Novel Full Chapter 672: Demons
Chapter 672: Demons
Far away from Outpost 7, was a place where the world burned.
The sky was red. There was no sun. Only a restless glow that seemed to seep from the sky itself, as if the heavens were made of slow flowing magma.
The air was hot enough to sting the lungs.
On a jagged plain of black rock, a crowd of creatures moved.
They did not resemble any animal. Their skin ranged from charred black to sickly violet and dull crimson. Some walked on two legs, some on four, some slithered, some crawled. A few had wings that twitched and flexed in the dry heat.
To the eyes of an ordinary human, there was only one word for them.
Demons.
They hunted. They fought. They traded roars and shrieks in a language of growls and guttural sounds. Smaller ones scattered when larger forms passed. Predators watched other predators, waiting for the slightest sign of weakness.
This was daily life here.
Near the base of a broken mountain, a dark maw opened in the rock. A cave.
Inside, the heat grew worse.
Molten veins of lava pulsed in the walls, casting flickering light over the rough interior. At the end of the cavern, a crude throne had been carved into an outcropping of rock. Skulls, broken armor, and twisted metal ornaments surrounded it in scattered piles.
On that throne sat a demon.
Huge. Humanoid in shape.
Its shoulders were broad enough to put an ogre to shame. Its skin was dark red. Two horns curled back from its forehead, black and ridged like blades that had grown from bone. Yellow eyes burned in its skull, pupils thin and sharp.
When it shifted, the rock under it creaked.
This was no common beast.
This was a Demon Lord.
One of the rulers of this place.
This place was not simply a world. It was one part of something far larger.
Hell.
Hell was not a single world. Hell was many worlds stacked together.
To be fair, one could call it a universe of its own.
Hell had one hundred worlds.
And everywhere, on every floor, demons lived.
Each floor had its own ecology, its own hierarchy, its own brutal society.
On the lower floors, demons were weaker and more savage. Imp like creatures, twisted hounds and small winged fiends.
Higher up, things changed.
From a certain point onward, true rulers began to appear.
Demon Lords.
They were not born on the first floor. A few rumors claimed that fallen lords sometimes crashed down to the lower levels, but native Demon Lords began to appear only after a certain threshold.
Above the twentieth floor, some worlds already had them.
Above the thirtieth floor, their presence was guaranteed.
From that point on, any floor could be under the dominion of one or several Demon Lords, beings who had risen above the common infernal masses. They held territories and commanded armies.
Each step upward through the floors increased the pressure.
Demons on the fortieth floor were far stronger than those on the twentieth.
Demons on the sixtieth would crush those below without effort.
And the Demon Lords followed the same rule.
Low floor Demon Lords ruled over hordes that looked impressive but were, by the standards of Hell, still weak. Compared to the higher realms they were nothing more than local chiefs.
Mid floor Demon Lords were true rulers. Their names carried weight across multiple floors. Their power was great enough that even among demons they were spoken of in grudging respect.
Above them stood the High Demon Lords.
Some called themselves Demon Prince.
Each of these beings was strong enough to annihilate worlds on the lower floors if given the time and freedom to do so. Their existence distorted their surroundings. Their mere presence twisted the land.
Above even these High Demon Lords, the so called Demon Princes, there were beings that almost no one in the lower worlds of Hell ever witnessed.
The Seven Demon Kings.
Known collectively as the Seven Sins.
Pride
Wrath
Greed
Envy
Lust
Gluttony
Sloth
Seven thrones scattered across the highest layers of Hell. Seven monsters who had climbed beyond the level of ordinary Demon Princes, each embodying one sin so completely that their existence bent reality around it.
And above even them, on the final floor, was something else.
The Demon God.
But on the thirtieth floor, the Demon Lord sitting upon the crude throne was not thinking about kings or princes. He was thinking about himself.
His eyes burned with awareness.
He was alive again.
He flexed his claws slowly.
He had resurrected recently.
A moment passed, and he let out a slow breath, tasting ash and molten air on his tongue.
In fact, this was not his first time resurrecting. Far from it.
Demons never truly died. Their souls were bound to Hell, dragged back by the fabric of the realm itself. But ironically, the demons that died the most, the ones that died the loudest and most violently, were not the weaklings.
It was the lower Demon Lords.
From the thirtieth floor upward, resurrection was almost a requirement. To rise higher, one needed to die or to have died at least once. Only then could the threads of Hell accept them as candidates for ascension.
Of course, this came with a cost.
Lower Demon Lords were not easy to kill, but compared to the monsters above, they might as well have been newborns. There were many beings powerful enough to hunt them. So many, in fact, that entire groups waited on certain floors for the precise purpose of killing resurrecting Demon Lords the moment they reappeared.
It was miserable.
A humiliating cycle.
Resurrect.
Killed.
Resurrect again.
Killed again.
Over and over, until either the Demon Lord clawed upward by sheer stubborn survival or collapsed into permanent oblivion.
This Demon Lord knew that routine very well.
Which is why his eyes narrowed now.
Because this time, when he resurrected on his old throne, the cavern was empty.
No hunters stood around.
No blades waited to pierce him.
No ambushers ready to tear his head off before his consciousness settled.
Silence.
Heat.
Stillness.
This had only happened a few times in the last several hundred years.
He slowly rose from the throne. The molten veins in the walls pulsed like the heartbeat of Hell itself. He lifted his head, sniffing the air, searching for traces of the killers who usually waited for him.
Nothing.
A rare and dangerous thought entered his mind.
Now that he had reappeared, anyone from the lower floors would struggle to descend. His presence would block the path downwards to all but the strongest.
That thought should have made him wary.
Instead, he chuckled.
A low, rolling sound echoed through the cavern, making the lesser demons outside flinch.
He did not know what was happening above. He did not know why the hunters who usually waited to tear him apart were missing.
What he did know was simple.
If his time on this floor was going to be short again, then he would use it.
Enjoy it.
“It would be a waste,” he rumbled, voice like grinding boulders, “to spend a fresh life sitting here.”
His clawed hand tightened on the armrest, and he pushed himself fully to his feet.
He thought of the floors below.
The pubs.
It had been a long time since he visited.
Too long.
His tongue dragged across sharp teeth as another hunger stirred.
It was one thing to tear apart lesser demons. Their blood was hot and bitter, useful, but ordinary. What lingered in his memory was different.
The blood of other races.
Mortals dragged from conquered worlds. Creatures from distant realms. Every race carried a different taste, a different weight of power and soul.
And among them, one race stood out in his memory.
Elves.
Their blood was bright. Their flesh was firm. Their souls burned clean and sharp. Among demons, there were endless arguments about what tasted best, what gave the greatest rush of stolen power.
Elves were always in the top three.
And in his personal opinion, they were the best in everything.
Fine slaves.
Fine trophies.
Fine meals.
His lips curled into a cruel smile.
“Perhaps,” he murmured, “I can find an elf again.”
He stepped down from the throne. The cavern trembled faintly under his weight. Outside, the demons on the plain felt his presence move and scattered out of instinct.
If something stronger had come from above, if some great will was pressing down on the thirtieth floor, then it would reveal itself in time.
Until then, he would walk his domain.
Drink in the pubs of the lower floors.
Crush whatever dared to stand in his way.
And if fate was feeling generous, he would taste elven blood again before someone killed him for the next resurrection.
Meanwhile in Aurora, ignorant to what was happening in Hell, many academies were ready to send their students there.
Michael on his end had already placed his robe in his storage space and had his black armor in full view.