Episode-1004
Chapter : 2007
Leviathan sat with the posture of a CEO in a boardroom. She was Song Eun-ha, Lloyd’s wife from his life on Earth. She wore a dress that seemed to be made of deep ocean water, shifting and flowing over her skin. She didn't look at the other humans. Her gaze was fixed on a datapad made of black crystal, scrolling through information with a bored expression. But every few seconds, her eyes would flick toward Lloyd, just for a fraction of a second, filled with a complex mix of professional focus and deep, hidden memory.
Next to her was Asmodeus. He was huge. He was in his human form, but he still looked like he could bench-press a castle. He wasn't wearing a shirt, just a vest of dark leather that showed off scars from a thousand wars. He was glaring at King Liam, his leg bouncing up and down with restless energy. He hated this. He hated talking. He wanted to hit something.
And then there was Belphagor, or Monalisa. She was slumped in her chair, her head resting on her hand, looking like she was about to fall asleep. She yawned, not bothering to cover her mouth. To her, the end of the world was just another reason to be tired.
But the center of attention wasn't the humans or the princes. It was the figure sitting at the head of the table, between the two factions.
Great King Satan.
He looked… normal. He appeared as a middle-aged man with graying hair and a neatly trimmed beard, wearing simple black robes. He didn't have horns. He didn't have a tail. He didn't glow with hellfire. He just sat there with his hands folded on the table, looking like a tired schoolteacher or a grandfather.
But Lloyd’s instincts were screaming. The air around this "normal" man felt dense. It felt like standing next to a black hole. The light seemed to dim slightly when it got close to him.
"Shall we begin?" King Liam asked, breaking the silence. His voice was casual, cutting through the tension like a knife. "I have a kingdom to run, and I’m sure you all have… whatever it is you do in the dark to get back to."
Asmodeus growled low in his throat. "Watch your tongue, human. You speak to the First King."
"I speak to an ally," Liam shot back, not even blinking. "Unless I’m wrong? Are we allies, or are we lunch?"
Satan raised a hand. The movement was slow, gentle. Asmodeus instantly shut his mouth and looked down.
"We are allies," Satan said. His voice was soft, but it carried perfectly over the sound of the ocean waves. It didn't sound like a voice coming from a throat; it sounded like the earth itself was speaking. "The time for eating is over. The time for survival has begun."
Queen Seraphina leaned forward. "We appreciate the ceasefire, Great King. But my people are terrified. They see devils marching on our borders. They hear rumors of the Fire Fly machines. We need to know what you bring to this fight. We have armies. We have technology. What do you have?"
Leviathan looked up from her datapad. "We have the battlefield, little Queen," she said, her voice cool and logical. "The Fire Fly Corporation isn't just attacking your cities. They are drilling into the crust of the Abyss. They are trying to harvest the core of our world. We know the terrain. We know the enemy’s magic better than you do."
"And we have strength," Asmodeus added, flexing a bicep that was thicker than Lloyd’s waist. "Your guns are loud, human. But can they punch a hole in a reality anchor? Can they wrestle a cyber-demon to the ground? We can."
"We are also very tired," Monalisa mumbled, eyes half-closed. "So if we could hurry this up, I need a nap. This fresh air is disgusting. It’s too… clean."
Lloyd watched the exchange, his arms crossed. It was surreal. Here they were, discussing the fate of the planet, and it sounded like a bad staff meeting. But he knew this was just the surface. This was the "pleasantries." The real negotiation hadn't started yet.
The Sultan of Zakaria spoke up. "We have a common enemy. That is clear. But trust is a currency we do not have. How do we know you won't turn on us the moment the Fire Fly ships are destroyed? How do we know this isn't a trap to get our defenses down?"
Satan looked at the Sultan. For a moment, his eyes flashed—not red, but a deep, endless void.
