Chapter 636: Core of Ruin
The taste of the air changed.
Asmodeus closed his eyes while a soothing energy flowed through his body, warm, powerful and alive. He opened his eyes, the flicker of gold shimmering more than any coin created in the world.
“Are you that angry, Mephisto? Angry that we’re finally equals now.”
Mephisto’s breath hitched.
For the first time since his descent, his scythe trembled in his grasp. The emerald fire wavered around him as if it lacked oxygen to burn like before.
“This… no. No, it can’t be,” Mephisto whispered with a trembling voice. The glow in his chest glinted before throbbing violently as if trying to resist a greater pull. Each soul ripped from the battlefield screamed, half-bending toward Asmodeus instead of him. “That power… it should be mine!”
“Don’t be so foolish, if the power comes to me. It’s clearly mine.”
His words changed from he past, the slight anxiety and sense of fear when speaking to Mephisto vanished like a snuffed candle. Asmodeus reached out to the souls that Mephisto stole all flowed towards him in a gentle stream of darkness.
“Thank you for fighting so valiantly, I won’t let you be used in our fight. Go now, and one day we shall meet again.”
I feel so warm and a little different.
Asmodeus snapped his fingertips, and the dark cloud of screaming souls shattered. The excess energy turned gold and flowed into his body, but the sparkling lights that used to scream became calm and vanished while rising into the air.
“What?! How could you let them go, without their souls the energy absorbed is almost worthless it’s nothing more but dregs!”
To Mephisto’s hysterical shout, Asmodeus shrugged his shoulders.
“So?”
He clenched his jaw, veins bulging across his temple, and the whisper turned to a roar.
“THAT POWER IS MINE!”
Mephisto’s wings unfurled with a snap from his rage. He surged forward, holding a scythe howling with divine flame. The air itself shrieked as his aura burned away the snow and stone.
“I will carve you apart, usurper! I will tear the crystal from your chest!”
Asmodeus waved his hand.
The beautiful axe Blood Reaver materialised once again with a guttural hum, its threads writhing like serpents eager to drink as they sank into his wrists like fleshy tethers. He grunted as the pure power of his divine power flowed into the weapon.
Mephisto’s eyes widened for a brief second as he swung down, a strike with enough power to shake the earth as the horizon lit in an emerald green arc.
Asmodeus met it head-on with a faint smile.
His axe, cutting a straight line of red in a single motion, dispelled the green flame with the fierce shockwave after their weapons collided. The sound didn’t resemble steel on steel. It reverberated on a deeper level, shaking the stomachs of those who heard it.
“!!!”
Mephisto gasped.
The impact ripped through the air as the ground cracked, blasting people around them to the ground, people on the wall almost dropping from the wall as its immense pressure crushed the broken siege towers and stones around them.
He tried to resist, biting his lips while gripping his scythe with both hands. “I won’t accept this… I won’t accept it!” Screaming at the top of his lungs to avoid it.
Emerald flame sprayed in every direction along with his determination. Only to be swallowed by the ink-black haze that followed every swing of Blood Reaver, the weapon like a beast itself devouring the power of the demigod.
Mephisto’s teeth ground so hard his jaw cracked. “Impossible… you shouldn’t even exist!”
Asmodeus’s beautiful figure faded in the smoke with wings stretching wide.
His voice, dark and grainy, echoed.
“Yet here I stand.”
***
The clash forced Mephisto back through the air, his wings thrashing as they tore apart with his emerald fire streaming like blood. His scythe shrieked against Blood Reaver, sparks flowing across the battlefield like stars.
But the sheer weight behind the axe pressed him down inch by inch.
“Damn you!” he bellowed, voice cracking. “You don’t even know what you are! Or what you’ve done!”
Asmodeus tilted his head. His grip tightened on the axe, and his steps pressed forward with a steady rhythm, each one shaking the broken battlements. “Maybe not. But right now I am just punishing scum who dared to hurt my women, my people… and destroyed my land!”
He swung.
A simple motion, almost clumsy compared to his usual elegance and style of fighting. Yet the strike tore the air open, shoving Mephisto across the field like a ragdoll, leaving a massive trench in the ground from the explosive force.
The emerald flames clung to the axe, then guttered out, swallowed whole by the black haze.
Mephisto snarled, blood trailing from his mouth as he forced his wings to steady. “You think raw strength makes you my equal?!” He slashed back, hurling crescent after crescent of green fire, each wide enough to cleave towers.
