Chapter 92: Closing the Door
The gray fog of the Umbral Plane was rapidly thickening as the dimension fought to separate from the mortal world.
Lucifer halted the Grand Army a mile away from the exit portal. The thirteen million mortal soldiers stood in perfect formation on the invisible spatial highway.
A mile ahead, the Coalition survivors blocked the swirling purple rift.
It was a desperate, heavily fortified barricade made of shattered wagons, petrified Umbral wood, and interlocking steel tower shields.
Approximately fifty thousand elite Royal Guards and noble knights manned the wall.
They had aimed dozens of heavy siege ballistas directly down the highway, the massive bolts glowing with unstable evocation magic.
"They are dug in deep, Commander," High Ranger Celeste reported over the comms rune. She sat on her dire wolf at the front of the Vanguard, her scarred face tight.
"If we charge the barricade, we will take massive casualties from the ballistas. The spatial highway is too narrow to flank them."
"We are not going to charge," Lucifer stated smoothly.
Lucifer dismounted his Nightmare Steed. He walked slowly toward the front of the column. Elara and Lyra followed closely behind him.
He stopped at the very edge of his army’s formation.
He looked down the mile-long stretch of empty space separating him from the barricade. He could see the terrified faces of the Coalition soldiers peering over their steel shields.
They knew they could not defeat the Warlord in a pitched battle, but they believed they only had to hold the choke point for a few more minutes until the Eclipse Convergence ended and the portal collapsed.
"Surrender, upstart!" a Royal General shouted from behind the barricade. His voice cracked with fear.
"The King’s army holds the gate! Lay down your weapons, relinquish the Cathedral’s angels, and we will allow you to cross back to the mortal plane! Refuse, and you die in the dark!"
Lucifer didn’t yell back.
He raised his right hand.
The Gauntlet of the Void King hummed. The dark matter covering his forearm absorbed the faint gray light of the Umbra.
Thick, jagged arcs of black lightning crackled across his knuckles, humming with the crushing density of a collapsed singularity.
[Item Equipped: Gauntlet of the Void King (Mythic)]
[Active Effect: Spatial Rend (Bypass casting sequences for dimensional manipulation).]
Lucifer opened his left hand, pulling a small object from his Dimensional Vault.
It was the Key of Shadows. The Mythic artifact he had used to permanently stabilize the portal from the Citadel side.
It pulsed with a faint, dark purple light, perfectly synced to the massive rift hovering behind the Coalition barricade.
"They think they control the door," Lucifer said softly, a cold smirk touching his lips.
He raised the Gauntlet of the Void King and grabbed the empty air in front of him.
"Spatial Rend," Lucifer commanded.
He didn’t tear a portal for himself. He targeted the massive, swirling purple rift hovering a mile away. The Gauntlet allowed him to physically grab the spatial fabric of the dimension regardless of distance.
Lucifer’s iron-clad fingers closed into a tight fist, seizing the invisible, magical tethers that anchored the portal to the Citadel of Obsidian.
The air across the mile-wide gap screamed. A visible ripple of distorted space shot from Lucifer’s gauntlet directly to the portal.
"What is he doing?!" the Royal General shrieked, watching the spatial distortion tear past his barricade.
Lucifer twisted his wrist sharply.
He used the raw physical dominion of the Gauntlet of the Void King, combined with his Archmage-level mana and the stabilizing resonance of the Key of Shadows, to forcefully rewrite the portal’s destination coordinates in real-time.
[System Warning: Massive Spatial Override Detected!]
[Target: Stabilized Umbral Portal.]
[Action: Re-routing Destination Coordinates...]
[New Destination: The Abyss (Sector Null).]
The massive, bruised-purple portal hovering behind the Coalition barricade violently shuddered.
The smooth, swirling vortex of dark energy suddenly turned a blinding, chaotic, violent red. The stable, circular edges of the rift jagged outward, tearing deeper into the fabric of the Umbral Plane.
The smell of ancient dust vanished, instantly replaced by the overwhelming stench of burning brimstone and boiling blood.
The portal no longer led to the courtyard of the Citadel of Obsidian.
It led straight down.
"The toll for betrayal is death," Lucifer announced. His voice, amplified by the Void, rolled across the invisible highway like a physical shockwave.
The Coalition soldiers didn’t understand what had happened. They felt the sudden, massive spike in heat radiating from the portal behind them.
The Royal General turned around, his eyes widening in absolute horror.
Through the red-glowing rift, he did not see the black-stone walls of the human capital. He saw an endless, churning ocean of liquid fire.
He saw massive spires piercing a sky of bleeding ash. He heard the deafening, endless screaming of a billion tortured souls.
He was looking directly into the deepest pit of the Abyss.
"The gate!" the General screamed, dropping his sword. "He changed the gate! It’s hell! Fall back! Fall back!"
Panic instantly shattered the Coalition barricade.
The fifty thousand elite knights and Royal Guards threw down their tower shields. They abandoned the heavy siege ballistas.
They turned and sprinted blindly away from the red-glowing portal, rushing forward down the invisible spatial highway, directly toward Lucifer’s waiting army.
"They are charging!" Lady Scarlett yelled, raising her twin curved swords. The mercenary Vanguard braced for impact.
"They are not charging," Lucifer corrected her smoothly. He lowered his Gauntlet, the black lightning fading to a steady pulse. "They are running."
