VROOM
The moment the Torture Domain ignited, a pulse of abysmal black light erupted from Seraphine, ignoring every physical law as it streaked across the horizon.
It was a spectral tide, phased out of reality, passing effortlessly through skyscrapers, freight trucks, and reinforced concrete. Not even the swirling clouds above or the biting winter winds could halt this encroaching stain of shadow; the world was saturated in an instant.
Swirling within this ocean of darkness were fragmented, flickering visions of history's most depraved agonies: the rack, the gallows, the iron maiden, and the stake. Flashes of flaying, disemboweling, and slow-motion bone-crushing blurred into modern catastrophes: collapsing towers, mid-air plane disintegrations, and the claustrophobic horror of sinking ships.
This wasn't just a hallucination.
These experiences manifested with physical reality upon every human caught in the wake. Seraphine had tuned the threshold for survival to the level of an Evershield Body. Those with a fortress of mind and flesh would pass; the weak would be hollowed out.
Morality, wealth, status, beauty: none of it mattered.
This was a clinical, absolute judgment.
WHOOSH
As the tide swept past, the moonlit sky turned a bruised, sickly grey. Hell had officially made its landfall. Inside nearby apartments, families were the first to be hit.
In a heartbeat, they were on the floor, convulsing as blood sprayed from their pores.
In the sky, the news helicopters that had been hovering like vultures lost all control. The pilots screamed as the shadow passed through them, sending the birds spinning into a death dive toward the pavement.
WHOOSH
Like a tsunami of pure malice, the Torture Domain expanded in every direction, showcasing the Hell of Pain's ultimate aesthetic of suffering to the entire world.
Across the globe, humans sampling this infernal art collapsed into sobbing, twitching heaps. Souls were torn from bodies before they could even finish a minute of the ordeal.
They dissolved into pools of viscous gore, releasing streaks of Spirituality stained with wrath and hatred that surged back toward Seraphine to be devoured.
RUMBLE
The flood of black light roared across the planet, boiling and screaming through the atmosphere.
One hundred kilometers. Three hundred. Three thousand.
It surged over skylines, through suburban sprawls, across great rivers, and over jagged mountain ranges: a relentless, mocking violation of every living, thinking soul on Earth.
Under the vast expanse of the sky, across the seven continents and four oceans, billions of humans collapsed as the black tide overtook them. In the wake of this expanding apocalyptic map, no one was spared.
Whether deep underground, high in the air, or submerged in the depths of the sea: even the entities lurking within the layered dreamscapes beyond reality: all were forced through the ultimate crucible of infernal agony.
The mightiest armies and nuclear arsenals were irrelevant. Under the weight of the Torture Domain, the masses had no choice but to endure; resistance was non-existent.
In this moment, the bustling mortal world was silenced. The vibrant noise of civilization was replaced by a hellish tide spanning tens of thousands of miles.
Even the clouds were shredded by the surging dark light, mixing with a global chorus of wails, screams, and rhythmic sobbing that fell back to the earth as a black, oily rain.
It was a scene of such absolute horror that it felt as if the world itself was weeping.
Ten minutes later, the global shroud of the Torture Domain slowly flickered and died. The entire planet fell into a heavy silence.
At that same instant, Seraphine sensed several hundred weakened auras flickering across the globe like dying embers.
"Two hundred and seventeen. Fantasy clan, Moon Tribe... you certainly knew how to hide, didn't you?"
She smiled. Her massive mental power condensed into two hundred and seventeen ethereal tethers, lashing out across the firmament and streaking toward the horizons.
SWOOSH
These Celestial Ropes traveled at thousands of times the speed of sound, crossing mountain ranges and vast oceans in heartbeats to find their marks. There was no room for negotiation. The falling tethers ruthlessly impaled the bodies and souls of every Night Walker and Fantasy clan survivor.
After stripping every memory and biological datum from these entities, Seraphine crushed them from afar without a hint of hesitation. She left only threads of pure Spirituality, drawing them back to her physical location in the material world. These remnants would become new life in a new world: her version of mercy.
From the data harvested from these beings, Seraphine acquired items she hadn't seen even in the great library. For instance, the forbidden arts for summoning Raging Demons and the secret techniques for breaching the Gates of the Hell of Nightmare.
"Fascinating. The Fantasy clan are entities of semi-information and semi-material life. No wonder they can convert information into matter and matter into information."
Seraphine reached out and tapped the air before her. "Let's test this demonic summoning ritual."
HUMM
Wisps of smoke materialized out of thin air.
