Chapter : 1331

He had won. He had not just beaten his enemy; he had erased him from the book of life. It was a victory so complete, so total, that it was a new and very lonely kind of sadness. He had saved the wedding. He had protected the kingdom. And the cost had been a small but important piece of his own soul.

At the same time, in a different reality, in the stormy, damaged skies above the capital city of Bethelham, the other war, the war of the gods, reached its own amazing and very loud end.

Arch Duke Roy Ferrum, a giant of storm and mountain, had been fighting a smart, harsh, and very tiring battle against Beelzebub and his two evil Sovereign spirits. He was a force of nature, but even a force of nature can be worn down by the sneaky, endless decay of the Abyss.

He was losing spiritual energy. Gog’s amazing granite body was full of deep, ugly cracks from the Crimson Oni’s constant, mountain-breaking attacks. Magog’s spinning, messy storm was starting to weaken. Its pure lightning was struggling against the Black Dragon’s constant, evil breath of shadow-fire. Roy knew, with the cold, hard certainty of a long-time commander, that he could not win a long fight. He had to end it. Now.

And then, he saw his chance. Beelzebub, in a moment of great, proud, and showy confidence, had let his two spirits go too far. He had ordered them into a planned, powerful pincer attack. It was a classic and very effective move meant to crush Gog between them, to break the mountain and, by doing that, to break the Arch Duke’s will.

It was a perfect move. A textbook attack. And it was a deadly, terrible mistake.

Roy’s eyes, the color of a winter storm, had been focused on a desperate defense. Suddenly, they flashed with a cold, hunting, and winning light. The time for defense was over. The time for the Lion of the North to show his true, terrible, and famous teeth had arrived.

He did not give a loud, roaring, and dramatic command. He gave a single, silent, and total order that was a perfect display of planned, powerful, and beautiful violence.

Gog, the living mountain, did not pull back. He did not get ready for the hit. He charged forward. He ignored the Crimson Oni at his back and slammed his entire, huge body directly into the charging Black Dragon. It was a massive collision, a meeting of rock and shadow that sent a shockwave of pure force through the sky. The boom was felt, if not heard, by every person in the city below.

At the same time, Magog, the ancient storm, did not just attack the Oni; it became its cage. The spinning, messy storm of wind and lightning, which had been a large, defensive shield, collapsed inward. It did not become a spear of focused energy, but a solid, inescapable, and beautiful ball of pure, packed storm, a small sun of pure elemental anger. It trapped the Crimson Oni in its center.

It was a perfect, beautiful, and completely surprising counter-pincer attack. Beelzebub’s two amazing spirits, which a moment ago had been the hunters, were now trapped, separated, and hopelessly, beautifully open to attack.

And then, with the calm, focused, and terrible grace of a master artist, Arch Duke Roy Ferrum released the full, terrifying, and famous power of his SSS-class Steel Blood.

The sky above Bethelham had been a mess of wild, elemental violence. It was a chaotic painting of shadow, lightning, and stone. Now it became the workshop for a single, amazing, and terrible act of creation. Arch Duke Roy Ferrum, his face a mask of cold, northern anger that was as beautiful as it was scary, raised his hands. In that moment, he was no longer just a fighter, a lord, or even a king. He was a master artist, a divine blacksmith. And he was about to build a cage for gods.

He did not pull chains from his hands, which was a simple trick for lesser men. He pulled them from the very air, from the iron in the dust floating in the dim light, from the very idea of 'tying' something up. A thousand chains, each one as thick as a castle wall, appeared. Each one was the color of a starless, total, and light-eating midnight sky. They did not just appear; they were made in a single, silent, and world-breaking moment. Their dark, heavy, and evil steel hummed with a power that was ancient, total, and completely, beautifully unforgiving.

Chapter : 1332

This was not the graceful, sword-like art of his son, a dance of a thousand tiny, exact cuts. This was the giant hammer of a king, a single, final, and total blow.

