Shura and I stepped out of the warmth of my pocket dimension and emerged directly into the biting, violent winds of the Tateyama Mountain Range.
We stood on a rugged, snow-covered peak, completely surrounded by a raging blizzard. The air was violently cold, the kind of sub-zero temperature that burned your lungs and froze your eyelashes the second you blinked.
But neither Shura nor I felt it. We were covered in an invisible layer of my flames that completely neutralized the harsh weather effects. The snowy surface parted with each step we took.
"Ah, so these are the perks of dating a literal campfire," she said over the howling winds
"Only the best," I said, smirking as I leaned down slightly. "Though, if you're feeling cold anywhere, we could always share body heat the old-fashioned way."
"Get me home quickly and we'll see what happens," she said, leaning her weight against me. "Or are ya really plannin' on warmin' me up in hostile territory?"
She wasn't wrong. The second she spoke, the blizzard around us seemed to shift.
The ground beneath our boots began to tremble. Through the dense whiteout, hulking silhouettes began to materialize. Within seconds, the snow cleared just enough to reveal that we were completely surrounded.
There were dozens of them. Massive, heavily muscled Oni, each easily the size of a two-story house. Their skin ranged from deep crimson to bruised purple, and they were armed with either giant iron kanabo clubs—spiked iron bludgeons roughly the size of a school bus—or crude, oversized broadswords that looked more like large cleavers.
From the front of the pack, the largest of the group stepped forward. He wore a necklace of human and demon skulls, his breath pluming in massive clouds of steam.
The Oni leader looked down at us and let out a booming laugh that echoed over the storm.
"Is this a joke?" the giant rumbled, his voice shaking the snow from the nearby pines. "The Exorcists finally find our territory, and they send two scrawny human pups? Did you kids get lost looking for a ski resort? Or did they just send you here to be an easy meal?"
He wasn't wrong. We looked like nothing more than two run-of-the-mill teenagers. And I happened to be masking my divine aura to make it easier for them to come find us.
Shura's eyes narrowed. Her hand drifted lazily toward the snake tattoo on her forearm. "Want me to fillet the big one, or do you want the honors?"
"Yea, I could use the exercise," I said, walking a few paces forward.
I looked up at the towering monster and casually rolled my shoulders.
"Aye, buddy," I said calmly, my voice easily cutting through the howling wind. "Care to test your luck and take me on?"
The Oni leader stared at me for a split second before erupting into roaring laughter, joined by the dozens of other giants surrounding us.
"A challenge? From a human twig?" The leader grinned, revealing rows of jagged, yellow teeth. He hoisted his kanabo over his shoulder. "Alright, pup. I'll accept. Let's see if you survive the first swing!"
With terrifying speed for a creature his size, the leader lunged forward. He brought the massive iron kanabo crashing down toward my head with enough raw force to flatten a skyscraper.
I raised my left hand.
CLANG!
The impact was deafening. A massive shockwave erupted from my palm, blasting a perfect, hundred-yard crater into the snowstorm and violently blowing the blizzard away from us.
The Oni leader's eyes bulged in shock when he saw me standing perfectly still, my boots planted firmly in the bedrock beneath the snow.
"Is that truly all you've got?" I questioned as he tried to pull his weapon back. "If so, then allow me to show you what real strength looks like."
I squeezed my grip. The impossibly dense iron of the kanabo groaned, buckled, and then violently shattered into thousands of jagged splinters.
Before the giant could even process his weapon breaking, I leaped off the ground, clearing the distance to his face in a microsecond. I spun and delivered a devastating roundhouse kick directly to his massive jaw. The sickening CRACK of bone echoed through the mountains as the house-sized demon was lifted completely off his feet, sent tumbling backwards through the snow like a discarded toy.
He crashed hard, shaking the mountain, but I didn't give him time to recover.
I closed the distance instantly, dropping back down to the earth right as he tried to push himself up on all fours. I pulled my right arm back and drove a brutal blow directly into his liver.
The giant's eyes rolled back. All the breath left his lungs in a violently forceful wheeze, and he collapsed forward, his massive face planting directly into the snow at my feet.
The surrounding Oni stared in frozen, uncomprehending horror as their leader twitched helplessly on the ground before a weak-looking human.
Now that I've gotten their attention, it's time to make things official.
I stopped masking my energy. I let my four-colored halo flare to life above my head in a blinding array of colors as I unleashed a crushing wave of divine pressure.
THUD.
It happened all at once. Dozens of the giant demons were instantly forced to their knees, their faces slamming into the snow. The sheer, suffocating weight of my divine authority pressed down on them like gravity. The mountain itself groaned and cracked under the pressure.
