Episode-1005
Chapter : 2009
The thing in the lava... that was the Great King Satan.
Lloyd deactivated his eye, blinking away the red spots in his vision. His heart was hammering against his ribs. He had fought Iffrit. He had fought huge monsters. But this... this was a planetary feature.
"He's... he's the island," Lloyd whispered, his voice dry.
King Liam frowned. "What?"
"The man in the chair," Lloyd said, pointing a shaking finger at the calm figure of Satan. "It's a doll. An avatar. The real Satan is... downstairs. Way downstairs."
Satan—the avatar—turned his head and looked at Lloyd. He smiled. It was a sad, tired smile.
"You have good eyes, child," Satan said. "The Austin bloodline always did have a knack for seeing things they shouldn't."
The vibration in the ground stopped, but the feeling of heaviness remained.
"Why?" Seraphina asked, her voice trembling. "Why use a puppet? Why not come here yourself?"
"If I stood up," Satan said simply, "many weak will die because of my demonic pressure."
He placed his hand on the table.
"My true body is not just large," Satan explained. "It is the Lock. For thousands of years, I have sat at the threshold between the Abyss and the Human Realm. My physical form plugs the hole. I am the cork in the bottle. If I move... if I leave my post... the barrier between worlds collapses. The atmosphere of the Abyss would rush into your world. Your sky would burn. Your oceans would boil. This is the 'Dissolutive Collapse' Leviathan spoke of."
The gathered kings fell silent. They had thought Satan was an invader. They thought he was a conqueror waiting for a chance to strike. They didn't realize he was the only thing holding the door shut.
"You are a prisoner," Lloyd said, realizing the truth. "You aren't the King of Hell. You're the Jailer. And you're also the inmate."
"A necessity," Satan agreed. "Power has a price. My price is stillness. I have not moved in five thousand years."
"Then why now?" the Sultan of Zakaria asked. "Why agree to this alliance? Why talk to us at all?"
Satan’s face hardened. The grandfatherly look vanished, replaced by something ancient and angry.
"Because someone is picking the lock," Satan said.
He gestured to the floor.
"The Fire Fly Corporation. They are not just on the surface. Their machines... those 'drills'... they are digging into my back. They are mining the Gate itself. They are trying to extract the concentrated mana of the barrier."
Leviathan—Eun-ha—spoke up, her voice sharp. "They are damaging the integrity of the cycle. If they break the Gate, it won't just kill us. It will shatter the cycle of souls. The dead will have nowhere to go. The living will have no mana to be born. It will turn this planet into a spiritual graveyard."
"They are hurting me," Satan said, his voice dropping to a rumble that shook the wine in the glasses again. "They are drilling into my flesh to steal the blood of the world. I cannot scratch the itch because I cannot move. That is why I need you."
He looked at each of the humans in turn.
"I need you to be my hands," Satan said. "I need you to kill the parasites that are biting me. If you do this... if you stop them... I will continue to hold the door shut. I will keep the Abyss away from your children."
King Liam took a deep breath. He looked at Lloyd. They shared a look of grim understanding. The situation was worse than they thought. They weren't just fighting a war for territory. They were fighting to stop a dam from bursting.
"We have a deal," King Liam said. He picked up the quill. "We kill the parasites. You keep the door shut."
"Agreed," Satan said.
King Liam signed the parchment. The sound of the scratching pen was loud in the silent pavilion.
"It is done," Asmodeus grunted, standing up. "Now can we fight? I am tired of talking."
"Patience, muscle-brain," Monalisa sighed. "We just signed a piece of paper. We haven't actually done anything yet."
Lloyd walked over to the table. He stood next to Eun-ha. She looked up at him.
"You knew," Lloyd said quietly. "You knew he was the Lock."
"I suspected," Eun-ha replied in a whisper. "But seeing it... confirming it... the math is terrifying, Lloyd. The energy density required to hold two dimensions apart... if Fire Fly destabilizes him, the explosion will be bigger than a supernova."
"Then we don't let them," Lloyd said.
He looked at the Avatar of Satan.
