The terrifying power erupting from a mortal body, having shattered the shackles of causality, made the four Demon Kings suspended in the blood-red sky feel a genuine threat.
This was no longer a game.
The existence before them was no longer a slightly interesting chess piece on the board.
He was an "enemy" that had to be eliminated immediately, one capable of shaking the foundation of their rule.
The threat had to be nipped in the bud.
The four God Hand members no longer held back, no longer watched from the sidelines.
They struck simultaneously.
In an instant, four completely different yet equally terrifying authorities containing the world's primordial power sealed off all of Guts's escape routes from four directions.
The first to strike was the scent of desire.
The Demon King Slan deployed her Shrine of Desire.
It was not a physical building, but a conceptual erosion, a hunt targeting the soul.
Endless pink mist exuding a sweet, cloying fragrance surged out of nowhere, attempting to drag Guts into an eternal illusion constructed from his deepest desires.
Within the mist, countless scenes that Guts had once yearned for but could never reach surfaced.
By a warm campfire, his comrades from the Band of the Hawk were laughing loudly; Judeau was playing the lute, while Pippin arm-wrestled with Corkus.
Casca leaned against his shoulder, fast asleep with a peaceful smile on her face.
There was no betrayal here.
No Eclipse.
No pain.
And no Griffith.
It was a false world warm enough to melt any will of steel.
Slan intended to use the most beautiful illusions in the world to corrupt his heart, which had long been filled with hatred.
However, these illusions, capable of making any hero fall, silently burst like bubbles in the sunlight the moment they touched the distorted force field surrounding Guts's body.
'Fake! It's all fake! Griffith isn't even here!'
Guts opened his eyes.
The light in his eyes was like two invisible heavenly swords, instantly tearing apart the grand illusion constructed by the Shrine of Desire.
All the beautiful scenes shattered into fragments in an instant.
The pink mist of desire was forcefully pushed back and evaporated by an even more domineering and tyrannical power.
"Griffith!!!"
A roar exploded from the depths of Guts's throat.
Contained within that voice was an endless, monstrous hatred that had been building up.
"Die!!!"
He ignored the attacks of the other three Demon Kings.
He locked all his power, all his anger, and all his will entirely onto Griffith, who was suspended in the air.
At this very moment, the power within his body completed its ultimate transformation for the final time.
Magnetic Field Rotation, Five Hundred Thousand Horsepower!
Killer Whale Overlord Punch!
This punch was thrown to kill him.
Guts's figure instantly transformed into a black-green meteor.
That streak of light tore across the battlefield.
Every Apostle blocking the path of this light, whether a lowly grunt or the powerful Octopus Apostle with super regeneration from before, was completely decomposed the instant they touched the force field around his body.
The process of their decomposition was terrifyingly quiet.
There were no explosions, no screams, not even a reduction to flesh and blood.
Their tough bodies, composed of abyssal matter, were directly reduced to the most basic atoms before returning to nothingness.
At the same time, the attacks from the other three God Hand members—attacks capable of twisting reality and annihilating space-time—finally descended.
Void's spatial tear.
Conrad's rotting plague.
Ubik's mental assault.
However, in the face of Guts's absolute power, these attacks appeared pale and powerless.
They couldn't even touch Guts's actual body before being completely shattered and reduced to nothing by the violent magnetic field generated by his advance.
High above, Femto (Griffith) felt an unprecedented crisis of death.
That bone-chilling sensation was an emotion he experienced for the first time since becoming a member of the God Hand.
It was the fear of "death" that only mortals possessed.
He had no time to think, not even to ponder how Guts could erupt with such terrifying power.
The instinct to survive overwhelmed everything else.
He casually tossed the unconscious Casca aside.
Immediately after, he crossed his arms in front of him.
He unreservedly gathered all the newly acquired power from the Abyss—his power as the Fifth Demon King—into his arms, constructing a defensive barrier.
Then, Guts's fist arrived.
An earth-shattering collision occurred.
But the expected explosion, one capable of shattering the entire alternate dimension, did not sound.
The world fell into an instant of absolute, deathly silence.
It was as if all sound, all light, and all laws were completely erased beneath this single punch.
The next second.
The deathly silence was broken.
"Crack."
An extremely faint, yet incredibly clear sound of shattering echoed.
A tiny crack appeared on Femto's absolute defense constructed from Demon King power.
Immediately after, the crack spread like a spiderweb across the entire defensive barrier in the blink of an eye.
"Bang!"
The barrier shattered explosively.
It turned into countless specks of black light, dissipating into the air.
The fist, wrapped in black-green destructive energy, continued unabated and planted itself solidly on Femto's chest.
Femto's pupils contracted violently.
His entire body was blasted away by the punch.
Those proud, magnificent black wings that symbolized his status as a Demon King continuously scattered and burned in the air, ultimately turning to ash.
Boiling blood belonging to a God Hand spewed continuously from his mouth, like brilliant fireworks, dyeing the entire twisted sky red.
Boom!!!
Femto's body, like a black meteor falling from the heavens, smashed ruthlessly into the twisted earth composed of countless agonized human faces.
After the loud crash, a bottomless crater appeared in the center of the earth.
Dust and smoke filled the crater.
The once invincible White Hawk, now the Fifth Demon King Femto, lay at the bottom of the pit, covered in blood.
On his chest, a massive, charred fist print had almost completely pierced through his entire body.
Through that horrifying wound, one could even see the equally ruined earth beneath him.
He struggled, trying to stand up from the ground.
Only to find that the Demon King power within his body was firmly suppressed by an unparalleled, domineering fist intent filled with destructive will, making it impossible to gather even the slightest bit of energy.
The entire battlefield fell into a deathly silence.
All the surviving Apostles stopped their slaughter.
They looked toward the crater, shivering, their massive bodies trembling continuously from extreme terror.
They could not believe it, nor did they dare to believe it.
That the omnipotent Demon King who had just been born, the one who was supposed to lead them into a new era...
Was actually defeated by a mortal, a mortal who was supposed to be a sacrifice.
Severely wounded by a single punch, pushed to the brink of death.
In the sky above, the other three God Hand members also ceased all their attacks.
They hovered in the air, watching this scene that completely shattered their comprehension.
Guts's figure slowly descended from the sky.
He finally landed at the edge of the crater, looking down from above at the white figure struggling to squirm at the bottom.
There was no joy on his face.
No thrill of revenge.
Only bone-chilling killing intent, so pure that it contained not a single trace of impurity.
"Not dead yet?"
His voice was calm and hoarse, devoid of any emotional fluctuation.
"Good! That's truly wonderful!"