Part 6 – Invasion

There was a wide variety of demons.

The majority were lowest-ranking demons, virtually mindless beasts, but mixed among them were dozens of mid-ranking or higher demons possessing considerable demonic power.

“There’s a high-ranking demon, too!”

Its demonic power was at a level that would classify it as high-ranking at the very least.

It was positioned within the demonic horde, so its form couldn’t be seen clearly, but its presence was undeniable.

What should they do?

If this were his original body, he would have fought without a moment’s hesitation.

But what stood here was not his original body, but an avatar—a temporary vessel prepared for inter-world travel.

Naturally, his combat power was no match for his true self.

But that didn’t mean he was completely unable to fight.

Though it was an avatar, Cordelia’s power was comparable to an Archangel’s, and Yuder himself could still use the Nine Heavens and Nine Gates.

As long as their opponent wasn’t stronger than a Demon Prince, they should be able to handle it somehow.

Yuder looked forward again.

Cordelia was already preparing a large-scale combat spell.

She clearly intended to launch a preemptive strike with a powerful area-of-effect magic.

But it was at that moment.

Through observation, Yuder, and through intuition, Cordelia, sensed something was off about the approaching demons and reached the same conclusion.

“They’re not attacking.”

Their target was not Yuder and Cordelia.

Nor were they charging forward to attack.

“They’re running away.”

Cordelia said, and Yuder agreed.

They were fleeing, and it was by sheer chance that Yuder and Cordelia happened to be in their path.

Then what was it?

What could a horde of hundreds, including a high-ranking demon, be running from?

-GWOOOOOOOOOO!

A tremendous sound, like the cry of a whale, washed over them from the distance.

The moment that sound, which shook the heavens and the earth, rang out, the demons erupted in terror and fear, and some among them even began to scream.

Cordelia reflexively canceled her spell and suppressed her mana.

Yuder, too, lowered his aura instead of raising it, erasing his presence.

And then the ground shattered.

The ground behind the fleeing horde of demons split apart, and something white and massive shot up from below.

-GAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

It opened its enormous mouth.

A giant maw, making up a third of its massive, whale-like white body, gaped wide in all directions before swallowing the rear of the demon horde whole.

It was as if a section of space had been erased.

The sight of a creature hundreds of meters long opening its mouth to swallow the demons could be called terror incarnate.

A whale that had burst forth, shattering the earth.

Its massive body, which seemed to be a hundred meters long, was covered in countless eyes.

Large, sharp horns protruded from between its fins.

“A demon?”

Cordelia muttered softly, then immediately shook her head.

It wasn’t a demon.

With the soul of an Archangel, she could tell.

Its kind was different, but she could feel a power in that monster that was absent in ordinary demons.

“I can feel divinity.”

Divinity.

The quality of a god.

The proof of a divine being’s existence.

The Overlords, who could be called the gods of demons, did possess divinity, but it was of a different kind.

What the Overlords possessed was less divinity and more demonic nature—something closer to a massive, powerful clump of demonic energy.

A being with divinity.

It was not a celestial being.

Yuder and Cordelia knew all the Archangels of the heavens.

The whale-like monster before them was not among them.

Then what was it?

What in the world was the identity of that monster—

It was at that moment.

One of the many eyes on the monster’s body moved.

It saw Yuder and Cordelia, who were positioned slightly off the fleeing monsters’ path.

It stared straight into Yuder’s green eyes and Cordelia’s blue ones.

Yuder and Cordelia knew it too.

Their eyes had met.

The monster had noticed them.

-Fsh-fsh-fsh!

The hundreds of eyes on the monster’s body focused on Yuder and Cordelia.

Once again, a high-pitched cry that shook the heavens and the earth erupted, and the monster twisted its body, changing its course.

“It’s coming this way!”

“Let’s bolt!”

Snatching Cordelia up in his arms, Yuder shot off the ground like a bolt of lightning.

And as he did, hundreds of tentacles shot out from the entire body of the monster charging toward him.

Yuder sensed killing intent.

At that instant, blades of pure white light sprayed from the tips of the tentacles like bullets.

It was a rain of blades.

It wasn’t just an attack from behind; it covered the path ahead of Yuder, an unavoidable attack with no escape.

But not for Yuder.

Heaven Escape Nine Steps.

In nine steps, one could hide even from the heavens.

The blades of light could not harm Yuder and Cordelia.

Yuder passed through the rain of blades like a phantom, and the monster, letting out an enraged roar, fired another volley of light blades.

But this time, Yuder’s response was different.

Instead of deploying the Nine Heavens and Nine Gates, Yuder held Cordelia tighter, and Cordelia, in his arms, cast the spell she had completed.

“Teleport!”

A long-distance spatial leap.

Yuder and Cordelia vanished in a flash of light.

The blades of light blanketed the ground, but by then, the two had already disappeared.

*

“Haa.”

At a location about two kilometers from the point of attack.

Yuder, who had dropped into a low stance the moment his feet touched the ground, let out a breath of relief, as did Cordelia.

Slipping out of Yuder’s arms, she leaned against a large rock and gazed back in the direction they had fled from.

The monster was shrieking neurotically as it devoured the demons.

“I think we’ve escaped for now.”

Normally, a long-distance spatial leap could have taken them much farther, but they had little time to prepare, and more importantly, they couldn’t get proper coordinates in that situation.

Therefore, Cordelia had no choice but to opt for a spatial leap to a location within her line of sight.

