Episode-1020
Chapter : 2039
From the mist ahead, a shape emerged.
Lloyd had expected a monster. Bael rode a drake. Lucifer looked like a fallen angel. Asmodeus was a mountain of muscle. Lloyd expected Beelzebub, the Lord of Gluttony, to be a massive, bloated creature, fat with the power he had consumed.
He was wrong.
The figure floating above the swamp was terrifyingly thin.
Beelzebub looked like a skeleton with skin stretched too tight over the bones. He was tall, perhaps seven feet, but he looked like he weighed nothing. His skin was a pale, sickly gray. His limbs were long and spindly, hanging loosely at his sides. He wore rags that looked like they had been chewed on.
But his face... his face was the stuff of nightmares. His mouth was too wide, filled with rows of needle-like teeth that chattered softly. His eyes were huge, yellow orbs that darted around frantically, never resting on one thing for more than a second.
He didn't look like a king who had eaten everything. He looked like a man who was starving to death.
"Hungry," Beelzebub whispered. His voice sounded like dry leaves scraping together. "So... hungry."
He wasn't alone.
Floating beside him was his Dark Spirit. It didn't have a human shape. It didn't have a beast shape. It was simply a hole.
"The Glutton of Hell" was a shapeless, shifting blob of absolute darkness, roughly the size of a carriage. It hovered in the air, changing form constantly. Sometimes it looked like a stomach; sometimes it looked like a mouth. It made a constant, wet chewing sound, even though it wasn't eating anything yet.
Lloyd checked his HUD. The sensors were screaming. The energy readings coming off the thin man and his shadow-blob were off the charts.
"Beelzebub," Lloyd said, leveling his rotary cannon. "By the authority of the Human Alliance, you are ordered to stand down. Surrender, and you will be returned to the Abyss."
Beelzebub’s head snapped toward Lloyd. Those yellow, frantic eyes locked onto the black mech. A slow, wide grin spread across his face, stretching his skin until it looked like it might tear.
"Metal," Beelzebub rasped. "Spicy. Crunchy. A tin can with meat inside."
He drifted closer, hovering a few feet above the acidic water.
"Did my brother Bael send you?" Beelzebub asked. "Did he send me a snack? Bael is stingy. He never shares the good meat."
"Bael is dead," Lloyd said coldly. "I killed him this morning. And if you don't surrender, you're next."
Beelzebub paused. He tilted his head, like a dog hearing a strange noise.
"Dead?" he asked. Then, he giggled. It was a wet, unpleasant sound. "Good. More for me. Bael was always too fatty. Too rich. I prefer... lean meat."
He pointed a long, bony finger at Lloyd.
"You smell delicious," the Prince of Gluttony said. "You smell like mana. You smell like souls. You smell like... lunch."
The Dark Spirit beside him surged. The blob of shadow expanded, opening a mouth that was wider than its body should have allowed. Inside the darkness of that mouth, Lloyd could see nothing but an infinite drop.
[Warning: Hostile intent detected. Energy signature rising. The target is emitting a decomposition field.]
Lloyd tightened his grip on the controls. "Okay. Negotiation failed. Let's do this the hard way."
He spun up the rotary cannon on his shoulder. The barrels whined as they reached firing speed.
"Eat this," Lloyd said.
He pulled the trigger.
A stream of high-velocity, armor-piercing rounds erupted from the Aegis suit. The bullets tore through the air, aimed directly at Beelzebub’s chest. At this range, the sheer kinetic impact should have turned the thin devil into a mist of bone and gray skin.
But the bullets never hit him.
As the rounds entered the space around Beelzebub—about ten feet away from his body—they simply... stopped existing.
They didn't bounce off a shield. They didn't melt. They just vanished. One moment they were flying metal slugs; the next, they were gone. There was no dust. No debris. Just empty air.
Beelzebub hadn't even moved. He just opened his mouth and inhaled slightly.
"Crunchy," Beelzebub muttered, licking his lips. "But dry. Needs sauce."
Lloyd stared at the screen. "System, what just happened? Where did the ammo go?"
