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 shimring more than any coin created in the world.
“Are you that angry, phisto? Angry that we’re finally equals now.”
phisto’s breath hitched.
For the first ti since his descent, his scythe trembled in his grasp. The erald fire wavered around him as if it lacked oxygen to burn like before.
“This… no. No, it can’t be,” phisto 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 scread, half-bending toward Asmodeus instead of him. “That power… it should be mine!”
“Don’t be so foolish, if the power cos to . It’s clearly mine.”
His words changed from he past, the slight anxiety and sense of fear when speaking to phisto vanished like a snuffed candle. Asmodeus reached out to the souls that phisto 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 et 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 beca 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 phisto’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!”
phisto’s wings unfurled with a snap from his rage. He surged forward, holding a scythe howling with divine fla. 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.
phisto’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 erald green arc.
Asmodeus t it head-on with a faint smile.
His axe, cutting a straight line of red in a single motion, dispelled the green fla 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.
“!!!”
phisto 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 imnse 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.
Erald fla 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.
phisto’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 phisto back through the air, his wings thrashing as they tore apart with his erald 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 battlents. “Maybe not. But right now I am just punishing scum who dared to hurt my won, 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 phisto across the field like a ragdoll, leaving a massive trench in the ground from the explosive force.
The erald flas clung to the axe, then guttered out, swallowed whole by the black haze.
phisto 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 slamd 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. phisto’s arms trembled under the weight, his bones creaking, erald aura spraying in unstable bursts.
“No… no, I will not—!”
The axe twisted before slamming into his abdon, sending his body shooting like a star before it slamd 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 phisto, 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.
phisto’s breath turned ragged, his eyes bulging with fury and fear.
He looked like a ss, 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 !”
The erald 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 … so be it!”
The light erupted, and the battlefield shook as phisto began to force the core open.
[ASMODEUS STOP HIM!]
“I phisto, forr god of death, offer my core unto the abyss!”
“Huh?”
The sky split open.
As if soone or sothing 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.
phisto scread in agony, his erald 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 lted into black sludge that hissed and stead.
“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 phisto widened, and from deep within, sothing 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 slled sothing 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.
phisto scread, arms flung wide, erald light pouring from his fractured core as if he wanted to drown the world in his ruin. “Yes! Feast on it! Tear apart, remake ! 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 , discarded . 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 thrumd the mont he pointed towards the abyss and phisto within as if warning him of the danger. He closed his eyes with a calm breath as the swirl of crimson ford at the end of his finger.
[Call Ishtar, handso]
“Don’t overstay your welco, phisto!”
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
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