Episode-1036
Chapter : 2071
There was a skill tree he rarely looked at. It was called [The Demon Gates].
It was a technique that unlocked the body’s natural safety limiters. The human body is capable of incredible strength, but the brain stops the muscles from contracting too hard because it would snap the bones. The Demon Gates removed those mental blocks.
Lloyd had used the first four gates before. They hurt. They made him strong enough to fight golems, but they tore his muscles and left him bedridden.
The Fifth Gate was the "Gate of Limitless Motion." He had used it for one second earlier to hold Lucifer’s spear. That one second had snapped his arm bone and nearly stopped his heart.
But Lucifer was charging a singularity. The Fifth Gate wouldn't be enough. The Fifth Gate was just human limits removed. To stop a King of Hell, Lloyd needed to stop being human.
"System," Lloyd said, his voice calm and cold. "Unlock restrictions. Authorization: Lloyd Ferrum."
[Warning: Accessing Forbidden Tiers. Opening Gate Six and Seven has a 99% probability of fatal biological collapse. Do you wish to proceed?]
"Proceed," Lloyd said.
He felt a click deep in his spine.
"Gate Six: The Gate of the Soul. Open."
It didn't feel like power. It felt like fire.
Imagine pouring boiling water into your veins instead of blood. That was the sensation. The Sixth Gate didn't just unlock muscles; it unlocked the spirit. It forced Lloyd’s Spirit Core to pump mana into every single cell of his body at maximum pressure. It was like redlining an engine that was already overheating.
Lloyd’s heart rate jumped from 100 beats per minute to 300. His blood rushed so fast it sounded like a roaring river in his ears. Steam began to vent from the joints of his armor, but it wasn't coming from the machine. It was coming from him. His sweat was evaporating instantly because his skin temperature had spiked to a fever level that should have cooked his brain.
He screamed. It was a raw, primal sound that cut through the noise of the gravity well.
But he wasn't done.
"Gate Seven," Lloyd gasped, blood leaking from his nose and eyes. "The Gate of the Void. Open."
If the Sixth Gate was fire, the Seventh Gate was something else entirely. It was cold. It was the feeling of falling into a deep, dark ocean.
The Seventh Gate connected his physical body directly to the Void—the empty space between dimensions where his [Spatial Inventory] existed. It flooded his biology with the raw, chaotic energy of nothingness.
The transformation was terrifying.
Rosa, looking up from her knees, gasped in horror. She watched as the black armor of the Aegis suit seemed to shrink, pulling tight against Lloyd’s body. Then, Lloyd stepped out of the suit. Or rather, the suit fell away, unable to contain him anymore.
Lloyd stood in the crushing gravity, but he wasn't being crushed. He was changing.
His skin, usually pale, began to darken. It turned a deep, unnatural pitch black, like he had been dipped in ink. It wasn't a shadow; his flesh was actually changing color as the Void energy saturated his cells.
Then, the cracks appeared.
Lines of glowing, electric blue light split open across his face, his neck, and his arms. It looked like he was a porcelain vase that had been shattered and glued back together with blue fire. His eyes, usually brown or glowing with the rings of his bloodline, were gone. In their place were two solid orbs of blinding white light.
The pressure coming off him was no longer human. It was heavy, dense, and suffocating. It pushed back against Lucifer’s gravity field.
"What... is that?" Jasmin whispered, staring at her master. She didn't recognize him. He looked like a monster. He looked like a demon that ate other demons.
Lloyd didn't feel like Lloyd anymore. His thoughts were racing so fast they blurred together. He felt the position of every atom in the courtyard. He felt the rotation of the planet. He felt the fear of the people hiding in the bunker.
Most of all, he felt the arrogance of the man floating in front of him.
Lucifer was still laughing, his arms spread wide, the purple singularity growing larger above his head. He was so focused on his own power, on his own grandeur, that he didn't notice the monster waking up ten feet away.
"I am the end!" Lucifer shouted, looking at the sky. "I am the hole in the world!"
