Beyond the Apocalypse-Chapter 1069: Surrounded by Devil Lords

Each of the Devil Lords radiated a cold, hateful aura that distorted the space around their forms. Their presences pressed down like crushing gravity, warping the air and poisoning the land beneath their feet.

Once, bringing even two of these Lords together would have inevitably ended in bloodshed. Devils were creatures of ambition and treachery, and cooperation had always been temporary at best.

But times had changed.

Devils were pragmatic above all else.

They had learned from the fate of the First Layer. They knew that standing alone meant annihilation. If they wished to avoid being slaughtered as their predecessors had been, they had only one option—to stand together.

They were in the midst of discussing their plans when, without warning, every Devil Lord froze.

Their eyes sharpened simultaneously as they rose into the air above the city.

What they saw caused a rare flicker of confusion to cross their faces.

Across the decaying plains marched the forces of the Six Sun Alliance.

Five Sovereigns advanced at the forefront, their auras blazing like suns amid the corruption of Hell. Behind them followed thousands of Legends and hundreds of thousands of Sages, their combined presence shaking the very foundations of the layer. The ground trembled beneath their march, and even the bells of the city faltered for a brief moment.

Confusion turned quickly into suspicion.

According to their intelligence, the Six Sun Alliance possessed a master strategist capable of complex, layered warfare. A direct frontal assault like this was reckless—borderline idiotic. There was something they were missing. Some hidden blade, some unseen calculation.

But they had no time to think.

With no hesitation, the Devil Lords activated the city’s defenses. A massive force field surged to life, sealing the city within a translucent dome of distorted space. Across the streets and towers, ancient runes ignited one after another, flooding the city with crimson and violet light.

Excitement spread through the ranks of Devils.

They believed these runes would unleash a power great enough to incinerate their enemies.

What they did not know—what none of them realized—was that their own lives were the fuel.

The eyes of the Devil Lords burned with thrill and savage excitement as they contemplated the power they were about to unleash.

Billions of low-tier Devils—mere ants in their eyes—still had larger souls. With that offering, the ritual would generate a catastrophic surge of infernal power, enough to annihilate armies and shake Sovereigns themselves.

Some of the Devil Lords even dared to imagine the impossible.

If fate favored them, perhaps they could cripple some of the Sovereigns of the Six Sun Alliance. Killing the White Death outright was beyond their expectations—they were not fools—but weakening him? That was another matter entirely.

If they could wound him severely enough, the Lords of the Ninth Layer would not hesitate for a single heartbeat to seize that opportunity. After all, Devils thrived on opportunism.

Everything was unfolding better than they could ever imagine.

Then it happened.

"RUMBLE!"

The entire city—gargantuan beyond measure—shuddered violently. Towers groaned as if screaming in pain, chains rattled like dying beasts, and the marble streets cracked open with thunderous force.

The Devil Lords froze, confusion flashing across their faces. This was not part of the ritual. The sacrificial array had not yet reached activation.

Before they could probe the disturbance with their souls, the earth itself betrayed them.

The ground shattered.

From the depths below, golden weapons erupted skyward.

Not dozens.

Not hundreds.

But thousands upon thousands of radiant god weapons burst forth in unison, each one blazing with divine authority.

Spears, swords, halberds, axes—every form imaginable—tore through the city like a divine storm. Wherever they passed, low-tier Devils were obliterated instantly, their bodies and souls shredded into nothingness before they could even scream.

The weapons did not stop.

They pierced upward through every layer of the City of Unkept Promises, annihilating structures, tearing apart defensive arrays, and carving radiant paths of destruction through the infernal stronghold. Towers collapsed. Chains snapped. Runes shattered as if made of glass.

"God weapons! How is this possible?!"

The roar came from one of the Devil Lords—a towering cyclopean figure with metallic skin and molten veins pulsing beneath the surface. His single eye trembled with disbelief.

They recognized the attack.

Their intelligence reports had warned them. One of the Sovereigns of the Six Sun Alliance possessed the ability to summon god weapons capable of killing Lords. They had accounted for that threat.

What they had not accounted for was this.

The city’s barrier was supposed to be impenetrable. Countless seals, layered formations, and invisible shields interlocked across every inch of space. Infiltration should have been impossible—even for a master of the Law of Space like the Xaos King.

