Chapter 126: Descent into Ashes
"The coordinates are locked, Grand Marshal," Sarah reported from the observation deck with her voice crackling slightly over the comms rune.
"The Crown of the First King is buried precisely two thousand feet beneath the epicenter of the Royal Palace ruins. The Abyssal corruption is extreme. My sight cannot penetrate the bedrock."
"It doesn’t need to," Lucifer stated smoothly. "I just need a drop point."
He did not bring his entire army. The thirteen million mortal soldiers were useless in a highly corrupted toxic Abyssal zone.
He needed speed and absolute lethality.
"Elara," Lucifer commanded and turned to the Twilight Sovereign. Her iridescent Mythic armor absorbed the dim light of the grand hall.
"I am ready, Warlord," Elara replied and spun her violet-flaming spear.
"Celeste," Lucifer added over the comms link.
A moment later, the heavy iron doors of the hall swung open. High Ranger Celeste jogged in. Her dire wolf paced nervously at her side.
She wore her dented steel breastplate and carried her heavy enchanted longbow. She had just finished organizing the refugee camps in the lower tiers.
"You called for me, Commander?" Celeste asked and snapped a crisp salute.
"You know the capital better than anyone," Lucifer said. His void-swirling eyes locked onto the scarred mercenary. "You spent years hunting nobles in those streets. I need a guide through the rubble."
Celeste blinked and her eyes widened slightly. "The capital is vaporized, my Lord. The streets are gone. It is just a molten crater."
"The layout remains," Lucifer corrected her smoothly. "And I need your thermal tracking to bypass the residual Abyssal fire. You are coming with us."
Celeste did not argue. She had sworn a Blood Oath. She simply gripped her bow tighter.
"Understood. The dire wolf stays here. He will panic in the ash."
"Lyra," Lucifer said and turned to the Dawn Saintess.
Lyra gripped her silver broadsword. Her newly evolved Twilight Seraph armor gleamed. Her six wings of holy fire and dark matter folded tightly against her back.
"I am ready to purge the dark, Lucifer."
"You are staying on Zephyria," Lucifer commanded smoothly.
Lyra froze. "Staying? But I can cleanse the Abyssal rot. I can heal you."
"The Abyssal Vanguard is going to test the perimeter while I am gone," Lucifer explained with his voice low and absolute. "Isolde has the sky. Vexia has the walls. I need you to anchor the mortals."
"Your holy aura is the only thing keeping the thirteen million conscripts from succumbing to the Shadow Madness creeping in from the atmosphere. If you leave, the army breaks."
Lyra understood the brutal logic instantly. The Warlord was leaving his most powerful defensive asset to guard his kingdom.
"I will hold the light, Lucifer," Lyra vowed softly. Her dual-toned eyes met his void gaze. "Do not stay in the ash too long."
Lucifer gave a single firm nod.
He walked out of the grand hall and headed toward the high balcony. Elara and Celeste followed closely behind him.
They stepped out into the freezing thin air of the stratosphere. The massive bruised-purple eye of the Abyssal Sovereign still dominated the sky above them. But Lucifer completely ignored it.
He walked to the edge of the stone railing and looked down at the dark smoking continent fifty thousand feet below.
"No parachutes," Lucifer stated coldly. "We drop fast. We hit the dirt. We secure the Crown."
He did not wait for confirmation. Lucifer vaulted over the railing!
He plummeted.
Elara followed a fraction of a second later. Her dark wings were pinned tightly to her sides to maximize her terminal velocity. Celeste took a deep breath, stepped off the edge, and fell into the dark.
The descent was terrifyingly fast, the freezing air roared past Lucifer’s dark leather armor.
[System: High-Altitude Descent Initiated.]
[Destination: The Ruined Capital (Sanctum of Solaris).]
[Status: Hostile Territory. Severe Environmental Corruption.]
As they broke through the thick toxic ash clouds hovering just above the surface, the true scale of the devastation became visible.
The world below was dead.
The lush green forests and rolling plains that had surrounded the capital were completely gone.
The landscape was a sprawling jagged nightmare of cracked black bedrock and slow-moving rivers of glowing green highly corrosive Abyssal lava.
The sky was permanently choked with thick swirling gray ash that blotted out the sun entirely.
The contrast between the pristine floating utopia of Zephyria and the ruined apocalyptic hellscape of the surface was horrific.
Lucifer did not activate Zephyr’s Grace. He tracked the ground rapidly approaching.
When they were exactly one hundred feet above the smoking black slag of the ruined city, Lucifer raised his right hand.
The Gauntlet of the Void King crackled with violent black lightning!
"Gravity Crush," Lucifer commanded quietly.
He targeted the air directly beneath himself, Elara, and Celeste. A dense spatial cushion snapped into existence.
The three of them slammed into the invisible barrier. Their catastrophic downward momentum was instantly and flawlessly arrested.
They bounced slightly, and their boots touched down gently on the hot cracked black stone.
"Clean drop," Celeste muttered and exhaled a ragged breath. She immediately drew an arrow, and her sharp eyes scanned the swirling gray ash.
Lucifer deactivated the gravity well.
He stood up and drew his ruby-red Blade of Ruin. The sentient artifact pulsed with a frantic rhythmic heartbeat. It gorged on the massive ambient death magic saturating the dead city.
The heat was intense.
They had landed near the outer edge of what used to be the main market square. The beautiful white marble buildings were completely melted! They formed bizarre twisted structures of fused stone and glass.