The Coalition soldiers were not attacking. They were a stampede of terrified, broken men trying to escape the literal mouth of hell.
They crashed into Lucifer’s front line, throwing themselves against the massive, glowing shields of the Solaris Templars.
"Mercy!" a Royal Knight sobbed, clawing at a Templar’s armor. "Let us pass! The gate is burning! The demons are coming!"
The Templars did not yield an inch. The two hundred heavy infantry tanks held the line flawlessly, completely ignoring the desperate pleas of their former comrades. They had signed the Warlord’s contract. They fought for Obsidian now.
"Hold the line," Lyra commanded, her silver broadsword burning with white holy fire. The Dawn Saintess stood behind the Templars, her aura pushing back the terrified mob. "Do not let them break the formation."
Lucifer watched the chaotic crush of bodies against his Vanguard.
The Coalition was trapped between a perfectly disciplined, thirteen-million-strong golden army and a portal to the Abyss.
He didn’t need to swing his sword to finish them. The environment he had created would do it for him.
The red-glowing portal behind the Coalition began to pull with immense force. The chaotic magic of the Abyss didn’t remain passive on the other side, it reached into the Umbra, hungry for souls.
"It’s pulling us!" a Coalition mage shrieked, his boots sliding backward on the rock.
The heavy siege ballistas abandoned at the barricade were the first to go. The massive wooden and iron engines dragged across the stone, lifting into the air and tumbling backward into the red rift.
They vanished into the liquid fire instantly.
The Royal Guards holding the rear of the stampede screamed as the Abyssal gravity snatched them off their feet.
Dozens of heavily armored men were sucked backward, their fingernails desperately scraping against the smooth, black stone.
They flew through the portal, their screams abruptly cut off as they crossed into the demon realm.
The pull intensified.
Hundreds of men were dragged backward every second.
"Please!" the Royal General begged, falling to his knees in front of Lucifer’s Vanguard. He ripped off his helmet, tears streaming down his face. "We yield! We surrender! We will serve the Warlord! Save us!"
Lucifer looked down at the weeping General.
"I don’t take prisoners," Lucifer stated coldly.
He raised his right hand. The Gauntlet of the Void King flared with black lightning.
Lucifer didn’t use the Gauntlet to pull the General to safety. He used it to amplify the pull of the Abyssal portal.
"Absolute Crush," Lucifer commanded.
He targeted the spatial fabric directly behind the terrified, screaming Coalition army. He created a massive, localized gravity well that synchronized perfectly with the pull of the red rift, increasing the suction force by five hundred percent.
The result was a catastrophic, violent vacuum.
The remaining forty thousand Coalition soldiers didn’t just slide backward. They were violently ripped off the spatial highway.
It looked like a massive, armored waterfall flowing in reverse. The entire panicked mob, including the weeping General, was yanked through the air, screaming in absolute horror as they flew helplessly into the blazing red maw of the Abyss.
The slaughter was entirely bloodless, but perfectly absolute.
In less than a minute, the mile-long stretch of the spatial highway was completely empty. The barricade, the weapons, and the fifty thousand elite troops were gone, swallowed whole by the demon realm.
[System: Hostile Forces Eliminated.]
[Fate Energy Tax Processed: +0% (Targets not under Warlord Contract).]
Lucifer lowered his Gauntlet. The black lightning faded.
"They are gone," Elara whispered, lowering her violet-flaming spear. The Valkyrie stared at the empty highway, her golden eyes wide with a mix of awe and profound respect for the Warlord’s ruthless efficiency.
"You fed a Royal Army to the Abyss without swinging a sword."
"They wanted to hold the door," Lucifer said smoothly. He adjusted the heavy platinum medallion on his chest. "I let them keep it."
He raised his left hand, holding the Key of Shadows.
"Sarah," Lucifer commanded over the comms rune, connecting back to the Citadel of Obsidian.
"I am here, Lucifer," the Oracle’s voice crackled back. She sounded exhausted but focused.
"The Coalition is cleared. Re-sync the coordinates to the Spire," Lucifer ordered. "I am resetting the lock."
Lucifer channeled his Void Arcanist mana back into the Key of Shadows. He raised the Gauntlet of the Void King and grabbed the spatial fabric anchoring the Abyssal portal.
He twisted his wrist in the opposite direction.
"Spatial Rend," Lucifer said.
The massive, violent red rift shuddered. The intense heat of the Abyss vanished instantly.
The portal snapped back to its original, bruised-purple color, the violent spatial tearing smoothing out into a stable, perfectly circular door leading back to the courtyard of the Citadel of Obsidian.
The cold, crisp mountain air of the mortal plane washed over the Vanguard, carrying the faint smell of the frozen pine forest.
[System Warning: Spatial Coordinates Realigned.]
[Destination: Citadel of Obsidian (Mortal Plane).]
Lucifer sheathed his longsword. He hooked the Key of Shadows back onto his belt.
"The path is clear," Lucifer announced, his voice echoing across the thirteen million silent, awe-struck soldiers behind him. "The Crusade is over. We are going home."
He didn’t mount his Nightmare Steed. He walked forward, his heavy iron boots echoing on the black obsidian.
The Warlord led his massive, golden army toward the purple portal. He had entered the Umbral Plane to harvest resources.
He was leaving as the absolute, uncontested master of two dimensions. The King’s army was his. The Cathedral’s wealth was his. The Titans were built.
It was time to wake Zephyria.