The silence in the ruined throne room was heavier than lead. The dust from Morgane's brutal execution had barely settled, coating the obsidian floor in a thin, grey film that mixed with the pooling blood of the fallen.
At the center of this devastation stood the being who had orchestrated it all. Erebin Bréacc Von Glassius. The Last Emperor of the Aen Elle Empire. The Pope of the Demon God Cult.
His new form radiated an oppressive, divine terror. The silver, ancient armor he wore gleamed with a violet luminescence, and the crown of black thorns upon his brow seemed to drink the ambient light of the room. He had absorbed the soul-shards of his five greatest generals, consolidating their power into the starlight crystal embedded in his chest.
"Are you all curious?" Erebin asked, his voice echoing with a dark, melodic resonance that seemed to vibrate directly against the bones of his listeners. He tilted his head, looking down at the broken bodies of Damien, Nicholas, and Gayeol. "Are you wondering why I would betray my own men? Why I would use their souls and the very shards I bestowed upon them to magnify my own power?"
A maniacal, chilling laugh escaped his lips. It was a sound devoid of joy, filled only with the bitter dregs of a thousand years of hatred.
"Do you truly believe I did all of this simply for the sake of blind religious devotion to the Goddess?" Erebin sneered, his violet eyes flashing with raw, unadulterated malice. "No. Faith is merely a tool. The Demon God is only my bridge. She is the vessel, the divine instrument I require to achieve my ultimate vengeance! A vengeance against your kind, against the arrogant Constellations who treat the cosmos as their playground, and most importantly... against the Head Administrator! The invisible tyrant who wove the very fabric of this wretched 'System'!"
Erebin slowly descended the steps of his dais of skulls. He cracked his knuckles, the sound ringing out like snapping timber in the vast, empty hall.
"Are you curious, little humans? Do you wish to hear my side of the story? To understand why I chose this path of blood and ash? Why a benevolent Emperor became a monster in the dark?"
Erebin spread his arms wide, as if addressing an unseen audience.
"Well, once upon a time, in a realm far removed from this rotting earth—"
"STOP!"
The raw, shredded scream tore from Damien's throat.
Damien forced himself to move. His entire body screamed in agony, his muscles burning with the necrotic backlash of his overused trait. Both of his legs were completely numb, effectively paralyzed from the waist down, yet through sheer, spiteful willpower, he dragged himself upward. He used his battered arms to prop himself up against a shattered pillar, effectively sitting on the ground but refusing to lay down and die.
"I don't have the goddamn time to listen to that pathetic villain backstory of yours!" Damien spat, coughing up a thick wad of blackened blood. "Save your breath, you pompous bastard."
Erebin paused. The maniacal grin faded from his lips, replaced by a look of cold, calculating amusement.
"Really?" Erebin mused, raising an elegant hand to touch his chin. "And here I thought you, of all people, would be desperate to hear the truth. I thought you would want to know the true, unfiltered reason why your precious girlfriend died."
Damien froze. The air in his lungs vanished.
He raised an eyebrow, his obsidian eyes widening in a mixture of shock, confusion, and sudden, volatile fury.
"Wait, what?!" Damien growled, his grip tightening on his dagger until his knuckles turned white. "How the fuck do you know about Melissa?!"
Erebin chuckled, a low, rumbling sound. "I know many things, Damien Vincenzo Leone. I know the tapestry of fate that led you to this exact moment. So, I will ask you once more: will you hear my tale, or will you die in ignorance?"
Erebin didn't wait for an immediate answer. He snapped his fingers.
From the shadows of the high vaulted ceiling, a small, metallic object descended. It whirred with the sound of anti-gravity thrusters. It was a highly advanced drone, equipped with an array of multidirectional cameras and broadcasting lenses.
"What's that?" Nicholas demanded, struggling to push himself up from the floor. He summoned Mjolnir to his remaining left hand, the golden hammer crackling with defensive lightning.
"Oh, this?" Erebin smiled, gesturing to the hovering device. "It is a broadcasting drone from the Old Era of my world. I salvaged it from the ruins of my capital. I honestly thought you humans still used this rudimentary model for your little 'Hunter Streams.' It is quite durable."
Erebin reached out and tapped a sequence of runes in the air, connecting the drone's feed to the global network of the Star Stream and the Hunter Association's emergency channels.
"Alright," Erebin announced, looking directly into the primary lens. "We are live now. To the billions of humans cowering behind their screens, and to the Constellations watching from their celestial thrones: witness the truth."
"What do you mean, 'live'? Turn that off and face me!" Nicholas roared, the lightning around Mjolnir flaring brighter.
"Woah, woah. Patience, Titan," Erebin chided, holding up a placating hand. "Let us fight later. Hear my side of the story first. I have held this silence for millennia. I was itching to share it with an audience, anyway. The world needs to know why it is ending."
Erebin looked down at the three broken warriors.
"Well? Do you want to hear it?"