With the entire rogue clan pinned to the ground, entirely unable to lift their heads, I casually walked over and took a seat on a snow-dusted boulder next to their fallen leader.
"Listen up," I projected, my voice echoing with divine resonance. "You all have two choices. You can stay up here in the freezing cold, hiding in these mountains until the True Cross Order eventually has enough and exterminates every last one of you."
I paused, letting the crushing weight of my aura sink in just a bit deeper.
"Or," I continued, "you can pledge yourselves to me. You can walk through my portal, train in my domain, grow stronger than you ever thought possible, and participate under my banner in the greatest war Gehenna and Assiah have ever seen."
In Oni culture, absolute strength was the only law that mattered, I mused internally. And I hadn't just beaten their leader; I had utterly humiliated him on his own terms, without even drawing a weapon, and was now pinning their entire army to the earth with my mere presence.
One by one, the massive demons struggled to shift their positions. Not to stand, but to fully prostrate themselves.
"We yield!" one of the larger lieutenants roared, his forehead pressed firmly into the snow. "We swear fealty to the King!"
"We swear!" the rest of the horde echoed, their voices a booming, unified rumble of absolute submission.
I smirked, the four-colored halo dimming slightly behind my head to ease the crushing gravity off their backs. I raised my hand, tapping into the spatial coordinates Mephisto had set up for me, and ripped open a massive, towering portal that led directly to the frozen courtyards of my pocket dimension.
"Stand up and march through," I commanded. "My First General is waiting for you on the other side. Do exactly as he says."
I watched as the battered leader was hauled to his feet by his subordinates, the massive army of giants solemnly filing into the portal to join my ranks.
"That takes care of the heavy infantry," Shura said, watching the large demons trudge into the portal. "Where to next?
"Now all that's left is to find my Second General," I said, tearing open another portal to get out of the frozen wasteland.
Moments Later...
We stepped out of the portal and into complete, suffocating darkness.
The air here was entirely different from the freezing mountains. It was stagnant, heavy, and smelled like centuries of undisturbed dust and decaying stone. According to the coordinates in Mephisto's dossier, we were standing at the bottom of a ruined cathedral somewhere deep in Europe.
I summoned a small orb of my blue flames, letting it float above my shoulder to illuminate the space. We were at the entrance of a massive, subterranean corridor built from reinforced obsidian and inscribed with thousands of overlapping holy wards.
"A Vatican black-site," Shura muttered, her eyes scanning the glowing, golden runes etched into the walls. "And a high-security one at that. Usually, you'd need a team of Exorcists and a week of chanting just to disarm the first layer of this hallway."
"We don't have a week," I said, stepping forward. "Just stay behind me."
I started walking down the corridor, and the ancient security measures instantly flared to life.
Golden barriers snapped into existence, blocking the path. Hidden pressure plates triggered mechanisms in the walls, and the entire ceiling began to weep highly pressurized holy water.
I didn't even break my stride. I let my platinum flames bleed off my body, expanding outward in a ten-foot radius.
The moment the holy barriers touched my fire, they conceptually melted, erasing themselves from existence as if they had never been cast. Hidden silver tripwires turned to instant ash before we could step on them, and the geysers of holy water evaporated into harmless steam before a single drop could touch Shura or me.
"Show-off," Shura laughed from behind me, highly amused by my blatant disregard for the Vatican's security as she casually stepped over a pile of melted silver mechanisms.
"I only do what I do best," I responded, continuing on.
At the end of the corridor, we reached a massive, reinforced iron door. The holy energy radiating from behind it was so thick it was almost nauseating. It was a suffocating pressure meant to constantly torture whatever was locked inside.
I kicked the door off its hinges. The heavy iron slab flew across the room, crashing against the far wall.
We stepped into the deepest, darkest cell. Suspended in the center of the room, bound by glowing holy stakes driven through its limbs and wrapped in massive enchanted chains, was a seraph-looking creature.
It looked angelic, but utterly terrifying. The creature had pristine, porcelain skin, but jutting from its back were multiple pairs of jagged, pitch-black wings made of shattered glass, bent at broken, unnatural angles. Floating above its head was a cracked halo, constantly leaking a toxic, tar-like black substance that sizzled as it hit the floor.
The demon wore a psychotic, wide-eyed grin that stretched way too far across its face, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth.
Shura wrinkled her nose. "What the hell is that thing? It smells like rotting holy water and centuries-old bad decisions."
It looks eerily similar to the homunculus form of Father from that Fullmetal Alchemist, I mused internally. And that's not all it looks like, it has the essence of Lucifer too. But why? Let's take a look, shall we?
I flared my flames, letting my divine sight read the residual energy surrounding the creature, instantly absorbing its history.
