CHAPTER 356: CHAPTER 345: ERASE

The third layer of Hell was not fire — it was ruin.

Ash and bone, silence and screams woven together into an unending hymn of collapse. The ground itself pulsed with the heartbeat of the dying realm, rivers of molten shadow running between shattered fortresses and broken thrones.

Where once Dagon’s citadel had risen — a palace of obsidian towers that touched the abyss — now stood only the smoke of its undoing.

And above the ruin, the new prophet’s chant rang out.

Atlas stood upon the balcony of the sundered keep, his boots sinking into blood and molten ash. His silhouette was carved in gold and black flame, his hair whipping in the heat-wind, his eyes glowing like twin stars through smoke.

At his feet writhed the once-king of this layer — Dagon, the Archmage of the Abyss, last sovereign of Xebec’s domain. The demon king.

Atlas’s voice broke the roar of destruction.

"Will you surrender, Dagon of the Depths?"

No answer — only laughter.

The sound was wrong.

Too human.

Dagon’s form was almost beautiful, even in ruin. No horns, no scaled skin, no grotesque limbs like the other demon kings. He looked human, save for the faint crocodilian twitch of his red eyes and the scent of old abyssal mana leaking from his pores.

His lips split in a grin, blood staining his teeth.

"Surrender.... hahaha?" he rasped. "You think kings of hell surrender, you think I will surrender like the succubus slut.... like that red cat?

How much of a fool you think I am... hahahaha..."

Atlas said nothing. The wind tore at his cloak. His aura shimmered, every breath humming with contained cataclysm. The system whispers flickered behind his eyes — lines of light only he could see, divine code cascading like rain.

[Yggdrasil Essence Resonating]

[Demon-God’s Essence Resonating]

[World-Serpent Essence Resonating]

"Haha

Hahaha

HAHAHAHA" Atlas laughed.

He exhaled. The air itself bent around his words.

And then, impossibly, he laughed too.

For a heartbeat, their laughter overlapped — the sound of two beings who had long since lost the line between hate and recognition.

When the sound faded, Atlas pressed his foot harder on Dagon’s chest, forcing him to look outward — beyond the balcony, to the burning remains of his kingdom.

Everywhere, Fallen angels carved through the ranks of demons.

Gabriel’s blade was a comet streaking through the sky, tearing holes in legions with each swing. Uriel descended like a storm of white fire, her wings breaking towers and bodies alike.

The air smelled of ozone and brimstone, divine wrath and dying magic.

"Your kingdom burns," Atlas said quietly. "Yield, and your name might survive."

Dagon’s red eyes gleamed with something feral, almost childlike.

"Let it burn then... A king is not his walls."

His voice cracked — too calm, too certain. Atlas heard the truth buried within: this ruin meant nothing to him. The citadel, the armies, the domain — all ash compared to something else.

He knew then what Dagon had hidden.

"I heard of a heir," Atlas murmured. "You hid her....where is she?"

Dagon’s smirk faltered, only for a moment. ".....You know too much."

"In a mirror dimension?" Atlas continued, his tone almost gentle. "A fold of reality only you or Aurora could enter."

Dagon’s silence was answer enough.

Atlas’s hand twitched, a flicker of hesitation. For a heartbeat, he saw Aurora — he had only got her messubut she was saying she would be returning, with info, very essential...info.

She had said this creature once was her teacher, so go easy on him.

This thing beneath his heel.

He almost pitied him.

Almost.

Atlas bent down, his voice low. "You could have stood beside her. As her teacher, Instead, you chose the pit."

Dagon’s laugh was broken now, bitter. "Hahaha...You think Aurora would follow you if she saw her master dying?"

The words struck deep, slicing past armor, past pride.

Atlas’s face twitched — just once. Then he smiled, empty and terrible.

"I stopped caring what she thinks," he lied.

He lifted Dagon by the throat, the demon king’s feet dangling above the balcony edge. Far below, the third layer burned — rivers of magma and light swallowing towers, screams rising like incense to dead gods.

"Look," Atlas whispered, forcing his gaze outward. "Watch your era die."

Dagon did not struggle. His lips curved in a faint, weary grin.

"Do you think I fear death? We have lived too long for fear. My only regret... is leaving my daughter alone."

Atlas slammed him against the marble pillar. Stone shattered. Blood sprayed like paint across the carved reliefs of ancient wars.

Once. Twice. Thrice.

He didn’t stop until the marble cracked and Dagon’s teeth scattered across the balcony like pearls.

"Sub....mit," Atlas hissed.

Dagon coughed blood and laughed through it. "N...ooo..."

Atlas’s fist flared. The power gathering there was not human — it was something primal, layered with echoes of ancient myth. His veins glowed green and gold as essence converged from within him, from worlds far beyond this one.

[Yggdrasil Essence Resonating]

[Demon-God’s Essence Resonating]

[World-Serpent Essence Resonating]

The air trembled. Reality folded inward around his fist, forming a sphere of compressed mana — white at the core, black at the edge, swirling with runes older than gods.

The heat blistered his own arm, but he did not falter.

Dagon’s eyes widened — not in fear, but recognition.

He had seen this once before.

"You... carry the same resonance," Dagon rasped. "As the one who erased Orcus..."

Atlas froze for half a second.

The name struck like lightning.

Orcus — the Demon King of Titus.

The one erased not slain, pulled from existence itself.

Dagon heard stories, whispers from the oldest archives: Orcus hadn’t died. He had ceased. No echo, no afterlife, not even a shadow. The gods themselves had not found his memory.

And now he understood.

"This isn’t death you bring," Dagon whispered, awe trembling in his tone. "It’s erasure. You are no prophet like you claim, you are no Guide. You are the end of continuity."

Atlas met his gaze — eyes steady, void of denial.

"I warned you."

He pulled his fist back, the runes spiraling like galaxies around it. The balcony cracked under the gravitational pressure of his power.

Below, even Gabriel and Uriel halted mid-slaughter, sensing the shift. The sky — if such a thing existed in Hell — turned black. The third layer itself seemed to recoil.

Dagon exhaled slowly. Blood dripped from his chin, his breath coming ragged, his words fragmented.

"Do it... if you must. Just... tell my daughter I kept my promise."

Atlas frowned. "What promise?"

"That she would never see me fall."

And then he smiled — a small, broken, human smile.

Atlas hesitated. For the first time in the battle, doubt clawed at him. His mind wavered between vengeance and mercy, between duty and something older — empathy.

He saw in Dagon’s cracked face the ghost of what Aurora had once loved: a scholar who chased forbidden truth, not a monster.

Perhaps in another life, they might have stood on the same side.

But this wasn’t that life.

Hesitating no more, He struck.

The world folded inward — a black hole of light and silence.

No sound. No scream. No explosion.

Dagon simply ceased.

Where his body had been, there was nothing — no dust, no shadow, not even memory. The essence around the spot was clean, as though reality itself had never shaped that being.

Atlas staggered backward, panting, the glow fading from his arm. His flesh was scorched, his veins pulsing with backlash. The system flickered warnings across his vision.

[Essence Overload Detected]

[Yggdrasil Core Cooling... 37% Integrity Remaining]

[Demon-God Fragment Stable]