I Regressed With a 10,000x God-Tier Multiplier-Chapter 41: Divine Projection
The golden sunlight over the Scourgelands did not last long.
Lucifer stood on the cracked balcony of the ruined fortress. He watched his Grand Army secure the valley below.
The Awakened mercenaries were pitching tents and sorting their massive piles of undead loot. The Aether-Steel Dragoons formed an impenetrable perimeter of black metal.
It was a perfect, organized forward operating base.
Then, the air pressure in the valley suddenly dropped.
It did not feel like that of the Soul Siphons. This was not a spell pulling mana. It felt like the laws of the world suddenly paused. The wind stopped. Even the soft rustle of the new green grass went silent at once.
Lucifer frowned. His eyes snapped upward.
The clear blue sky above the fortress began to twist. It warped, bending light like thick, broken glass.
A deep, powerful hum vibrated through Lucifer’s bones, as if he could feel it instead of hear it.
"Elara," Lucifer called out. His voice was sharp.
The Fallen Valkyrie stepped out onto the balcony. She looked up at once. Her golden eyes widened with shock. She gripped her silver spear tightly with both hands.
"The veil between realms is tearing," Elara stated. Her voice was tight. "The magical fallout from the Cataclysm Orb combined with the death of the Lich Lord weakened the boundary."
A loud, tearing sound ripped through the sky. It was like a huge piece of thick cloth being torn straight down the middle.
The blue sky split open.
A jagged, glowing tear, hundreds of feet long split the sky. It wasn’t a portal to another place. It was a rift leading straight to the Divine Realms.
From the center of the rift, a massive, horrifying hand pushed through.
[System Warning: Catastrophic Anomaly Detected!]
[Entity Classification: Divine Projection (Avatar)]
[Name: Zerathis, The Rot Lord.]
[Status: Attempting forced entry into the Mortal Plane.]
Lucifer stared at the massive, rotting hand gripping the edges of the rift tear.
In his past life, Zerathis hadn’t appeared for another five years. The Rot Lord was an ancient god of decay, the patron deity of the cult Lucifer had just wiped out.
Zerathis usually sent his high priests to do his bidding. He rarely manifested directly.
But Lucifer had destroyed his High Executioner, broken his Altar of Decay, freed his controlled Star-Kissed Elves, and killed his Legendary Lich Lord in a single afternoon. The Warlord had stepped into a god’s domain.
A wave of pure, unfiltered divine fear washed out from the rift.
It was called a Fear Aura. It was a passive defense mechanism used by deities to crush mortal minds before a fight even began. It hit the Grand Army in the valley like a physical hammer.
Down below, the cheering mercenaries stopped immediately.
Men and women who had just laughed off an ambush of ten thousand Undead Knights collapsed to their knees. They dropped their swords.
Some began to cry uncontrollably, clawing at their armor. Others just stared up at the rotting hand in the sky, their minds breaking under the overwhelming terror of its presence.
Even the hardened Crimson Rose scouts stumbled, dropping their bows. Lady Scarlett fought to stay in the saddle of her dire wolf, but the massive beast whimpered and pressed its belly against the dirt, entirely paralyzed.
"Hold the line!" Lucifer roared.
He pushed his own Sovereign’s Weight out, trying to create a buffer over the army. It helped slightly, stabilizing the Vanguard captains, but it was not enough to counter a god’s aura.
Zerathis forced his arm through the rift up to the elbow.
The Divine Avatar was trying to pull itself entirely into the mortal world. If the Rot Lord managed to manifest his full body, the entire northern continent would turn into a dead, rotting swamp within hours.
Lucifer stood on the balcony. He did not tremble.
His soul was older than his body. He had spent years fighting Abyssal lords and watching the world burn. The Fear Aura of a rotting god washed over his dark armor and slid off his mind like water off oil.
"He can’t fully enter!" Elara shouted over the ripping roar of the rift. She planted her boots firmly on the balcony, her golden wings flaring to resist the fear. "The laws of this plane are rejecting his form! He’s projecting an Avatar!"
"It is still too big," Lucifer said coldly.
He analyzed the massive, glowing arm. The Avatar was a giant of rotting flesh and divine light, equivalent to Level 100.