Damien, Nicholas, and Gayeol exchanged tense, desperate glances. They were all hovering on the brink of complete exhaustion. Nicholas was missing an arm; Damien couldn't walk; Gayeol had depleted her mana core to absolute zero. If Erebin wanted to monologue, it was the only chance they had to catch their breath, let their passive regeneration kick in, and wait for the cooldowns on their ultimate skills.
In unspoken unison, the three of them nodded slightly, offering a grim confirmation to let the fallen Emperor speak.
"Excellent," Erebin beamed, his eyes glowing with violet fire. "Then let us begin. Though I will endeavor to keep this short, so we may have ample time for your executions later."
Erebin clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace slowly in front of the dais, the camera drone tracking his every movement.
"To be perfectly honest with you, I was not always a creature of darkness," Erebin began, his voice taking on a wistful, almost poetic cadence. "I was a great Emperor. I was known across the realms as Erebin Bréacc Von Glassius the Great. My empire, the Aen Elle, was a beacon of magic, art, and civilization. I was a ruler, a sovereign respected by the common folk, beloved by the nobles, and revered by the High Race of Elves. We lived in absolute harmony. Our world was a paradise of our own making, long before it was violently dragged into the orbit of this wretched 'System' and teleported into this dimensional dungeon."
Erebin stopped pacing. His eyes darkened, the violet flames flickering with the ghosts of his past.
"But one day... the sky tore open. A massive, abyssal gate appeared above our golden capital. We didn't know what it was. We had no concept of the Star Stream. And then, we saw them. Monsters pouring out of that celestial wound like a plague of locusts. They did not come to conquer; they came to consume. They slaughtered our people mercilessly in the streets. They burned our ancient libraries. They defiled our women and devoured our children in front of their screaming mothers."
Erebin's hands balled into tight fists, his silver armor creaking under the pressure of his grip.
"We retaliated, of course. The Elven Vanguard fought with the fury of a dying star. But their forces were unending. We were outmatched, drowning in an ocean of teeth and claws. And then... just as our capital walls were breached, salvation seemed to arrive."
Erebin pointed a finger directly at the camera drone, his expression twisting into a mask of pure, unadulterated loathing.
"You! Your kind appeared! Beings calling themselves 'Hunters' and 'Players', guided by the so-called 'Constellations'. They descended from the heavens wielding world-ending weapons. Magic that mimicked your nuclear bombs. Swords that cleaved mountains. We looked up at the sky and wept tears of joy. We expected them to save us. We thought the gods had answered our prayers."
Erebin's voice dropped to a lethal, trembling whisper.
"But they did not come as saviors. They came as scavengers. They were given a 'Scenario' by the System. A quest to subjugate our world for resources and entertainment."
Tears of blood—thick, black, and viscous—began to well up in Erebin's eyes, tracking down his flawless porcelain skin.
"Those murderers... those human 'heroes'... they realized our magical cores were valuable. They realized our people could be sold. They turned their weapons on us. I watched as your kind cut my beloved wife's head off right in front of my throne. I watched them drag my beautiful daughter, the First Princess of Aen Elle, by her hair into the mud. They gang-raped her while the Constellations watched and donated 'Coins' for the spectacle! They butchered my young children for sport. And after that... after all of that... the very same people ran me through with a broadsword alongside my younger sister, who had tried to fight back after they shackled us in slave collars."
The throne room was deathly silent. The sheer weight of the tragedy, the grotesque horror of the betrayal, hung in the air like a physical pressure.
"I died in the mud, choking on my own blood, watching my empire burn," Erebin said softly.
"But death was not the end. As my soul drifted into the abyss, the Goddess Nesmeranda appeared before me in a realm colored in endless violet. She was imprisoned, suffering just as I was. She offered me power. She offered me a chance to rewrite the wrongs of the universe. I accepted it without a moment of hesitation. But before she sent me back to the world of the living, she gave me a revelation. The ultimate truth of this cosmos."
Erebin smiled, a chilling, triumphant expression.
"The Head Administrator. The invisible architect of the Star Stream. They, and the pantheon of Constellations that rule the heavens, are the ones behind all of this! They are the architects of our misery! They are the reason why the Dungeons exist, why the gates open, why the monsters invade both my world and yours!"
Erebin turned his burning gaze directly onto Damien.
"They are the reason why your parents were caught in a dungeon break, Damien! They orchestrate the tragedies to forge 'Protagonists'!" He looked at Nicholas. "They are the reason your comrades died in the Pacific, Nicholas, to push you to evolve into an SS-Rank!" He turned to Gayeol. "And they are the reason your older sister was abandoned to die in Busan, Gayeol, to create a tragic backstory for the 'Sword Empress'!"
Erebin threw his hands wide, addressing the entire universe through the drone.
"They are the reason we have all lost our loved ones! It is all a manufactured game! My Apostles, the members of my Cult... they were all broken souls from destroyed worlds who realized the truth. They chose to become monsters because the gods who demand our worship are the true demons!"
