The red sky of Helmond vanished completely ..
replaced by one of blinding, immaculate white.
A pallid sky that instilled a bitter, unsettling sensation in all who gazed upon it.
Slowly, a cloud of pale mist took shape ..
a strange aura unlike anything ever witnessed before.
From within that mist, golden eyes emerged, flashing with a cursed yellow light.
Gradually... the fog assumed a physical form.
Limbs took shape.
Then a body.
Arms, legs ..
and finally, features.
He stood at the same height as Agaroth,
yet his skin was ashen gray, pallid and utterly devoid of life.
His features were sharp ..
carrying an air of supremacy and ancient majesty.
His hair was long and white,
flowing behind him like strands of pure, condensed aura.
Around him formed a shroud of pale aura,
an aura that instilled terror in the hearts of all who sensed it .. even for a single second.
He opened his eyes,
announcing his return to the material world after an unimaginably long absence.
The Pale Devastation was a calamity the world had long forgotten ..
and now... everyone was about to remember.
As Odin fully manifested before him, the Demon King’s smile slowly widened.
He rose into the air, drifting forward until the two stood face to face.
"This presence... these features..."
Agaroth murmured, staring at his opponent with his distinctive eyes.
"It really is you."
There was no doubt.
The one standing before him was Odin—and none other.
No matter how Agaroth tried, the King’s Eye could not see through him.
In fact, the longer Agaroth stared, the more violently his eye trembled ..
until a thin line of blood trickled down his cheek from the strain.
Odin, meanwhile, appeared indifferent for a moment ..
before slowly forming a mocking, arrogant smile.
"O Demon King,"
"O you who call yourself the beast that devours all."
Odin’s voice echoed beside Agaroth’s ear ..
and throughout all of Helmond.
Yet none of the demons understood a single word.
Only Agaroth did.
They were not beings capable of hearing Odin’s voice ..
all they perceived was an eerie grinding sound, like a call from the abyss at the end of the world.
In truth, even Odin’s form was unclear to them.
All they could perceive was a sinister, pale fog.
The only one who could see him clearly...
the only one who could hear him ..
was Agaroth.
"You understand nothing of this world, Demon King,"
Odin continued.
"You toy with fate, challenge causality, and your arrogance has grown so vast that you dared to stand against me."
Odin hovered calmly beneath the immaculate sky he himself had formed,
his golden eyes piercing straight into Agaroth.
The Demon King, however, showed no concern.
"You speak from on high," Agaroth replied coldly,
"yet you can barely maintain this form. Open your eyes .. this world no longer remembers you."
Faced with the Demon King’s provocation, Odin remained unfazed.
"The world?"
"What is the world?"
Odin asked, as the strange power surrounding him intensified.
"I am the world, Demon King.
True, I cannot remain in the material realm for long .. but that will be more than enough to deal with you."
Odin declared, disdain dripping from his words.
"You—who claimed to be the strongest in an era when I was absent—
you crowned yourself king and proclaimed that none could kill you."
"Let me open those eyes of yours, Demon King.
For all your visual powers... you are blind—utterly incapable of seeing the truth."
At that very moment...
both Odin and the Demon King smiled.
One with confident, condescending certainty ..
the other with terrifying, sadistic delight.
Agaroth was no fool.
He had long realized that the Great Ones were attempting something here in Helmond ..
something so significant that Odin himself had descended, using all his power to manifest once more in the material world.
Odin existed primarily in the spiritual realm .. a level perceived by only a handful of living beings.
He had lost his physical form long ago.
Yet by drawing upon power accumulated over countless years,
Odin could temporarily deceive causality and the flow of fate ..
allowing himself to appear in the material world for a brief time.
Such an act undoubtedly came at an immense cost.
Which meant that whatever Odin sought to achieve here
was worth that risk.
Agaroth understood all of this.
And yet... he did not care.
Every cell in the Demon King’s body screamed at him to tear apart the opponent before him.
An opponent who for the first time in ages .. made him uncertain whether he would emerge victorious... or defeated.
The Demon King, wreathed in abyssal darkness .. against Odin,the Pale Devastation.
This was the sight that unfolded before the eyes of Helmond.
Among the onlookers, Izalith watched closely, unease written across her face.
Her gaze never left Odin ..
that Pale Devastation that had appeared from nothingness.
The Great Ones had been mighty... overwhelming even ..
but this was different.
Absolute evil.
Evil of the same nature as Agaroth—
yet fundamentally different at the same time.
No matter how hard she tried, Izalith could not gauge his power.
And that terrified her more than anything else.
Unconsciously, she reinforced the blood walls surrounding the battlefield,
fearing what might result from a clash between those two beings.
Then ..
for a single moment ..
silence fell.
A single second of stillness...
before catastrophe began.
Agaroth surged forward at insane speed toward Odin,
a sinister expression carved upon his face .. and the clash was about to begin.
The Demon King’s fist ignited with savage, raging dark fire as he struck without mercy .. his attack aimed directly at Odin.
Odin remained standing where he was.
He did not move.
Not even an inch.
Then ..
the collision came.
All of Helmond heard it.
A deafening explosion, accompanied by a strange, glass-shattering shriek that stabbed into every ear.
Agaroth’s detonating fist ..
the same fist that had annihilated the Great Ones with ease ..
stopped completely before Odin’s face.
It was unable to reach him.
It was as though an invisible force barred the Demon King from advancing any further, to the point that no matter how much overwhelming power he unleashed, it accomplished nothing.
Before that pressure, Odin’s smile widened—
his eyes flaring with a sinister glow.
Then, without warning ..
Agaroth was sent flying.
An invisible force struck him with such tremendous might that the Demon King’s body was hurled backward, smashing into Izalith’s blood wall, piercing straight through it to the other side.
He continued to crash onward ..
slamming into the Tower of the End, tearing straight through it, and bursting out the far side.
By the time the Demon King regained control of his body,
he had been thrown an unfathomable distance away from his opponent.
In those brief moments, Izalith and the other demons could not comprehend what had occurred.
With a single invisible strike, Odin had hurled the Demon King across Helmond—
and effortlessly pierced the blood wall into which Izalith had poured her entire strength.
Meanwhile ..
The instant Agaroth stabilized himself .. the ground beneath him began to rise toward the sky.
No.
It was not the ground.