Chapter 210: Chapter 210: The Cowardly Prince, Wrath of the Old Gods
The shattered red crystal flared, projecting a massive, violently swirling crimson runic circle onto the polished floor of the throne room.
The heat was immediate and abrasive. It didn’t feel like the holy, purifying fire of Solaris Prime. It felt like standing too close to a raging, out-of-control forest fire. The twenty Xenophage Broodlords hissed, stepping back nervously from the expanding ring of magic.
Prince Pine cowered on his crystal throne, clutching his glowing scepter like a child holding a toy sword.
"You are dead, Warlord!" Pine shrieked, his voice cracking hysterically. He pointed a trembling, manicured finger at Lucifer. "The Founders made pacts! We have allies in the deep cosmos! You think you are a god? I am summoning the God of Fury!"
Lucifer stopped walking. He stood ten feet away from the edge of the burning crimson rune.
He didn’t look terrified. He didn’t order his commanders to fall back.
He looked at Elara, who was standing behind him with Lyra, their combined shield having easily absorbed the Broodlords’ plasma volley.
"The God of Fury," Lucifer repeated flatly. He raised an eyebrow. "Is that a title, or a mood?"
Elara let out a short, dry laugh, spinning her violet-flaming spear. "It sounds like someone who screams a lot when they stub their toe."
"It’s a surviving deity of the old pantheon," Sarah corrected, stepping up beside them. The Oracle’s starlight aura pulsed as she analyzed the massive, incoming magical signature. "A minor war god who fled the Silver Citadel before the Heavens fell. He is incredibly aggressive, but his domain is purely physical."
"Physical," Lucifer noted. A cold, predatory smirk touched his lips. "Excellent. I needed to stretch."
The crimson runic circle detonated.
A pillar of absolute, roaring red fire erupted toward the ceiling. The heat instantly vaporized the decorative silver tapestries hanging near the throne.
From the center of the flames, a colossal figure stepped forward.
[System Warning: Divine Avatar Manifested!]
[Entity: Avatar of the God of Fury]
[Level: 85 - Lesser Deity]
[Status: Enraged.]
The Avatar was twenty feet tall, forged of dark, heavy bronze armor that glowed red-hot from the inside. He carried two massive, jagged axes that dripped with liquid magma. He didn’t have a human face; his helmet was shaped like a roaring, demonic boar.
The sheer, oppressive weight of his divine presence slammed into the room. It was an aura of pure, unadulterated anger, designed to incite mindless rage and strip away tactical thought.
Prince Pine scrambled to his feet on the dais, practically weeping with relief.
"Destroy them!" Pine wailed, pointing his scepter at Lucifer’s group. "Burn them to ash! They destroyed the Aegis Wall! They killed my brother!"
The Avatar of Fury turned its massive, boar-helmeted head toward the Prince.
"Silence, mortal," the God’s voice boomed. It sounded like grinding metal and roaring flames. "You summon me for pest control? You burn a Blood Pact crystal because your walls fell down?"
"They are not pests!" Pine shrieked indignantly, gesturing wildly at Lucifer. "He is the Warlord of Obsidian! He commands dragons!"
The Avatar slowly turned his burning gaze back to Lucifer.
The God analyzed the dark-armored human. He saw the Warlord’s Level 50 core. He saw the relatively small group of women standing behind him.
The God of Fury threw his head back and laughed. It was a harsh, booming sound of absolute derision.
"A Level 50 mortal," the Avatar scoffed, raising his magma-dripping axes. "You woke me from my slumber to fight a Level 50 mortal? I will crush him into paste and then I will take the rest of your royal treasury as compensation for wasting my time, little Prince."
Lucifer didn’t activate his aura. He didn’t draw his sword.
He looked at the towering, twenty-foot God of Fury.
"You look tired," Lucifer observed smoothly.
The Avatar froze, his axes pausing in mid-air. "What did you say, insect?"
"You look tired," Lucifer repeated, his voice dropping into the low, echoing rumble of the Void Monarch. He casually crossed his iron gauntlets over his chest. "You are an Avatar. You are projecting your power across dimensions. You are hiding your true body somewhere in the cosmos because you were too cowardly to fight the Abyss when it breached the Heavens."
Lucifer stepped forward, closing the distance to the burning runic circle.
"And now," Lucifer continued coldly, "you are answering distress calls from a pathetic prince hiding behind bugs. You aren’t a God of Fury. You’re a glorified bodyguard on retainer."
The Avatar roared.
The sheer disrespect was unacceptable. The God of Fury didn’t bother casting a spell. He lunged forward, swinging his massive, magma-dripping right axe in a brutal, horizontal arc aimed directly at Lucifer’s torso.
The strike was fast, carrying the incredible physical force of a Level 85 deity.
Lucifer didn’t dodge. He didn’t use Void Step.
He raised his left arm.
The Aegis of the God-Slayer—the jagged, kite-shaped shield forged from the Heart of Ruin and the essence of dead gods—materialized instantly on his forearm.
*CLANG.*
The impact shook the throne room. The polished silver floor beneath Lucifer’s boots shattered.
But Lucifer didn’t move an inch.
The massive, magma-dripping axe stopped dead against the dark matter surface of the Mythic shield. The absolute kinetic force of the blow was entirely absorbed by the Aegis. The divine fire splashing off the blade was instantly negated by the shield’s passive *Absolute Divine Negation* effect.
The Avatar of Fury stared down at the shield, his burning eyes widening in sheer disbelief beneath his boar helmet.
"How?" the God grated out, pressing down with all his might. The axe didn’t budge. "You are mortal!"