Chapter : 2008
"Because," Satan said calmly, "if we lose, there is no Abyss to go back to. The Corporation doesn't want to conquer us. They want to process us. To them, we are not kings or gods. We are fuel. We are batteries. I do not intend to end my existence powering a toaster in another dimension."
Lloyd almost smiled. Even the Devil King understood the stakes.
"The agreement is simple," King Liam said, sliding a heavy parchment across the table. "We share intelligence. We coordinate our attacks. You keep your hungry lesser demons on a leash, and we don't nuke your territories. We fight together until the Fire Fly Corporation is gone. Then, we can go back to hating each other."
Satan looked at the document. He didn't pick it up. He just stared at it.
"A piece of paper," Satan mused. "Humans love their paper. You think ink binds the world."
"It binds us," Seraphina said firmly.
"Very well," Satan said. "But know this. My presence here is… complicated. What you see before you is a courtesy. A mask."
Lloyd frowned. He looked closer at Satan. The man looked solid. He was breathing. He was casting a shadow. What did he mean by "mask"?
"We understand," Leviathan said quickly, cutting off her King. She looked nervous, which was something Lloyd had never seen before. Eun-ha never got nervous. "The Great King is simply stating that his full power cannot be contained in such a small space."
"No," Satan corrected her gently. "That is not what I mean."
The wind suddenly stopped. The flags on the poles fell limp. The birds that had been circling overhead went silent.
The stone cup on the table in front of King Liam rattled. Just a little. Clink. Clink.
Then the floor shook.
It wasn't a violent earthquake. It was a slow, deep vibration, like a massive heart beating miles beneath their feet.
Thump-thump.
The humans grabbed the table. The devils didn't move.
"What is that?" the Sultan asked, looking around wildly. "Is it an attack? Is it the Fire Fly?"
Lloyd pushed off the pillar he was leaning against. His hand went to his side, ready to summon a weapon, but he stopped. His instincts—the instincts of the Major General—told him this wasn't an attack. This was something else. This was a presence.
"Lloyd," King Liam said sharply, looking back at him. "Eyes."
It was a code. Liam wanted intel. He wanted Lloyd to look beneath the surface.
"On it," Lloyd said.
He took a breath and focused. He channeled his Void energy into his optic nerves.
"[All-Seeing Eye]," Lloyd whispered. "Activate. Maximum depth."
The world turned gray and wireframe. Lloyd looked past the table, past the kings, and down. He looked through the stone floor of the pavilion. He looked through the dirt and rock of the island. He looked deep into the crust of the planet, down where the magma flowed and the pressure was enough to turn carbon into diamonds.
And then, Lloyd Ferrum, the man who had seen everything, gasped.
________________________________________
Lloyd stumbled back a step, his hand gripping a stone pillar to steady himself. The visual data flooding his brain was overwhelming. It was too big. It was too much.
"Lloyd?" King Liam asked, his voice tight. "Report. What do you see?"
Lloyd couldn't speak for a second. He was trying to process the scale of what was beneath them.
The island of Aethelgard wasn't just an island. It was a lid.
Through the spectral vision of his [All-Seeing Eye], the rock and water faded away. Beneath them, miles down in the mantle of the planet, swimming in an ocean of liquid fire, was a shape.
It was a titan. A giant so massive that the island they were standing on was just a speck of dust on its shoulder.
It was a humanoid figure made of obsidian and hardened magma, curled into a fetal position deep in the earth. Its skin was the crust of the planet. Its veins were rivers of lava. It was immense—tectonic in scale. If this thing stood up, its head would brush the stratosphere. If it moved an arm, it would cause a tidal wave that would wipe out a continent.
And connected to this titan, like a tiny marionette string, was a thin thread of blue mana. The thread traveled up through miles of rock, up through the floor of the pavilion, and connected directly to the back of the "normal" man sitting in the chair.
The man at the table wasn't Satan. The man at the table was a puppet. A focal point. A tiny projection used to talk to ants.