Under Seraphine's precise manipulation, they drifted and coalesced into four distinct, intricately carved patterns in the mid-air. Once formed, these patterns slowly overlapped, rapidly constructing a sophisticated grey-black relief depicting flames, demons, and blades.
THRUM
The relief vibrated violently.
Seraphine noticed the surrounding scenery suddenly blurring as the pattern expanded, growing from a mere half-meter in diameter to a colossal ethereal archway spanning hundreds of meters. The moment the portal solidified, it was violently forced open from within.
A hideous, towering demon over twenty meters tall stepped through. Upon exiting the gate, the beast couldn't help but take a deep breath of Earth's air. It looked down at Seraphine and bared its teeth in a cruel grin.
"Mortal, why have you summoned..."
Seraphine's body abruptly surged, the sound of her rapid expansion cutting him off.
CRACK! SNAP! CLICK!
The demon's jaw dropped. His eyes widened as he craned his neck, following her form as it skyrocketed into the sky. In a matter of seconds, Seraphine had ballooned into a featureless, pitch-black giant hundreds of meters tall.
WHOOSH
An icy, merciless aura slammed into him, instantly extinguishing his murderous intent.
"By Abaddon's name... wh-wh-what..."
The demon's eyes twitched. He turned to flee, but Seraphine was faster.
SWOOSH!
A cyclone of movement followed as a hand, larger than the demon's entire body, snatched him out of the air. Her grip tightened with a sickening CRUNCH.
"Aaaah!!"
Ignoring the demon's agonizing shrieks, a massive maw split open across Seraphine's featureless face, revealing rows of interlocking, rotating serrated teeth. She shoved the demon headfirst into the vortex.
The teeth spun like high-speed industrial grinders. A split second of violent friction followed.
SCREECH CRUNCH!
The screams vanished instantly. In a heartbeat, the demon was pulverized like a piece of candy and swallowed.
Without a backward glance, Seraphine stepped through the colossal archway and vanished. Behind her, the gate groaned shut, blurred into a distortion, and faded into nothingness. The desolate mortal realm remained in its silence, waiting for the next cycle of life to emerge.
...
Just like the Box of Sorrow leading to the Hell of Pain, the path this Raging Demon took to the mortal realm relied on a branch of the Creeping Sea. However, in terms of complexity and refinement, the two were worlds apart. This reflected the innate nature of the Raging Demon clan: crude and violent.
WHOOSH!
Through a long corridor of thick smoke and searing flames, Seraphine finally reached the end: the Pit of Hell. It was a gargantuan structure spanning countless kilometers, its surface pockmarked with an infinite number of dark craters, resembling a massive, blackened honeycomb.
THUD!
Seraphine landed heavily on a vast, scorched, and burning landscape. She found herself in a world of volcanic rock and molten lava. The environment was lethal, devoid of light or vitality, filled only with suffocating heat and an oppressive darkness.
In the gloom, the only light came from distant volcanic vents glowing with a deep crimson hue. From afar, they radiated a heat so intense it felt as if it could ignite the soul and body upon contact.
Seraphine noted that the atmospheric pressure here was thousands of times greater than Earth's surface. The air was a toxic cocktail of high-temperature gases and corrosive, viscous mists, heavy with the stench of sulfur and char.
No living things were in sight, not even a single demon. There were only scattered craters, toxic green hot springs, and dark red lava rivers snaking into the horizon.
"This place makes 'inhospitable' sound like a compliment," Seraphine muttered, taking a few steps toward a bottomless abyss tens of thousands of kilometers wide.
At first glance, it was a pit of absolute, light-swallowing blackness. The darkness was so dense it was impossible to discern what lay within the thick, obsidian depths.
Ghostly wails echoed from the depths, the sound of a million souls in constant agony. Crossing through hundreds of thousands of miles of absolute darkness, the true face of the abyss finally revealed itself.
The near-vertical crimson cliffs were jagged with massive rock formations and littered with the skeletal remains of countless creatures. Some of the larger boulders were hollowed out like primitive fortresses.
Seraphine could sense the violent, malevolent auras within, the lairs of Raging Demons. Flaming vines clung to the stone, alongside patches of thick, mossy mold that exhaled plumes of toxic smoke.
Under the crushing pressure and searing heat, the rock face was in a semi-molten state. Countless crude burrows were carved into these glowing walls. Within these cramped holes lived hordes of emaciated souls.
Naked and feral, they had forgotten their humanity, moving on all fours like beasts. Their existence was defined by the most primal laws: ambush, plunder, and slaughter. They fed on the mangled remains of their own kind or the unburnt minerals within the molten cliffs.
