Chapter 98: The Victor’s Feast
The grand hall of the central keep was massive, built of polished black and illuminated by floating spheres of starlight.
Lucifer stood at the head of a long, heavy oak table. It was not a war council tonight. It was a distribution of power.
The thirteen million mortal soldiers were camped across the sprawling courtyards and lower tiers of Zephyria, celebrating their survival and the immense wealth they had scavenged.
Inside the hall, Lucifer’s core commanders were gathered.
Elara stood to his right, her Twilight wings shifting softly against her dark Void-Weave armor.
Sarah sat gracefully to his left, her Scepter of Cosmic Alignment resting against her chair.
Lyra, the Dawn Saintess, stood near the hearth, her silver battle armor gleaming.
Vexia hovered a few inches off the ground, her red bat wings beating lazily.
At the far end of the table stood High Ranger Celeste and Dwarf King Thrain.
Lucifer did not offer them wine or platitudes. He opened his Dimensional Vault.
A massive spatial rift tore open above the center of the oak table.
"The Umbral Plane is closed," Lucifer announced, his voice a low, resonant hum of Void magic. "The King’s Armada is stripped.
The resources of a dimension and a kingdom are sitting in my vault. You fought well. You held the line when the sky cracked. Now, you are compensated."
He didn’t hand out gold coins one by one. He didn’t use the Apex Multiplier to inflate standard loot. He had the genuine, high-tier artifacts and raw capital.
Lucifer raised his Gauntlet of the Void King.
"Celeste," Lucifer commanded.
The High Ranger snapped to attention, her scarred face serious.
Lucifer reached into the rift. He pulled out a heavy, rolled parchment bound in dark crimson leather. He tossed it down the length of the table. It landed in front of Celeste with a heavy thud.
"That is the deed to the subterranean Vampire City we discovered beneath the Umbral Ridge," Lucifer stated smoothly.
Vexia hissed softly in the background, crossing her pale arms, but she did not object.
"The Sanguine Court is dead. The architecture is intact. The city is rich with unrefined Void crystals and ancient blood magic.
It is currently locked in my spatial storage, but when the time comes, I will anchor it to the mortal plane."
He looked directly at the hardened mercenary.
"You lost your Phantom Ranger corps to a noble’s betrayal," Lucifer continued. "You spent years hunting in the mud.
The deed is yours, Celeste. Rebuild your House in the dark. You are no longer a landless assassin. You are the Lady of the Deep."
Celeste stared at the crimson parchment. Her hands trembled slightly as she reached out and touched the leather binding. She had expected gold. She had not expected a city.
"My Lord," Celeste breathed, her voice thick with raw emotion. She slammed her fist against her breastplate, bowing her head deeply. "My Rangers will hold the dark for Obsidian. We will not fail you."
"I know," Lucifer said.
He turned his eyes to the other end of the table.
"Lady Scarlett," Lucifer called out.
The commander of the Crimson Rose mercenaries stepped forward from the shadows near the heavy iron doors.
She was covered in soot and monster blood, but her eyes burned with fierce, predatory excitement.
"You scouted the Vanguard. You spotted Vorian’s trap," Lucifer noted. "Your company bled on the front lines."
Lucifer did not toss her a deed. He didn’t even use a chest.
He channeled a massive pulse of Spatial Rend through his gauntlet. The rift above the table widened significantly.
A literal waterfall of solid, refined gold bars and pristine, glowing blue mana crystals poured out of the void.
The sheer volume and weight of the wealth crashed onto the oak table, instantly splintering the heavy wood.
The gold cascaded onto the obsidian floor, piling up in a blinding, glittering mountain that reached Scarlett’s waist.
"Five million gold pieces," Lucifer declared coldly over the deafening sound of clinking metal. "And twenty thousand refined mana crystals. It is your eighty percent cut of the Umbral harvest and the King’s stripped armada."
Scarlett’s jaw dropped. The scarred mercenary fell to her knees in the mountain of wealth, running her armored hands through the gold bars. It was more capital than her entire company could spend in a hundred lifetimes.
"You... you actually paid the contract," Scarlett gasped, looking up at Lucifer with absolute, unadulterated shock. "Nobles always find a way to cheat the mercenaries out of the boss loot. You didn’t even haggle."
"I am a Warlord, not a merchant," Lucifer corrected her smoothly. "I bought your loyalty with blood. The gold is just the receipt."
He closed his iron fist, shutting the spatial rift. The deafening roar of falling treasure ceased.
"Take your company, Scarlett," Lucifer ordered. "Establish a permanent garrison on the lower tiers of Zephyria. When we need ground forces, you will lead the charge. You answer only to Celeste and me."
"To the death, Grand Marshal," Scarlett vowed fervently, grabbing a handful of gold and holding it to her chest.
Lucifer turned his attention to King Thrain.
The dwarf was leaning on his massive forge hammer, his red beard singed and his muscular arms covered in burns from the Aether-Forge.
He had worked continuously for days, forging the titans.
"You built the Titans," Lucifer said, his voice dropping to a low rumble of genuine respect. "You locked the Star-Metal to the Dragon Bone. The assembly line is flawless."
"It was the Heart of the Winter Sovereign that cooled the forge, Warlord," Thrain replied proudly, gesturing vaguely toward Isolde, who rolled her reptilian white eyes. "But the metal sings for me. The forge is hot."
