Chapter 259 A Miracle
After Seras screamed as her water broke, the sound travelled all the way to the ears of Lucifer and Abaddon.
When the sin of pride realized that he had been watched this entire time, he sneered evilly in contempt.
“You brought your women to this fight? As always I am detested by your reliance on-“
“Be silent.”
Lucifer turned back towards Abaddon but he looked… different?
For starters, he had returned back to his normal appearance, and his hair and eyes were now shining with a blinding golden light.
But despite his godly appearance, his body had formed golden cracks as if it were breaking down from the inside.
“What are you…?” Lucifer asked in genuine confusion.
The longer he looked at Abaddon, the more he felt like he was unqualified to do so.
His presence was somehow nonexistent and yet… boundless.
He watched with wide eyes as Abaddon placed a hand on the spearhead embedded within his abdomen and began pulling it out of his body.
Lucifer currently had both hands on the spear and was using all of his strength to hold it in place.
And yet he was still being easily pushed back by Abaddon.
“I am out of time… I can only hope that she’ll forgive me for making her wait.”
“What are you-“
In the next moment, something incredibly strange happened.
Abaddon raised his hand and made a simple vertical slash in the air with his finger.
It wasn’t an exaggerated movement.
Nor was it executed at a speed that no mortal man could hope to accomplish.
Lucifer watched everything that happened without missing a step, and he still couldn’t fathom why he was suddenly cut into two.
He couldn’t move, think, or even utter a single word.
The sin of pride simply held a permanent shocked expression as the two sides of his body finally separated from each other.
CRACK!
Just as Lucifer’s body hit the ground a rip in reality appeared directly in front of Abaddon.
The power he was using now was far too much for this world to handle, and as a result it was now on the verge of collapse.
‘Damn it… ah.’ Abaddon raised his hand to try to repair the rip, only to realize that his arm had fallen off and turned into a golden dust.
And he wasn’t regenerating.
The cracks across his body had begun spreading at an alarmingly rapid rate, and it was very clear that use of these powers had only exacerbated his deterioration.
He didn’t know what was going on or why he suddenly had all of this new power.
But for now at least, he wasn’t in a place to question it.
Seras had pleaded for him desperately, and there was nothing that could stop him from answering her call.
Using his other arm, he made a closing gesture with his hand and forced the rip shut.
After doing so, his remaining arm fell off just like the first and became no more than dust in the wind.
‘It doesn’t matter, I have to go.’
Abaddon did not even bother to absorb the sin of pride as his body became a blur and he vanished from the battlefield.
Whoosh!
In the blink of an eye, Abaddon appeared among his wives and Lillian on top of the hill.
“Kyaa!”
“H-Honey, what’s happening to you?”
“Why aren’t you healing!?”
Abaddon wanted to lie and say that he was okay, but he honestly could not force his words to come out.
He knew full well that he probably wouldn’t be okay.
“Girls… I-“
“AGHH!!!”
Seras let out a deeply disturbing scream as her hand went to her stomach, and now a small trail of blood was running from between her legs.
Abaddon immediately got onto his knees and went beside her, while wearing his best gentle and reassuring smile.
“I’m sorry, my love. I was a bit late, wasn’t I?”
“I-It’s okay! I’m just happy that you’re here now! I-I’m sorry for being so-”
“Don’t. I know how important this is to you, and there is nothing you need to apologize for.”
Abaddon could not hold his wife’s hand since he no longer had any of his own, but he intertwined his tail with hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
“Just take a deep breathe and push, okay? Something like this is nothing for you.”
Seras nodded with tears in her eyes and took several deep breaths before she began to push.
Lisa and Eris sat between her legs with a blanket and prepared to receive the baby, while the rest of the wives waited off to the side with clear anxiety on their faces.
“AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”
Seras screamed out with all of her might and pushed as she tried to give birth to her first child.
It was a painful but short delivery, and after Seras gave it her best effort, the newest member of the Tathamet family was born.
“You did it!”
“It’s over now… you did so great.”
Lisa gently took the bloody newborn into the blanket and allowed Eris to clean it up with some water magic.
“W-What is it…?” Seras asked weakly.
Lisa peeked underneath the baby’s blanket and smiled happily.
“It’s a girl!”
–
Back in Luxuria, Apophis, Mira, Thea, and Nita were all outside at a picnic table playing a card game.
All of a sudden the prince felt a chill run down his spine and looked at all of the girls present with a displeased expression.
“Why’re you looking at us like that? Are you disappointed because you’ve lost the last eight games?” Thea asked with a smirk.
“It’s okay big brother, you will get better soon.” Mira said cutely.
“I can start letting you win if you want, brother in law?” Nita suggested.
Apophis merely shook his head and stared absentmindedly into the sky.
“It’s not that… for some reason, I feel as though my burdens have increased.”
The girls did not understand exactly what he meant, so they merely shrugged their shoulders in unison and continued to play.
Mira: “Draw four brother!”
Apophis: *Sigh.*
–
Lisa gently handed Seras the baby girl, and she and Abaddon were able to get a good look at their daughter for the first time.
Like her mother, she had soft white hair that was already showing signs of growing long in the future.
