Chapter 910: Hazon and Barkial
Seeing that everything was firmly under his control, the massive Devil Lord leaned back on his throne with leisurely confidence.
"The opening of the Sacred Realm will appear in three and a half hours," he declared, his many eyes gleaming. "At that moment, I will forge a portal and anchor it. Once you enter, the connection will sever, and it will not reform for four months. When that time comes, I will use the marks I’ve placed upon your souls and bodies to bring you back to me."
He paused. A cold light flickered across his features, and a wave of gluttonous hunger radiated from his soul. For a heartbeat, every Devil present felt as though they were nothing more than livestock awaiting slaughter.
"By that time," Nebolex continued, his voice like grinding stone, "you had better return with the corpse of the Fallen Primordial God. Otherwise, my hunger will find... other sustenance."
The message needed no further explanation. If Nebolex could not eat the Primordial God, he would satiate his hunger with their bodies and souls. Failure meant death.
None were surprised. This was Hell. The strong devoured the weak, and failure was always punished with annihilation. None of them expected mercy, so they simply nodded and lowered themselves into meditative postures. Energy began to circulate through their bodies as they prepared themselves for what lay ahead.
Other than knowing it was the tomb of a Primordial God, they had no information about the Sacred Realm. But they all understood one thing: it would not be peaceful. A single shred of additional strength might mean the difference between survival and extinction.
And they also knew they could not only worry about the dangers of the realm itself. Their comrades were also their enemies. Only one party would bring the corpse back, which meant every other faction was a rival. There was no doubt: once the body of the Primordial God was found, the true battle would begin.
Time bled away. The three and a half hours vanished like a blink.
Then Nebolex’s power erupted.
His aura flooded the throne room, rising into the ceiling, condensing into a storm of black plasma. It grew denser and heavier, until the very Laws of space-time bent beneath it. The chamber shook, reality twisted, and at last a massive portal yawned open—its edges rimmed with molten light, its heart swirling with infinite darkness.
"Go. Now!" Nebolex roared.
The assembled Devils launched forward in unison, streaking into the portal like comets of fire and shadow.
Vlad and his companions followed. Yet even as he moved, his eyes locked onto Nebolex, committing every detail of the Devil Lord’s aura, every flicker of energy, every shift of power to memory. Only then did he vanish into the swirling void.
The transition was brutal.
Vlad’s body spun, his soul dragged through a storm of dimensional layers. His vision blurred, his mind reeled. When he finally crashed into solid ground, his chest heaved with dizziness.
"The fact that it had this effect on me," Vlad thought grimly, forcing himself to stand, "means the distance and number of dimensions we just traveled is absurd. Escaping this place on my own will be... difficult."
But he pushed the thought aside. Survival first, worries later.
He turned his gaze outward—and froze.
Calling this place a Sacred Realm was an irony so bitter it was almost laughable.
Above stretched not a sky of clouds, but a burning firmament of endless flame, a dome of writhing infernos. Lightning cracked across it, not of electricity but molten fire, tearing open the heavens with blinding flashes. Each strike poured molten heat down upon the world, bathing it in ceaseless glow.
The very air breathed heat and wrath. It scoured the flesh of those who lingered, alive in its cruelty.
From that sky descended colossal chains. Each link was the size of mountains, their surfaces cracked and glowing like rivers of magma. They pulsed with infernal power, radiating a force so oppressive it could burn the flesh from ordinary Superior Legends.
The ground below was no kinder. Jagged volcanic stone stretched in all directions, broken only by rivers of molten fire that carved glowing scars into the land. Blackened mountains jutted like broken teeth, framing horizons of desolation. Sulfurous seas bubbled and boiled, their fumes choking and deadly. The very earth seemed to scream, as if it remembered every soul crushed into its depths.
This was no mere tomb. This was a wound in creation itself—a place where the Abyss’ chaotic darkness had fused with Hell’s burning tyranny, leaving reality fractured and raw. The sky burned, the ground bled, and the chains bound existence together in a prison of fire and shadow.
Vlad’s frown deepened. Fiendish, every inch of it. Who would choose such a place as their tomb? What kind of Primordial God are we about to face?
"Listen up!"
The sharp command broke his thoughts.
Two figures strode forward, their presences eclipsing the rest. They were the Devil Lords who had accompanied the expedition, towering over the gathering like twin mountains of flame and shadow.
"I am Hazon," the first declared, his voice a thunderclap.
"And I am Barkial," said the other, his tone cold as steel.
The two Lords cast their gazes across the mass of Devils. Their auras pressed down, making even the Superior Legends lower their heads.
"We will divide our forces into two groups," Hazon continued. "Each will march in a different direction. Our first goal is simple—find structures, ruins, anything that might guide us. We must learn where we are, and what path leads to the core of this realm. Only there will we find the tomb of the Primordial God."
With that, the two began splitting the gathered Devils. Groups that had traveled together from Sector Four were assigned without hesitation, each sent to one side or the other.
But when it came time to assign Vlad and his companions, the pattern broke.
The two Devil Lords exchanged a glance—cold, calculating—and made a different choice.