Chapter : 2010
"We have the Titan Squad," Lloyd said to the group. "We have the Wraiths. We have the armies of three nations. We will find their drills. We will break them."
"Good," Satan said. "Because my patience is wearing thin. And my back itches."
It was a joke, but nobody laughed. The idea of a tectonic giant scratching an itch and destroying a continent wasn't funny.
The meeting was technically over. The alliance was formed. But the heavy feeling in the air didn't lift. It felt like the calm before a storm.
Lloyd looked out at the ocean. The water was calm, blue, and peaceful. But his [All-Seeing Eye] was still throbbing with a warning headache.
"Something's wrong," Lloyd muttered.
The quill in King Liam’s hand hovered just above the thick parchment. The ink was wet, gleaming black in the sunlight. All he had to do was sign his name, and the "Planetary Defense Pact" would be real. It would be the first time in history that humans and devils officially agreed to stop killing each other and start saving the world.
Around the white stone table, everyone was holding their breath. Queen Seraphina watched the pen with intense focus. The Sultan of Zakaria gripped the arms of his chair. Even the Devil Princes—Leviathan, Asmodeus, and Belphagor—were silent. The Avatar of Great King Satan sat perfectly still, like a statue waiting for a signal.
Lloyd Ferrum stood near a pillar, his arms crossed. His face was calm, but inside, his brain was screaming. His [All-Seeing Eye] was throbbing with a dull ache behind his temples. It wasn't the pain of overuse; it was a warning. It was the feeling a soldier gets right before an ambush triggers.
"Sign it, Liam," Lloyd whispered under his breath. "Do it now."
King Liam lowered the quill. The tip touched the paper.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEECH.
The sound didn't come from the pen. It came from the sky.
It was a noise so loud, so high-pitched and unnatural, that it felt like a physical blow to the head. It sounded like a million sheets of metal being torn apart at the same time. The wine glasses on the table shattered instantly. The courtiers covered their ears and fell to their knees screaming. Even Asmodeus, the brute of the Devil faction, flinched and looked up.
This wasn't thunder. It wasn't a dragon’s roar. Lloyd knew this sound. He remembered it from a lifetime ago on Earth.
It was the sound of atmospheric displacement. It was the sound of a warp-jump.
"Look up!" Lloyd shouted, his voice cutting through the panic.
The blue sky above the Island of Aethelgard didn't just cloud over. It tore open. Reality itself seemed to rip like cheap fabric. Through the jagged hole in the sky, three massive shapes descended.
They were ugly, blocky, and terrifying. They weren't magical airships made of wood and canvas. They were made of dark, charcoal-grey composite metal. They didn't have sails; they had glowing blue thrusters that hummed with a deep, vibrating bass note that shook the teeth in Lloyd’s skull.
Fire Fly Corporation Dropships.
"They're here," Lloyd said, his face turning grim. "And they didn't knock."
As the ships descended, a wave of pressure slammed into the pavilion. It wasn't wind. It was a "Mana-Nullifying Field." The ambient magic in the air, usually thick and vibrant in Riverio, suddenly felt thin and dead. The mages in Queen Seraphina's retinue gasped, clutching their chests as if the air had been sucked out of the room. The defensive wards around the island flickered and died without a fight.
The lead ship, larger than the other two, hovered directly over the pavilion. A ramp lowered with a hiss of hydraulics and steam.
Standing at the top of the ramp, looking down at the gathered kings and princes, was a figure that embodied the end of the world.
It was Lucifer, the Devil King of Pride.
But he didn't look like the Lucifer that Lloyd had heard stories about. He didn't look like a creature of pure myth anymore. He looked like a monster that had been upgraded.
Lucifer wore his pristine white armor, but it was cracked open in places. Beneath the armor, pulsating black veins bulged against his skin. These weren't natural veins; they were tubes. They were cybernetic implants glowing with a sickly purple light. Embedded in his chest and shoulders were metallic nodes that hummed in sync with the ship above him.
"Reality Anchors," Lloyd realized, his mind racing. "They hardwired him to the dimension. He isn't just visiting; he's part of their network now."