Chapter : 2072
Lloyd tilted his head. The blue cracks on his neck flared.
The Seventh Gate granted one specific ability. It wasn't strength. It wasn't magic. It was the removal of the concept of "Distance."
For a normal person, to get from Point A to Point B, you have to cross the space in between. You have to run, or fly, or walk. Even for a speedster like Vala, movement takes time.
For Lloyd, right now, distance was just a suggestion.
He took a step.
He didn't run. He didn't jump. He simply decided he wanted to be somewhere else.
The air didn't even have time to move out of his way.
One millisecond, Lloyd was standing near the ruins of the fountain, his body smoking and crackling with blue energy.
The next millisecond, he was standing directly in front of Lucifer.
There was no blur of motion. There was no sound of footsteps. It was as if the universe had just cut one frame of a movie and pasted Lloyd into the next frame in a different spot.
Lucifer blinked. He looked down.
He saw a face made of black skin and blue fire inches from his own. He saw two white eyes burning with a cold, absolute rage.
The Devil King’s smile froze. His brain couldn't process how the human had gotten there. His gravity field was supposed to crush anything that got close. But Lloyd was standing inside the field, unaffected. The Void energy in Lloyd’s body was neutralizing the gravity. Lloyd was a walking hole in the laws of physics.
"You..." Lucifer started to say.
Lloyd didn't let him finish. He didn't want to talk. He didn't want to banter. He just wanted to end it.
He pulled his right arm back.
As he did, he mentally reached out to his spirit, Atlas. The Titan of Earth was dormant, recovering from the earlier battle, but Lloyd didn't need the spirit to manifest. He just needed its weight.
"Atlas," Lloyd’s thought echoed like a thunderclap. "Give me the mountain."
The weight of the Earth Spirit flooded into Lloyd’s right arm. His fist became heavy. Impossibly heavy. It was no longer just a hand; it was a tectonic plate compressed into the size of a grapefruit.
The blue cracks on Lloyd’s arm widened, bleeding pure light. The muscles bulged, tearing the remnants of his uniform. The air around his fist began to warp and distort, unable to handle the sheer density of the mass he was holding.
Lucifer saw the punch coming. He tried to raise his arms. He tried to summon a shield. He tried to fly backward.
But he was too slow. Compared to the thing standing in front of him, the Devil King was moving through molasses.
"Tectonic Punch," Lloyd whispered.
He threw the punch.
________________________________________
The impact did not make a sound. Not at first.
When Lloyd’s fist connected with Lucifer’s chest, the force was so sudden and so extreme that it created a vacuum. The air was pushed away faster than sound could travel. For a split second, there was absolute, perfect silence in the courtyard.
Then, the universe caught up.
KRA-KOOOOOOOM.
The noise was deafening. It sounded like a bomb going off inside a cathedral. The windows of the manor house shattered instantly. The trees in the garden were stripped of their leaves.
Lloyd’s fist hit the white, high-tech armor of the Fire Fly Corporation. This armor was designed to stop tank shells. It was designed to survive re-entry from space. It was made of alloys that didn't exist on this planet.
It shattered like cheap porcelain.
The white chest plate disintegrated. The shards of advanced metal turned into shrapnel, flying backward into Lucifer’s own body.
Beneath the armor was the Reality Anchor—the pulsing purple device that kept Lucifer tethered to this dimension and gave him his infinite mana.
Lloyd’s fist didn't stop at the armor. It drove straight through. It hit the device.
The Reality Anchor exploded.
Purple lightning arced out, wild and uncontrolled. The machine screamed as it died, a digital shriek of failing technology. The connection to the dropship above was severed instantly.
But the punch still wasn't done.
The kinetic energy traveled through the device and into Lucifer’s chest. The Devil King’s ribs snapped. His sternum collapsed. His internal organs were compressed into jelly.
Lucifer’s eyes bulged. His mouth opened in a silent scream of shock. He felt his feet leave the ground.
He was launched.
He didn't just fly backward; he was fired like a cannonball.