward with a deafening screech. A terrifying hurricane of razor sharp wind blades and crackling blue lightning exploded from the dark interior. Aquila shot out of the prison and soared high into the ash filled sky. The Falcon King let out an incredibly furious avian cry that rattled the ruined mountain peaks. He was uninjured but his pride was severely bruised.

With their aerial commander freed, the vanguard resumed their march.

The Demonic Alliance pushed forward across the devastated human domain. The ground was slick with blood and the air was thick with the stench of burning chitin. They were making incredibly good progress. They were finally closing the distance to the central dimensional rift.

However, a deep and suffocating tension hung over the leadership. Sovereign Morven had now moved and was marched at the front of the army with his chest heavily wrapped in medical bandages. He gripped his trident and constantly scanned the dark storm clouds above them.

Ignis, Zylith, and Malos did the exact same thing. They were all fully expecting the sky to tear open. They expected Lucien to descend with his buzzing voice. But once again the mutated traitor never showed up.

Lucien was supposed to be the supreme commander holding the front lines and breaking the morale of the lower realm. But because he had kicked an iron plate named Garrick, the grand betrayer was currently just a mutilated torso hiding near the rift.

With Lucien completely out of the way, the unified push of the demonic armies was much easier. The massive swarms of insectoid demons lacked higher support without their commander. The Alliance slaughtered them and slowly painted the grey ash completely black.

They finally reached the inner perimeter of the invasion. The towering dimensional rift loomed in the distance and was pulsing with a terrifying purple light.

The Hive Empire realized their fodder troops could not stop the marching vanguard. The dark clouds above the perimeter parted and an elite army stepped forward to block the final approach.

Five new Demon Lord level commanders descended from the sky.

They were terrifying monstrosities radiating killing intent. The first was a gigantic armored wasp with a stinger that dripped with concentrated necrotic venom. The second was a towering ant lion creature that manipulated the grey ash into massive suffocating sinkholes. The third was a cloaked moth demon, releasing a continuous cloud of illusory scales. The fourth was a massive stag beetle with crushing mandibles the size of warships. The fifth was a grotesque locust monstrosity that vibrated its wings to produce lethal sonic waves.

The five commanders let out a unified screech and led a massive elite legion of heavily armored bug demons directly toward the Demonic Alliance.

Sovereign Morven planted his trident into the ground. He looked at the five towering enemies and then looked at the millions of elite bugs charging behind them.

"I will handle the army here," Morven declared with his pale eyes flashing with authority. "I will carve a path directly to the rift. You all kill those commanders!"

Morven pulled his trident from the dirt and charged forward. He completely ignored the five Demon Lord level monsters and crashed directly into the elite legion. He was paving a road of corpses through the center of the battlefield as generals, commanders and troops followed behind his carnage.

The remaining leaders of the lower realm stepped up to intercept the five commanders. Malos, Ignis, Zylith, Aquila and Seraphis stood ready.

Suddenly a streak of red light shot across the battlefield and landed heavily beside them. It was Sovereign Rathor the Blood Demon Lord. He looked incredibly pale and entirely humiliated. His right arm was completely missing and left a jagged bloody stump.

He had fled the battlefield in cowardice earlier but he had now returned. Rathor did not say a single word. He just glared at the approaching Hive commanders and gathered his blood laws.

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The six supreme beings of the realm clashed violently against the five Hive commanders.

Sovereign Zylith and Aquila immediately targeted the massive armored wasp and the cloaked moth demon. Aquila flapped his wings and unleashed a hurricane that blew the hallucinogenic moth scales away from the battlefield. Zylith used the clear air to summon a forest of purple lightning. She directed the thunder directly at the armored wasp.

The wasp dodged the initial lightning strikes with incredible speed and lunged at Zylith with its necrotic stinger. Aquila dove from the clouds and intercepted the strike. The Falcon King coated his massive talons in crackling wind laws and grabbed the stinger directly. He used his immense momentum to rip the stinger entirely out of the wasp.

Zylith did not waste the opening. She compressed her lightning into a single spear and hurled it directly into the open wound on the wasp. The lightning detonated inside the creature and quickly vaporized its internal organs. It then exploded its thick carapace from the inside out. The battle was quick and fierce. With each side going for direct killing moves instead of a long drawn out battle.

Ignis and Malos teamed up to fight the massive stag beetle and the sonic locust.

