Episode-1039
Chapter : 2077
Lucifer convulsed as the nanites flooded his bloodstream. He could feel them moving, crawling under his skin, rewriting his biology. They were overriding his nervous system, shutting down his ability to control his own muscles.
"Stop!" Lucifer begged. He was crying now, tears of blood mixing with the mud on his face. "Please! I don't want to die! I'll do anything! I'll be your slave! Just don't kill me!"
The ascent stopped for a moment. Lucifer hung there, twenty feet in the air, staring into the red sensor-eye of the mech’s camera.
"You aren't going to die, Lucifer," Marcus said. His voice was curious, almost scientific. "Death is a waste of energy. We don't waste things at Fire Fly."
The tentacles tightened. They began to pull him apart, stretching his limbs to the breaking point. They were preparing him for something.
"Your body is weak," Marcus explained. "It breaks too easily. But your core... your Spirit Core... that is a masterpiece of natural energy generation. It produces gravity. It produces force. It is an engine."
Lucifer’s eyes widened in horror. He realized what they wanted. They didn't want him. They didn't want his personality, his memories, or his leadership. They wanted the battery inside his chest.
"We are going to strip away the useless parts," Marcus said. "The flesh. The ego. The pride. We are going to peel you like a fruit, Lucifer. And then we are going to take that core and put it into something that deserves it."
"No..." Lucifer whispered. "I am a person... I am a being..."
"You were never a King to us, Lucifer," Marcus delivered the final insult. The words hit harder than the harpoon. "You were just a battery prototype. A field test to see if Abyssal energy could be weaponized."
The winch started again. Lucifer was dragged higher, closer to the grinding gears and the flashing lights inside the mech.
"And the test was a success," Marcus added. "Now, we move to mass production."
Lucifer screamed one last time as he was pulled into the darkness of the machine.
The hatch slammed shut with a heavy, final clang, cutting off his cry instantly.
Silence returned to the battlefield. The massive Overlord Mech hovered there for a moment, its engines humming as it began its work. Inside the belly of the beast, saws began to spin. Lasers began to cut. The processing had begun.
The hatch of the massive Overlord Mech slammed shut, sealing the Devil King Lucifer inside total darkness.
For a moment, there was silence. It wasn’t the peaceful silence of a library or a bedroom at night. It was the heavy, suffocating silence of a coffin. The air inside the machine smelled sterile, like rubbing alcohol and cold copper. It didn't smell like the mud and blood of the battlefield outside. It smelled like a laboratory where bad things happened.
Lucifer hung in the dark, suspended by the metal harpoon that had punched through his chest. He was still alive, though barely. His immortality, the blessing of his royal blood, was now his greatest curse. It kept him awake. It kept him feeling everything.
"Marcus!" Lucifer shouted, his voice wet and gurgling. "This is a mistake! Check your data! I am the King of Pride! I am your ally!"
A red light flickered on above him. It was a single, unblinking sensor eye, staring down at him with zero emotion.
"Correction," the voice of Marcus boomed from speakers all around him. The voice was flat. It didn't sound angry or happy. It sounded like a man reading a grocery list. "You were an ally. Past tense. Now, you are raw material."
The inside of the machine began to move.
It didn't start with knives or lasers. It started with clamps. Dozens of cold, metal arms shot out from the walls. They grabbed Lucifer’s arms, his legs, and his head. They pulled him tight, stretching him out until his joints popped. He was pinned in the air, helpless, like a butterfly stuck on a board.
"Scanning biological density," the computer voice droned. "Subject possesses high concentrations of localized mana. Spirit Core detected in the upper thoracic cavity. Integrity: Critical. Energy Potential: Maximum."
"Don't touch it," Lucifer whispered, terror finally breaking through his arrogance. "That is my soul. That is who I am."
"We don't care who you are," Marcus replied. "We only care what you can power."
Then, the processing began.
