The river of reincarnation was the entrance to hell as well as the exit out of it. It was a place where the souls of the dead intersected with those who would come back to life. Sinister sounds always echoed around here…
“Come here~ Come here~ Here you can find cockatrice skewers baked in hellfire which make the umami flavor twice as intense~~”
“Try a hell moon candy. Its mysterious taste is a result of mixing ten different poisons! If you hand over just ten minutes of your reincarnation turn, you can get one delicious hell moon candy for free!! Only ten minutes!”
The festival had been going on for a whole month already. Numerous merchants and tourists were walking around and mingling under the colorful firecrackers that were exploding nonstop.
[(Congra) Welcome, new souls! – Hell King Eligos (tulations).]
The banner hanging upstream of the river fluttered in the sharp hell wind. Beneath it, Eligos’ expression was darker than usual. This was partly because he was wearing a helmet, but also because he was frowning.
A little girl approached him and whispered, “I guess there really is a foreign god.”
She was a great demon with the nickname of Supreme King. This was Leraje, who was currently second in the hell hierarchy. Her cheeks were puffed up because of the candy in her mouth.
Eligos sighed as he stared at her. “It seems so.”
Around two months ago, cultivators appeared in this world. Since then, a lot of good things had happened in hell. The number of people who died on the surface and fell into hell had increased exponentially. This was a huge opportunity for Eligos, who had just risen to power. He was planning to get more inhabitants of hell and use them to make hell prosperous. He intended to let the world know what a great ruler he was, unlike Baal who trampled on others as if they were insects just for fun.
This was why he was holding the festival near the river of reincarnation. The inhabitants of hell gathered to watch.
I, Black Knight Eligos, have become the new symbol of hell. Since then, an abundance of humans have died and made it to hell.
This is my power as the symbol of hell and proof that I am greater than Baal…
“……”
Eligos was holding his written speech in one hand. He was going to read it in front of a crowd of people who would cheer as they watched the procession of souls filling the river of reincarnation.
But the moment he had been waiting for simply wasn’t coming… Was it because the surface was surprisingly calm? No. The surface was in the midst of a fierce battle at this very moment. Eligos had received information that hundreds of thousands of cultivators had died in the past month. However, not a single one of them had made it to hell…
By this point, he had to admit it. As Leraje said, there was indeed a foreign god, one who had sent the cultivators to this world. Even if they died, their souls didn’t fall to hell and instead wandered in outer space. Just like a significant number of humans.
Ah, so that’s what this was. Now both Eligos and Leraje also had a vague understanding of the concept of players.
“Hell is like an anthill.”
From her perspective, hell was a dimension lower than heaven or the surface. It was a well-established theory that Yatan’s position in the hierarchy of the gods was lower than Rebecca’s. Yatan had created hell to provide opportunities for those who had failed during their lives in heaven or on the surface. This was relatively unremarkable.
But was there another dimension besides the surface and heaven as impressive as this one? This dimension wasn’t small like the Elemental World or the Peach Blossom Spring. It was a higher dimension ruled by a foreign god who created powerful beings, such as dragons and cultivators.
Leraje was once again aware of the greatness of the universe. Hell felt insignificant in comparison…
Eligos thought differently.
“An anthill? No, hell is the greatest dimension.”
He took off his helmet. He rarely did that. He looked no different from an ordinary human being.
“How can a land that bestows oblivion to those who reach the end of one life and gives them a new opportunity to live be insignificant?”
Eligos had been born as a great demon. All his life he had been fighting, pillaging, sometimes even crushing other people’s dreams and taking away their loved ones.
One day, Eligos looked into the mirror and realized that he might have been human in his previous life. Since then, he had been glorifying Yatan and hell.
“Watch. See how a righteous ruler can make hell prosperous!”
The worst king, Baal, was now gone. Hell would surely be a great place in the future. As Yatan wished, so many beings like Eligos would be reborn in hell and given a chance at salvation.
But before that—
“…Tell them to stop setting off those firecrackers. And get rid of this damn banner.”
The festival had to end now…
***
“Hngh!”
Damian was anxious.
“Yikes!!”
He didn’t know how he ended up stuck between these monsters.
“Pope, concentrate.”
Cultivators who kept flickering out of sight suddenly appeared right in front of him. Damian couldn’t perceive the speed of an Absolute-level cultivator. He was fighting in the sky with no topographic features, but it felt like he was being attacked every second. He was startled by the sharp sensation at his neck. Zik eventually rescued him. Damian instinctively complained out of resentment.
“What do you want me to do here? Honestly, aren’t I just a hindrance?”
Presently, the battlefield was divided into three main parts.
Firstly, there was the Full Moon Fortress. The Transcendent-level cultivators borrowed the power of all the formations installed in the Full Moon Fortress to engage in a fierce battle with the elites of the Overgeared Guild. In fact, the Overgeared Guild had easily destroyed all the other facilities of the Full Moon Fortress.
