Chapter 7.1. The War (2)

  Lightning erupted across his arm, racing down to his hand. The moment the electricity touched the human soldier’s neck, the man convulsed violently—then screams turned into crackling silence. Flesh burned away instantly. Muscles charred. Bones blackened.

  Within seconds, only a scorched skeleton hung from Lucifer’s grip.

  He tightened his fingers.

  The neck snapped into dust. The rest of the skeleton collapsed to the floor in a clatter—only for the bones to crumble the moment they touched the ground. The skull rolled three times, landed upright, and then disintegrated like the rest.

  Lucifer didn’t look back. He stepped forward, leaving the fading dust behind him.

  Kane followed.

  The Seven Sins emerged next. The moment they saw the nearby human soldiers, they didn’t wait for an order—they tore through them instinctively, erasing every last one with cold precision.

  Behind them, the Demon Army poured out of the gate and assembled in front of their king. An enormous sea of demonic creatures stretched across the land, their hunger for human flesh palpable in the air.

  Lucifer raised a hand.

  The army surged forward.

  A throne of black stone materialized behind him, forming out of swirling darkness. Lucifer sat, settling into its cold surface. An invisible platform expanded beneath Kane and The Sins, lifting them beside their king as the throne began to rise.

  Floating above the advancing horde, Lucifer watched with calm, crimson eyes as the conquest of the human world began.

  Pulse.

  Lucifer closed his eyes. In the next instant, invisible waves spread across Demacia—silent rings of dark–light magic rippling outward like sonar. Each pulse mapped the land, brushing past forests, towns, cities, and battlefields—until the Demon Lords’ presences lit up in his mind like distant beacons.

  He contacted them telepathically.

  “Any traces of otherworlders?”

  One by one, the answers came back.

  None.

  Unfortunate… but not unexpected.

  There was good news, however. After crushing the miasma crystals he had given them, the Demon Lords reported that the spreading miasma was performing far beyond expectations. Their armies, bathed in the thick dark fog, needed no rest. Their stamina surged endlessly. Their strength rose with every breath.

  And with that overwhelming advantage, they had been carving through human towns with terrifying ease.

  Lucifer opened his eyes, shifting his focus back to his own path of destruction.

  His demonic army had already passed the towns he had destroyed during his first arrival in the human world and were now reaching new settlements. Without hesitation, Lucifer gave the order:

  “Destroy everything.”

  At his command, Wrath stepped forward. A massive fireball erupted from his hands—large enough to engulf an entire gate tower—and slammed into the town’s wall. The explosion shook the earth, showering the streets in burning debris and instantly announcing the beginning of the assault.

  The human screams that followed were drowned by the demonic roars.

  Lucifer glanced at The Sins.

  They were barely holding themselves back, itching to join the slaughter.

  He gave a small nod.

  Permission.

  The Sins vanished from the platform in an instant, each one diving into the battlefield with bloodthirsty excitement.

  Lucifer watched from his rising throne, crimson eyes scanning the chaos below.

  The real conquest had begun.

  The Sins and the demonic army laid waste to everything in their path. Town after town collapsed under their brutality, most offering barely any resistance before being swallowed by the tide of claws, teeth, and hellfire.

  But during their advance, something finally broke the pattern.

  A town ahead shimmered with a protective barrier—bright, solid, and pulsing with holy magic.

  Lucifer narrowed his eyes.

  This was the first advanced defensive structure he had seen in the human world. And the holy resonance woven into it…

  An otherworlder.

  It has to be.

  “March.”

  The command rippled through the army, and the demons surged forward.

  Lucifer raised one hand, pointing lazily at the glowing dome.

  “Negative Beam.”

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  A thin jet of concentrated black energy fired from his fingertip. It pierced the barrier instantly like a needle through paper. Black cracks veined across the whole structure—shivering, spreading—

  —and then the entire barrier shattered into glittering shards of white light.

  With nothing holding them back, the demonic army flooded into the town.

  Screams. Stone collapsing. Bones snapping. Fire spreading. The demons tore through the streets, devouring and killing everything that moved, turning homes into rubble in seconds.

  Then—

  A wave of white light crashed outward, knocking demons off their feet at the front lines.

  Lucifer’s eyebrow lifted slightly.

  Not strong enough to interest him. Likely an otherworlder… but at that level, the Sins could handle it with ease.

  But then—

  A second spike of holy energy erupted.

  Then a third.

  Even so, the demons kept tearing the town apart, tearing through defenses and civilians like they were nothing.

  Lucifer leaned back on his throne, expression calm.

  “Sins.”

  His voice echoed across the battlefield.

  “Go hunt them down.”

  The Sins grinned—every one of them delighted—and in an instant, they vanished from the throne, rushing toward the rising power signatures with murderous anticipation

  At that moment, a telepathic pulse echoed through Lucifer’s mind. Mephistopheles.

  He reported having reached a town protected by a barrier. Lucifer instructed him to use the miasma crystal — a concentrated form of dark magic capable of consuming any other magic — and warned him about the possibility of otherworlders being inside.

  Moments later, more demon lords contacted him with identical reports. One barrier after another. Lucifer gave each of them the same command: use the miasma, breach the town, stay alert for otherworlders.

  Just as he finished, a violent crash erupted to his right. Pride, Wrath, and Greed were sent hurtling through the air, slamming into the wall of a nearby building hard enough to crack the stone. Dust exploded outward, but of Gluttony, Envy, Sloth, and Lust there was no sign—meaning they were still locked in combat somewhere within the town.