“What in the world is that monster? And why did we end up in Hell in the first place?”

The coordinates used for the Spatial Gate had not been wrong.

Yet, if they had arrived in Hell instead of Pleiades, there were only two possibilities.

One was that the world of Pleiades itself had moved significantly, changing the coordinates. The other was that a problem had occurred with the travel through the Spatial Gate itself.

The former was highly unlikely, so it had to be the latter, but he couldn’t think of a reason for it.

“Cordelia, I think we first need to figure out what that monster is.”

A being with divinity was rampaging in Hell.

If it wasn’t a simple coincidence, there was a possibility that their crash-landing in Hell instead of Pleiades was caused by that monster.

“Let’s catch a mid-ranking or higher demon and get some information.”

Nodding at Yuder’s words, Cordelia immediately stretched out her hand and activated her telekinesis.

Just then, a demon in a corner far away let out a stifled scream and shot into the air.

It seemed to be a demon that had been hiding from the monster.

“H-How?!”

“Just a hunch.”

Giving an answer that no one but Yuder would find convincing, Cordelia applied a bit more force to her telekinesis and pulled the captured demon toward them.

“You, you know us, right?”

She could tell from its reaction.

It was highly likely that the demon had immediately suppressed its presence and hidden itself upon seeing them appear via teleport for that very reason.

“H-How could I not know! The Fantastic Couple!”

Coming from a burly demon that looked to be three meters tall, who was now bawling his eyes out, the words seemed incredibly sincere.

“Then this will be quick. What is that monster? And what happened to Hell? It looks like you were hiding here to avoid that monster, too.”

At Yuder’s question, the demon spoke up at once, as if it had nothing to hide.

“They are the Outer Gods. The Outer Gods have invaded Hell.”

“Outer Gods?”

“Yes, Outer Gods. Those bastards, gods from other worlds, are laying waste to Hell.”

So there was more than one.

Outer Gods.

Gods from another world.

From the demons’ perspective, Yuder and Cordelia would also be Outer Gods.

After all, Yuder, though a demigod, was a guardian of Pleiades, and Cordelia was an Archangel of the heavens.

But that monster belonged to neither Pleiades nor the heavens.

Gods from a world other than Pleiades or the heavens.

“Why did the Outer Gods invade Hell? And what are the Overlords doing? Their own domain is being laid to waste.”

The Overlords were, for all intents and purposes, the gods of Hell.

Were they just standing by and watching as monsters like that rampaged freely?

At Cordelia’s question, the demon’s face twisted as if to say, Are you serious?, and it shouted in a voice choked with rage.

“You’re the ones who screwed everything up! You are!”

There had been an Overlord to stand against the Outer Gods, but he was gone.

Thanks to the two before it—the Outer Gods from Pleiades.

“Ah, so this was Asmodeus’s territory.”

Looking inexplicably sheepish, Cordelia let out an “ehehe” laugh, and the demon trembled, unable to contain its indignation.

Yuder asked the demon with a serious face.

“Is all of Hell under attack?”

“Yes, in other regions, the Overlords are leading the defense… but the regions without an Overlord are being ravaged by the Outer Gods.”

As the demon spoke with a sorrowful face, as if asking what could be done about this tragedy, Cordelia narrowed her eyes.

“Hey, why are you acting like an innocent citizen? You’re a demon. This is the kind of stuff you guys do all the time.”

“Keuk.”

From the look on its face, it seemed to want to say, ‘That’s then, this is now,’ but in front of the ‘Fantastic Couple,’ infamous among demons, it seemed the words wouldn’t come out.

“Do you know where the Outer Gods came from?”

“I don’t know exactly, but I do know the path they took.”

Cordelia tilted her head at the somewhat strange answer, and Yuder narrowed his eyes.

The moment he saw the mix of fear and elation on the demon’s face, he felt he knew what it was about to say.

“Don’t tell me—”

“That’s right. They are the ones who failed to get to Pleiades.”

The ones who were a step too late.

The ones who couldn’t reach Pleiades and turned their feet to the neighboring Hell instead.

“Hell isn’t the only one being invaded by the Outer Gods. No, Hell is merely an afterthought.”

The demon said with a sinister smile.

And Yuder remembered its words.

The ones who failed to get to Pleiades.

The ones who therefore turned their feet elsewhere.

Pleiades, which they couldn’t reach despite the coordinates being correct.

Pleiades, which the Outer Gods could no longer enter.

If the young god Athalia had sealed Pleiades to stop the Outer Gods’ invasion, that would be a relief.

But what if that wasn’t the case?

What if, in the midst of the Outer Gods’ invasion, the world itself was sealed for some other reason?

And the Outer Gods.

The otherworldly gods who weren’t a step too late, who had already arrived in Pleiades—

Yuder and Cordelia looked at each other.

And they understood.

Pleiades was being invaded by the Outer Gods.

And now, Yuder and Cordelia, the guardians of Pleiades, were stranded in Hell.

*

The Outer Gods had descended.

The calamities that had been holding their breath rose once more.

The one watching it all smiled gently.

The first Outer God to set foot in Pleiades.

The one who had summoned all the other Outer Gods to this land.

She smiled and whispered. Cradling the broken world in her arms, she recited beautifully.

“Let us begin.”

The first step toward regeneration.

To once again meet all those she loved.

The Outer God, Aylia.

The Goddess of the Broken World held a pure white smile.

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Translated By: Meher (RaidenTL)

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