Episode-1010
Chapter : 2019
He closed his eyes. He stopped fighting the suit. He stopped fighting the gravity. He turned his focus inward, to the burning core of his own physical body. He found the mental block that stopped him from hurting himself, the survival instinct that said "stop."
And he shattered it.
"Demon Gate: Fifth Release. Open."
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The sound that came from inside the Aegis suit wasn't mechanical. It was wet and organic. It was the sound of muscle fibers snapping like overstressed cables. It was the sound of tendons tearing away from bone.
Inside the helmet, Lloyd screamed.
It was a scream of pure, white-hot agony. The Fifth Gate flooded his body with adrenaline and bio-electricity. His heart rate spiked to 300 beats per minute. His muscles swelled, pushing against the inner lining of the pilot suit until the fabric ripped. Blood vessels in his eyes burst, turning his vision red.
But with the pain came power. Impossible, world-breaking power.
The hydraulic assist of the Aegis suit was designed to multiply the pilot’s strength by fifty times. But now, the pilot himself was fifty times stronger than a human. The math went crazy. The force exerted by Lloyd’s body overloaded the sensors.
"Warning," the suit screamed. "Input force exceeds tolerance. Skeletal frame compromised."
Lloyd ignored it. He forced his legs to straighten.
CREAAAK. BOOM.
The Aegis Mark III stood up. It fought against the crushing weight of [Pride’s Dominion]. The ground under Lloyd’s feet exploded, turning into a crater of dust as he pushed back against the invisible hand of the Devil King.
Lucifer paused. He lowered the spear slightly, turning his head. His eyes widened in genuine surprise. He saw the black machine standing up in the middle of his absolute authority.
"A human?" Lucifer whispered. "Standing in my presence? Impossible."
"I am... not... done!" Lloyd roared. His voice was a gargle of blood and static.
He raised his right arm. He didn't have time to run over there. He didn't have time to shoot. He needed to stop that spear.
He reached deep into his Void Power. He grabbed the [Steel Blood] ability—the power to manifest metal. Usually, he created chains or swords. But now, fueled by the insane energy of the Demon Gate, he poured everything he had into a single creation.
"Chain... Bind!"
The air between Lloyd and Lucifer split open.
Four massive chains erupted from the void. These weren't the sleek, silver chains of an assassin. These were jagged, ugly, black chains made of raw, compressed iron. They moved faster than the eye could see, propelled by Lloyd’s screaming will.
Lucifer sneered. "Metal? Against me?"
He moved to throw the Spear of Nihil, intending to erase the chains and Satan in one strike.
But the chains were fast. And they weren't aiming for Lucifer. They were aiming for the weapon.
CLANG-SNAP.
The four chains wrapped around the shaft of the Spear of Nihil. They coiled tight, biting into the nothingness of the weapon.
Lloyd slammed his fist into the ground, anchoring himself. He pulled back with every ounce of strength the Fifth Gate gave him. The servos in the Aegis suit exploded. Oil sprayed inside the cockpit. His own arm bone snapped with a sickening crack.
But the spear stopped.
For one single second, the weapon of absolute erasure was held in place, frozen in the air just inches from Satan’s chest.
Lucifer looked at the chains holding his weapon. He looked at the black mech, smoking and sparking, holding the line through sheer, self-destructive stubbornness. For the first time in centuries, the King of Pride felt something other than boredom. He felt annoyance.
"You persist," Lucifer hissed. "You annoying insect."
He flexed his wrist. A pulse of Sovereign power traveled down the spear.
The chains shattered. They didn't just break; they disintegrated into dust. The backlash hit Lloyd like a cannonball. He was thrown backward, crashing into the ruins of a pillar. The Aegis suit went dark, its systems fried.
But the second was over.
"Got you," Lloyd whispered, coughing up blood.
On the floor, Leviathan’s finger slammed onto the 'Enter' key of her datapad.
"Reality Anchor... Decoupled," she gasped.
High above, on the hovering dropship, the main connection node flared. A spark jumped from the ship to Lucifer’s armor.
The black cables pulsating under Lucifer’s skin suddenly turned gray. The purple light in his chest flickered.
The connection to the dimension was severed.
