God Ash: Remnants of the fallen.-Chapter 914: For the Curtain Call, The End of the World as we Know It (5).

Chapter 914: For the Curtain Call, The End of the World as we Know It (5).

Lukas sucked in a deep breath.

Then he frowned.

"Disgusting."

The air smelled and tasted tainted.

Foul.

A faint, lingering scent of blood clung to the wind, reaching deep into his lungs with every breath he took.

"How ready are we?" He turned to Abigail, with his eyes narrowed and a grimace wrinkling his brows.

"As ready as we possibly can be under these circumstances."

"Perhaps we should stall for now to see how the situation unfolds?" Gilead suddenly said.

Lukas shook his head,

"No. I don’t think the Blood Moon Sect have the numbers to stave off all the Devils. If we wait too long, whatever advantage they might have had will be swept away. If my guess is right, I believe the two leaders might try to duke it out." He said, a sharp gleam flashing through his eyes.

"Even if their leaders take each other out, that doesn’t mean the battle ends, does it? Edward, the Sky Ward asked with a frown.

Lukas shook his head,

"Yes and no."

He went silent for a moment, then pointed at the sky,

"What exactly do you think is the basis of this battle?"

Gilead frowned, "The basis of the battle?"

Lukas nodded,

"Yes. The true determinants..."

Seeing their faces turning up blank, Lukas explained in a low voice.

"The Will of the Celestials. In other words, control."

He pointed at the crimson moon,

"The Will of Blood Moon Goddess. It siphons like life of the creatures down below while enriching the bodies and spirits of her followers,"

Then he pointed at the Devil Spire,

"And the Will of the Devils, twisting and reforming the land in corruption. They are both creating and reshaping the world to their advantage. It is a clash of divine wills. "

Gilead hummed,

"In essence, you are saying that the most powerful Devil within the Spire is what we must destroy to end this war?"

Lukas laughed mirthfully, "Of course not. If we want to put an end to the war, we also have to destroy the Blood Moon Sect, and that happens only by killing the matriarch. But for the Devils, we have to take the entire damned thing down."

Gilead sighed,

"The {Broodmothers}."

Lukas nodded, his lips curling upwards into a bitter smile,

"The Devils are attacking us as well as feeding and protecting those {Broodmothers}. In return, the {Broodmothers} birth new Devils and spread the miasma of Devil Essence more and more. If we can destroy them, the Devils lose their advantage. Just like last time..." Lukas trailed off at the end.

"There’s just one tiny problem... How do we get to the Devil Spire without getting embroiled in the battle ourselves?" Abigail asked with a frown.

Lukas shrugged,

"I have no idea."

Abigail’s expression fell.

"Then, how about we make use of the chaos to sneak in and destroy the place from the inside out?" Gilead suddenly suggested.

Lukas frowned, "How the hell do we do that?"

Gilead went silent for a moment.

Then his gaze turned towards his shadow.

His eyes widened.

***

Off in a distance part of the City...

Another war raged on strong, turning the earth inside out and boiling the skies.

That portion of the human army had already retreated back to Valestorm, leaving behind just a small squad consisting of only around twenty humans.

Despite this, Greotes wore a furiously dark look as he glared down from on high.

"How!"

Hordes of {Zombies} poured forth.

However, they were torn to pieces very quickly by the unstoppable human grinding machine.

Even the Devils he sent forward stood no chance.

If he had his way, he would have simply given the order to push past them and reach the other side of the land bridge so they could infiltrate the humans from behind.

However, even that plan has been destroyed when a large explosion had rocked through the world and the bridge, had crumbled down into the abyssal chasms.

Now, the group of humans were stuck in this side, but so were they.

In his anger, he had ordered his army to crush them. However, they were being cut down very quickly.

Even those from range were being sniped and taken down by the humans.

’Humans... Humans!’

They were supposed to be lesser creatures!

Granted the path to the zenith of power was still long and the potential of Devils would not begin to show so early, that didn’t mean humans should be able to beat them back.

However, this was no ordinary beating back.

This was a massacre.

His fog of poisonous miasma coupled with Devil Essence had been neutralized so it was doing little to no damage on these few humans.

Being weak in face to face confrontations, Greotes knew jumping into such a battle alone would spell the end of him.

’Still I can’t just let this happen. If this keeps up, I’ll send up dead either way.’

If Abaloth heard he had just let theier forces get slaughtered, death would be the least of his worries.