The locust vibrated its wings sending a devastating sonic wave that shattered the surrounding rocks and disrupted their Qi circulation. Malos stepped forward and swung his spatial sword. He cut the sonic wave in half and sent the remaining destructive vibrations harmlessly into the void.

The stag beetle charged through the gap and snapped its massive crushing mandibles at Ignis. The Fire Demon Lord did not retreat. She caught the mandibles with her gauntleted hands. Her molten armor flared to life and superheated the dark chitin. The beetle screeched in agony as its mandibles began to melt into slag.

Malos vanished and reappeared directly above the struggling stag beetle. He drove his sword downward, executing a spatial decapitation. The massive head of the stag beetle slid cleanly off its neck and crashed heavily into the ash.

Seraphis and Rathor focused entirely on the towering ant lion. Seraphis remained in his human form. He raised his hands and summoned a torrential downpour of highly toxic water. He flooded the area with it.

The ant lion was forced to breach to the surface and was coughing up toxic sludge.

Rathor unleashed his pent up rage and humiliation. He used the blood freely dripping from his own severed stump as a weapon. He manipulated the dark red liquid turning it into hundreds of crystallized blood swords. He launched the swords with terrifying velocity directly at the breaching ant lion.

The blood spears pierced the monster, pinning it firmly to the ruined earth. Seraphis stepped forward and exhaled a concentrated beam of poison water directly into the ant lion's face melting its skull into a bubbling puddle.

Three Hive commanders were dead in a matter of minutes at the joint attack of the Demon Lords. However, the Demon Lords had spent a lot to achieve these results. They were now drained and the remaining would be difficult to take on.

The remaining two commanders, the cloaked moth and the sonic locust, didn’t realize this though. They thought they were entirely outmatched. The lower realm fighters were incredibly vicious and fighting with absolute desperation.

The two insectoid monsters abandoned their elite legion and immediately retreated, flying rapidly back toward the safety of the dimensional rift. Their main goal was to protect the rift at all cost. They would stage their last defense there.

The six leaders did not pursue the fleeing commanders. They turned their attention to the surrounding elite legion and joined Sovereign Morven in the slaughter with what they had left in the tank.

They fought their way through the final layers of resistance. The combined elemental destruction of fire, lightning, wind, water and blood completely eradicated the remaining Hive troops.

The Demonic Alliance marched forward and finally came to a complete halt. They had made it. The army was battled and torn but they succeeded in reaching here. The tear in reality was massive now.

It was a swirling, chaotic vortex of deep purple and pitch black void energy stretching high into the storm clouds. The foundational laws of the world groaned under the sheer unnatural pressure of the open gateway.

The Demon Lords and the Beast Kings stood at the front of their exhausted armies. They gripped their weapons tightly ready to launch a combined assault to try and collapse the portal. They readied talismans, treasures and weapons in this last attack. They needed the help due to their own strength having been drained.

Before anyone could channel their Qi a figure slowly floated up from the enemy's main camp. It was Lucien.

The Demon Lords gasped in shock at the sight of the grand betrayer.

Lucien was a completely horrific sight. He was literally just a head, a chest and a left arm hovering in the air, supported entirely by thick tendrils of dark demonic energy. Grotesque fleshy vines and dark alien chitin writhed and twisted beneath his ruined ribs desperately trying to slowly regenerate his missing halves. Green blood dripped continuously from his mutilated torso and was splattering loudly against the grey ash below.

The arrogant, apex predator from an hour ago was now a shattered bleeding remnant.

Lucien looked down at the assembled leadership of the lower realm. His multifaceted eyes burned with unfiltered hatred. He coughed up a thick glob of black blood and let out a weak buzzing laugh.

"You look entirely surprised." Lucien mocked, his voice glitching and distorted from his severe internal injuries. "Did you really think you could kill me that easily?"

Morven stepped forward. He had assumed Lucien retreated to prepare another trap, not that the traitor had been literally chopped in half by an unknown force.

"What in the hell happened to you?" Morven demanded as he pointed his trident at the hovering torso.

Lucien snarled his facial features twisting into a mask of rage. He completely ignored the question, refusing to admit that a random brute with a spiked mace had casually obliterated his evolutionary form.

"It does not matter what happened to me!" Lucien screamed back. "You are all entirely too late! You fought through the mud and the ash for absolutely nothing! You failed!"

Lucien raised his remaining left hand and gestured wildly toward the massive swirling vortex behind him.

"The gateway is completely stable now!" Lucien laughed maniacally as blood was pouring down his chin. "My master has arrived!"