Erebin smiled, his chest heaving with the passion of his sermon.
"Now you know why! Why I am doing this! Why I want to unseal the Demon God and use her power to shatter the System! I want to make your kind, and the gods that sponsor you, completely extinct!"
'Motherfucker. I knew it,' Damien said inwardly, his teeth grinding together.
His hatred for Hunters and the System hadn't been misplaced. It wasn't just human greed; it was a cosmic design of suffering. Every tragedy in his life was a plot point for some unseen audience.
"Really?" Nicholas spoke up, his voice gravelly but firm. He used Mjolnir to push himself up to a kneeling position. "Because as far as I know, you and your army of monsters are the ones currently slaughtering millions of innocent people on Earth. You are the reason our world has changed into a post-apocalyptic nightmare."
"Oh, no, no, no, no," Erebin wagged his finger, shaking his head. "Do not confuse the symptom with the disease, Titan. What I am telling you is the absolute truth! The truth of why you and I are in this situation. Why we are forced to fight each other like gladiators in an arena while the real culprits watch from above!"
Damien planted his hands on the ground. The muscles in his arms screamed, threatening to tear from the bone, but he forced himself upward. He couldn't feel his legs, but he locked his knees, standing through sheer, terrifying willpower. He swayed slightly, but he remained upright.
"If what you said is the truth..." Damien began, his voice raspy but echoing with a chilling authority. "If our kind, corrupted by the System, were the reason for your Empire's fall... for your daughter's horrific demise... for your family's slaughter... and if those Administrators are the reason why both our worlds are broken..."
Damien raised his chipped, blackened Poignant Dagger, pointing the jagged tip directly at Erebin's face.
"Then I pity you. I truly do. But one thing remains absolutely certain!"
Damien's obsidian eyes flared with the dark, suffocating aura of the [Black Death].
"I will stop you! Even though I have learned the sickening truth... the truth behind my parents' deaths, and the truth behind Melissa's sacrifice. Even knowing that the gods are the true enemy, I would still choose to save this world from you and your Goddess's grasp!"
Gayeol, finding a reserve of strength she didn't know she possessed, finally stood up beside Damien. She gripped the hilt of her katana, her knuckles white. She nodded firmly at Damien's declaration.
"I agree with what he said!" Gayeol shouted, her voice ringing clear. "Your tragedy does not give you the right to inflict the same horror on our home!"
Nicholas finally pushed himself to his feet. He stood tall, a one-armed giant bathed in golden lightning. He pointed the head of Mjolnir directly at the fallen Emperor.
"I will take his side too, Erebin," Nicholas rumbled, the air vibrating with thunder. "Because the kid is right! Maybe the System is rotten. Maybe our predecessors were the monsters who destroyed your family. But we are here now!"
Nicholas stepped forward, interposing himself between the Emperor and the younger fighters.
"And I won't let you unseal your Goddess and let her wreak havoc on the billions of innocent lives left in this world to satisfy your vengeance!"
Erebin's smile slowly faded. A look of profound, melancholic disappointment washed over his ancient features.
"Really?" Erebin sighed, shaking his head slowly. "I honestly thought the three of you could understand me. You, of all people, who have been broken by the same cruel machinery. I thought you would give me, at the very least, your sympathy. Your defection."
"I do feel your pain!" Damien shouted, his voice cracking with emotion.
Erebin's eyes widened slightly in surprise.
Damien continued, his chest heaving. "There is no day that goes by where I don't curse the Constellations and the bastard who created that System! I hate them with every fiber of my being! But... that doesn't mean I will switch sides and choose to drown my own world in blood! It's because I still have friends waiting for me. I still have people I consider family left on that surface! And I absolutely refuse to go back on my word to die today fighting for them!"
Damien adjusted his grip on the dagger, shifting his weight onto his numb legs. "So bring it on, Emperor."
"Hmm. I see," Erebin murmured softly. "At least someone feels my pain. At least someone could understand the depth of my despair. I respect your resolve, Damien Vincenzo Leone. But..."
Erebin's eyes flared violently violet.
"It changes nothing."
-ZWOOP.
Erebin didn't move fast; he simply ceased to exist in his current location and rewrote his coordinates. He appeared instantly, face-to-face with Damien.
"DAMIEN!" Nicholas and Gayeol screamed simultaneously, realizing the Emperor had bypassed their defensive line entirely.
Damien's combat instincts, honed to SSS-Rank perfection by his trait, screamed at him to dodge. His brain sent the frantic signals to his legs to push back, to leap, to roll away.
But his legs didn't respond. They were completely dead, paralyzed by the necrotic mana buildup. They didn't even flinch. It looked as if he had frozen in fear.
'Goddamnit, move! MOOOOVVVEEEE!!!!' Damien screamed in his mind, panic finally breaking through his icy exterior.
"It is a profound waste that we are on different paths," Erebin whispered softly, his voice devoid of anger, sounding almost mournful.
