CHAPTER 33: WAR(3)

"In the eyes of God..."

"All creatures of the divine realm are but toys, livestock I keep penned in captivity. They exist for my needs. And so these creatures..."

"They’re nothing but fools."

"Blinded from birth by the lies of ’God,’ unable to see the truth of the world."

A pause.

"Yet... are they truly fools?"

"Not entirely."

At the very bottom of the Endless Abyss, Cillian lifted his head, his voice calm against the roar of the abyss.

"Even deceived, they will fight with everything for the sake of survival. Instinct will drive them to bleed and die to defend their world..."

Above, the black-red vortex of the Abyss pressed closer to the assessment world, dragging at its golden skies like a whirlpool swallowing light.

"And their counterattack," Cillian whispered, "will be terrifying. They will use every means, every weapon, to erase the existence that threatens their home."

⸻———x——————

Above a city near a small dragon’s nest, the battle raged.

"Dokar!"

"Myink"

The sky thundered with dragon speech. Osiris soared through the heavens, his black scales glinting as he tore the demon legions apart. His flames reduced armies to ash; even abyssal generals of legend tier fell within moments, unable to endure his dragon breath.

Only those at the very peak of legend could mount feeble resistance, and even their strikes dissolved against his power.

"Pathetic."

Osiris’s golden pupils narrowed with pure disgust.

He dove, striking down a towering fire demon that had claimed dominion over the city. Lava and flame exploded from the fiend’s body, engulfing him in a hellish tide. But when the smoke cleared, Osiris stood unscathed, the authority of fire burning in his veins.

"Filthy alien," he hissed, sparks spilling from his maw. "Are you ready to die?"

With cruel delight in his eyes, he prepared to annihilate the intruder—

Then.

Thud!

An arrow clanged off his eyelid, sliding down uselessly to the ground. His scales remained unmarred, but fury ignited within him.

"Who would dare?"

Osiris crushed the fire demon beneath his claw, lava blood splattering across his chest, then turned to face his attacker.

And momentarily froze.

It was a dragon-blooded warrior, now just any, it was one who bore his bloodline.

But the warrior’s body was riddled with writhing tumors, his scales blotched and warped, his soul twisted by abyssal corruption. What should have been a proud heir of dragons had been reduced to a wretch, enslaved by the Endless Abyss.

Osiris’s heart thundered with rage. His own blood had been turned against him.

"You..."

His claw fell like a hammer, reducing the corrupted warrior to ash along with the earth beneath him.

"Fallen insect!"

But even as he exhaled in disgust, Osiris sensed something deeply wrong.

The city.

The very city he’d woken up to protect... had already fallen.

Demons swarmed, yes, but so too did the civilians, the dragon-blooded mortals. Men, women, even children lifted weapons, claws, and twisted spells, not against the encroaching abyss, against him.

Everything and everyone was corrupted

The realization chilled even Osiris. He seized several more dragon-blood warriors in his claws and tore into their souls with his gaze.

And what he saw was rot.

The seeds of faith within their souls were gone, smothered by a black fire. Every last one of them bore the abyssal mark, their corruption was absolute.

"This... impossible..."

His voice shook with fury. But there was no mistake. The Abyss had claimed them utterly.

Where demons walked, corruption followed. Their very existence poisoned the land, sky, and soul alike. Even if reclaimed, the soil could never be made whole again.

This was the true horror of the Abyss, it did not conquer through brute violence alone.

And these warriors of his bloodline, once his descendants... were beyond salvation.

"Damn it!"

Osiris’s claws crushed them into pulp. With a roar that split the heavens, he rose into the air and let loose his fury. Dragonfire swept across the entire city, burning stone, flesh, and soul alike to nothing.

The city of the nest was reduced to ashes in an instant.

Lifting his head, Osiris glared toward the horizon. At the edge of the world, the black-red vortex pressed closer, dragging their skies into its maw.

"To end this disaster... the world itself must be destroyed."

He was not alone in his grim revelation. Across the assessment world, other champions came to the same conclusion. As they fought, they saw the truth: lands tainted by demons could not be reclaimed. Even in victory, the scars of the Abyss lingered, festering, rotting, and spreading.

There was only one solution.

To win the war, the Abyss itself had to be erased.

And so Cillians trap was complete. The endless abyss lay in wait, its snares ready. Every mighty warrior who rose in wrath, every god-blooded beast who turned to strike... would step into the jaws of the Abyss itself.

——————x——————

At that moment in the assessment world, many powerful beings sensed the strangeness of the Endless Abyss and acted without hesitation.

They gathered into mighty legions, reorganized around ancient bloodlines and towering figures of power, and reshaping space-time channels.

