Guts's figure slowly descended at the edge of the massive crater.
He was bare-chested. Beneath his bronze skin, a faint golden light flowed like magma, every heartbeat causing the surrounding space to tremble slightly.
At the bottom of the crater, Griffith—who had once shone as brightly as a god, now the Fifth Demon King, Femto—was pathetically embedded in the crimson rock layers, his body shattered.
Demon King's blood spilled from his mouth, sizzling as it corroded the ground beneath him.
Guts did not immediately deliver the killing blow.
He didn't want a quick end.
He wanted Griffith to use his newly incarnated Demon King body to re-experience the ultimate pain and despair that their comrades in the Band of the Hawk had endured.
With no wasted movements, Guts vanished from the crater's edge, appearing right in front of Griffith at the bottom in the next instant.
He raised his foot and lightly stomped down on Griffith's right arm, which was attempting to gather dark energy once more.
"Crack—!"
A crisp, teeth-grinding sound of bone shattering echoed abruptly in this dead, alien space.
That Demon King arm, constructed from abyssal energy, was as fragile as a dead branch before Guts's absolute, logic-defying strength.
Bone, flesh, and energy were crushed to dust beneath his foot, turning into a puddle of black sludge that could no longer regenerate.
Griffith let out a suppressed groan, the intense agony twisting his features.
"This stomp is for Pippin," Guts said, his voice hoarse and calm, devoid of any emotional fluctuation, as if merely stating an established fact. "This is exactly how he was torn apart alive by those monsters."
Before his words even faded, he raised his foot and stomped down viciously once more.
"Crack!"
This time, it was Griffith's left arm.
The same shattering, the same inability to heal.
"This stomp is for Judeau."
"He had a smile on his face right up until he died."
"Do you know why?"
Guts crouched down, a truly ferocious expression appearing on his weather-beaten face for the first time.
"Because he believed his sacrifice would buy us a sliver of hope."
"Oh, Griffith."
"Do you hear it?"
"The wails of our comrades, do you hear them?"
Guts reached out, grabbed Griffith by the throat, and lifted his broken body out of the ground.
"I will crush every single bone in your body, inch by inch."
"I will make you feel, with absolute clarity, a fraction of the agony they felt before they died."
High above in the sky, the projections of the other three God Hand members quietly watched this unfold.
The power displayed by this mortal had completely exceeded their comprehension, even beginning to threaten the foundation of their projections in the mortal realm.
"We cannot allow him to continue," the leader of the God Hand, Void, stated as the tightly shut third eye on his stitch-covered face slowly opened.
His cold, emotionless will instantly transmitted to every corner of this alien space.
"Begin sacrificing the Apostles."
"Let our true forms descend."
Upon hearing this command, the expressions of the Apostles on the ground—who had just been reveling in the birth of the Demon King and gorging on the flesh of the sacrifices—instantly froze.
It was replaced by an unprecedented terror stemming from the very depths of their souls.
They had been granted power, summoned from the abyss, not to follow the gods in conquering the world.
But to become, in this very moment, the sacrifices required for the gods' true forms to descend.
"No... No!"
A massive goat-headed Apostle let out a terrified roar. He tried to flee this damned space, only to find his body completely out of his control.
An invisible, irresistible, and majestic force seized his soul, forcefully dragging his colossal body off the ground and launching him into the sky.
It wasn't just him.
Hundreds of Apostles, regardless of their strength or form, were captured by this force at the exact same time.
They let out wails of despair, struggling in vain as they could only watch themselves fly uncontrollably toward the sky, toward those three apathetic gods.
In the air, a grand yet cruel sacrificial ritual began.
The moment those indestructible Apostle bodies neared the God Hand projections, they were torn apart and disintegrated by an invisible force.
Flesh, bone, and soul—everything was instantly reduced to the purest dark energy.
Torrents of pitch-black energy, like hundreds of rivers flowing into the sea, surged madly into the projections of the three God Hand members.
With the injection of this massive energy, the auras of the three God Hand members began to skyrocket at a terrifying speed.
Their originally somewhat illusory projections became increasingly solid, as if they were truly squeezing into this reality from another dimension.
The entire alien space of The Eclipse began to violently twist and distort under their surging power.
The ground, composed of countless agonized human faces, began to melt and collapse.
The blood-red sky grew thicker, looking as though it could drip down at any moment.
However, this terrifying divine might, enough to crush all living beings in the world, acted as the most intense catalyst for Guts.
Instead of crushing him, that immense pressure acted like a key, unlocking the dusty shackles deep within his soul.
Countless memory fragments of the Martial God, those once-blurry battle scenes, now began to automatically integrate and piece themselves together.
In an instant, tens of thousands of unimaginable combat techniques.
Countless pinnacle methods of utilizing power.
Even the memories of those tragic, firsthand wars fought against gods flooded into his consciousness.
His understanding of power reached a brand new, unprecedented height in this moment.
Boom—!!!
Under the dual stimulation of immense external pressure and internal memory fusion, the surging magnetic field power within Guts was ignited once again.
The barrier leading to a higher realm was shattered by his furious will.
Magnetic Field Rotation, Six Hundred Thousand Horsepower!
Hum!
The already blazing golden light on Guts's body became even more dazzling and pure at this moment, as if a miniature sun had descended upon this realm of despair.
"Obliterate," the three God Hand members, having absorbed the massive energy, simultaneously launched a combined attack at Guts on the ground.
Space folded.
Causality twisted.
Plague materialized into a physical torrent.
Three terrifying forces representing the world's foundational authorities merged together, transforming into a destructive beam of light capable of completely erasing this alien space, blasting toward Guts.
Facing this apocalyptic strike, Guts did not retreat; instead, he advanced.
The combat instincts of the Martial God in his mind had already calculated everything for him.
He soared into the sky, forcefully throwing a right punch.
This punch lacked any earth-shattering momentum.
But whether it was the angle of the strike, the timing of the exertion, or the concentration of power, everything reached a flawless, microscopic precision—a state of Perfect Compatibility bordering on the Dao.
Thud—!!!
The fist, containing magnetic field power and Perfect Compatibility, violently collided with the destructive beam of light.
In the next second, that combined attack capable of erasing everything began to crumble inch by inch from the inside.
The powerful recoil even traveled along the energy connection, viciously impacting the projections of the three God Hand members.
Their newly solidified bodies shook violently, even showing signs of instability.
One punch.
Just one punch.
It completely shattered the combined strike of the three God Hand members.
"We can wait no longer!... Sacrifice all Apostles!"