Chapter 658: Abyssal Sovereign
The Blood Reaver created a low howl as it cleaved the air, descending with explosive power. The ground buckled beneath the swing, arcs of molten stone and crackling aura shooting outward from the sheer force of his strike.
Yet the Arbiter remained still and watched even as the blade approached.
"DIE!" Asmodeus growled in anger, his face filled with swollen veins.
With one hand, the towering being caught the edge of the axe mid-swing. "Eh?" There was no strain, no sound of impact, only the howling wind that soon faded. Replaced by the demonic metal screaming in protest as if in pain.
Cracks spread across the blade as if it were cheap glass.
"What...?!" Asmodeus barely had the time to react before the creature’s other hand slammed into his chest.
His world inverted.
A single palm strike launched him across the plaza like a meteor. Stone, steel, and divine barriers exploded into shrapnel as his body tore through buildings and battlements alike. The shockwave flattened an entire district before he finally stopped.
Embedded in the citadel wall, with blood streaming from his lips.
"Ryuji!" Serena’s scream echoed through the broken city, her tails formed a point, gathering immense divine energy in a dark sphere of magic.
But the female Arbiter simply raised a finger, and with a flicker of light, space folded around her. Serena froze before being slammed into an invisible wall that pinned her to the ground with impossible pressure.
"Pathetic," the taller Arbiter said flatly, dusting the blood from its palm. "Even with your prized weapon, is this it? Is this everything...?"
He almost seemed offended, as if something angered the creature.
The debris shifted and cracked. Steam rose from the crater, and with a guttural howl, Asmodeus stepped out of the rubble, armour shattered, half-naked and smoking with dozens of wounds.
But with his grin still intact.
"Not bad." He coughed, wiping blood from his mouth. "But you need to hit harder if you want me dead."
Asmodeus vanished. One heartbeat was all it took.
He was there one moment and the next.
He was above them.
Blood Reaver, newly reforged and burning with divine flame, descended once more with enough force to split the sky. This time, the air ignited around him, but the Arbiter simply turned and punched.
The blow didn’t connect...
’What is that?’
Instead, a colossal hand of gold swooped from the clouds and grabbed him mid-attack, crushing his body like a toy and slamming him back down. The blow shattered his bones, snapped his wings, and sprayed his blood on the ground.
"Stay Down."
The words reverberated across the city like a divine decree, and even the clouds above evaporated as if obeying the arbiter’s voice.
But the demon king refused to do so, even while coughing up blood, his bones shattered and his legs trembling from the sheer difference in power. Barely able to stand, he dragged himself back to his feet once more.
And he laughed.
"Is that... all... the gods guards dogs have?"
The Blood Reaver hit the ground with a hollow clang, its once-fearsome blade shattered and dull. Asmodeus stared down at the weapon, then at his trembling hand with torn skin, blood pouring freely, his body screaming from every wound.
"Hahah....hahahaha....Pathetic..." he whispered to himself with a cynical tone. "To think I became arrogant when facing opponents like this..."
A ripple of power pulsed outward from his body.
With a deep breath, he gathered both demonic and divine aura rapidly, the ground around him cracked, an updraft blowing rocks, debris and his hair into the sky. It crackled with lightning as something deep inside him clicked into place.
"Asmodeus..." Serena’s voice trembled. "What are you—"
"Haha, don’t worry. If there was a Demon Lord form, a Demon King from and even a Demon Emperor form. Surely you didn’t think there that was the limit of my power or something right, sweet heart?"
The ground shattered beneath his feet.
A black fissure opened across his chest and bled a bloody divine light. His heartbeat thundered loud enough for the Arbiters to hear it.
Ba-dum.
Ba-dum.
Ba-dum.
The very air warped, twisting like reality itself was trying to run away.
His body erupted in a maelstrom of black-and-red aura.
"Ein. What is this primate doing?" The tall arbiter watched the scene, their eyes still as if watching insects.
"...I don’t know. Zwei." The female arbiter’s eyes no longer watched Serena but Asmodeus. Her perfect pupils constantly shook from side to side, and her lips pressed together.
Then her eyes snapped open, and her lips parted with a faint shimmer. "What...?"
Wings of blood and shadow exploded from his back, splitting into jagged arcs of crimson light. His skin darkened into a deep obsidian sheen. Runes crawled across the surface like living spells. His hair rose and floated, wild and untamed, glowing with a divine light, and his once golden eyes were now pools of endless black, with golden pupils that pierced through that darkness.