So this is Lucifer's great mistake, I thought, processing its lore. Before he realized human bodies decomposed too fast to hold supreme power, he tried to create a sub-king—a "Seraph" to rule in areas he wasn't at. He split off a massive chunk of his own soul, but it got mixed with chaotic human malice. And instead of a perfect servant, he got a being of blinding truth and absolute madness.
I continued to look deep into its history.
Lucifer hated it. Not because it was weak, but because it was a dark mirror. Where the King of Light deluded himself with his goal of destroying the world was for the "greater good," this demon openly mocked him, pointing out the hypocrisy of the Baals. It reveled in psychological torment and breaking egos. Lucifer locked him down here in the dark because the "perfect" King couldn't stand looking at his own failure… Crazy.
The demon slowly lifted its head.
Instead of cowering at the pressure my divine aura was giving off, or screaming in pain from the holy seals burning its flesh, it took one look at me and sensed the terrifying, bottomless depths of my power, and its unhinged smile grew even wider.
Then, its crazed eyes darted to Shura.
Without warning, a jagged, invisible pulse of concentrated mental light shot directly toward Shura's head—a conceptual attack designed to trap her in an illusion and force her to experience her worst traumas.
But I intercepted it by raising my left hand and pinching my fingers together.
CRACK.
That attack was similar to Lucifer too, I thought, shattering the light between my fingers like fragile glass. The psychic shards dissolved into harmless sparkles.
The creature's head tilted, its jagged wings twitching as it let out a raspy, echoing laugh. "Too fast..." it whispered, its voice a grating mix of divine resonance and demonic static. "Too bright... Another sun?"
My blue eyes shifted, glowing with a dangerous, piercing platinum hue. "Watch where you point that."
"Yea, mind your manners, freak," Shura snapped, glaring daggers at it.
The Seraph's smile faltered for a fraction of a second, replaced by a look of genuine, chaotic awe.
"I'll give you the same deal I gave the others," I said, walking right up to the chained monster. "You can stay chained to this wall and rot in the dark for another millennium. Or, you can fight for me."
The demon tilted its head, its broken halo leaking more black tar. "And why would I fight for you?" it hissed.
"Because I'm going to war against a group known as the Illuminati," I said, my voice dropping to a cold, absolute promise. "And they're led by none other than Lucifer."
That got the creature's attention immediately.
"Fight for me, and I'll give you a front-row seat to watch Lucifer suffer the most humiliating defeat of his immortal life."
That did it. The mention of breaking Lucifer's ego made the demon's eyes light up with manic glee. It gave a jerky, agonizing nod, acknowledging me as its new king.
"To see the 'Perfect King' bleed..." it rasped, shivering with twisted excitement. "Yes... I will carve a path of nightmares for you."
"Good choice," I said.
I stepped forward and placed my hand directly on the creature's chest.
My platinum flames washed over the Seraph. The holy stakes and enchanted chains instantly burned away into dust, but the fire didn't stop there. It seeped into his fractured soul, fixing what the King of Light couldn't.
The flames repaired the cracked halo, sealing it perfectly. The shattered, jagged glass wings reconstructed themselves, transforming into sleek, indestructible metallic blades that folded cleanly behind his back. Most importantly, my fire burned through his brain, eradicating the chaotic, agonizing madness that had plagued him since birth.
When the flames cleared, the leaky tar was gone. His psychotic, wide-eyed grin shifted into a calm, terrifyingly cold stare. He was no longer a broken, mad experiment. He was now a Divine Dark Archangel. He still possessed all of his lethal psychological and hard-light powers, but now, he wielded them with the razor-sharp precision of a master executioner.
The reborn creature stepped down onto the floor, flexing his metallic wings. He dropped to one knee, bowing his head in perfect, disciplined reverence.
"I am remade, my King," he spoke, his voice now smooth and chillingly clear. "But I am without a title. Bless me with a name."
Shura, who had been leaning casually against the cell wall with her arms crossed, looked the terrifying archangel up and down.
"He looks like a messenger of death," she mused. "Why not Malachi?"
"Hmm, not bad," I acknowledged, then looked down at the kneeling ex-Seraph.
"You used to be his mistake," I told him, my voice echoing with finality. "Now, you're my messenger. When they see you coming, they'll know exactly who sent you. Your name is Malachi."
Malachi rose to his feet, his metallic wings gleaming in the dim light. "As you command."
I raised my hand, ripping open a portal back to my pocket dimension.
The pieces were all on the board. The frontline was secured, and my Generals were armed. It was now time to gear up for the start of this war.
.
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Sorry it took so long, here's chapter 32.