That was their fatal mistake.

Their understanding of Vlad was based solely on what he had revealed in the First Layer of Hell. They had never witnessed his Ultimate Form. They had no knowledge of the Quantum Eye, nor of its terrifying ability to bypass any shield, formation, or spatial restriction.

Right now, Vlad stood beneath the shattered ground, his presence hidden perfectly. His eyes were cold, devoid of emotion, as he continued to summon and release god weapons into the heart of the city.

With his full power, Vlad could have concentrated the full might of Heaven’s Gate and erased several Devil Lords in an instant. But he did not.

Doing so would expose too much.

For now, he displayed only the level of strength Overlord had revealed during the First Layer’s conquest. Enough to devastate, but not enough to reveal the full extent of their trump cards.

The Devil Lords recovered quickly. Devils did not survive for eons by being slow.

They sensed the anomaly beneath the city.

Without hesitation, they unleashed a barrage of spells—void lances, infernal storms, curses woven from hatred and law-breaking power. The ground exploded as their attacks tore downward, ripping apart layers of stone and space itself.

Cold light flashed in Vlad’s eyes.

"I would have preferred to kill more," he thought calmly. "But nearly every low-tier Devil is already dead. The god weapons crippled the city’s defenses and formations. This operation is a success."

Just as the earth above him began to collapse completely, another presence stirred within his soul.

Overlord emerged.

In the next instant, the ground shattered entirely, revealing their figures to the ten Devil Lords hovering above the ruined city.

For a brief moment, silence reigned.

The Devil Lords stared in disbelief. They could not comprehend how these two had reached the heart of the city without triggering a single alarm. But understanding was irrelevant now.

Their killing intent exploded.

The pressure of ten Devil Lords locking onto a single target was enough to crush mountains and shatter wills. Even beings of immense power would tremble beneath such murderous focus.

But the eyes of the True Depravita of Wrath and the True Depravita of Pride held only cold disdain.

No hesitation.

No fear.

In perfect synchronization, they moved.

Energy surged.

Swords appeared in their hands.

And in the next heartbeat, the two True Depravitas launched themselves toward the Devil Lords.

The True Depravita of Pride tightened his grip around Gram. With a single, decisive motion, divine fire erupted from the blade, roaring like a newborn star as it surged through the massive breach the Devil Lords had torn into the ground.

The inferno expanded violently, filling the underground space with searing light and halting the advance of the enemy in an instant. Even Devil Lords were forced to retreat, their bodies screaming under the purifying heat.

Before the Devil Lords could even comprehend what had happened, the battlefield shifted again. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

The True Depravita of Wrath appeared.

Vlad materialized directly before one of the Devil Lords—Baalreth, the cyclopean tyrant. His towering form was a grotesque fusion of metal and flesh, his body split by glowing fissures from which molten lava pulsed like blood.

His single eye burned like a miniature sun, radiating hatred and violence as he raised his massive metallic club, intent on crushing Vlad in a single blow.

He never got the chance.

Vlad swung the Quietus Sword with all his power.

A massive arc of annihilating force tore through the air, silent yet absolute. It struck Baalreth square in the chest, reinforced metal, and sent his enormous body hurtling backward, crashing into the ground with enough force to shatter entire sections of the city.

Less than a second later, danger flared again.

Two Devil Lords emerged behind Vlad in perfect coordination.

One possessed a serpentine body crowned with a thousand whispering mouths, each murmuring curses and venomous incantations. The other was skeletal and draped in rusted funeral chains, his presence draining heat and vitality from the air itself. They were Zeraphine and Morvane the Pallid.

Without hesitation, they unleashed torrents of poison and suffocating miasma toward Vlad’s back, the twin attacks converging in a lethal spiral.

But they never reached him.

Overlord appeared behind the True Depravita of Wrath in a flash of golden light.

Gram swept through the air once more, and divine fire erupted outward, incinerating the poisonous streams and dispersing the miasma as if it had never existed. The flames forced Zeraphine and Morvane back, scorching their forms and disrupting their momentum.

The two True Depravitas stood back to back, weapons in hand, their presence radiating cold dominance as the Devil Lords surrounded them.