Chapter 285: Chapter 284: Sussy sus sus
"Haaa... fucking hive minds..." Atlas muttered, his voice sharp, edged with exhaustion and disdain. His boots scraped against the scorched ground of the third layer, ash crunching beneath his soles.
Of course, one of the demon kings had to be a hive mind. A network, a collective, a thousand voices wrapped into one faceless entity. Male? Female? It — that was all he could call it. The title it chose for itself shifted like smoke, sliding from tone to tone, slipping past all certainty.
Atlas hated it. Not because of the strangeness — Hell was full of strangeness — but because this fucking hive mind knew something. Something it dangled just close enough to taste but never close enough to bite.
He flexed his hand, staring at the faint scars across his knuckles, each one a memory of someone trying to kill him — and failing. "Genderless bitch knows something..." he muttered under his breath, grinding his teeth.
His gaze cut to Azazel. The once-proud demon now knelt, bound to him by chains far worse than steel — by vomit and blood, by a ritual Atlas hadn’t even fully understood when it happened.
Their connection was raw, intimate in a way that unsettled him. Azazel’s wings twitched weakly, batwings molting one by one like snow burning black before it hit the ground. Atlas didn’t know why Azazel was still bound, why their lives seemed tethered. Maybe he didn’t want to know.
Suspicion tried to worm its way into him. Was it chance? Fate? Or some cruel design written long before?
He shook the thought off. No cracks. No hesitation. That was how Hell swallowed men whole. It was not azezal, that much was for sure.
’Is that fat green pig...?’ The thought passed sharp and bitter through his skull, memory of him bleeding into the present. A lord fallen. His city Babylon rotting beneath the demi god’s foot.
Authority stolen, land claimed. Yet even victory left questions festering like wounds.
A sudden shimmer cut across his vision. Aurora drifted near, her pale form haloed in a glow that felt too alive for this corpse-realm. She hovered as though the air bent itself to carry her. As she started to learn the hovering flying technic he carried.
"What happened? I missed something?" she asked lightly, but there was a bite beneath her words, the kind that pried.
Atlas forced himself calm, jaw tightening. "Yeah. One of your demon king buddies. Gilath — or something, I forgot the name."
Aurora pressed a finger to her chin, lips curling like she was toying with a thought rather than weighing it. "Hmmm... and what did it say?"
"...To join a meeting of the three demon kings," he answered. His voice carried a flatness, but his heart beat harder with the admission.
Her eyes narrowed. For a fraction of a second, something broke through her mask. Not fear — Aurora wasn’t the type. But something cautious. Calculated. Then her lips parted into a smile too sharp for comfort.
"Sounds more like a trap than an invitation."
"Yeah," Atlas agreed, eyes sliding back to the scorched horizon. "But more than that. It offered me safe passage through to the fourth layer."
Silence — then Aurora’s laugh cracked through the still air. High, ringing, sharp. "Hahahahaha..." She doubled over slightly, her silver hair falling around her face.
Atlas didn’t flinch, but irritation rose hot in his chest.
"They don’t have the fucking power to do that," Aurora said finally, her laughter cutting short into a scoff. Her tone turned jagged. "The reason I was stuck here? Because these fuckers are weak compared to the last boss of the third layer."
Atlas stilled. His head turned sharply, catching every flicker of movement on her face. "Last boss?" he repeated, voice low.
Aurora’s smirk returned, but her eyes didn’t match it. "Oh? You perked up. Thought that would get you." She twirled her finger idly, sparks of crimson light dancing at the tip like blood catching flame.
"Yes. There is someone stronger. Beyond the demon kings. Someone older. Buried deep, near the gates of fourth layer.
Atlas’s mouth went dry. The air itself seemed heavier, pressing down on his shoulders. He remembered his fight with Orcus — the devastation, the sheer will it had taken to strike him down.
The ground had split like glass beneath them. The land had screamed. If that wasn’t the peak, what the hell was waiting deeper?
Aurora’s voice softened, almost reverent. "I want to say his name. But even names rot in Hell. His is forbidden, even whispered. Because once, he tried to rebel. Not against the kings, no... against one of the Empresses. The three who rule the sky, the land, and everything in between."
Her words struck like knives. Atlas’s stomach churned. A strange heat pulsed in his chest. He wanted answers. He needed them. But all he had were riddles, puzzle pieces pressed into his palm without a picture to guide him.
He turned back to the horizon. The sky here was not sky at all, but a roiling ceiling of black and violet flame. He tried to steady his breath, the sulfur taste sharp on his tongue.
Until now, Aurora had been his guide. His anchor in a place that wanted him drowned. But lately... lately she was off. Her rhythm shifted, her smiles hid more than they revealed. She was acting strange. Stranger even than Hell itself.
He couldn’t ignore it anymore. His instincts clawed at him. Survival screamed in his veins: Don’t trust her completely. Not here. Not now.
’Maybe... maybe I should take them by their offer,’ he thought, the whisper coiling cold in his skull.
The thought lingered, dangerous. His fists clenched, knuckles whitening. His shadow stretched long on the broken earth, jagged and unnatural, as though the land itself wanted to devour him.
Aurora’s eyes flicked to him, reading the hesitation. She tilted her head, and for the briefest moment, he thought she almost looked... hurt. Then her smirk sharpened again, disguising it.
"Careful, Atlas," she said softly. "You start listening to hive minds, you stop listening to yourself."
He said nothing. His silence was answer enough.