Erebin didn't draw a sword. He simply swept both of his hands outward in a cross-slash, his fingers coated in razor-sharp, condensed spatial magic.
-SHLICK.
The sound was horrifyingly smooth.
Damien's eyes widened to the size of saucers. Time dilated, stretching a single second into an eternity.
He felt a sudden, bizarre lightness in his shoulders. Then, the agonizing, blinding torrent of pain registered in his brain.
Erebin had cleanly, effortlessly sliced both of Damien's arms off at the mid-bicep.
-CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The Poignant Dagger, still gripped tightly by Damien's severed left hand, fell to the obsidian floor, bouncing away with a hollow, metallic echo.
Damien stood there for a microsecond, shock overriding his nervous system. He looked down slowly.
He watched as his own severed arms, clad in the blood-soaked sleeves of his tactical shirt, fell away from his body and hit the ground. Fountains of hot, arterial blood began to spray wildly from the twin stumps, painting the grey floor in bright crimson.
'Ahh...' Damien thought, his vision immediately beginning to grey out at the edges as his blood pressure plummeted. 'So... this is it. This is how I go.'
"Goddamnit!" Nicholas roared, his voice thick with absolute rage and desperation. He turned to Gayeol. "Gayeol! Do an emergency medical treatment on him right now! Stop the bleeding! I'll handle the Emperor!"
Nicholas didn't wait for her confirmation. He launched himself forward, Mjolnir trailing a massive comet-tail of lightning, aiming a devastating overhead strike directly at Erebin's skull.
"But I'm no expert when it comes to medical magic!" Gayeol cried out in panic, dropping to her knees beside the swaying Damien. She caught him just as his legs finally gave out, lowering his torso gently to the floor.
"Just do what you do as usual! When you apply field dressings to yourself! Keep him conscious!" Nicholas shouted back, engaging the Pope.
"I see you are eager to die first, Titan. Then make this battle excite me!" Erebin mocked. He didn't summon a weapon. He raised his bare hands, encased in spatial armor, and met the divine hammer head-on.
-CLANG!
-BOOM!
-CLANG!
The shockwaves from their clash threatened to tear the throne room apart. Nicholas was fighting with the ferocity of a dying god, pouring decades of battle experience into every strike, but Erebin was parrying the blows with terrifying ease, moving with the grace of a dancer.
Meanwhile, Gayeol was in a state of absolute terror. She ripped open the med-kit strapped to her thigh. Her hands, usually so steady with a blade, were shaking violently. She pulled out heavy combat gauze and mana-infused coagulant gel.
"Damien! Stay with me! Please, you have to stay with me!" Gayeol pleaded, tears streaming down her flawless face. She wrapped the bandages tightly around the spraying stumps of his shoulders, pressing her hands down with all her weight to suppress the massive arterial gush.
Damien's vision was blurring rapidly. The world was turning into a muted watercolor painting. The pain was beyond description; it felt like his shoulders were submerged in boiling acid. He wanted to use his [Medical Expert (A)] passive skill to manually slow his heart rate and force his veins to constrict, but he had absolutely zero mana left in his core.
He tried to force his [Black Death] trait to trigger, hoping the necrotic energy would cauterize the wounds.
[System Notification: Trait on Cooldown.]
[3 minutes left until Black Death can be activated again.]
'Goddamnit,' Damien thought, his consciousness slipping away into the dark, comforting void. 'Is this how I die? Really? By being caught off guard because my legs failed me? Like the exact same thing that happened to Morgane and Lucy?!'
The unfairness of it all burned hotter than the physical pain.
'Fuck. I don't want to accept this. I don't want to accept dying like a helpless dog on the floor!'
His internal monologue became a desperate, raging scream against the dying of the light.
'Stand! Stand! Stand! STAAAANNDDDDD UPPPPP!!!'
Damien gritted his teeth, blood frothing at his lips. He tried to force his torso upward, engaging his abdominal muscles. He struggled like a wounded animal, his face contorting in agony, but he kept slipping on his own blood. His vision grew darker. The edges of his world were collapsing.
Then... he heard a voice.
It wasn't Gayeol's panicked screaming. It wasn't the thunder of Nicholas's hammer.
It was a voice from five years ago. A voice that smelled like gunpowder and cheap vanilla perfume. A voice that had anchored his soul to the earth.
"You know, I have a very high standard for the men I date," Melissa's voice echoed in the chambers of his fading mind, bright and teasing.
He remembered her standing in the training yard, the sun catching her blonde hair, a smudge of dirt on her nose. She had offered him her hand after beating him in a sparring match.
"So... don't give up, idiot! Stay perseverant. Always think, 'I can do it!' Even though you are the most pessimistic, brooding type of person I've ever met... don't give up. Prove me right."
Her spectral image smiled at him, a warm, radiant expression that pierced through the cold darkness of his dying mind.
"Prove me right... that you are my Villainous Prince, Damien."
The memory hit his heart like a defibrillator.