The losses they had suffered were already beyond unacceptable.

Suddenly the space behind him crackled and tore open.

Greotes grimaced and turned around.

Then a vicious grin appeared in his face,

"You wretched thing! What took you so long?!" He barked.

"Shut it, you tentacled monster. I’ve come to fish you out of the deep shit you’ve gotten stuck in." Dyrog said with a snort.

"Now then, what do we have here?" The {Hellsky Rider} muttered as he scanned the surrounding area with narrowed eyes.

"The humans have retreated?" A terrifying looking Devil had had stepped out of the rift alongside Dyrog said in a voice that sounded like shattering glass.

An enormous {Greater Flame Devil} stretched into full height behind them. Then it spoke, voice like rumbling thunder,

"A small pile of insects? That is what made you bring me here? Greotes... Do you wish to perish?!"

Greotes spat angrily,

"You fools! Don’t underestimate these bunch. They are really troublesome."

His eyes narrowed dangerously as he spat,

"That one with the large sword singlehandedly killed Inixth."

Dyrog turned to him, a flash of excitement on his face,

"Inixth was killed by a single human?"

Greotes nodded,

"That is the same human I encountered outside the city some time ago. The one that almost killed me."

Dyrog frowned,

"But I thought Inixth took care of him."

"He did," Greotes said.

"But he’s come back to life, somehow."

Dyrog clicked his tongue,

"Interesting. Then he can’t be fully human then. A Beastman perhaps?"

"Fool! Do you know any Beastman race with inbuilt immortality?!" Xartivan, the {Greater Flame Devil} said as it pulled out an enormous sword the size of a pillar from its spine.

The surface of the sword glowed like flowing molten steel.

"No. He from what I can tell, he might have some Demon blood."

The faces of all the Devils fell,

"Demon, huh... Now that is certainly interesting. I am intrigued! I wonder what this Demon Boy can do!" Dyrog said solemnly.

The {Hellsky Rider} flapped his wings as he rose into the sky.

With a wave of his hand, a terrifying looking glaive burning with a viscous dark flame appeared in his grasp.

The other Devils that had come were also Tier 2 Devils; levels above the regular Tier 1s the humans had been battling up until now.

They were bound to give them a harder time.

Noticing the flunctuations in space, Cain was aware of their presence from the moment of their arrival.

He shared the information with Hunter and asked him to share it with everyone else as he sent off a brutal swing that cut a Devil standing before him diagonally in two.

Wiping the black ichor splattered onto his face. He grumbled faintly,

"And just when we were making quick work of them too."

Having fallen into a rhythm in the depths of battle and bloodshed, he had long since lost count of just how many accursed Devils he had felled and struck down.

He was constantly switching between ranged and melee weapons as well as casting spells to his victims were littered all over the place.

A field of death had been established around them, such that the next line of Devils seemed a little hesitant to step forward.

Although they technically could not die, the Devils still felt pain.

And with each Devil, the memories of the lives they lived would vanished as their souls were washed clean in the waters of the Othershore.

The ring of death formed from the corpses of so many Devils was forcefully ripped open as a large squad of Devils, largely consisting of Tier 2 Devils cut through.

Behind them were the rest.

Like wiped the sweat and blood of his forehead,

"Well...this certainly isn’t looking too good, is it?"

They had exhausted a significant portion of their energy.

The original plan was to destroy the bridge and quickly head back, but theyr had unilaterally decided to take down as many Devils as the possibly could before leaving.

He turned to Cain.

"So? What now?"

They could stay and fight.

But that could lead to unforeseen, and undesirable outcomes.

The best thing to do would be to retreat, and since he was their only way out, the decision fell on him.

Cain huffed.

He was not stubborn and unreasonable.

He sighed,

"We’ll make our retreat."

Just as he was about to open up a spatial rift to initiate {Spatial Jump}, his body froze.

’What—’

His face went pale and he glanced down.

For a moment, he doubted his eyes.

His very own shadow was coiled around his body. It had betrayed him!

Before he could properly process what was going on, the dark tendrils of his shadow tightened and quickly dragged him in, leaving everyone around wide-eyed and stumped.

"W-what the hell?!" Luke muttered in shock.

Perhaps he just had an inclination or maybe a revelation, but Steve turned around just in time to catch the last glimpse of Cain’s head disappear into his own shadow.

His face went pale as an expression of understanding and then of unbridled rage settled on it.

"You damned wit—!"

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