Episode-1009
Chapter : 2017
The battle wasn't over. Lloyd had taken out a pawn, but the King of Pride was just getting started.
Lloyd Ferrum stood amidst the smoking wreckage of the Pavilion of Winds. He was encased in the heavy, black armor of the Aegis Mark III, his breath coming in steady, controlled rhythms. He had just blasted a high-level cyborg into the ocean, proving that physics could indeed hurt a monster. The immediate threat of the Gamma Team leader was gone, but the war wasn't over.
Lloyd didn't look at the cheering soldiers or the stunned kings. He looked up.
High above the ruined island, standing on the edge of the hovering dropship’s ramp, was Lucifer.
The Devil King of Pride hadn't moved during the entire battle below. He had watched his soldiers die and his commander get crushed with the same expression someone might have while watching a boring play. He looked beautiful and terrible, his white armor glowing against the dark metal of the ship. The black cables pulsing under his skin—the "Reality Anchors" provided by the Fire Fly Corporation—gave him a sickly, artificial aura.
Lucifer sighed. The sound was amplified by the ship’s speakers, echoing across the entire island. It wasn't a sigh of anger. It was a sigh of disappointment.
"How tedious," Lucifer said. His voice was smooth, like oil sliding over glass. "I give you toys to play with, and you break them. Humans really are children."
He took a step forward, off the edge of the ramp. He didn't fall. He walked on the air as if there were invisible stairs leading down to the ground. Every step he took sent a ripple of pressure through the atmosphere. It felt like the air pressure was dropping before a hurricane.
"Marcus was expensive," Lucifer noted casually as he descended. "The Corporation will be annoyed that you broke him. But, I suppose it doesn't matter. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself."
Lloyd’s HUD (Heads-Up Display) inside the helmet started flashing red. The sensors weren't picking up a heat signature or a mana spike. They were picking up a massive gravitational distortion.
"Everyone, brace yourselves!" Lloyd shouted over the comms. "He’s coming down!"
Lucifer landed in the center of the crater. He didn't make a sound. There was no dust cloud, no impact tremor. He just touched the ground, and the world seemed to tilt.
He looked around at the Human Alliance and the Satan Faction. He looked at Asmodeus, who was panting from his fight. He looked at Queen Seraphina, who was trying to rally her mages. Finally, his eyes landed on the Avatar of Great King Satan—the old man sitting calmly in his chair.
"Brother," Lucifer said to Satan. "You look so small in that puppet. It’s embarrassing."
Satan looked back, his face impassive. "And you look like a machine, Lucifer. You sold your pride for a battery pack."
Lucifer’s smile vanished. His eyes, usually cold and mocking, burned with a sudden, intense white light.
"It is not a battery," Lucifer whispered. "It is an upgrade. And it is time you learned your place."
Lucifer raised his right hand. He didn't cast a fireball. He didn't summon lightning. He simply pressed his palm downward against the empty air.
"Sovereign Authority: [Pride’s Dominion]."
The effect was instantaneous and absolute.
It wasn't a wind. It wasn't a spell that traveled from point A to point B. It was a rule. The magic dictated a simple concept: The King is above, and everything else is below.
CRUNCH.
Gravity on the island of Aethelgard seemed to increase by a hundred times in a single second.
Asmodeus, the ten-foot-tall Demon Prince of War, didn't even have time to scream. He was slammed face-first into the stone floor as if a mountain had been dropped on his back. The stone cracked under his weight. He struggled, his massive muscles bulging, but he couldn't lift his head. He was pinned like an insect.
Queen Seraphina and the Sultan of Zakaria collapsed instantly. Their knees hit the ground hard enough to bruise bone. They were pressed flat, unable to breathe, their faces mashed into the dirt. The Royal Guards, the mages, the courtiers—everyone fell. It looked like a giant invisible hand had just slapped the entire army onto the ground.