The purple light in Lucifer’s chest flickered and died.
Chapter : 2020
It happened in an instant. One moment, the Devil King of Pride was an unstoppable god, holding a spear that could erase souls, connected to an endless supply of power from the sky. The next moment, the connection snapped. The thick black cables pulsing under his skin turned a dull, lifeless gray. The invisible weight of his "Pride’s Dominion"—the gravity field that had pinned everyone to the ground—vanished.
Air rushed back into the lungs of the survivors on the Island of Aethelgard.
Lloyd Ferrum, trapped inside the smoking, sparking wreckage of the Aegis Mark III, didn't cheer. He didn't waste time celebrating. He knew exactly what this was. It wasn't a victory; it was a window. A tiny, fragile window of opportunity that would stay open for maybe five seconds before Lucifer rebooted or the Fire Fly ship re-established the link.
"Now!" Lloyd roared over the comms, his voice cracking with strain. "Eun-ha! Get us out of here!"
Leviathan—Song Eun-ha—didn't need to be told twice. She was already moving before Lloyd had finished speaking. She was on her knees, her datapad smashed on the stone floor, her dress torn and stained with dust. But her eyes were glowing with a terrifying, focused intensity. She wasn't looking at the enemy. She was looking at the space between the atoms of the air.
She raised both hands. She didn't cast a spell in the traditional sense. She didn't chant ancient words. She simply grabbed the fabric of reality and pulled.
"Conceptual Water," she whispered. "Tidal Shift."
It didn't rain. The ocean didn't rise. Instead, the air itself turned into liquid.
A massive, swirling vortex of deep blue energy erupted from the center of the ruined pavilion. It looked like a whirlpool opening up in the middle of the sky. This wasn't normal water; it was the concept of "flow" and "movement" given physical form. It washed over the battlefield, ignoring the laws of physics.
"Everyone, group up!" King Liam shouted. The "Joker" was already moving, grabbing the shell-shocked Sultan of Zakaria by the collar and dragging him toward the center. "If you aren't in the water, you stay here and die!"
Queen Seraphina, her face pale but her jaw set, scrambled to her feet. She grabbed her surviving mages and ran toward the vortex. Asmodeus, the brute of the Devil faction, grunted in pain as he hauled himself up. He grabbed the chair—the one containing the Avatar of Great King Satan—and lifted the old man as easily as if he were holding a doll.
"Mona, move!" Asmodeus barked at the Prince of Sloth.
Monalisa Belphagor was lying on the ground, looking like she wanted to take a nap right there in the crater. "So much running," she complained, but she let herself be swept up by the current of blue magic.
Lucifer stood frozen on the ramp of his dropship. He looked down at his chest, tapping the dead node of the Reality Anchor with a look of genuine confusion. For the first time in centuries, his system had crashed. He looked up just as the blue whirlpool expanded to swallow the alliance.
"You think you can run?" Lucifer sneered. His voice didn't boom anymore; it was just a voice. But it was filled with a cold, promising malice. "There is nowhere on this planet I cannot find you."
He raised his hand to fire a blast of raw mana, trying to disrupt the spell.
But he was too slow.
Lloyd, still inside the heavy black suit, used the last dregs of his hydraulic pressure to throw himself backward. The Aegis suit tumbled into the blue vortex.
The world dissolved.
The sensation of teleportation wasn't like walking through a door. It was violent. It felt like being flushed down a drain that stretched across the continent. There was no up or down. There was only a rushing roar of blue noise and the feeling of being squeezed through a tube that was slightly too small.
Lloyd felt the armor of his suit groaning under the pressure. The "Star-Frost" metal, already damaged from the gravity attack, was creaking. Warning lights flashed inside his helmet, screaming about structural failure, but Lloyd ignored them. He just gritted his teeth and held on, praying that Eun-ha’s coordinates were correct. If she missed the target, they could end up inside a mountain, or at the bottom of the ocean, or scattered across the stratosphere as dust.
For a few seconds, they were nowhere. They existed in the void between spaces, a tunnel of chaotic magic.
Then, the ride ended.
It didn't end softly. The blue vortex spat them out like a cannon firing grapeshot.
CRASH. THUD. SLAM.