Episode-590
Chapter : 1159
The two spirits, Gog and Magog, the living mountain and the primordial storm, the twin pillars of Roy's terrifying power, had been unleashed. Their combined presence was not just a pressure; it was a fundamental rewriting of the laws of reality in their immediate vicinity. The ground buckled and warped under Gog’s immense gravitational pull. The air itself screamed and tore under the strain of Magog’s atmospheric dominance.
Rubel, who had thought himself a god only moments before, now felt like a microbe, an insignificant speck of dust in the presence of two fundamental forces of creation. His own, newly gained Emperor-level spirit, a colossal, carrion-like Black Vulture with wings of shadow and a beak of sharpened despair, manifested in a desperate, instinctual act of self-preservation. It was a magnificent, terrifying creature of death and decay, its wingspan a hundred feet across.
It was also, in this moment, utterly and completely irrelevant.
Roy did not even look at it. Magog, the storm dragon, let out a casual, almost contemptuous roar. A single, lazy bolt of white-hot lightning, thicker than the fortress tower and brighter than the sun, arced from its jaws.
It struck the Black Vulture.
There was no explosion. There was no struggle. The Emperor-level spirit, the pinnacle of Rubel’s unholy power, the grand prize for which he had traded his soul, was simply… gone. It was not killed; it was erased from existence, its very conceptual reality unmade by a power so absolute that the universe itself could not even register its passing.
Defeated. Broken. Utterly and completely outclassed in every conceivable way, on every conceivable level of existence. Viscount Rubel fell to his knees on the blasted cobblestones. The demonic fire in his eyes was gone, replaced by the blank, hollow stare of a man who had not just been defeated in battle, but whose entire worldview, whose very understanding of the concept of power, had been systematically, contemptuously, and absolutely annihilated.
He stared up at his brother, at the man who stood flanked by a living mountain and a primordial storm, at the master of the hundred-armed steel god, and he finally, truly understood. He had not been fighting a man. He had not even been fighting a king. He had picked a fight with God himself.
And God was not in a merciful mood.
Roy’s judgment was swift, and it was final. The colossal steel god behind him, the silent executioner, raised one of its hundred hands, the shadow falling over the kneeling, broken form of Viscount Rubel. The end had come.
The shadow of the steel god’s hand was the shadow of an eclipse, a promise of absolute, final darkness. It descended with a slow, inexorable, and almost majestic grace. This was not the quick, brutal swat that had erased Rubel’s shadow-magic; this was a deliberate, ceremonial execution, a final, public statement on the price of betrayal. The entire battlefield, the clashing of kings and the slaughter of legions, seemed to hold its breath, all eyes, living and dead, turning to witness the final, terrible judgment of the Arch Duke.
Rubel knelt on the ground, a broken, hollowed-out thing. He did not cry out. He did not beg for mercy. His mind, which had been a raging inferno of ambition and righteous fury, was now a silent, empty landscape of pure, cold, and absolute despair. He had seen the true face of power, and it had rendered his own pathetic, soul-bartered strength a meaningless, childish joke. He closed his eyes, welcoming the oblivion he had so richly and foolishly earned.
The hand, a moving mountain of polished Ferrum steel, was a mere ten feet from his head, its descent accelerating.
And then, the sky ripped open.
It was not a storm. It was not a portal. It was a wound. A jagged, bleeding tear in the very fabric of reality, a gash of absolute, non-euclidean blackness that opened directly above the battlefield, a silent scream in the face of creation. From this wound, a new power washed over the world.
It was not a pressure or an aura. It was a feeling. A feeling of absolute, soul-crushing, and infinitely ancient despair. It was the feeling of a star growing cold. The feeling of a universe ending not with a bang, but with a final, lonely, and eternal whimper. It was a conceptual plague of hopelessness that made the auras of the Curse Knights feel like a warm summer breeze. Every fighting spirit on the field, from the mightiest of the Ferrum lords to Roy's own Sovereign-Level Gog and Magog, faltered. Hope, courage, rage, and the very will to fight were all simply… extinguished.
Chapter : 1160
From the heart of the black wound, a figure descended. He did not walk or fly; he simply drifted down, his movements as slow and lazy as a falling ash in a windless room. He was tall, impossibly slender, and clad in a simple, elegant suit of what looked like black, tailored silk that did not ripple or move. His face was a masterpiece of cold, aristocratic beauty, with high cheekbones, skin as pale as bleached bone, and a mane of shimmering silver hair that seemed to float around him as if he were underwater. His eyes were a pale, bored, and utterly ancient shade of violet.