'AAAAHHHHHH!!!!!'
A primal, inhuman roar erupted from Damien's throat. It was a sound of absolute refusal to die.
Adrenaline, pure and unadulterated, flooded his dying nervous system. Against all medical logic, against the total catastrophic failure of his body, Damien forced himself upright. He rolled onto his knees, leaving Gayeol's desperate grip, and staggered to his feet. He swayed violently, a double-amputee bleeding out on the floor of hell, but he stood tall.
"Damien, wait! What are you doing?!" Gayeol screamed, horrified, reaching out for him. "Your blood is still gushing out! The tourniquets aren't holding! I need to treat you more, or you'll die in seconds!"
Damien completely ignored her. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and locked onto a single object on the floor.
He stumbled forward, dropping clumsily to his knees. He leaned over.
With his mouth, he clamped his jaw down onto the leather-wrapped hilt of his fallen A-Rank Poignant Dagger.
He stood back up, his neck muscles bulging. He bit down on the hilt so hard he felt his molars cracking under the immense pressure. He tightened the grip of his jaw until it was an iron vice. The taste of old leather and his own fresh blood filled his mouth.
[System Notification: 3 minutes have elapsed.]
[Cooldown complete. You can use your trait again!]
Damien glared at the hovering blue system window. He looked past it, toward the epic clash between Nicholas and the Emperor. He couldn't see well; his vision was heavily doubled and swimming with black spots from the massive hemorrhagic shock. But he could see the violet light of the Emperor.
He focused every single remaining drop of his life force into his soul.
'BLACK DEATH SIXTH STATE: FINAL FORM!'
His skin didn't just turn black this time. It turned an ethereal, translucent white, glowing with the terrifying energy of the underworld. The aura of death condensed around the blade of the dagger held in his teeth, extending it into a massive, spectral scythe made of pure anti-matter.
'VARIANT CONCEPTUAL ATTACK: THANATOS' SEVERANCE OF JUDGEMENT!'
Damien didn't run. He vanished from Gayeol's sight, faster than he had ever moved in his entire life. He broke the boundaries of his own physical limitations by burning his very soul as fuel.
-FLASH!
He reappeared directly above and behind Erebin.
"I know it wouldn't kill you so easily, brat!" Nicholas roared with a bloody, triumphant grin as he locked Mjolnir against Erebin's spatial shield, holding the Emperor in place for a crucial fraction of a second.
"Ywou knwff I wwn't abamdon ywu, owd mwan!" Damien garbled around the hilt of the dagger in his mouth.
"Amd I wwn't wet ywu hwve aww the fwun by yowsewf!"
With a vicious, full-body twist that threatened to snap his own spine, Damien swung his head, slashing the massive spectral blade of [Thanatos' Severance of Judgement] directly down onto Erebin's unprotected back.
-SLASH!
-KABOOOOOOOOM!
The explosion of necrotic energy was absolute. It didn't just destroy the immediate area; it vaporized the very concept of matter it touched. The shockwave blew Nicholas backward and flattened Gayeol against the floor. A massive mushroom cloud of black and violet energy expanded, tearing through the vaulted ceiling of the throne room and blasting a hole straight into the artificial night sky of the Fifth Layer.
"Haah... haah... did we do it?" Nicholas coughed, using Mjolnir to prop himself up. He peered through the settling dust, his heart hammering in his chest.
'It must be his final attack. A conceptual variant. The power output was immeasurable,' Nicholas thought inwardly as the smoke slowly began to thin.
He looked at the absolute devastation. The majestic throne room was entirely ruined. The massive pillars had collapsed, the dais was pulverized, and the ceiling was open to the swirling auroras above. The sheer scale of destruction caused by their exchange of blows and Damien's suicidal final strike was awe-inspiring.
"No. It's not done yet!" Nicholas's eyes widened as his danger sense spiked off the charts.
Nicholas instinctively swung Mjolnir behind him, parrying a strike he couldn't even see.
-CLANG!
"Wow! What magnificent reflexes!" Erebin's voice echoed, completely unfazed.
The Emperor stepped out of the smoke. His silver armor was heavily cracked, and a massive, bleeding gash ran diagonally across his back where Damien's attack had landed. But he was far from dead.
"I honestly thought you would die instantly from blood loss before you could launch that attack, boy. But, as expected of a person who shares the same unyielding ideology as mine! Your willpower is commendable!"
Erebin disappeared into the spatial folds and reappeared instantly directly behind Damien, who was falling toward the ground, completely unconscious and tumbling from the air after his strike.
"DIE!"
Erebin raised his hand, forming a crescent arc of spatial energy, preparing to cleanly decapitate the falling, armless soldier.
"Do you really think I'd let you do that?! Hah! Not a goddamn chance!"
Nicholas burned the very last sparks of his lifespan. He engaged [Godstep] and materialized directly between Erebin and the falling Damien, shielding the boy with his own body.
Nicholas raised his hammer, his eyes glowing with the blinding light of the heavens.