"The layout is unrecognizable," Elara noted. Her violet-flaming spear cast long dancing shadows through the thick ash.
The Twilight Sovereign’s iridescent armor shifted perfectly. It absorbed the residual Abyssal energy without harming her core.
"The bombardment erased the streets."
"The streets don’t matter," Lucifer said smoothly. He pointed his glowing red blade toward the massive glowing green crater in the distance. "The Royal Palace was there. The vault is underneath it."
Celeste raised her hand and signaled for silence.
The High Ranger closed her eyes for a fraction of a second and tapped into her Level 35 sensory skills.
"Movement," Celeste whispered. She pointed her bow toward a ruined half-melted stone wall twenty yards to their left. "Multiple signatures. They are not crawling on the ground. They are walking. Bipedal."
Lucifer’s void-swirling eyes narrowed.
The Abyssal Gargoyles and Void-Rays that had bombarded the city were aerial units. The Void Crawlers were insectoid. Bipedal movement meant something else entirely.
The thick gray ash slowly parted.
Figures shambled out of the gloom!
They were not demons. They wore the melted twisted remnants of silver plate armor and iron-gray tabards. They carried rusted broken halberds and shattered broadswords.
They were the Royal Guards and Church Templars who had died during the initial bombardment!
But they were not simply zombies. The Abyssal fire had not just killed them. It had mutated them!
Their flesh was fused to their melted armor and pulsed with sickly green necrotic veins. Their jaws were unhinged and dripped with corrosive acid. Their eyes burned with mindless purple Void fire.
[System Warning: Corrupted Entities Engaged!]
[Enemy: Abyssal Husks (Level 45 - Mutated Infantry)]
[Quantity: 100+]
"The Royal Guard," Celeste breathed with her bowstring drawn tight. She recognized the melted insignia on a twisted breastplate. "The Abyss didn’t just kill them. It hijacked their corpses to build an occupying force."
"They are slow," Elara stated coldly and spun her spear. "They lack the coordination of the living."
"They don’t need coordination," Lucifer corrected smoothly. "They have numbers. The entire population of the capital was caught in the blast. There are millions of these things wandering the ruins."
One of the Abyssal Husks was a former Templar Captain. It raised its shattered broadsword and let out a wet gurgling shriek!
The horde charged!
They did not run. They moved with a jerky unnatural terrifying speed! Their mutated muscles propelled them forward in violent erratic bursts.
"Clear the path," Lucifer commanded.
He did not wait for them to close the distance. He swung his longsword!
The Blade of Ruin flared blindingly bright. Lucifer unleashed a massive horizontal wave of pure ruby-red True Damage.
The crimson arc ripped through the swirling ash and slammed into the charging Husks.
The True Damage bypassed the mutated Abyssal-infused armor effortlessly. The front line of thirty Husks was sliced cleanly in half. Their torsos slid off their legs and instantly dissolved into purple ash.
But the horde did not stop. They trampled over the dissolving ashes of their comrades entirely devoid of fear or self-preservation.
"Falling Star!" Celeste shouted.
The High Ranger fired her bow. She did not shoot a single arrow. She unleashed a volley of five high-explosive aether-tipped shafts simultaneously!
The arrows arched high into the air and slammed down directly into the center of the Husk formation.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The explosive blasts shattered the mutated armor of a dozen Husks. It blew their limbs off and knocked them to the scorched ground.
Elara did not use ranged attacks. The Twilight Sovereign launched herself forward.
She became a blur of dark matter and violet fire, She slammed her heavy shield into a massive mutated Royal Guard and crushed its chest cavity.
She spun and drove her celestial spear through the throat of another Husk. It instantly purified the Abyssal rot inside its body and turned it to dust.
Lucifer walked calmly through the slaughter.
He used the Gauntlet of the Void King to manipulate the battlefield. When a cluster of Husks tried to flank Celeste, Lucifer casually clenched his fist.
"Gravity Crush," Lucifer whispered.
The singularity materialized. It instantly flattened five heavily armored Husks into the melted cobblestones with a sickening wet crunch!
The skirmish lasted less than a minute.
The last Abyssal Husk, missing an arm and half its face, lunged blindly at Lucifer, the Warlord simply sidestepped the clumsy attack.
He drove the Blade of Ruin smoothly through the back of the creature’s neck and severed the corrupted spine.
[System: Hostile Skirmish Cleared.]
[Experience Gain Suspended: Mortal Level Cap Reached.]
Lucifer flicked the black sludge off his sword.
"They are mindless," Elara noted as she stepped over a pile of dissolving ash. She did not look winded. "But if a swarm of thousands surrounds us in this ash, we will be bogged down. We need to move faster."
"We are moving," Lucifer stated smoothly.
He looked toward the massive glowing green crater of the ruined Royal Palace. The World-Anchor was buried deep beneath the slag.
"Celeste," Lucifer ordered and kept his void eyes locked on the destination. "Find us the fastest cleanest route through the rubble.
Avoid the main avenues. The Husks will congregate where the population density was highest."
"Understood, Grand Marshal," Celeste replied. She slung her bow over her shoulder and drew her twin curved daggers. She moved swiftly into the swirling gray mist to scout ahead.
Lucifer and Elara followed closely behind her.
The descent into the ashes had begun. They were walking through the graveyard of the old world and hunted for the only anchor capable of securing the new one!