Among them stood descendants of the World Tree, pure-blooded dragons untouched by age, and even the primeval beasts of the Orc world. Below them stretched their vast armies, sworn to follow wherever their masters led.

Their purpose was clear, to reach the core of the Endless Abyss before its corruption spread unchecked. Destroy it, purge it, and erase the twisted, festering world before it swallowed more than itself.

Such a force would instantly shatter the fragile divine realms of most graduates with ease.

Their march alone was enough to make observers doubt Cillian’s chances.

In the observation hall, Vice Principal Warren’s fists clenched without his notice. In the principal’s office, Headmistress Elara Everhart frowned in silence.

Everyone wanted to know the same thing: could the Endless Abyss, this newborn and abominable world, withstand the counterattack of the strongest forces from the highest planes?

At the bottom of the Endless Abyss, Cillian whispered into the void.

"It begins..."

He almost wondered if it was coincidence. For the stronger a creature was in other realms, the easier it seemed for them to be pulled, without resistance, into the Endless Abyss. Enemy or not.

From behind him, the black mist split into writhing tendrils like veins, lashing away from his back one by one. As they burned off, his mind steadied, his thoughts sharpened. With a single snap of his fingers, Cillian shifted planes, appearing before Mirethane-the monstrous eight-headed colossus that slept across half a world.

The beast stirred as if it had sensed its ruler’s arrival. Its eyes opened slowly, twin abysses glowing with ruin.

Meanwhile, beyond the Endless Abyss, the counterforce began. The most powerful legions of the assessment world had left their realms behind and stepped into the darkness.

But as they advanced, the assessment world itself began to collapse. Planets trembled, falling into ruin, dragged downward as if gravity was bending toward the Abyss. Its influence spread, bleeding into every corner of the inhabited lands.

On the planet nearest the Abyss, the first true horror appeared. Voices began whispering and soft, venomous murmurs seeping into the minds of the weak-willed.

Entire villages trembled as the devil’s whispers grew louder. Even where no demons had yet descended, madness took root.

The people broke.

One after another, cries echoed through the night.

"I don’t want it..."

"Say it again..."

In a tiny village, a foreign boy huddled inside a kennel. Not a metaphorical one, but a real doghouse.

He was a child of sinners, cursed by blood. His ancestor had blasphemed the angels, and so his line bore punishment across generations. His lot was to eat scraps, perform degrading labor, and live in filth.

This was the price of ancestral sin, or so the church decreed.

He had believed it too. Every lash of the whip from the bishop carved the lesson deeper.

"You are steeped in sin!"

The whip cracked, tearing his back.

"The seven virtues were lost when your ancestors fell!"

Another blow, another welt.

"Only by suffering will you one day return to the angels!"

Those were the last words he heard before he collapsed into unconsciousness days ago.

But in that darkness, another voice came.

An angel, or something that claimed to be one. Distant, radiant, and oh so beautiful.

"No one is born with sin," she whispered, her words like honey.

"All suffering is given to you by others."

"The world you live in is false. If I were to descend, truth would be restored."

The boy trembled in his dream.

"But... how can I bring you here?"

The angel smiled.

"With the blood of those who whip you."

He awoke in terror, drenched in sweat, clinging to denial. It was a nightmare, surely a temptation to fall. Yet the voice never left. Night after night it returned, reciting to him verses from a terrible scripture, a Book that replaced virtues with sins.

Day by day, his body wasted. His mind frayed between confession and rejection, guilt and rebellion. Until at last, starved and broken, he whispered into the empty dark.

"Stop talking... what should I do?"

And the angel answered gently, with words more terrible than any whip.

The next day, the kingdoms knights came to the village.

This was a routine stop along the border, in what they had dubbed ’NothingVille’, the stretch of land where nothing ever happens, they had expected a quiet resupply.

Instead, they walked into a slaughter.

The streets were awash in blood. Trails of crimson led not outward, but inward, straight towards the church.

The knights pushed open the broken doors with shaking hands. What they saw hollowed their hearts.

The outcasts of the village, the children of sinners who had lived in kennels, were kneeling before a grotesque statue made of human remains. Their chants filled the desecrated hall, not of angelic virtues but of seven deadly sins.

"Arrogance... envy... greed..."

One by one they lifted their faces, eyes burning scarlet like the spawn of the Abyss.

And when they saw the knights—they saw not men of honor in glistening armoir, instead, they saw the men who had ruled over them with whips and fire.

Without hesitation they bared their teeth, fangs glistening in the torchlight.

The knights froze, For in those eyes, they saw what all creatures of the Abyss carried within them.

A desperate hunger.

The devil was everywhere, hiding not in the earth or sky, but in the hearts of men.