Episode-1026
Chapter : 2051
As they walked, Lloyd looked at Eun-ha. In this light, bathed in the red glow of the underworld, she looked less like his wife from Earth and more like the Queen of Envy. Her shadows danced around her, protecting her from the heat.
"Are you okay?" Lloyd asked her quietly.
Eun-ha looked at him, surprised by the question. "I am a Devil Prince, Lloyd. This is like a warm bath to me. You are the one sweating."
"I'm managing," Lloyd said. "I just wanted to make sure... you know, that we're good. After this."
"After we resurrect Jasmin?" Eun-ha asked.
"After we win," Lloyd corrected.
Eun-ha smiled. It was a small, sad smile. "Let's focus on the trade first. Satan is not like the other Princes. He doesn't care about gold or power. He cares about balance. You are bringing him a piece of chaos to remove from the board. He will like that. But he will test you."
"I'm ready for a test," Lloyd said.
"It won't be a fight, Lloyd," the Avatar called back without turning around. "The Great King does not spar. If he fought you, you would simply cease to be. The test will be of your resolve. Can you give up what is necessary?"
Lloyd touched the pouch on his belt. He thought about Jasmin. He thought about the empty, hollow diamond doll he had created, waiting in his inventory.
"I've already given up a lot," Lloyd said. "I can give up a little more."
The bridge ended at a massive wall of black rock. It looked like a dead end.
The Avatar stopped. He turned to face Lloyd and Eun-ha. The old man’s eyes were glowing now, shining with the same dying-star light that Lloyd had seen back at the summit.
"We have arrived," the Avatar said. "Prepare yourself, Human. You are about to stand in the presence of the Foundation."
The Avatar tapped the rock wall with his staff.
RUMBLE.
The sound was so deep it wasn't heard; it was felt in the marrow of the bones. The wall didn't open. It dissolved. The rock turned into smoke and drifted away, revealing what was behind it.
Lloyd took a breath, steeling himself. He stepped through the smoke, into the heart of the world.
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The heat was gone. That was the first thing Lloyd noticed.
As he stepped through the dissolved wall, the oppressive, burning atmosphere of the magma ocean vanished instantly. It was replaced by a cold, dry stillness. It felt like stepping into a walk-in freezer, but without the humidity. The air was thin, crisp, and vibrated with a low-frequency hum that made Lloyd’s teeth ache.
He opened his eyes, adjusting to the sudden change in light.
He was standing on a platform made of polished black glass. The platform extended out into a void of absolute darkness. There were no walls, no ceiling, no floor that he could see. Just the platform, floating in nothingness.
But it wasn't empty.
In front of him, looming out of the dark, was a gate.
It was called the Cocytus Gate, but that name felt too small for it. It was a structure that defied engineering. It was a massive, rectangular archway made of obsidian, standing at least a mile high. The stone was carved with runes that were older than humanity, older than devils, older than the concept of language. The runes pulsed with a faint, violet light.
Inside the archway, there was no door. There was a swirling, chaotic vortex of gray mist. It looked like a storm trapped in a bottle. Faces seemed to press against the mist from the other side—screaming, silent faces of lost souls and monsters trying to get out.
"The Abyssal Gate," Lloyd whispered. "The front door to Hell."
"The back door," Eun-ha corrected him softly. "The front door is broken. This is the seal that keeps the pressure from blowing the planet apart."
Lloyd looked at the gate. It was terrifying, yes. But what was holding it shut was even more terrifying.
Fused into the base of the gate, merging with the obsidian frame and the bedrock of the planet itself, was a shape.
It was a Titan.
Great King Satan was not a man. He wasn't a demon in the traditional sense. He was a geological formation given sentience.
Chapter : 2052
His body was massive, hundreds of feet tall, sitting in a cross-legged meditative pose right in front of the gray mist. But where a normal body would have skin, Satan had rock. His chest was a cliff face of jagged black stone. His arms were ridges of granite, fused directly into the pillars of the gate. He didn't look like he was sitting in front of the door; it looked like the door had grown out of his back.
He had multiple faces.
Lloyd squinted, his [All-Seeing Eye] activating instinctively to try and make sense of the visual data.
On the Titan’s massive shoulders, three heads were carved from the rock. The one on the left looked like a weeping woman, made of white marble. The one on the right looked like a roaring lion, made of red sandstone. And in the center, the main head was a stern, emotionless visage of pure, polished obsidian.
He didn't move. He didn't breathe. He looked like a mountain that had been carved into the shape of a god.
"He's... stone," Lloyd said. "Is he alive?"
"He is more alive than you or I," the Avatar said, walking past Lloyd. The small old man walked up to the giant, frozen toe of the Titan. "He is simply waiting."
The Avatar raised his staff and struck the Titan’s foot.
CLACK.
The sound echoed through the endless void.
For a long moment, nothing happened. The gray mist in the gate swirled. The silence pressed in on Lloyd’s ears.
Then, the ground jumped.
It was a violent jerk, like the planet had hiccuped. Dust fell from the darkness above.
The central head of the obsidian Titan moved.
It was a grinding, tectonic sound, like two continents rubbing together. The massive stone head tilted down. The eyelids, which looked like slabs of slate, slowly slid open.
Beneath the stone eyelids, there were no eyes. There were stars.
Two burning, dying suns glowed in the sockets. They were orange and red, swirling with nuclear fire. They cast a harsh, warm light over the platform, illuminating Lloyd and Eun-ha.
The gaze of the Great King fell upon Lloyd.
Lloyd felt a weight land on his shoulders that made the gravity spell of Lucifer feel like a feather. This wasn't magical gravity. This was the weight of attention. A being that had existed for eons, a being that held up the world, was looking at him. It felt like being examined by a microscope the size of a building.
The Titan’s mouth didn't move. The rock was solid. But a voice filled the air. It vibrated in Lloyd’s chest, in his teeth, in the steel of his blood.
"You," the voice boomed. It wasn't loud, but it was heavy. Every syllable felt like a stone dropping into a pond. "The Anomaly. The one who crosses lines."
Lloyd straightened his back. He was a Major General. He had stared down death a thousand times. He wasn't going to cower before a rock, even if that rock was a god.
"Gluttony," the voice rumbled. "My wayward child. He was always hungry. He ate and ate until he became nothing but a mouth. And now... he is a history."
"He was a parasite," Lloyd said. "He was drilling into your back. So I removed him."
"You harvested him," Satan corrected. "There is a difference. You did not just kill him. You turned his sin into a resource. That is... interesting."
The giant stone hand of the Titan, which had been resting on his knee, moved. It was a slow, majestic movement. The fingers, each the size of a bus, uncurled. The palm was open, waiting.
"You bring the harvest, Human," the voice boomed, shaking the tectonic plates beneath their feet. "But a harvest is not a gift. It is a trade. You want something in return. You want to open the Library of the Lost."
Lloyd nodded. He didn't blink.
"I want a soul," Lloyd said. "I want to make a trade. One Prince for one Handmaiden."
The burning eyes of the Titan narrowed. The heat in the room spiked.
"Equivalent Exchange," Satan rumbled. "A law as old as the stone I am made of. But a Prince is heavy, and a Handmaiden is light. The scales do not balance, Lloyd Ferrum. If you want to pull a soul back from the other side of this gate... you will have to add your own weight to the scale."