In this abyss, survival of the fittest was the only law. Every soul struggled in a cycle of savage violence, forever on guard against the next predator. Some had devoured so many of their kin that they began to manifest demonic traits. If they survived long enough, they would eventually pupate into true Raging Demons.
"So this is how the Raging Demon race is born," Seraphine noted.
Her gaze pierced deeper, past the feeding grounds and the demon lairs. Millions of kilometers, tens of millions... her vision plummeted a hundred million kilometers until it reached the absolute floor of the abyss.
There lay a titanic crater filled with lava. Crimson light billowed upward like embers, bathing the entire base in a hellish glow. At the center of the crater lay the upper torso of a female giant, thousands of meters long.
She was only half a body. From the waist down, there was only a jagged, massive tear. Lava-like, burning ichor seeped continuously from the raw, colossal wound. From that severed waist, countless spiderweb-like vascular tentacles of molten rock had grown, anchoring her to the walls of the crater. These veins branched out even further, climbing upward across immense distances to reach the surface far above.
"So, this is where you've been hiding to lick your wounds," Seraphine laughed. "In that case, don't bother getting up. Just stay still and be the main course on my plate."
...
Within the scorched crater, Abaddon, Lord of the Pit of Hell, jerked awake.
ROAR!!!
Her fiery eyes locked onto Seraphine, standing leisurely at the edge of the pit. With a sudden surge of power, she raised a hand several thousand meters long, braced herself to sit upright, and threw a punch in a blind fury.
The kinetic energy behind the strike was so immense it ionized the toxic, heavy atmosphere. Lightning crackled and wailed as it struck the flesh of Abaddon's arm. Even this single, raw punch pulled at the structural layers of the Hell across millions of miles, causing them to vibrate violently.
CRACK! SNAP! CLICK!
The intensity of the vibration, if measured by old Earth's earthquake standards, would be a magnitude twenty planetary-extinction event, enough to tear the planet apart a thousand times over. Across the myriad craters of Hell, countless demons and feral souls were pulverized under the weight of the collapsing rock layers.
Confronting this planet-shattering strike, Seraphine simply extended a finger and pressed forward in silence.
Fist and finger collided.
BOOM!!!!
In that split second, it was as if ten trillion lightning bolts had exploded in the deepest reach of Hell. Everything was engulfed, shredded, melted, and vaporized by a dome of pure white light and searing heat.
In that absolute void of white, Abaddon's gargantuan arm and half her shoulder disintegrated, flesh, skin, and bone reduced to ash in one ten-thousandth of a heartbeat.
ROAR! ROAR! ROAR!!!
Abaddon let out a desolate scream. As her shoulder and arm vanished, the force of that single finger drove her through the hardened floor of the crater. She smashed through trillions of miles of rock, her body battered and broken, as she was physically hurled out of the Hell of Rage and into the boundless void.
In her wake, untold numbers of souls, demons, and Demon Generals were instantly pulverized into a trillion high-energy particles, wiped from existence.
The colossal Pit of Hell, caught in the roar of the two clashing forces, boiled and collapsed. Its crimson hue instantly shifted to a white-hot, high-temperature glare.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Countless volcanoes toppled, and the vast earth groaned as it buckled. Mountains of lava were vibrated, melted, and vaporized in an instant, hurled out into the void where they spun around the ruins like satellites.
In the boundless void.
WHOOSH
Seraphine, appearing like a pitch-black cosmic spirit, traversed the distance in a single second. She emerged ahead of Abaddon's trajectory, her mouth expanding rapidly into a world-swallowing maw.
SWOOSH!!
The aim was flawless.
Still spewing ichor as she flew, Abaddon was swallowed whole. Seraphine began to chew with violent force.
CRUNCH! CRUNCH! SNAP!
During the grinding and swallowing, Seraphine began to slowly absorb and sift through Abaddon's vast, intact memories. Unlike the scrubbed remnants of Leviathan, Abaddon's mind was meticulous and complete. Because of this, her history was far more valuable than anything in the Hell of Pain's libraries.
According to these memories, Abaddon, who had lived for over eight hundred thousand years, was not the first Lord of the Pit of Hell; she was the ninth. Her mind held countless secret arts of rage, the deeper mysteries of the dark contracts, and vital information on the origin of the Pit of Hell and the very first Lord.
Deep within Abaddon's consciousness lay an ancient memory, weathered by the passage of untold eons. In this primordial fragment, the scenes of the Pit of Hell's birth were captured, along with everything the first Abaddon witnessed during her descent.
"Inherited memories passed through the lineage of Abaddons," Seraphine mused.
Combining these fragments, she reached an intriguing conclusion:
The Pit of Hell, or rather, Abaddon's Cell, likely originated from what was called Heaven. It was quite possibly a fragment of Heaven itself. And the first Abaddon, and perhaps those after her, were in essence... true angels.