Secondly, there was the Tomb of the Gods. The Transcendent-level cultivators were persistently attempting assassinations to break down the Overgeared Guild’s chain of command. The damage on both sides was significant.
Thirdly, there were the outskirts of the Full Moon Fortress. Cranbel and Navaldrea, as well as the Tower members and Apostles, had engaged in a fierce battle with the Absolute-level cultivators. This was the fiercest battlefield.
This was where Damian was. It was frustrating for him. He was alone in a battlefield where he couldn’t match his opponents’ strength.
“Who knows… Isn’t the reason you’re here something that you need to figure out yourself?”
The pope of the Overgeared God Church was a powerful position. Damian was in charge of spreading Grid’s will to the people. Even the Apostles respected him, but at this moment, Zik was glaring at him coldly. He looked very disappointed.
Damian came to his senses and reflected on the past. He was in the middle of killing the enemies at the Full Moon Fortress when Braham had suddenly appeared and kidnapped him…
‘…I don’t know anything!’
Braham had kidnapped Damian during the battle without bothering to give him an explanation. Braham threw him here and immediately started fighting.
Why was Damian here? Why would he know the reason for being here? He pondered for a bit.
“Hey, yamete kudasai!”
He had just dodged a bombardment of ranged attacks. A cultivator holding a guandao was waiting for him. If Damian hadn’t performed the Restraint sword dance in advance, he would’ve lost his invincibility passive.
‘Fortunately, I made it a habit.’
The Restraint sword dance was a great skill. It had AOE CC. Restraint was a sword dance that simply overwhelmed nearby enemies. There was no need to even attack the target. However, the hit rate was very high. This was very useful unless the target’s status was higher than the caster’s. If he had trained this skill until it reached the Master level, Damian would be able to successfully use Restraint even if the target’s status was as high as these cultivators’…
“…Uh?”
Damian saw the enemy in front of him and realized something. This was the problem. He hesitated for only a split second, but the Absolute-level cultivator was already on the move.
“Yikes…!”
‘I’m sorry for being distracted!’
Damian knew he was going to die and closed his eyes tightly as he apologized in his mind. The guandao was about to press against his brow when it suddenly stopped as if blocked by an invisible wall.
Blood splattered all over Damian’s face. The cultivator brandishing the guandao was vomiting blood.
“Despicable bastards!”
The cultivator let out swear words that didn’t fit his status as an Absolute. He threw the guandao he had retrieved into the sky toward Braham. Several layers of an indigo protective layer rippled as it collided with the guandao. Braham was unfolding Grid’s Multiple Weakening Barriers at his fingertips. It had a dreamy feeling to it.
Of course, Damian wasn’t misled. He had tried to survive on his own regardless of the situation around him. But then he saw the cultivator holding the guandao.
There were several swords and spells embedded in his back from the Tower members and Apostles ambushing him during the short period when he couldn’t move. Didn’t that last only 0.01 seconds?
Damian became certain of his role in this battle.
‘They are asking me to keep using Restraint…’
Of course, this didn’t work on all cultivators. Maybe even the Master-level Restraint wouldn’t work on cultivators who were classified as immortals. But there were too many cultivators on this battlefield. Even the Apostles and Tower members were outnumbered. There were only a few Absolutes among them.
‘This battle isn’t easy. Braham grasped at straws and brought me here.’
Damian also had to help… As he clenched his fists, Braham killed the cultivator with the guandao before turning around and snorting at Damian.
[I thought you would be arrogant because of the big challenge, but it turns out you have decided to be obedient and cooperate.]
“Of course. Being a bread shuttle is my specialty!”
[Bread… what?]
Because Braham was so confused, his intent exposed his bewilderment. If Braham had been talking using his normal voice, he would’ve never asked what a bread shuttle was. He would just brush it off as Damian talking nonsense and not worth reacting to.
Yeah, he shouldn’t have reacted.
“Bread shuttle means…”
As expected, the conversation was about to keep going.
[Shut up.]
Braham clicked his tongue and used Mass Teleport. The space where Damian was standing suddenly got split in half. A trident appeared out of the dimensional rift, trembling greatly.
Damian reappeared next to Braham, his heart in his throat and his back drenched in sweat. He would have been stabbed had Braham not intervened.
“I didn’t realize I was in danger at all. Don’t tell me that was… an immortal?”
[Yes.]
“N-No way…”
Even if Damian was fully equipped with cooldown reduction artifacts and if he had trained Restraint to Master-level, its cooldown would be two minutes and thirty seconds. Therefore, the success rate of Restraint when targeting Absolutes was low. This meant there was very little Damian could do to help.
And if the enemy was an immortal? Damian was resentful, but the enemies didn’t care about his feelings. Cultivators from all directions attacked him relentlessly.
“No! Gri…!!”
Damian desperately shouted Grid’s name, but to no avail.
[Shut up.]
Braham cast a Silence spell on him. He didn’t want Grid to intervene. It was only right to win a war of this magnitude without Grid.
“Hmph! Hmphhh!”
Damian felt as if he was dying. It felt like he was playing a horror game by himself.