From her father she inherited two dark black horns the color of obsidian, and a rich brown complexion.
Her bright red eyes contained a mix of intelligence and curiosity, as she stared back at the crying woman who was responsible for bringing her into this world with a blank expression.
Suddenly, her eyes drifted to her father and his horrible condition.
She wiggled a bit in her blanket before she held her hands out as if she wanted to be picked up.
A single tear fell from Abaddon’s eyes as he smiled helplessly.
He wanted nothing more than to take his newest child into his arms and cradle her until the last star died out, but unfortunately such a thing was impossible.
The best he could do was bring his face closer to his daughter and allow her to touch him once before his time ran out.
“Hello, my little one… You’ll have to forgive me for my appearance but I’ve just been through quite an ordeal, you see?”
He felt her small and clammy hands gently trace across the cracks in his face.
He was continuously grateful for everything that he had gotten to experience in this new life, but this was by far one of his most favorite moments.
But… it was beginning to get harder for him to maintain his consciousness.
And yet even if it was difficult, he desperately wanted to remain in this moment for as long as he could.
“…I had never thought that my origin would be so incredibly idiotic. It is the first time I’ve been able to converse with you since you called me and you are already about to return to nothingness. I am not certain of whether or not I should find this insanity humorous or not.”
Abaddon: “…”
The wives: “….”
Lillian: “…”
The child seemingly took no notice to the fact that she was receiving stunned gazes and continued to touch her father’s face.
“It is a miracle that you haven’t vanished already. I assume that you are holding on through no more than strength of will but even that has it’s-“
Bekka: “THE BABY IS TALKING!!”
Audrina: “What the fuck!?!?”
Valerie: “I need a drink…”
Seras: “So I’m not hallucinating then? I had thought that I was just tired…”
Lillian: “W-What is going on..?”
Lailah: “She’s already using such big words….”
Lisa: “Mira certainly did not do this…”
Eris: “I though that she was a bit special when she did not cry after being born but…”
It seemed like the wives had finally realized that what they were hearing was not some kind of auditory hallucination.
But it seemed like this sudden revelation had pushed the limit of what Abaddon could endure, and his eyes suddenly became hazy and he lost the ability to remain upright.
His body was caught by Valerie and Lisa before it could hit the ground and they tried their best to support his large frame.
“W-What’s happening to him!?”
“I can’t hear his heartbeat!!”
Before the wives could fall into a panic, the babyish voice of their newest daughter clarified the situation.
“Place my origin on the ground and lay me on top of him.”
“Y-Your what…!?”
“You-“
“We are running out of time. He has less than a minute left before he is erased from existence forever.”
The girls flinched when they heard the warning of their daughter, and did as she said without batting an eye.
Once Lailah placed the young girl on top of her father, she struggled a bit to hold her head up on her own before she finally got to work.
“A physical body… I have never felt a tribulation as great as this.” She muttered.
With great focus, she placed her hand on her origin’s navel and closed her eyes.
“W-What’re you doing?” Eris asked worriedly.
“Repairing the seal that the old one has placed on him.” She answered without opening her eyes.
“Seal?”
“Old one?”ππ±xt.πΈπ
“Irrelevant for now.” The child muttered.
Everyone watched in awe as Abaddon’s body gradually lost it’s godlike glow, and the golden cracks in his skin disappeared.
But even though he was no longer seconds away from evaporating, he still looked terrible.
His body was no more than a layer of skin wrapped over a skeleton, and his hair had returned to a sickly grayish white.
The wounds on his body were regenerating drastically slower than normal, earning concerned looks from all of his wives and Lillian.
“H-He didn’t look this terrible last time…” Lisa said as she wiped her tears.
The child flinched at the memory of the day she descended, as if she had been reminded of something unbearably unpleasant.
“Yes, well… that can happen when one draws in a great deal more power than their body can handle, and then draws in even more energy afterwards.”
Even as a true dragon, Abaddon still possessed a young body and could only handle so much.
Using the sin of sloth on the millions of demons under his command was already a double-edged sword, but the addition of his sealed abilities was entirely too much.
And this was the end result; a body that was so fragile that even the newborn sitting on his chest could kill him.
“He should have been more careful… if he had not allowed that weapon to pierce him, then things would not be as dire. His soul is now no more than a candle in the wind.” The child said.
The spear of longinus, like most of the six endings provides a true death by erasing a soul from existence.
It spreads through the body like a virus before trying to destroy the soul.
But what Lucifer didn’t know was that Abaddon’s soul was encased in a protective seal placed by the creator himself.
Stabbing him with a weapon of that calibre poked a hole in that encasing and as a result, a bit of his power started to leak out uncontrollably.
Luckily he was able to use it to defeat Lucifer but… the cost was indeed a heavy one.
“I admittedly bear some of the blame for all of this.” the child said exhaustedly.
“When I felt him call me, I was so determined to reunite with him…I had no idea that he was too weak to survive such a thing.”
Even though he was unconscious, Abaddon received an invisible arrow to the heart and slipped further into his coma.
The child finally crawled around and turned to face her mothers wearing a somewhat stoic expression.
“I suppose that this must be strange for all of you. My name is Ouroboros, I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”