'MJOLNIR FIFTH STATE: FINAL CRY!'
'VALHALLA!'
-BOOOOMMM!!
A golden explosion of pure, divine thunder erupted from the hammer. The concussive force hit Erebin squarely in the chest, launching the Emperor backward like a cannonball. Erebin crashed through a ruined pillar and skidded across the floor, tearing up the obsidian tiles.
"Hahahahah..."
The sound of laughter echoed from the dust cloud where Erebin had landed.
"Hahahahahah....."
The laughter grew louder, more unhinged.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
Erebin slowly stood up, brushing the dust from his cracked armor. He was bleeding from a dozen wounds, but his violet eyes were burning with euphoric madness.
"Is that truly all you have got?" Erebin asked in a mocking, theatrical tone, spreading his arms wide. "I didn't even break a sweat to kill your Saintess, hahahaha! How incredibly fun it is to see two humans struggling so desperately, sacrificing everything just to survive, and yet you barely managed to make me bleed!"
"Hahahaaha! How utterly useless you two must feel right now!"
While Erebin was laughing and monologuing, Nicholas dropped to one knee, catching Damien's unconscious body with his remaining arm before the boy hit the floor.
He shook Damien roughly. Damien's eyes fluttered open. He was pale as a ghost, barely clinging to life.
"Hey... kid. Can you still use your ability? Can you still launch one more attack and kill him?" Nicholas whispered urgently, blood dripping from his chin onto Damien's face.
"Yeah... but..." Damien slurred, his jaw slack, the dagger having fallen from his mouth.
"But what?"
"I can't see well. My vision is gone. It's getting blurrier and darker because of the blood loss. I can't aim."
"I see," Nicholas nodded grimly. He looked at his own trembling hand holding Mjolnir. "Then let's do a joint attack again. Exactly the same thing we did to erase the Third Apostle. I'll guide the strike. You just supply the payload."
Nicholas tightened his grip on Mjolnir. The weapon began to emit a high-pitched, whining ZZZZ sound as it gathered ambient mana from the atmosphere, preparing to overload itself.
"Let's end this," Damien whispered, his eyes rolling back slightly. He forced his [Black Death] trait to remain active, draining the very essence of his soul.
'MJOLNIR FIFTH STATE: FINAL CRY!'
'VALHALLA!'
'BLACK DEATH SIXTH STATE: FINAL FORM!'
'THANATOS' JUDGEMENT!'
The golden city of the gods and the spectral reaper of the abyss manifested simultaneously behind the two broken warriors.
Erebin stopped laughing. He saw the massive accumulation of conceptual energy forming before him. His eyes narrowed.
"That's it! Yes! Show me!" Erebin screamed, raising his hands high above his head. "Show me, Humans! Show me your final, pathetic struggle against the inevitable!"
Erebin channeled the combined power of the five Apostle shards and his own abyssal core.
'VOID DEMONIC DIVINE ART SEVENTH STATE: EIGHTH TEAR!'
'VORĀGŌ MUNDORUM!' (The Maelstrom of Worlds)
A massive, swirling black hole materialized above Erebin's hands, tearing the fabric of reality to shreds, pulling in the light and the debris of the throne room.
"AAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" Damien and Nicholas screamed in unison, launching their combined, conceptual attack forward. A beam of intertwined gold and anti-matter black shot across the room.
"AAAHHHHHHH!!!" Erebin screamed back, hurling the black hole forward to meet the beam.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!"
"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
The two supreme forces collided in the center of the ruined hall.
-WOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The sound wasn't an explosion. It was the sound of the universe breaking.
For a moment, everything went completely white. There was no sound, no sensation, no time.
And then—
-BOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!
The resulting explosion defied description. It didn't just destroy the castle; it vaporized it. The shockwave expanded outward, atomizing the obsidian walls, incinerating the corpses of the armies outside, and traveling upward with such cataclysmic force that it created a massive, jagged crack across the false, starry sky of the Fifth Layer. Through the crack, the true, chaotic void of the dimensional rift could be seen bleeding into the dungeon.
The light faded. The dust settled over a crater that was over a mile wide.
"Haah... haah... did we do it, kid?"
Nicholas was lying on his back, staring up at the cracked sky. His golden armor was completely shattered, and his body was a canvas of horrific burns.
He weakly turned his head. He looked at Damien.
Damien was sitting slumped against a rock, completely unresponsive, his eyes closed, his breathing non-existent.
"Damien!" Nicholas screamed, panic gripping his heart. He forced his broken body to move, crawling over the scorched earth. He grabbed Damien's falling body with his only arm, pulling the boy into his lap.
"Are you alright, kid? Kid! Goddamnit, answer me! Don't you dare die on me now!"
Damien didn't open his eyes. He didn't speak. But slowly, weakly, he raised his blood-stained left foot and gently nudged Nicholas's shin. It was a pathetic, half-hearted kick, but it was a confirmation that he was still in there.