She was indeed a fallen Angel of Destruction.
As for why a fragment of Heaven and an entity like Abaddon shifted from ultimate light to ultimate darkness, the memories remained hazy. Seraphine suspected this was the result of Heaven falling into ruin and decay after Yahweh's departure eons ago. The Garden of Eden, guarded by Uriel, served as a prime example of such stagnation.
Of course, these were merely theories. To know the truth, she would have to find the long-lost God, an entity whose life-level was at least Archaic Myth or beyond, and have a proper chat.
"By that logic, the Hell of Pain and Hell of Nightmare are likely also fragments of Heaven, and the lineages of Leviathan and Baphomet were originally angels too."
Seraphine sat cross-legged in the void, slowly digesting Abaddon's power as she contemplated. "Once I devour Baphomet and raise my level, I'll track down the location of that Heaven. Exploring its secrets might reveal the mystery behind the creation and operation of this Giant ecosystem. Besides, if there are still angels or fallen ones lingering there, eating them should trigger my next evolution."
With her plan set, Seraphine continued to refine Abaddon's strength while deconstructing the dark contracts and the various demonic summoning rituals spread by the Pit of Hell.
From Abaddon's memories, she discovered that all summoning arts were part of the dark contract system. This system had a Controller, Abaddon, who managed and regulated every summons.
The Subjects of these summons were the numerous Raging Demons within the Pit. It functioned similarly to the Box of Sorrow system, albeit cruder and more streamlined.
Now, Seraphine intended to rewrite the underlying rules and structure of this contract system. She would replace the Controller with herself and swap the Subjects with projections of her own power.
"This way, I can manifest in multiple worlds simultaneously, maximizing efficiency and saving time.
I can even cast power projections through the Boxes of Sorrow scattered across different space-times, using the Candlelight in the Mirror technique to establish a mental link. After Leviathan's death, the collapse of the Giant ecosystem became visible.
Now that Abaddon is gone, Baphomet's demise will likely accelerate this decay toward total extinction."
Seraphine gazed at the distant Pit of Hell as it slowly drifted toward oblivion in the void, murmuring to herself:
"I must seize the greatest possible harvest before this ecosystem completely perishes."
A moment later, Seraphine finally finished thoroughly digesting Abaddon. This colossal power of rage, through a resonance with the previously consumed power of pain from Leviathan, suddenly underwent a squared exponential surge.
HUMM
A single, massive eye split open across Seraphine's featureless face, its divine light erupting:
"Excellent. I am now roughly a hundred times more powerful than when I first stepped into the Ancient Myth realm. My hunch was correct; the rulers of these three Hells truly possess a connection akin to a Trinity. It seems that once I devour Baphomet, I will undoubtedly break through to the Primordial Myth level, the same realm as Vassago."
As the surging power gradually stabilized, she leisurely reached out to sense the dark contract system, searching the millions of mortal realms to see if anyone had initiated a summons. However, upon concentrating her focus, she realized the number was exceptionally low.
"Only twenty-seven lifeforms are utilizing a dark contract? Hmm, so few? Is the Giant ecosystem collapsing even further?"
She shook her head slowly. "Very well. Twenty-seven it is. Even mosquito meat is still meat."
Immediately, twenty-seven Seraphines, much smaller in stature, resembling ordinary humans, stepped out from her colossal, cross-legged form in the void.
After nodding to her, they were enveloped and vanished into twenty-seven simultaneous branches of the Creeping Sea, heading toward various parallel Solar Systems.
...
A certain parallel space-time, Solar System, Earth, Beaconreach.
"Well, I've been running down the road."
"Tryin' to loosen my load."
"I've got seven women on my mind..."
A beautiful girl in a snow-white hoodie and oversized sunglasses, covering half her face, drove down the sprawling Route 66 to the rhythm of the truck's stereo.
RING-RING...
The phone suddenly blared. Gripping the steering wheel, she killed the music and snatched up the device. After a glance at the caller ID, she swiped open with a grin and pressed it to her ear. "What's up, Uncle Chester?"
"Where am I? Beaconreach, obviously."
"Ugh, Uncle Chester, quit with the 'Ninth Lady' stuff. How many times do I have to tell you? It sounds so feudal. Just call me Seraphina."
"What am I doing? A road trip, what else?"
"Relax, I'm fine. This girl's been training in martial arts for years; your average thug couldn't handle one of my punches. Besides, I've got a gun in the car—not a little pistol, a 12-gauge. Some idiot looks at me wrong, and I'll blast him into tomorrow."