The chains did not whip out. They did not lash out. They flowed. They were a thousand rivers of dark, living, and smart steel, moving with a silent, unstoppable, and scary purpose. They all came together on the two trapped, struggling, and now completely terrified spirits of the Abyss.

The Black Dragon was still caught in Gog’s unbreakable, mountain-sized hug. It let out a silent, mental shriek of pure, deep terror as the first of the dark chains wrapped around its bony body. It breathed its shadow-fire, a force that could unmake reality itself. But the chains were not from this reality. They were a physical form of Roy’s total, firm will, and they were, in this moment, the most real thing in the universe. They tightened. The sound of ancient, fossilized, and demon-made bone, a hundred times stronger than human steel, cracking and breaking like dry sticks, echoed in the silent sky.

The Crimson Oni, trapped in the beautiful, terrible center of Magog’s storm-prison, did no better. The chains went through the spinning, messy storm as if it were just morning fog. They found the raging, struggling demon inside. They wrapped around its arms and legs, its body, its single, jagged horn that was covered in lightning. They formed a perfect, complex, and inescapable web of total, firm control. The Oni’s cursed lightning, a power that could break mountains and boil seas, sparked harmlessly and sadly against the dark, evil, and completely uncaring steel of the Ferrum family power.

The cage was complete. A giant, complex, and darkly beautiful ball of a thousand connected, living chains held the two amazing, Sovereign-Level spirits of the Abyss. It was a masterpiece of fighting skill and total, overwhelming power. It held them in an unbreakable, and now slowly, unstoppably, crushing hug.

Arch Duke Roy Ferrum lowered his hands. He looked at Beelzebub. His storm-gray eyes showed no victory, no anger, no feeling at all. There was only the cold, flat, and final judgment of a king who had just given a death sentence.

And then, with a slow, careful, and almost casual move, he closed his fist.

The cage of a thousand chains collapsed inward.

There was no sound. There was no explosion. There was only a single, silent, and terrible squeeze. The Black Dragon and the Crimson Oni, two amazing, terrible beings from myths and legends, two masterpieces of evil, were not just broken; they were crushed into a single, dense, and totally meaningless point of evil, dead dust. Their spirits, their power, their very existence, were destroyed in a single, silent, and disrespectfully beautiful act of total, overwhelming, and final force.

Beelzebub stared. The bored, proud, and beautiful smile was gone. It was replaced by a mask of pure, glowing, and totally helpless anger. His toys, his beautiful, broken, and carefully made pets, had just been unmade before his very eyes. He had underestimated the Lion of the North. He had mistaken his patience for weakness, his control for a limit, his quiet, northern calm for a lack of passion. He had made a deadly, strategic, and very, very personally shameful mistake. And the cost had been the loss of two of his most valuable and irreplaceable helpers.

He looked at Roy, who now stood alone in the sky. He was a single, amazing figure of total power. His own two spirits had pulled back, their job done. He looked at the man, a being of just flesh and blood, who had just by himself, and with a scary, beautiful grace, beaten two Sovereign-Level spirits. And for the first time in a thousand years, Beelzebub, a prince of the Abyss, a god of sadness, felt a flicker of something that was almost, but not quite, fear.

It was respect. A cold, hard, bitter, and very unwelcome respect for an opponent who was not just powerful, but a true and terrible master of his art.

With a final, angry snarl that was a silent, screaming promise of a future, and much more terrible, fight, Beelzebub ripped open a new tear in reality. It was a bleeding, crying wound of shadow and sadness. He did not offer a final, parting shot. He did not make a final, dramatic threat. He simply left. The lord of the Seventh Circle, the god of sadness, the grandmaster of the long game, had been beaten. He had lost this battle.

He stepped back into his hellish world, and the tear in the sky closed behind him. It left behind only a bruised, silent sky and the lasting, metallic, and very, very personally shameful taste of his own, deep defeat.

The war was over.

For now.