"I am the Emperor," Lucifer corrected smoothly.
He didn’t swing a sword in retaliation. He didn’t need to.
He lowered his right hand.
"System," Lucifer whispered.
He tapped into the power granted by the child goddess he had found in the birdcage.
[Skill Activated: The Highest Blessing of Death.]
[Effect: The Reaper’s Touch (5% chance of Instant Erasure).]
Lucifer didn’t apply the multiplier to the percentage chance. He didn’t need to guarantee the erasure. He just needed to maximize the number of hits.
"Deploy," Lucifer commanded.
He didn’t draw the Blade of Ruin. He reached into his Dimensional Vault and pulled out a different weapon entirely.
It was the Nine Hammers of Doom, an artifact he had acquired during the early days of his regression. But it was no longer a set of nine. During the downtime on Zephyria, King Thrain had taken the artifact and upgraded it in the Aether-Forge, infusing it with raw Star-Metal and the ambient cosmic magic of the Spire.
Lucifer pulled out the Nova-Hammers.
They were not large weapons. They were nine sleek, aerodynamic, jagged spikes of pure, crackling black Star-Metal, hovering in a tight circle around his iron gauntlet.
"System," Lucifer ordered. "Apply the Apex Multiplier to projectile count. Ten thousand times."
[Divine Talent: Apex Multiplier Activated!]
[Applying 10,000x multiplier to Nova-Hammer deployment...]
The nine hovering spikes violently duplicated.
In a fraction of a second, ninety thousand jagged, crackling black spikes filled the air of the throne room. They hovered in a massive, dense cloud of dark matter, completely surrounding Lucifer, the Avatar, the twenty Broodlords, and the cowering Prince.
"What is this magic?!" the Avatar roared, pulling his axe back and raising his arms defensively.
Lucifer didn’t answer. He snapped his fingers.
The ninety thousand Nova-Hammers fired.
It was not a directed volley. It was a chaotic, localized storm of absolute physical violence. The black spikes ricocheted wildly around the enclosed throne room, bouncing off the walls, the ceiling, and the floor at supersonic speeds.
The twenty Xenophage Broodlords didn’t stand a chance.
The massive, Level 70 bugs were shredded instantly. The heavy Star-Metal spikes punched through their thick green chitin armor effortlessly. But it wasn’t just physical damage.
Every single strike carried the 5% chance of the Reaper’s Touch.
With ninety thousand projectiles hitting the bugs thousands of times a second, the mathematical probability was guaranteed.
The Broodlords didn’t bleed. They didn’t fall over.
They simply ceased to exist.
One by one, the massive, fifteen-foot monsters were instantly erased from reality, leaving empty patches of air where they had stood a microsecond before.
Prince Pine shrieked in absolute terror, throwing himself flat on the floor behind his crystal throne as the black spikes whizzed inches above his head, turning his massive bodyguard force into nothingness.
The Avatar of Fury roared, swinging his magma axes wildly, desperately trying to swat the incoming projectiles away.
But there were too many.
The Nova-Hammers slammed into the God’s heavy bronze armor. Hundreds of strikes landed every second.
The Avatar’s health bar plummeted. But it wasn’t the physical damage that broke him.
A single, stray Nova-Hammer grazed the side of the Avatar’s boar helmet.
[Passive Triggered: The Reaper’s Touch.]
[Status: Instant Erasure Applied.]
The Avatar of Fury froze.
The massive, twenty-foot projection of the God simply stopped moving. The red-hot glow of the bronze armor instantly died. The magma dripping from his axes turned into gray ash.
The Avatar didn’t explode. It didn’t shatter.
It was deleted.
The massive figure vanished completely, leaving absolutely no trace of its existence in the throne room.
Lucifer closed his hand.
The remaining Nova-Hammers instantly returned to his Dimensional Vault.
The throne room was completely silent. The twenty Broodlords were gone. The God was gone.
Lucifer stood in the center of the pristine silver floor, completely unharmed. He hadn’t even drawn his sword.
He walked slowly toward the crystal throne.
Prince Pine was curled into a pathetic ball, weeping uncontrollably. He peeked over the edge of the crystal seat, his eyes wide with unadulterated madness.
"He’s gone," Pine gasped, his voice a ragged whisper. "You... you deleted a God."
"I deleted an Avatar," Lucifer corrected smoothly. He stopped at the base of the dais. "The God is currently sitting in his true body somewhere in the cosmos, realizing how close he just came to true death."
Lucifer drew the ruby-red Blade of Ruin.
The sentient sword pulsed with a slow, heavy heartbeat, hungry for royal blood.
Pine scrambled backward, pressing his back against the glowing blue crystal of the throne.
"Wait! Please!" Pine begged, raising his hands in a frantic gesture of surrender. "I yield! I surrender the Dominion! I will give you the access codes! I will give you half the Ringworld! You can have the industrial sectors! You can have the fleet!"
Lucifer looked down at the sniveling prince.
"I already own the whole thing," Lucifer stated coldly.
He didn’t offer a monologue. He didn’t ask for the codes.
Lucifer swung the Blade of Ruin in a clean, horizontal arc.
The True Damage sliced effortlessly through the air. Prince Pine’s head detached smoothly from his shoulders, tumbling down the steps of the dais and rolling to a stop near Lucifer’s boots.
[Target Eliminated: First Prince Pine (Level 40)]
[Status: Royal Lineage Severed.]
Lucifer sheathed his sword. He kicked the severed head aside casually.
"The throne is empty," Lucifer announced, turning back to his commanders. "Let’s see who is left to clean up the mess."