"Go back? No way. It's too boring at home. I finally made it out here; I'm staying until I've seen it all. The Aurenthal Group isn't going to stop spinning just because I'm gone."
The girl named Seraphina pulled the phone away, squinting as she intentionally blurred her voice and lowered the volume:
"Oh no, I'm getting close to the desert and the signal's dropping... Uncle Chester, I can't hear a word you're saying. Okay, okay, let's talk later. Bye!"
She hung up and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.
"Phew," she let out a long breath, then broke into a giggle. "Heh, freedom... feels damn good."
CLICK!
She hit the stereo, and the music kicked back in.
"...Four that wanna' control me."
"Two that wanna' stone me."
"And one says she's a friend of mine."
"Take it easy..."
"Take it easy..."
With the truck music blaring, Seraphina felt lighthearted and relaxed, mirroring the clear, endless sky above her. Since her quiet departure from home to Beaconreach, this was her first solo road trip without a security detail. Starting from XX City, she'd picked up an SUV and hit the road on a whim, without a single destination in mind.
But after seeing countless online posts about the "uncomplicated" folk on the West Coast, she'd set a loose goal: drive straight through Beaconreach to the coast.
As for any danger? Seraphina wasn't worried.
In her eyes, having reached the second realm of martial arts—Forged Veins—she was far beyond what any street thug could handle. Plus, she'd packed that high-powered shotgun in the car.
"Fists and firepower," Seraphina chirped, her head bobbing to the beat. "What hoodlum would dare push back?"
As the SUV ate up the highway, the landscape slowly shifted. The open road was swallowed by the high desert. Across the vast, desolate plains, only the occasional tumbleweed rolled over the endless, parched earth.
After a long stretch, Seraphina finally spotted a small, blurred structure on the horizon. A few minutes later, she pulled up to find a roadside diner connected to a small convenience store. Several battered semi-trucks were parked nearby.
THUD!
Closing her car door, Seraphina smoothed the slight wrinkles on her light-wash jeans before stepping into the diner in a pair of high-top basketball sneakers.
Inside, she realized the two shops were merged into one large convenience-diner hybrid. Her eyes swept the room, landing on a few burly men scattered at the tables—likely the drivers of the trucks outside.
She gave them a passing glance and looked away. But the moment she entered, the men exchanged subtle, knowing looks. One bearded man in a cowboy hat grinned, slowly straightening up and crossing his heavily tattooed arms, his gaze lingering on Seraphina with an unmistakable intent.
A woman in her forties approached, looking Seraphina up and down with a warm smile. "Oh my God, what a beautiful girl. Are you looking for something to eat, honey?"
Clearly, she was the owner. Seraphina looked around and asked softly, "Do you have anything ready to eat?"
"Of course," the woman replied, her smile widening. "Perfect for a traveler like you."
"Then I'll take a portion."
"OK!"
After the owner left, Seraphina leisurely strolled into the grocery section. She picked up a few bottles of water and some snacks, noticing a shelf in the corner displaying magazines and books for sale. She drifted over, picking up a volume and flipping through it.
After browsing a few books, Seraphina felt a bit bored; nothing caught her interest. Just as she turned to leave, her gaze snagged on an old, weathered-looking book buried in the stack.
"Huh."
She only saw a sliver of the cover, not even the title, yet a mysterious tremor ran through her heart. She couldn't resist reaching out and pulling the thin volume from the pile.
PUFF-PUFF!
She blew the dust off and found the book surprisingly light. On the cover, the title read: "The Summoning of Abaddon".
"Summoning? A mystery novel? Or horror?"
Curious, she flipped through a few pages and discovered it was an occult text written at the end of the nineteenth century. It recorded several demonic summoning rituals, ranging from the complex to the simple. The author wasn't an individual, but a group called the "Golden Dawn Research Society."
"So cool. Magic for summoning demons from hell."
Filled with interest, she took the book, her snacks, and water, and headed back toward the dining area. Just then...
"Ahem..."
A brawny, middle-aged man in a cowboy hat and a full beard stepped forward, rudely blocking Seraphina's path. He gave a low, lewd chuckle. "Afternoon, gorgeous."
He reached out a hairy hand, aiming to stroke Seraphina's fair, delicate cheek.
CRACK!
Seraphina's expression didn't even flicker. She grabbed his wrist and twisted, snapping it with a single, violent wrench.
"AAARGH!!!" The bearded man's face went pale as he began to howl in pain.
His companions immediately charged forward, faces flushed with rage, fists raised...
CLICK!
A shotgun was leveled straight at the head of the stout man in front. His ferocious expression froze instantly.