Asmodeus raised his axe and waded through them. The blasts slammed against him, burning into his skin. This form didn’t use the black demon scales and scorched his flesh. He didn’t block them and quietly watched as the wounds healed instantly.
His eyes shone brightly, gold fading into scarlet veins of fire. “This body…” He flexed his hand around the axe, feeling the stretch of every muscle, a rush of power flooding his veins. “Its so amazing… and with every strike.”
He lifted Blood Reaver over his head with two hands and brought it down in a two-handed arc.
BOOM!
The scythe nearly snapped. Mephisto’s arms trembled under the weight, his bones creaking, emerald aura spraying in unstable bursts.
“No… no, I will not—!”
The axe twisted before slamming into his abdomen, sending his body shooting like a star before it slammed into a wall. The stone shattered into dust, his wings folded, and blood burst from the demigod’s chest.
His scythe embedded into his flesh to catch the blow.
The pressure didn’t stop.
Asmodeus appeared beside Mephisto, his foot smashing into his cheek, shattering half his teeth as the demigod flung onto the ground. He landed with a deep explosion, cracking the ground in a huge crater of spiderweb cracks.
Mephisto’s breath turned ragged, his eyes bulging with fury and fear.
He looked like a mess, dragging himself from the crack, his right arm dangling, half torn off, his wings broken, and his jaw drooping and broken. “Enough!” His voice cracked into a scream. “If I keep fighting like this… he’ll crush me!”
The emerald glow in his chest flared. The fractured divine core twisted violently, screaming as he drew deeper on it, ripping away restraints he had no intention of breaking this soon.
His voice warped, half-human, half-monster. “Then I’ll take what’s left! If it destroys me… so be it!”
The light erupted, and the battlefield shook as Mephisto began to force the core open.
[ASMODEUS STOP HIM!]
“I Mephisto, former god of death, offer my core unto the abyss!”
“Huh?”
The sky split open.
As if someone or something painted over the beautiful blue with a bottle of spilt ink.
The darkness pulsed as if it were composed of thousands of huge black worms writhing.
Mephisto screamed in agony, his emerald light shone bright, gushing from his chest, but… it wasn’t for an attack, the black writhing mass devoured the divine aura like a hungry beast writhed with delight, this creature didn’t belong. Each pulse turned the heavens darker, the snow melted into black sludge that hissed and steamed.
“What is that…”
“My head, it hurts, what is this screeching sound!?”
The ground buckled as spires of dark flesh clawed upwards as the cracks around Mephisto widened, and from deep within, something stirred. A sound followed, not a roar but a chorus of gnashing teeth and writhing tongues, so vast it rattled bone and marrow alike.
[How could he call one of those things!?]
What did he call, Serena?
[The beasts of the Abyss… the enemy of our creators and the existence they feared enough to seal them!]
“A beast of the abyss…? But why are they coming from the planet’s core!?”
The beasts of the Abyss had smelled something delicious.
Their number one food.
Divine aura, pure and rich, the sweetest nectar for things that should never touch the world. If not offered, they cannot touch it. Shapes moved beneath the battlefield, too large to be called simple monsters; the size was impossible. A tendril thicker than city walls, claws longer than towers, eyes glowing with hunger in the dark.
Mephisto screamed, arms flung wide, emerald light pouring from his fractured core as if he wanted to drown the world in his ruin. “Yes! Feast on it! Tear me apart, remake me! I will ascend beyond this mockery of a form!” His broken jaw slurred the words, but his voice reverberated across realms. “Those fools who abandoned me, discarded me. It was THEIR plan! Why should I suffer here for them! SO LET IT ALL COLLAPSE!”
[ASMODEUS, STOP HIM!]
This voice wasn’t the usual.
Not the soft and serene wife he loved, but a raspy and sharp tone. Her presence was faint, but he could tell she didn’t show hostility to him, so he nodded.
[That fool! Offering his Divine core to one of those disgusting beasts!? If you don’t stop it, they will flood the world with aberrations and faceless horrors! Monsters that even divine power struggles to harm!]
Asmodeus narrowed his eyes.
I will do my best, mysterious goddess.
His chest thrummed the moment he pointed towards the abyss and Mephisto within as if warning him of the danger. He closed his eyes with a calm breath as the swirl of crimson formed at the end of his finger.
[Call me Ishtar, handsome]
“Don’t overstay your welcome, Mephisto!”
The violent sphere of blood condensed while rapidly devouring the surrounding mana and fusing with Asmodeus’s divine aura.
And then he unleashed it.
A beautiful crimson beam of pure destruction.
—Ray of Sanguine Devastation