The world became still.
Every creature in the plaza felt a primal fear, whether mortal, divine or demon.
The instinctual knowledge of something that had stepped beyond its bounds. Though the male Arbiter remained still, the female’s face showed a reaction, cracking her mechanical stillness ever so slightly.
Yuina stared, unable to stop the heat rising to her cheeks. "H-he looks... like one of them."
"No way... look at our husbands figure. He isn’t some sexless doll." Lumina corrected softly, as she held her hands tight, unable to stop herself from trembling, and yet the look on her face was one of rapturous bliss. "Ah~ how did such a stupid boy surpass me? How terrifyingly beautiful."
Asmodeus spoke the truth.
If there was a demon lord form, then there must be a demon king form.
And if he reached demon emperor form...
Obviously, there must be a Demon God form.
Different from the immature and incomplete form he used when fighting Mephisto or the abyss, after three years of secretly training with Alan and every knight of the Lumerian army himself.
He finally reached the first step to actual Godhood.
"Although I am kind of sick of being called a demon... there’s more to me than that. Since I’ve absorbed, divine, demonic, magic and even abyssal energy..." He looked south, towards the abyssal portal and grinned like a wolf. "Let’s call it, Abyssal Sovereign form."
Asmodeus himself wasn’t confident in calling this a god form.
After seeing the Arbiters’ power and level.
But in this form, he could sense their strength, divine aura and power.
Asmodeus whispered while layering his voice with mana to create countless echoes.
"The will of demons. The fear of gods. The hope of humanity."
The taller Arbiter raised its hand, but this time the motion was slower, and there was a hint of emotion on its face. "You dare... speak of the gods...." His voice was slow and aggressive yet filled with disdain.
However, he hesitated. And in that hesitation, Asmodeus vanished. One instant, he was standing still. Next, he buried his fist deep enough in the Arbiter’s chest that it bent into the shape of an arrow.
VWOOSH!
"Payback."
There was a sudden bang. The blow sent the celestial being hurtling backwards, smashing through several floating rings of divine runes. Space itself fractured from the impact, waves of destruction rolling out in every direction.
The smaller Arbiter’s pupils shrank to the size of tiny dots. "Impossible..."
She released Serena and flashed forward, the weight of gravity magic collapsing into a dense singularity around her hands. Her expression twisted the moment she entered within a metre of Asmodeus, before pulling back like a bolt of lightning, she vanished and appeared ten metres away from him while panting.
"Ah... you seem to have already noticed." Asmodeus smiled at her.
A thin, bloody wound grew across her cheek, leaking golden blood.
The moment the Arbiter recovered from the blow, he was gone. He charged like a bull, and Asmodeus met him with a smile.
Their bodies collided midair with a force that tore the clouds apart and split the sky in half. The ground beneath them crumbled as shockwaves rippled out like tidal waves, annihilating everything they touched.
It was no longer a one-sided beating.
They moved faster than sound, each punch detonating like artillery, every kick shattering the air around them. Asmodeus ducked beneath a sweeping strike, his vision sharpening as the world slowed to a crawl.
’Slower... but not slow enough.’
Even with his time domain pushing his body beyond its limits, the Arbiter’s raw speed pressed him harder than any foe before.
A fist grazed his jaw, then another slammed into his ribs.
Asmodeus retaliated with a jagged blade of crystallised blood, carving a deep gash across the Arbiter’s forearm. The being countered by forming a spear of condensed light in his palm, thrusting it with precision, only for Asmodeus to shatter it with a knee to his gut.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Dozens, hundreds of blows exchanged in a heartbeat, neither giving the other ground.
But then, Asmodeus slipped past his guard, his leg driving into the Arbiter’s chest with an explosive roundhouse that sent the judge hurtling skyward.
"Let’s see you block this..." he mused while raising his hand. One finger extended, locked on the target like the barrel of a gun. Blood gathered at his fingertip, trembling with catastrophic power.
"Sanguine—"
Asmodeus noticed the strange movement of the female as she held her hand towards the male, not him.
"Divine—"
The ray began to materialise, reaching the critical mass.
But at the same time, a golden aura exploded from the female arbitrator’s palm.
"—Devastation!"
"—Judgement!"