Chapter 638: Crimson Vow
The orb pulsed.
A fragile, yet dense wall of air caving inward around it.
The Abyss reacted instantly. Tendrils convulsed in a frenzy, smashing the ground and sky alike in blind desperation. They weren’t aiming anymore, only trying to kill, to stop whatever that bead of blood-red light was.
Asmodeus stayed still.
Every instinct screamed at him to move, to dodge, but he held his ground. The threads of Blood Reaver writhed and fused into his arm as the axe returned to his hand, its edge drinking from the forming sphere.
The first tendril reached him.
He cut it in half with one brutal swing.
The second wrapped around his torso, spikes punching through his side.
He let it pierce him, grunting as black ichor bled from his ribs, then twisted and sheared it away with a backhand slash. His blood sprayed but immediately burned to mist, devoured by the growing orb.
I can’t lose focus!
This beam has to destroy that core!
The monster roared, a horrible layered shriek of a thousand voices, Mephisto’s among them, hateful, panicked, begging and cursing all at once.
“YOU… WILL… NOT… ERASE… ME!”
It heaved its entire mass upward. The chest-maw unhinged wider than before, green light flooding the ruined plain. The orb of abyssal annihilation swelled again, faster this time, reckless and unstable.
[He’s desperate!]
Serena’s voice tore across Asmodeus’s mind, edged with alarm.
[He’ll burn his own soul to stop you if those beams collide at full charge. The city will vanish!]
“I know.”
His answer was calm.
The thumb-sized sphere had grown denser, so much heavier than before, a dark, beautiful colour akin to liquid garnet. Threads of Asmodeus’s aura, his wives’ tattoos, even the souls he had freed, shimmered for an instant and sank into it. It wasn’t just power. It was every bond, every vow, hammered into a single point.
The world became monochrome as he poured more and more energy into the bead.
Time seemed to slow as he raised his hand.
“Rest well, Mephisto.”
The Abyss fired.
A hurricane of green-black death surged toward him, the beam wide enough to erase mountains.
Asmodeus flicked the orb.
A crimson streak cut forward in a quiet, almost gentle lance and then reality split.
The two forces met.
The crimson ray exploded in a blinding white light the moment it came into contact with the huge, green beam, and for an instant, the sky became pure white, followed by a deafening screech.
Then it imploded.
A shockwave howled across the battlefield, erasing sound, flattening towers and forests miles away. The Abyss’s beam shattered along its length like glass under a chisel; the crimson lance drilled through, piercing the monster’s chest and striking the glowing core beyond.
A sound followed… not quite the explosion he expected, but a sucking, world-sized inhale as the core cracked.
Green light bled out in rivers, devoured by the tiny red wound that widened, eating upward. The monster screamed, a sound so vast it shook bones to dust and turned nightmarish voices into fading echoes.
Asmodeus didn’t stop.
He clenched his fist, and the tiny orb detonated from within.
The core ruptured.
The whole titanic body convulsed, tendrils thrashing wildly, smashing towers and hills in its death throes. Emerald fire spewed upward, caught, and was dragged back inward by the hungry wound that formed the Abyss, devouring its own stolen energy.
Mephisto’s warped upper body surfaced one last time, eyes wide, jaw broken and still screaming, not in rage now but terror.
“NO! I… REFUSE—!”
His voice vanished as the black-red implosion reached him. The body collapsed inward, folds of abyssal flesh shredding and pulling back into the wound like a dying whirlpool.
Asmodeus took a deep breath, as if the battlefield held its breath with him.
Then the force exploded with the power of ten atom bombs.
The wound in the monster’s chest swelled, dragging everything inward.Stone, broken towers, even pieces of the outer wall rose screaming into the vortex as if trying to swallow the world itself. The air warped in a flash of white, black and red, lifting soldiers from the ground and throwing them sprawling by the pull.
The titan’s tendrils writhed blindly, slamming and tearing at nothing, some ripping free of their own sockets as the force consumed them.
Emerald fire poured from every crack in its body and was instantly snuffed out, ripped to threads and drunk by the collapsing core. The sound was no longer a roar but a vast, drawn-out wail, a million voices, Mephisto’s among them, dissolving into nothing.
Asmodeus held his place in the maelstrom, his ears bleeding, wings torn as they flapped against the immense force, using Blood Reaver to anchor himself inside the storm. His hair whipped wildly, shaking intensely as he glared at the imploding core.