"Good. That's good," Nicholas sighed, a massive wave of relief washing over him. He held Damien's mangled torso close, tears mixing with the soot on his face.
Nicholas carefully laid Damien's body gently back onto the ground. He dug deep into his empty mana core, squeezing out the very last drop of magic he possessed. He activated a short-range [Godstep], teleporting across the crater to where Gayeol's unconscious body had been blown. He picked her up gently and teleported back, laying her down next to Damien.
Nicholas sat heavily between the two youngsters. He looked around the empty, smoking crater. There was no sign of Erebin. The Emperor had been completely atomized by the blast.
"It seems we finally killed him, huh?" Nicholas smiled, a bloody, exhausted, genuine smile. He looked down at the two unconscious fighters.
"But it seems your suicide is going to get postponed, Damien. Hahahaha... it seems it will be. Sigh... really." Nicholas laughed softly, shaking his head.
His smile turned bitter as he looked up at the fractured sky.
"I really didn't expect the three of us to be the ones to survive this. Of all people, we are the ones left breathing, huh. Morgane... Lucy... Simon. Those three kids... they didn't deserve to die early. They were the good ones. But... at least we won, right? We stopped the ritual. Well, I guess I bought humanity another hundred years, I suppose." Nicholas mumbled, nodding his head slowly as the adrenaline finally left his system.
Beside him, Gayeol groaned. Her eyes fluttered open. She pushed herself up onto her elbows, coughing weakly. She looked at Nicholas, then at Damien, who was still breathing shallowly.
"Yeah... I agree with you, Master," Gayeol whispered, her voice raspy. She crawled over to Damien, gently resting her hand on his chest to feel his heartbeat. "Though... let's hurry up and get out of here. This place is collapsing."
Damien's eyes cracked open. He looked at Nicholas through a haze of pain.
"Yeah, yeah... whatever, old man," Damien wheezed, managing a weak, sarcastic grin. "Goddamnit... and here I really thought I would finally get to die here."
They shared a moment of profound, quiet victory. Against impossible odds, they had broken the Emperor and stopped the end of the world.
But before they could formulate a plan to leave the crater.
-SQUELCH!
The sound was wet, familiar, and utterly devastating.
"Ack...!"
Nicholas's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. A fountain of blood erupted from his lips.
Damien and Gayeol's eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated horror.
"NICHOLAS!" Damien screamed, his voice breaking.
"MASTER!" Gayeol shrieked, scrambling forward.
Standing directly behind Nicholas was a nightmare.
It was Erebin.
He was in a critical, horrific state. His silver armor was melted into his skin. His left arm had been completely blown off at the shoulder. Half of his face was burned away to the skull, exposing his charred jawbone and a single, manic violet eye. He looked like a walking corpse.
But he was alive.
And his remaining right hand was plunged elbow-deep through the back of Nicholas's chest, protruding from the center of the Titan's heart.
"That was incredibly close, you bastards!" Erebin rasped, his voice bubbling with blood, his charred face twisting into a horrifying, triumphant grin.
"R-run..." Nicholas choked out. He didn't look at Erebin. He looked directly at Damien and Gayeol. His blue eyes, usually so full of arrogant confidence, were pleading with them. "Run..."
Erebin's smile widened. He clenched his fist.
He brutally crushed the Titan's heart inside his chest, then violently ripped his hand back out, taking chunks of spine and muscle with it.
Nicholas's massive body slumped forward, hitting the dirt with a heavy, lifeless thud. The Titan of the West, the immovable object of humanity, was dead.
Damien and Gayeol could not move. They were physically paralyzed by their total exhaustion, but more so, they were paralyzed by the absolute, crushing weight of despair and fear they were experiencing in that moment. It was a nightmare that refused to end.
"Hahahaha! Look at this!" Erebin crowed, holding his bloody hand up to the fractured sky.
Suddenly, the massive wound on his back began to knit together. Flesh bubbled and hissed. The stump of his left shoulder began to sprout bone and muscle at an accelerated, impossible rate. His burned face began to regenerate, returning to its flawless, elven perfection.
"This is the power of the Demon God! The shards have fully integrated! Her power flows through me unconditionally!"
Erebin raised his newly regenerated left arm, flexing his fingers.
"Hahahaha! Be in despair! Weep for your fallen heroes, you utter fools!" Erebin laughed, pacing around Nicholas's corpse, mocking the paralyzed Gayeol and the armless Damien. "You gave it your all, and you still lost! The tragedy is exquisite!"
Damien stared at Nicholas's body. The last shred of his sanity snapped. He didn't have arms. He didn't have mana. But he had a voice.
Damien leaned his head close to Gayeol, who was shaking violently beside him.
"Run," Damien whispered directly into her ear, his voice deadly serious, completely devoid of his usual sarcasm. "I'll handle him."
"Wh-what?!" Gayeol gasped, looking at him in disbelief.
