**'Abyssal Sovereign: The Demon's Dominion'**

Chapter 517: Chapter 516: Return

Din appeared far away in a massively ruined city.

Screams filled the air as people ran in every direction, desperately looking for cover or trying to find their loved ones, but to no avail.

His expression changed as he fell onto the ground, breathing hard. His throat felt dry, while his head spun violently. Every breath burned his lungs as if he were inhaling fire instead of air.

He coughed violently.

"Kh...!"

A mouthful of blood splattered onto the cracked pavement beneath him.

His vision blurred as the very city around him looked like the aftermath of an apocalypse and it was.

Towering buildings had collapsed into mountains of rubble. Roads were split apart by enormous ravines. Fires raged throughout the streets, filling the sky with thick black smoke that mixed with the crimson clouds overhead.

People cried as some searched through broken concrete with bleeding hands.

Others sat motionless beside the corpses of their families, unable to even shed tears anymore.

Din stared blankly, Just hours ago, he had proclaimed himself the protector of humanity.

Yet now...

He couldn’t even stand.

"..."

Slowly, he forced himself onto one knee with every movement sending excruciating pain through his body.

His bones felt as though they had shattered countless times before barely knitting themselves back together.

The backlash from Void’s power was far greater than he had imagined.

No...

Perhaps it wasn’t simply backlash.

Void had forcefully used a body that had only just reached Rank 1 to wield the strength of Rank 2.

The fact that Din was still alive was already a miracle.

He staggered toward the nearest wall before collapsing against it.

His chest rose and fell rapidly.

The air...

There wasn’t enough of it.

He looked toward the sky.

The atmosphere itself had become thinner after the heavens were torn apart.

Even though the gods had repaired much of the damage, the world itself still hadn’t fully recovered.

Every breath required effort.

Every breath felt like climbing a mountain.

"...Osiris.."

He whispered weakly.

No answer.

His brows furrowed.

"Osiris..."

Silence.

For the first time since meeting that annoying demon...

The voice inside his consciousness had disappeared.

...

Night arrived as the temperature dropped sharply.

Without electricity, the once-glorious city became a sea of darkness illuminated only by burning buildings.

Din slowly walked through the ruins.

His footsteps echoed faintly.Occasionally he would stop to help move a piece of debris or carry an injured child toward the few remaining shelters.

The survivors thanked him repeatedly, yet Din merely nodded before walking away.

He couldn’t stay at least not after what had happened.

The gods...

The immortals...

They would certainly be searching for him.

If they discovered these people had sheltered him...

None of them would survive.

...

The first night was agonizing.

Din leaned against the remains of an apartment complex.

Sleep refused to come.

Every few minutes he would wake up coughing blood.

Sometimes his heartbeat slowed so much he thought it had stopped.

Other times it raced wildly. No doubt his body was currently unstable as he could barely circulate his energy anymore.

When dawn finally arrived...

He looked even worse than before, dark circles covered his eyes, his lips had become pale.

Even walking required all of his concentration.

...

The first day passed painfully.

Food had become scarce.

Water was even rarer.

Most rivers nearby had either dried up or become polluted after the battle.

Din wandered through the ruins until he found an abandoned convenience store.

Almost everything had been looted.

Only a few bottles of water remained buried beneath fallen shelves.

He smiled bitterly.

"So this is luck..."

Opening one bottle with trembling hands, he drank slowly.

The cool water eased the burning in his throat.

For a brief moment...

He almost forgot everything.

Then another fit of coughing arrived.

Blood stained the water bottle crimson.

Din lowered his head.

"...Guess I’m not doing so well."

He laughed weakly.

The sound felt strangely lonely.

...

By evening...

The survivors had begun gathering together.

Makeshift camps formed throughout the city.

People shared what little food remained.

Children cried from hunger.

Parents smiled despite having nothing to offer.

Watching them...

Din quietly turned away.

His fists clenched.

This...

This was exactly why he had accepted becoming the Human King.

Not for power.

Not for glory.

But because these ordinary people deserved someone willing to stand before monsters.

Even if that someone became a monster himself.

...

The second day arrived.

The atmosphere had worsened.

Breathing became increasingly difficult.

Many elderly people had already begun collapsing from oxygen deprivation.