The pull deepened until even light seemed to bend. Then, with a final, hideous shudder, the entire abyssal carcass folded inward.
The sky cleared.
Only drifting ash and a steaming crater remained where the mountain-sized horror had stood.
He watched silently, a little shaken.
That’s when his eyes widened and he spread himself out, as if to block something.
A single drop of green-black energy burst where the core had been and detonated.
The world went white.
A concussive blast ripped outward in a perfect sphere, flattening what little remained of the plain. The shockwave slapped the clouds apart, tore the tops from distant mountains, and hurled armies and rubble alike to the ground. Heat rolled over the walls like a living beast, devouring, deafening, and almost endless.
A long silence followed, the beautiful frozen land now half destroyed and dark.
Asmodeus hovered above the ruin, wings trembling, Blood Reaver buried in the stone beside him to keep himself aloft. His chest heaved from the intense power and force of the implosion and sudden shockwave, blood oozing from his lips as he dropped to the ground.
[You… did it.]
Serena softly congratulated him despite the dark pool beneath, touched with relief, he smiled.
[But the wound he tore will not close easily. The Abyss has tasted this world again.]
Asmodeus exhaled, gaze lingering on the dark pit below.
“…Then I’ll stand at the gate,” he hissed.
He turned toward the distant citadel to his wives, his people, the armies that still waited in stunned silence. Hundreds, maybe thousands, died in this battle… but he felt it inside his chest, the power gained from defeating the Abyss boosted him even further than a mere lesser god.
Asmodeus felt he could fight Mephisto at full power right now, if not for the dozens of deep, unhealing wounds across his body.
For the first time since his awakening, his expression softened.
That’s when his face tightened and he collapsed.
***
Yumiko watched Asmodeus fight off the abominations. He defeated the horrific monster that devoured half the citadel and army.
Foul creatures spawned by the abyssal horror.
Bipedal beasts with countless tendrils and a huge mouth across their abdomens.
“Asmodeus!?” She shouted with a dry, hoarse voice and covered in dirt and blood.
Is he alright!?
He dropped from the sky, twirling in the air, his wings covered in holes… Blood Reaver dropped from his hand and plummeted into the ground beneath.
“Velvet, Vinea, Levia! Help me save him!”
Yumiko’s heart lurched as she saw him tumble.
The man who had just torn an abyssal horror of existence was falling like a broken star.
“No—!” she screamed, vaulting over a shattered wall, her legs bleeding heavily.
Her gauntlets dug into the stone as she sprang forward, legs burning. The battlefield was still chaos: stray tendrils twitched and writhed without life, and the spawns that had poured from the beast’s carcass thrashed madly before dying in spasms.
She smashed one aside with a single blazing kick, the blue fire of her mana-enhanced body blazing more than ever.
“Asmodeus!”
He hit the ground hard with a bounce, then somehow landed on his knees before collapsing to one side. Blood pooled from wounds that refused to close, too deep even for his new power to seal quickly. His wings were torn, with more holes than feathers and membrane remaining.
Yumiko reached him first, skidding to her knees in the ash and heat. She caught his shoulders, fingers trembling. “Ryuji… stay with me. Please.”
His eyes flickered open with a dim light, but still the colour of molten gold. He managed the faintest smile, lips splitting. “You’re… safe.”
“Idiot!” Her voice cracked; she shook him once, furious and terrified at once. “Don’t think about stupid things like that… why do you alway…. why do you always do stupid things like this!? Can’t you feel my chest.”
She knew he would be fine, but the tears wouldn’t stop pouring from her eyes.
“You look so ugly when you cry… Urgh… Haha…” Asmodeus coughed while making a joke, his right arm lifting as if to stroke away her tears, but he fell.
“Idiot, Idiot Idiot!”
Yumiko hugged him against his chest, her aura flowing into him like a raging tide; the other women’s voices sounded from behind.
“Yumiko!” Velvet’s shout cut through the ringing air as she sprinted across the ruined field, spear burning violet. Vinea followed, half-limping. Behind them, Levia staggered forward with a pale face and no armour.
“Come, give him your energy, help him!” Yumiko didn’t wait, and with one arm, yanked the girls one by one… until all his wives beside Serena now hugged his body, flooding him with their aura, as weak as it was… It healed his wounds faster.
“After this, I want a wedding!” Yumiko grumbled.
“A big one, for everyone!” Alice complained with a rare outburst.
“Okay…” Asmodeus breathed heavily with closed eyes.
“I’ll marry all of you.”