Lucifer opened his Dimensional Vault again.
He pulled out the single, heavy, golden parchment he had looted from the epicenter of the World-Eater’s crater.
[Item: Scroll of Fortune]
[Tier: Legendary Artifact]
[Effect: Bends probability. When activated, guarantees absolute success on the next crafting, forging, or enhancement attempt, completely ignoring system failure rates.]
Lucifer held the scroll out.
Thrain’s eyes went wide. As a master smith, he could instantly feel the reality-bending magic radiating from the parchment.
He dropped his heavy hammer, the metal clanging loudly against the obsidian floor.
"A probability lock," Thrain whispered, his thick hands shaking as he reached for the scroll. "A guaranteed success.
By the ancestors... I can forge a Mythic weapon. I can use the purest Star-Metal without fear of it shattering the anvil."
"You can," Lucifer agreed. He handed the scroll to the dwarf. "I have the Shard of Chaos stored in my vault. When the time comes, you are going to use that scroll to forge it into something that can kill a true god."
Thrain clutched the golden parchment to his chest, tears mixing with the soot on his cheeks. He bowed low, practically vibrating with manic, creative energy.
Lucifer looked around the ruined oak table.
His commanders were wealthy, armed, and utterly devoted. The political structure of the human kingdoms was a distant memory.
He was the Monarch of Zephyria.
"The distribution is complete," Lucifer announced. He did not smile. "Enjoy the night. The city is secure."
He turned and walked toward the heavy, arched doorway leading to the high balcony of the central keep. Elara and Sarah followed him, leaving the others to their newfound wealth.
They stepped out into the freezing, thin air of the upper atmosphere.
Zephyria floated ten thousand feet above the earth. The massive, jagged black island drifted slowly through the clouds.
The ten thousand glowing blue Cryo-Pylons formed a perfect, protective ring around the edge of the floating landmass. Below them, the world was dark, wrapped in the night.
Lucifer walked to the edge of the black-stone balcony. He rested his Gauntlet of the Void King on the parapet.
"It is quiet up here," Sarah murmured, stepping up beside him. Her starlight aura pulsed softly, blending with the stars above. "The noise of the mortal world does not reach us."
"It won’t reach us," Lucifer agreed. "We are out of range of their politics."
Elara leaned on her violet-flaming spear. The Valkyrie looked down at the dark continent below. "The King is currently staring at a paralyzed army and empty armories.
The other nations will smell the weakness. The human kingdoms will tear themselves apart trying to fill the power vacuum you created."
"Let them," Lucifer stated coldly. "While they fight over dirt, we are preparing for the Abyss."
He looked up at the endless, starry sky.
The tutorial phase of his regression was officially, completely over. He had leveled to the mortal cap. He had acquired Mythic gear. He had built a flying fortress. He had a legion of dragons, mechs, and angels.
He was exactly where he needed to be to stop the end of the world.
But Lucifer’s eyes narrowed slightly. He felt a faint, deep tremor in his Warlord core.
It was a profound, metaphysical shift in the fabric of reality.
"Do you feel that?" Lucifer asked softly.
Sarah gripped her Scepter of Cosmic Alignment. Her cosmic eyes flared with sudden, intense, blinding silver light. The Oracle gasped, stumbling backward as a massive vision hit her mind with the force of a physical blow.
"Lucifer!" Sarah cried out, clutching her head. "The sky... the leylines in the atmosphere are tearing!"
Elara stepped forward, raising her shield. She looked up.
The stars above Zephyria were not twinkling. They were rapidly shifting, moving out of alignment. The clear, dark blue night sky began to split, exactly like it had when Malakor’s Avatar tried to force its way into the world.
But this was not a bruised-purple spatial rift.
The entire sky above the floating city cracked open. A large fissure, hundreds of miles long, tore across the atmosphere. It did not bleed purple or green magic.
It was absolute, pitch black.
The air pressure on the high balcony vanished instantly. A wave of pure, unfiltered, suffocating gravity pushed down from the large tear.
It was an energy so old, so impossibly dense, that it made Lucifer’s Void Arcanist core feel like a flickering candle.
"It is not a god," Elara whispered in absolute terror, her Twilight wings wrapping defensively around Sarah. The Valkyrie’s voice trembled. "That is not a divine manifestation."
Lucifer did not draw his sword. He didn’t activate Zephyr’s Grace. He stood perfectly still, his iron gauntlets gripping the balcony railing as the immense, crushing pressure washed over him.
He recognized the energy.
From the absolute center of the large, pitch-black fissure, a massive, unblinking eye opened.
It was the size of a moon. The iris was a swirling, infinite vortex of dark matter, rimmed with blinding, violent purple fire.
It looked down directly at Zephyria, focusing its entire, incomprehensible attention on the single, dark-armored Warlord standing on the balcony.
[System Warning: Primordial Entity Manifestation Detected!]
[Entity: Nihilus, The Father of the Void.]
[Danger Level: Absolute Annihilation.]
Lucifer stared up at the eye of the Void God.
The entity did not roar. It did not cast a spell. The mere presence of its gaze began to crack the black stone of the balcony.
Lucifer didn’t flinch. A cold, predatory, utterly fearless smile broke across his face.
"You’re early," Lucifer whispered softly, his void-swirling eyes locking onto the colossal purple iris above him. "Good. I was getting bored."