Even martial warriors below Rank 0 found themselves gasping for breath after only walking short distances.

Din wasn’t any better.

Each breath sounded rough.

His lungs wheezed painfully.

He sat atop the ruins of a collapsed skyscraper, staring toward the distant crimson horizon.

His consciousness remained unusually quiet.

No sarcastic remarks.

No insults.

No laughter.

Nothing.

"...Osiris"

He called once more.

Still...

Nothing answered him.

For some reason...

That silence frightened him more than the gods.

More than the immortals.

Even more than death itself.

The loud, arrogant demon who never stopped talking...

Had completely disappeared.

A strange emptiness settled inside his heart.

Din slowly lowered his head.

"...Don’t tell me..."

He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

The thought alone made his chest tighten.

The wind blew across the ruined city.

Ash drifted through the air like gray snow.

Far below...

People continued struggling to survive another day.

Din wanted to stand.

He wanted to protect them.

He wanted to become the Human King he had declared himself to be.

But the moment he tried...

His legs gave out.

Thud.

He collapsed onto one knee.

His breathing became heavier.

Pain shot through every inch of his body.

When he instinctively tried to circulate his strength...

Nothing happened.

His eyes widened.

Again.

Nothing.

His Rank 1 aura...

His immense demonic energy...

The overwhelming strength he had possessed only days ago...

It was all gone.

Only a weak, exhausted body remained, trembling atop the ruins.

Din lowered his head as another mouthful of blood dripped onto the broken concrete beneath him.

Each breath sounded harsher than the last.

The silence inside his consciousness remained absolute.

And for the first time since accepting Void’s blood...

Din truly felt alone.

*******

At the other side...

The demon army gathered together. Over 50 million demons remained, and right here, right now, there were Peak Rank 0 demons all present, alongside Lord Vakim himself. They were all gathered in a giant clearing with patches of burnt leaves and branches scattered across the ground. This was once a vibrant and thriving forest, but the battle, the war, had changed everything.

Even the cool, flowing river a few meters away had been contaminated with blood and dirt.

For the demon army, they had no worry about all this since they didn’t eat or necessarily rest like mortals, but...

Something much more dire and heavy weighed on all of their minds.

With the majority of it falling upon Vakim.

If before he wanted to summon other Rank 1 demons in the hope that together they could conquer this world, right now that hope was gone and shattered.

The truth was that he and whoever he wanted to summon could not do anything.

It was over.

Summoning a Rank 2 demon was like digging a pit for oneself and diving into it. He would lose far more than he would gain, and in the end, he wouldn’t even obtain the most important thing—the world’s consciousness—nor would he gain the right to own this world and make it his territory.

Not to mention that he was still under a Rank 3 demon. It wasn’t that he couldn’t call a higher-up, but the losses far outweighed the gains. First, what he would use to summon a higher-ranked demon would leave him broke and practically with nothing.

And because this was still just a Supreme World, the benefits of conquering it would never reach him.

So he had to make a choice: be reckless and keep fighting, or return.

Vakim stood at the forefront. Around him was the demon army as his gaze hardened.

His hooves dug deep into the soil as the temperature rose, with his bull horns twisted toward the sky.

Nuk, at the back, sighed as he waited.

Whatever the decision was, it would affect him too. After all, he couldn’t leave this world since he was not yet a Rank 1 demon and couldn’t draw a rune, so they all depended on Vakim.

Basically, their lives and deaths did.

He looked at the sky.

It was red like blood as thick lightning kept striking the ground like an enraged bull.

"Return," Vakim finally declared.

All the Peak Rank 0 demons breathed a sigh of relief as they turned to the Middle-, Low-, and High-Level Rank 0 demons and twirled their fingers.

Seeing this, the demon army turned and marched forward as Vakim disappeared.

Then the ground trembled as space split apart and a portal appeared.

The moment it did, every demon grinned as the comforting feeling of home washed over them. They couldn’t wait to enter as they rushed in.

Nuk glanced at a skull hanging from a tree, its tongue almost ripped out, before walking into the portal.

Finally, Vakim entered as the portal closed.

The skull twitched as a bird landed and pecked at it.

The head turned out to be the head of the malard that had been turned into a ghoul by Nuk.