Chapter : 2018
Even Lloyd felt it. The Aegis Mark III screamed in protest. The hydraulic joints whined as they fought to keep the suit standing. The "Star-Frost Ore"—the metal immune to magic—was the only thing saving him. The metal resisted the conceptual magic, but the sheer physical weight was crushing. Lloyd dropped to one knee, the impact shattering the concrete beneath him. The warning lights in his eyes turned from red to a terrifying, strobing black.
"Structural Integrity at 40%," the computer warned. "External pressure exceeding safety limits."
Lloyd gritted his teeth, tasting blood. He tried to stand, but he couldn't. It felt like the sky was sitting on his shoulders.
However, not everyone was on the floor.
In the middle of the crushing field, two figures remained seated.
One was the Avatar of Satan. The old man hadn't moved. The chair beneath him was creaking, and the stone floor around the chair legs was turning to powder, but Satan himself was upright. He was the foundation of the world; gravity was just a suggestion to him.
The other was King Liam.
The "Joker" was sitting behind his overturned table. He was shaking. His nose was bleeding, and the veins in his neck were popping out. But he hadn't fallen. He had jammed his heavy boots against the stone barricade and was holding himself up by sheer, stubborn willpower—and perhaps some hidden technology woven into his clothes. He glared at Lucifer, his pistol still gripped tight in his hand.
Lucifer looked around, unimpressed by the suffering. He walked through the field of gravity as if he were strolling through a garden. He walked past the groaning Asmodeus. He walked past the struggling Lloyd.
He stopped in front of Satan.
"You see?" Lucifer said softly. "You are the past. You are heavy, old, and slow. I am the future."
Lucifer held out his hand. The air grew dark. Shadows twisted and condensed, forming a weapon. It wasn't a sword or an axe. It was a long, thin spear made of absolute nothingness. It looked like a tear in the universe. It didn't reflect light; it ate it.
The Spear of Nihil.
Lloyd’s eyes widened behind his visor. He knew what that was. He had read the reports from his father’s defeat. That spear didn't just kill the body. It erased the existence. It targeted the soul and deleted it from the cycle of reincarnation. If that spear hit Satan’s Avatar, it might feed back through the link and damage the true body deep underground. If the Great King was hurt, the "Lock" on the Abyss might break, and the world would end.
"Goodbye, brother," Lucifer said.
He raised the spear, aiming it directly at the old man’s chest.
Lloyd tried to move. His servos whined. He couldn't get up. The weight was too much. The "Star-Frost" armor stopped the magic from crushing him into a cube, but it didn't give him the strength to move against a Sovereign’s will.
He looked at Leviathan—Eun-ha. She was on the ground near the table. She wasn't fighting the gravity physically; she was fighting it digitally. Her datapad was pressed against the floor, her fingers flying across the cracked screen. She was trying to hack the Reality Anchors, trying to disrupt the signal coming from the ship that gave Lucifer this god-like power.
"I need time!" she screamed, her voice strained and thin under the pressure. "Lloyd! I need two seconds! Just two seconds!"
Two seconds. It sounded like nothing. But in a fight against a god, two seconds was an eternity.
Lucifer pulled his arm back to throw the spear.
Lloyd looked at his dashboard. His power was maxed out. His engines were redlining. Physics wasn't enough. The suit was strong, but it wasn't strong enough to lift the will of a King.
He needed something else. He needed to break the rules.
"I have to open the gate," Lloyd thought.
He wasn't talking about a door. He was talking about his own body.
In the mountains of Ramos, he had purchased a forbidden skill from the System: [The Demon Gate]. It was a technique that removed the brain’s natural safety limiters on the muscles. It allowed a human to use 100% of their muscular strength, usually tearing themselves apart in the process.
He had opened four gates to fight the God-King Golem. He had never opened the fifth. The System had warned him that the Fifth Gate—the Gate of Limitless Motion—would snap his bones and melt his nerves. It was suicide.
But Satan was about to die. And if Satan died, everyone died.
"Two seconds," Lloyd snarled.