[Analysis: Matter deletion. The target projects a field that breaks down atomic bonds instantly and converts matter into energy. He consumed the kinetic force and the physical mass of the projectiles.]
Chapter : 2040
"He ate the bullets," Lloyd realized with a growing sense of horror. "He literally ate the bullets."
This wasn't like fighting Bael’s army, where he could just overwhelm them with firepower. This wasn't like fighting Anthony, where he could use physics tricks. He was fighting a living black hole.
Beelzebub waved his hand lazily. "My turn."
The Dark Spirit, the Glutton of Hell, lunged forward. It moved faster than a blob should move. It stretched out like a whip made of tar, aiming for the Aegis’s left leg.
Lloyd fired his thrusters to dodge, moving backward. But the mud slowed him down. The suction of the swamp held the heavy mech in place for a fraction of a second too long.
The shadow struck the knee joint of the Aegis.
There was no crash. No impact sound. Just a hiss.
The thick, Star-Frost Ore armor plating on the knee—metal that was supposed to be immune to magic—simply dissolved. The shadow touched it, and the metal turned into gray slush, then into gas. The hydraulic lines underneath ruptured, spraying fluid into the swamp.
"Warning: Left leg mobility compromised," the computer stated calmly. "Armor breach in Sector 7."
Lloyd cursed. He fired a blast from his repulsor beam to push the shadow back, but the shadow just ate the beam too.
"This suit," Lloyd realized, his heart beating faster. "It’s just food to him. To a creature of Gluttony, armor isn't protection. It’s a serving platter."
Beelzebub floated closer. He was drooling now, a thick, black ichor dripping from his chin.
"Come out," the Prince whispered. "Come out of the can. The meat is better without the shell."
Lloyd looked at his dashboard. The structural integrity was dropping just from being near this guy. The acidic air was eating the sensors. The swamp was eating the feet. And the monster was eating the weapons.
The Aegis Mark III was a masterpiece of engineering. It was the peak of Lloyd’s technological achievement. It had killed a Devil Prince just hours ago.
But right now, in this rotting swamp, it was a liability. It was a trap.
Lloyd made a decision. It was a crazy decision, the kind of decision that would make any sane soldier scream. But Lloyd wasn't just a soldier anymore. He was a man who understood the rules of this new world.
"Physics loses here," Lloyd said to himself. "He eats physics. So I have to stop feeding him."
He reached for the manual release lever.
"System," Lloyd commanded. "Ejection protocol. Silent mode."
[Are you sure? The environment is toxic. Without the suit, exposure to the aura of the Prince will be extremely hazardous.]
"I know," Lloyd said. "But the suit is just a big target. I need to be small. I need to be fast. And I need to use the one thing he can't eat."
"What is that?" the AI asked, breaking protocol for a moment of curiosity.
"Nothing," Lloyd said. "I'm going to hit him with nothing."
He pulled the lever.
________________________________________
The hiss of the hydraulic seals releasing was masked by the bubbling of the swamp. The back hatch of the Aegis suit popped open.
Beelzebub was busy gnawing on the front armor of the suit. He had drifted closer, his hands resting on the chest plate of the machine. The metal was turning soft under his touch, like chocolate melting in the sun. He was enjoying himself. He thought the pilot was trapped inside, terrified, waiting to be consumed.
He didn't notice the shadow slipping out the back.
Lloyd dropped from the open hatch into the mud. He landed in a crouch, the thick, yellow sludge coming up to his knees. The smell was instantly overpowering. It burned his nose and made his eyes water. The air tasted like copper and vomit.
He wasn't wearing his heavy armor anymore. He was dressed in a sleek, lightweight tactical bodysuit made of dragon-weave fabric—tough, but not metal. It was designed for speed, not tanking hits.
He felt the immediate sting of the acidic air on his exposed face. His skin tingled. The "aura of hunger" that Beelzebub projected wasn't just a metaphor; it was a physical pressure, a constant pulling sensation, as if the air around him was trying to drag him into the Prince’s mouth.
Lloyd took a breath, filtering the mana through his own internal core to keep from gagging.
"Okay," Lloyd whispered. "Just me and the hungry ghost."