  Lucifer immediately focused on the battlefield. One of the three foreign energy signatures he had sensed earlier had vanished completely. Judging by the sudden drop, that otherworlder was either unconscious or on the brink of death.

  But before he could consider this further, two figures stepped out of the shattered building the Sins had been thrown into.

  A man in his mid-twenties.

  A woman around the same age.

  Both radiated a sharp, refined aura that didn’t belong to this world.

  Without hesitation, they charged straight at the Sins. Blurred movements. Blades of light and force. Their first strikes were blocked, but only barely—and Lucifer saw it immediately.

  If the fight continued like this, the Sins would lose.

  Possibly die.

  And for the first time since entering the town, Lucifer felt a flicker of genuine interest.

  Lucifer stretched out his senses, searching for the remaining four Sins. What he found made his eyes narrow. Their energy levels were faint—far below what they should have been. That meant only one thing.

  They had already been defeated.

  A cold realization settled over him. He had underestimated the otherworlders… and because of that, his generals were now fighting for their lives.

  “Kane,” Lucifer said calmly, though the air around him vibrated with restrained power, “prepare to retrieve the other Sins. They’re either unconscious… or close to death.”

  Kane vanished without hesitation.

  Lucifer kept his attention fixed on the battlefield. Pride, Wrath, and Greed were still standing, but the two otherworlders pushed them back with frightening ease. Each exchange tilted the fight further out of the Sins’ favor. Even the lingering miasma—thick, corrosive, devouring all magic—made only a modest difference.

  The reason became clear as Lucifer observed more closely.

  The bodies of the otherworlders were wrapped in multiple layers of holy magic, a dense barrier of light that resisted the miasma’s corruption. It didn’t stop it completely, but it slowed the erosion to a crawl.

  Lucifer found himself… intrigued.

  Their control over holy magic was refined, precise—far beyond the norm for humans. It reminded him, faintly, of his own past mastery of the same element before he abandoned the light.

  And now, standing at the border of a ruined town, watching his Sins struggle for their lives, Lucifer finally acknowledged it:

  These otherworlders were a threat worth his attention.

  Lucifer felt it before he saw it—the surge of magic from the Demon Lords was plummeting at an alarming rate. His sonar pulses confirmed his suspicion: they, too, were being overwhelmed.

  He dragged a hand down his face in frustration and let out a long, measured sigh. His attention returned to the battle between the Sins and the otherworlders, which was nearing its climax.

  Pride, Greed, and Wrath were slammed into a wall with bone-cracking force. As they struggled to rise, the two otherworlders charged, their swords wreathed in a blinding flood of holy magic. Overhead, they raised their blades, the sheer pressure of the holy energy radiating outward, threatening to cleave the three Sins in half.

  “Go,” Lucifer said to Kane, his tone calm but sharp. Kane vanished instantly, moving to retrieve the remaining Sins.

  Lucifer’s gaze remained fixed on the incoming strike. As the otherworlders’ blades descended, he closed his eyes for just a heartbeat—and in the blink of an eye, he was there.

  Bare hands met the swords. The blades shuddered violently against his grip, the holy magic pressing against him like molten metal. Lucifer’s eyes opened, glowing red with unrestrained power, and the air around him warped under the sheer force of his presence. Time seemed to slow.

  The rest of the demonic army simply watched, frozen in awe as the dust settled. The otherworlders stood stunned, realizing that both of their powerful sword strikes had been halted—by one being. Lucifer himself.

  Without hesitation, he encased the Three Sins in spheres of pulsating dark energy, their struggles rendered useless. His gaze shifted to the otherworlders, the glow of his red eyes cutting through the chaos.

  “I will admit,” Lucifer said, his voice calm but edged with power, “I severely underestimated your strength. But what truly surprises me is that Demacia can summon so many of you.”

  The male otherworlder’s eyes locked on Lucifer, recognition igniting rage. “You—you’re the demon who beat my brother and kidnapped him!” he shouted, holy energy surging along his blade, making it shimmer with deadly light.

  Lucifer tilted his head, a faint smirk playing across his lips. “Ah, so you and that human are siblings. A shame, truly. We are on opposite sides, my little human. You show us no mercy—so why would we show you any?”

  He tightened his grip on the otherworlders’ swords, the holy magic crackling futilely against his overwhelming aura. “I took your brother, yes—but to me, he was nothing but garbage. Just as you are—throwing yourselves into a war you were never meant to enter.”

  The otherworlders unleashed the full force of their power, yet it barely stirred him. Lucifer remained untouched, a pillar of unyielding might.

  At that moment, he sensed Mephistopheles’ magic teetering on the edge of collapse. The Demon King’s crimson eyes flared as he clutched the two swords, and the otherworlders froze in place, unable to move under the weight of his presence.

  Without hesitation, Lucifer transmitted to Mephistopheles, appearing just in time to shield him from a massive assault—a dragon of raw energy hurtling toward him.

  Lucifer’s gaze swept over the attackers: otherworlders, but not wielders of magic. Martial artists. Their aura radiated lethal precision, each movement honed to strike deadly blows.

  They had realized something crucial. If they could kill Lucifer—the one standing at the center of this chaos—they might finally tip the scales and end the war.

  Little did they know the grave mistake they were about to make. The otherworlders charged at him, but as Lucifer’s crimson eyes met theirs, their bodies froze mid-stride, paralyzed by the sheer force of his presence.

  Lucifer walked toward them, each step measured, deliberate, and terrifyingly calm.

  “You otherworlders,” he said, his voice cutting through the charged air like a blade, “you were brought to this world and believed your strength would make you superior. You thought yourselves gods among mortals. But you have no idea what horrors await here. Let me show you one.”