"You are not in the right condition to fight him," Damien ordered. "I will not let that bastard kill you too. Not after Lucy. Not after Simon. Not after Nicholas. Go."
"H-how about you?!" Gayeol cried, tears streaming down her face, her hands gripping his tactical vest tightly. "You don't even have arms! You are not in any condition to fight either! I-I can stay! I can help you!"
Damien violently jerked his torso, using his body weight to push her away from him.
He didn't answer her. He awkwardly leaned his head down toward the ground where his Poignant Dagger lay abandoned. He opened his mouth and clamped his teeth down hard on the leather hilt once more.
He raised his head, the blade pointing unsteadily toward the fully healed Emperor.
"Gwwo! I'ww hwndle thwis!" Damien mumbled around the blade, his eyes burning with a suicidal frenzy.
"GO!" Damien roared, dropping the blade for a second to scream at her, before quickly biting it again.
Gayeol looked at him, her heart shattering into a million pieces. She knew he was going to die. He was offering himself as a momentary distraction so she could escape.
She forced herself onto her feet, her legs trembling. She took a step backward. Then another. She turned and began to run, stumbling over the rubble, tears blinding her vision.
She stopped near the edge of the crater and looked back over her shoulder at the lone, armless man standing against a demigod.
"RUUUUUNNNN!!!" Damien screamed at her, his voice tearing across the wasteland, ordering her not to give him any hesitation, not to look back.
Gayeol sobbed, turning around and sprinting into the darkness.
Erebin watched her go. He didn't pursue. He just cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck, chuckling softly.
"How terribly cruel," Erebin mused, looking down at Damien with mock pity. "You pushed that poor girl away. You know she has deep, lingering feelings for you, don't you? She sees herself in you. And you just broke her heart to save her life. It's wonderfully tragic."
Damien didn't need to reply. He didn't want to reply. He bit down harder on the dagger, shifting his weight, preparing to launch himself in a pathetic, final, suicidal charge.
"Well, no matter," Erebin sighed, raising his hand, gathering a sphere of volatile void energy that would erase Damien from existence. "I will hunt her down after I finish you. DIE—"
Erebin's sentence was cut off abruptly.
His eyes widened in shock. The sphere of void energy fizzled out and vanished from his hand.
Erebin looked down at his stomach.
Something was moving under his skin.
"AAAHHHH!! AAAHHHH!!"
Erebin screamed, a sound of absolute, mind-rending agony. He clutched his stomach as his armor bulged outward from the inside.
Suddenly, the silver armor burst open.
A hand—a small, pale, delicate hand coated in blood and viscera—punched outward from inside Erebin's stomach, tearing through his flesh and organs.
"WAIT! GODDESS, PLEASE! IT'S NOT THE TIME TO COME OUT YET! I AM NOT READY! WAI—WAIT!!!!" Erebin shrieked, clawing at the hand protruding from his own abdomen, trying to push it back in.
But the hand grabbed the edges of the gaping wound it had created, and pulled.
With a sickening, tearing sound that echoed across the silent crater, Erebin's entire body was blown violently apart from the inside out.
Chunks of flesh, silver armor, and geysers of blood exploded outward. A massive wave of gore rained down, splattering directly across Damien's face and chest, coating him in the warm, wet remains of the Emperor.
Damien stood frozen, the dagger slipping from his slack jaw. He was paralyzed by the sheer, incomprehensible horror of what he was witnessing.
The blood and viscera that had belonged to Erebin didn't pool on the ground. It hung suspended in the air, swirling in a macabre, gravity-defying vortex.
And then, after a gruesome, agonizing minute of fleshy reconstruction, the blood began to form a shape.
The blood solidified, weaving bone, muscle, and skin together until a figure stood in the center of the gore.
It was a woman.
She was breathtakingly beautiful. Her beauty was so absolute, so conceptually perfect, that it transcended human understanding. It was a beauty that inspired immediate, instinctual worship and profound, paralyzing terror. She was so beautiful that even Damien's memories of Melissa's beauty were momentarily eclipsed by her sheer presence.
She had long, flowing hair the color of deep, royal purple. She was draped in a gown woven from shadows and starlight.
But it was her face that made Damien's heart stop beating entirely.
She possessed heterochromia. Her right eye was a brilliant, burning crimson red.
But her left eye... her left eye was a deep, swirling, luminescent purple.
It was the exact same color. The exact same shape. It carried the exact same familiar, arrogant, yet warm gaze as Melissa.
The woman slowly opened her eyes, looking around the ruined world as if waking from a long nap. She locked her gaze onto Damien, who was covered in blood, missing his arms, and staring at her like a broken man seeing a ghost.
'THAT MUST BE HER! THE DEMON GOD!'
Damien screamed inwardly, his mind fragmenting as he recognized the face of the woman who had died in his arms five years ago, now transposed onto the visage of a deity.
'NESMERANDA!'
The air pressure in the entire dungeon plummeted. The world held its breath.
The Demon God, Nesmeranda.
She had finally manifested into this world.