Chapter : 2078
It was a nightmare of industrial efficiency. The Fire Fly Corporation didn't believe in magic, but they understood energy. They knew that a Devil King wasn't just a monster; he was a living nuclear reactor. The problem was the packaging. The flesh, the bones, the ego—it was all just useless wrapping paper getting in the way of the battery.
So, they removed the wrapping paper.
Small, surgical lasers activated. They moved with blinding speed, cutting away the ruined remains of Lucifer’s white armor. Then, they cut deeper. They stripped away the skin and the muscle, cauterizing the wounds instantly so he wouldn't bleed out. They needed the blood for fuel.
Tubes snaked out of the walls and latched onto his veins, pumping the black, divine blood out of his body and into the ship’s fuel tanks. Lucifer screamed, but there was no one to hear him. The machine was soundproof. His screams were just data, sound waves that the computer registered and ignored.
Outside, on the ruined grounds of the Ferrum Estate, Lloyd Ferrum watched the hovering metal giant.
He was on his knees, breathing hard. His body was wrecked from opening the Seventh Demon Gate. His arm was shattered, and his vision was blurry. But he couldn't look away.
The massive Overlord Mech was changing. It wasn't moving or shooting. It was vibrating. A low, deep hum resonated from the machine, shaking the pebbles on the ground. It sounded like a blender grinding up rocks.
"What are they doing?" Rosa asked. She was kneeling beside Lloyd, her hands glowing with cold light as she tried to stabilize his temperature. She looked up at the floating fortress. "Why aren't they attacking?"
"They are recycling," Lloyd rasped. His voice was weak, but his mind was still the mind of a Major General. He knew how the Fire Fly Corporation worked. He knew their philosophy. "They don't rescue failures, Rosa. They salvage them."
Lloyd activated his [All-Seeing Eye]. It was painful. It felt like sticking a hot needle into his brain, but he had to know. He forced his perception to zoom in on the hovering mech.
The metal hull of the ship blocked most of his vision, but he could see the heat signatures. He saw a bright, burning spot in the center of the machine. It was Lucifer’s Spirit Core.
But the core wasn't stable. It was being moved. It was being ripped out of its housing.
"They're killing him," Lloyd said, a cold chill running down his spine that had nothing to do with Rosa’s ice magic. "No. It's worse. They're taking him apart."
Inside the machine, the end of Lucifer came not with a bang, but with a surgical extraction.
Lucifer, now little more than a nervous system and a beating heart suspended in a metal frame, watched as a robotic claw reached into his open chest. He felt the cold metal fingers wrap around his Spirit Core—the glowing purple gem that contained his gravity magic, his memories, and his pride.
"Please," Lucifer begged. He didn't sound like a king anymore. He sounded like a frightened child. "I don't want to disappear."
"You won't disappear," Marcus said. "You are being upgraded."
The claw pulled.
There was a sickening, wet tearing sound. The Spirit Core was ripped free from Lucifer’s body.
The connection was severed. The light in Lucifer’s eyes went out instantly. His consciousness, his personality, his thousands of years of history—it all vanished in a millisecond. The biological remains of his body went limp, just dead meat hanging on hooks. The machine flushed the organic waste into an incinerator. The man named Lucifer was gone.
But the power remained.
The claw moved the pulsing Spirit Core into a new chamber. This wasn't a biological chest. It was a housing made of Star-Frost Ore and circuitry. It was the "Singularity Engine."
The core was shoved into the slot. Connectors slammed into place, biting into the magical gem.
The reaction was immediate. The purple gravity magic of the Devil King flooded the circuits of the Fire Fly machine. But this time, there was no will to control it. There was no ego to hold it back. It was just raw, unadulterated force.
The computer system seized control of the magic. It didn't ask the magic for permission; it enslaved it. It took the concept of "Gravity" and turned it into code.
"Energy transfer complete," the automated voice announced. "Singularity Engine online. Output at 400%. Initiating transformation sequence."
High above the estate, the Overlord Mech began to scream.