He landed on the ground as gently as a snowflake, his polished black shoes making no sound on the rubble-strewn cobblestones. He surveyed the scene of cataclysmic warfare—the clashing gods, the shattered armies, the impending execution—with an expression of profound and supreme boredom. It was the look of a grandmaster of a cosmic game stumbling upon a group of children playing with checkers.
He let out a soft, theatrical sigh and brought a single, elegantly gloved hand to his mouth to cover a delicate yawn, a gesture of such calculated, insulting indifference it was a weapon in itself.
“My, my,” he said, his voice a soft, melodic, and infinitely weary baritone that carried across the entire battlefield without any effort, cutting through the din of war like a razor through silk. “What a noisy little performance. All this smashing and roaring and displays of… elemental enthusiasm. It’s terribly gauche. Do you Northern brutes have no appreciation for the art of subtlety?”
He turned his bored, violet gaze towards Roy. He looked at the hundred-armed steel god. He looked at the living mountain, Gog. He looked at the primordial storm, Magog. He took in the entire tableau of absolute, Sovereign-Level power that had so thoroughly broken Rubel’s mind.
And he sneered.
A genuine, condescending, and utterly insulting sneer, the kind a king might give to a particularly uninspired court jester.
"A mountain, a storm, and a rather large metal puppet," the stranger mused, his voice dripping with an amused, academic contempt. "How quaint. It has a certain… rustic charm, I suppose. A bold, primitive aesthetic. Did you think of it all by yourself?"
Roy, who had been a statue of absolute, cold authority, finally moved. His head turned, and his gaze, which had been fixed on the final, righteous execution of his brother, now settled on the newcomer. The cold fury in his eyes was replaced by a new, and far more dangerous, stillness. This was not a variable he had anticipated. This was an entirely new game.
“Who are you?” Roy demanded, his voice a low, dangerous rumble, the sound of a tectonic plate shifting deep beneath the earth.
The silver-haired man gave a small, mocking bow, a gesture of pure theatre. “Where are my manners? One should always introduce oneself before ruining the grand finale of a play. My name is Beelzebub. A humble servant of the Seventh Circle, and a senior partner in our little… joint venture here. And I am afraid I must interrupt this charming family reunion. I’ve come to collect my investment.”
His violet eyes flickered to the kneeling, broken form of Rubel. “You see, this one belongs to me. And while I appreciate the… rather enthusiastic disciplinary lesson you’ve attempted to provide, I’m afraid his curriculum is rather full at the moment. We have such grand, world-changing things planned.”
The steel god’s hand, which had been frozen in its descent, now resumed its motion, a clear and final answer to the demon’s casual intrusion.
Beelzebub clicked his tongue in annoyance, a sound of genuine disappointment. “Oh, dear. No sense of theatre at all. Very well. The direct approach it is.”
He didn't move. He didn't even seem to exert any effort. He simply… gestured, a lazy flick of his gloved fingers. Two new portals, two new wounds of swirling, chaotic shadow, ripped open in the sky on either side of him.
From the first, a creature of pure, ancient nightmare unfurled itself. It was a dragon, or the skeletal, blasphemous mockery of one. A colossal, skeletal Black Dragon, its bones forged from obsidian and solidified despair, its eye sockets burning with a cold, green, necromantic fire. It opened its cavernous jaw and breathed not fire, but a torrent of pure, liquid shadow that struck the descending hand of the steel god. The shadow-fire did not burn; it corroded. The polished Ferrum steel sizzled and dissolved under the conceptual assault, the hand of the god being unmade by a force of pure, unholy decay.
From the second portal, another entity emerged. It was a ten-foot-tall, crimson-armored Oni, its skin the color of dried blood, its face a mask of demonic, joyful fury. It crackled with a visible aura of black and red cursed lightning, and in its hands, it wielded a massive, spiked kanabō club that seemed to absorb the very light around it. This was not a mindless beast; its eyes held a cold, tactical cunning, the gaze of a veteran warrior.
Two more Sovereign-Level spirits. Corrupted. Unholy. And utterly, terrifyingly powerful.
The Black Dragon let out a silent, soul-chilling roar and launched itself at Gog, the living mountain, its shadow-fire a tide of annihilation. The Crimson Oni pointed its club at Magog, the storm dragon, and unleashed a bolt of black lightning, a direct challenge from one master of the storm to another.
The two dark gods intercepted the attack meant for Rubel, meeting Roy’s Gog and Magog in a world-shattering explosion of divine and demonic power.
The duel between brothers was over.
The war between the gods of House Ferrum and the devils of the Abyss had just begun