Lucifer was capped at Level 50, the mortal maximum. Even with the Carnage Core’s True Damage, he couldn’t physically reach the rift, and his magic alone wasn’t strong enough to cut through a godly limb.
Mortals could not kill gods directly. It was a hard rule of the system.
But mortals could definitely cheat.
Lucifer turned away from the sky. He looked at Sarah.
The Star-Touched Oracle was leaning heavily against the doorway. She was trembling violently, her face pale.
The Divine Fear Aura was agonizing for her because her Oracle sight forced her to see the true, incomprehensible scale of the Rot Lord’s power.
"Sarah," Lucifer commanded.
Sarah blinked. She turned her eyes focused entirely on Lucifer’s face. She saw the Warlord standing completely unbroken against the crushing divine pressure.
"I need your staff," Lucifer ordered.
Sarah did not hesitate. She pushed herself off the stone wall and walked forward. She handed him the Scepter of Cosmic Alignment.
The moment Lucifer wrapped his iron gauntlet around the smooth ashwood shaft, the violent purple orb at the top flared. It recognized the Warlord’s immense, compressed mana core.
Lucifer felt the 500-point Intelligence boost and the massive mana regeneration spike instantly.
He didn’t use the Scepter to cast a spell at the giant hand. He used it as a beacon.
Lucifer drove the base of the Scepter hard into the cracked floor of the balcony.
"Elara," Lucifer said, his eyes locking onto the Valkyrie. "In the Divine Realms, the gods fight each other for territory and followers. Correct?"
"Yes," Elara confirmed, her golden eyes narrowing as she realized his plan. "The heavens are a constant battlefield. The Lumina Order’s patron, Solaris, hates Zerathis. The Nature Spirits despise the Rot Lord."
"And right now, Zerathis is funneling a massive portion of his divine power into forcing his Avatar through this tiny tear in reality," Lucifer stated.
His voice was a low. "His true body in the Divine Realm is exposed. He is distracted."
Lucifer gripped the Scepter with both hands.
He channeled his Void Arcanist magic directly into the mythic staff. He used the Void to bend space, creating a massive, hyper-compressed magical frequency.
He used the Scepter of Cosmic Alignment to broadcast a signal.
[System: Cosmic Beacon Activated.]
[Broadcasting Dimensional Coordinates.....]
[Target Audience: Hostile Divine Entities.]
The result was instantaneous.
High above the Scourgelands, the massive, rotting arm protruding from the rift suddenly convulsed.
The energy around the rift flared violently, then flickered. The deafening tearing sound of the sky was replaced by a deep, resonant boom like a holy war exploding in another dimension.
"RRAAAAGH!"
The voice of Zerathis echoed through the rift. It was not a roar of triumph. It was a scream of absolute, panicked agony.
The massive hand released its grip on the edge of the spatial tear. The arm jerked backward, trying to retreat into the Divine Realm. The blinding, pure divine light fused with the rotting flesh began to sputter and die.
"His true body is under attack!" Elara shouted triumphantly. Her golden wings flared bright, feeding off the sudden weakness of the dark god.
The Fear Aura covering the valley shattered instantly.
Down in the Scourgelands, the ten thousand Awakened mercenaries gasped for air. The crushing psychological terror vanished.
Men and women who had been weeping in the mud seconds ago suddenly staggered to their feet, grabbing their swords and looking up in shock.
The massive, rotting arm was rapidly shrinking.
As Zerathis pulled his divine power back to defend himself in his own realm, the Avatar projection in the mortal world lost its mass.
The arm went from the size of a castle to the size of a cathedral, then to the size of a large tower.
It was losing its Level 100 status. The connection to the god’s main power source was severed.
Lucifer watched the shrinking projection. The Warlord did not plan to let the Avatar escape.
"He is localized," Lucifer stated coldly. He ripped the Scepter of Cosmic Alignment out of the floor and tossed it back to Sarah.
He drew his longsword. The Carnage Core on his hip flared a blinding, violent ruby red.
[System: Target Downgraded.]
[Entity: Zerathis’s Avatar (Level 50 - Legendary)]
The Avatar was no longer a god. It was just a massive, rotting monster stuck halfway through a closing spatial rift. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖
"Elara," Lucifer commanded. He pointed his
glowing blade straight up at the shrinking arm. "Ground it."
