He caught them completely off guard, attacking without warning.
Beneath their feet, a dark black pillar exploded upward, cloaked in filthy aura that killed everything it touched.
The pillar rose and rose until it reached the heavens themselves before erupting violently.
Yet the Second and Fifth Upper managed to endure and escaped the attack without injury.
One relied on sheer durability.
The other shielded himself with black flames while clad in the gigantic black Murgol Armor.
Old Marvas felt his nerves boil the instant he recognized who had attacked them.
Only seconds later...
That monster emerged from within the swamp of darkness.
Its body was grotesquely mutated, crimson flesh writhing with countless mouths growing from it.
A walking nightmare that spread terror to anyone who gazed upon it.
Enraged, Marvas roared at him.
"Why?!"
"Why are you standing against us, Gael?!"
The Fifth Upper shouted furiously at the rebellious Duke of Hell, angered that the one who should have been their ally had turned against them instead.
Gael did not answer.
He attacked immediately, for he was not one for words.
Darkness scattered in every direction from his body as crimson tentacles covered in jagged mouths slithered from the shadows toward the two demons.
"Do not waste your breath trying to reason with him!"
"That bastard only understands fists!"
Agares charged forward immediately, fighting at full power.
He tore through the darkness and reached Gael, throwing a punch with all his might and generating an overwhelming shockwave of force.
Agares’ fist struck Gael’s body...
Then sank into it as though he had punched a mass of rotten flesh.
The Second Upper suddenly found himself drowning inside his opponent’s body as it split open around him.
The countless mouths turned toward him, attempting to devour him whole.
Realizing he had fallen into a trap, Agares unleashed his aura to its absolute limit and began throwing punches in every direction at maximum speed, destroying the mouths and the flesh behind them.
He managed to hold on...
But that filthy dark energy had already begun invading him.
At that very moment, Marvas’ dark flames erupted forth, clashing against Gael’s abyssal darkness and preventing it from reaching Agares.
Thanks to the power of the Dark Soul, Marvas could contend against Gael’s Aura of the Abyss.
"I’ll handle the abyssal power!"
"So focus entirely on fighting him!"
Marvas took on the support role while Agares battled Gael head-on.
The Duke of Hell was a chaotic monster beyond comprehension.
He could fight from long range and close quarters simultaneously.
And his body was not normal in the slightest...
Nothing more than a moving mass of bloody flesh covered in dozens of mouths and hollow dark eyes devoid of all light.
No one had ever known how that demon transformed into such a thing.
A monster born from the Abyss itself...
And one that had become part of it.
By combining their strength, Agares and Marvas somehow managed to endure against him.
Both relied entirely on their world-breaking abilities.
But the situation was not in their favor whatsoever.
They were barely holding on.
And what troubled old Marvas most...
Were the countless eyes watching from afar, filled with overwhelming killing intent directed at him.
’This is bad...’
Crimson was occupied fighting the Great One of Krat.
Gael had betrayed them, forcing the two of them into battle against him.
Which meant every demon currently inside the continent...
Was now fighting among themselves.
In other words...
There had never been a better opportunity to kill them all and wipe them out entirely.
Marvas remained on high alert as he unleashed an enormous amount of black flames against Gael.
’Who?’
’Who will make a move?’
He was anxious.
His eyes darted left and right, unable to predict what would happen next.
Gael’s intervention had shattered the balance.
And it would only become the gateway for even greater horrors to descend upon them.
Who would intervene next?
Whose foot would step onto this battlefield now consumed by every kind of flame imaginable?
Midir?
Orsted, the Ruler of Light?
Who?
The answer...
Was infinitely farther from what Marvas had imagined.
Another foot stepped into the central region where the battle raged.
But it did not belong to a man.
It belonged to a woman.
A woman climbed to one of the highest points within the World of Doors, seeking the perfect angle from which she could observe the entirety of the battlefield.
From there, she witnessed the thunderous clash between the First Upper and the Great One.
And she witnessed the battle between Gael and the others as well.
Then she pointed toward the latter with a single finger.
She was a tall woman, barefoot, dressed in robes woven from harmonious shades of blue and crimson.
Her hair was pitch-black, her eyes blue, and her skin deathly pale.
She looked remarkably human...
Aside from her height, which nearly reached two and a half meters.
A little over eight feet tall.
The moment she pointed her finger, a strange creature behind her responded to her command.
A monster vastly larger than she was.
Its body was dark and hardened, possessing a form resembling living stone.
It resembled a golem.
Its enormous crimson eyes were filled with glowing circles, while its gigantic mouth stretched from one side of its face to the other.
Except...
It had no ears.
Only two bloodshot red eyes...
And a massive maw lined with jagged teeth.
"Go."
"Relic of the Past."
The woman gave the order.
The monster’s eyes lit up immediately.
It listened only to her voice and no one else’s.
The strange golem let out a terrifying roar before leaping skyward.
Only seconds later...
It descended like a meteor toward the battlefield where Gael fought against Marvas.
The two raised their heads at the final moment, witnessing its catastrophic descent.
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!"
The monster crashed down with overwhelming force, creating a colossal explosion and pressure wave that blasted both Marvas and Gael away in opposite directions.
The two stood at the edge of a massive crater...
From whose depths the monster slowly rose.
The creature opened its mouth...
And unleashed a monstrous howl as the earth around it trembled violently, unable to withstand the crushing pressure of its aura.
A horrifying pressure froze everyone in place.
It even reached Crimson himself.
The First Upper turned sharply in shock the instant he sensed it.
That single second of lost concentration caused him to receive a direct strike from the Great One of Krat, sending him crashing into the ground below.
Yet even the Great One himself looked stunned.
"That pressure... and that scream... impossible..."
He denied it instinctively and attempted to move closer to witness it with his own eyes.
But Crimson surged upward from below and intercepted him before he could.
The strange beast that had arrived was no ordinary creature.
Everyone realized that immediately.
The monster charged directly toward Gael after sensing that the Duke of Hell was the strongest among them.
The golem swung its gigantic fist, intending to crush the Duke of Hell in a single blow.
Gael answered with a punch of his own.
The two fists collided...
And the clash began.
Gael’s intervention and the arrival of the mysterious monster had merely been the beginning.
The first spark of chaos.
The seed of a devastating war that was about to erupt between all those titans.
A conflict where no one could know who would emerge victorious...
And who would die within it.