When Astaroth Umbraen arrived, the battlefield fell into eerie silence.
He had expected trouble—yes. The emergency signal was not used lightly. But this…?
This was something else entirely.
Before him stood a figure wreathed in fractured light and death's echo. The air warped around it. Power bled from it in waves.
Astaroth's breath caught.
"That… that thing—is still growing in power?"
From beside him, Zerathos Amethion stepped forward, eyes narrowing in alarm. Among the kings, none were more attuned to aura fluctuations than him.
"It hasn't stabilized yet. Its power is still augmenting. No end in sight…"
A chill passed through the assembled monarchs.
"This might be worse than Lucifer," Zerathos added, voice grave.
Astaroth clenched his jaw. "Then we bring him down before it's too late. We use the trump card."
The others nodded, faces dark with shared dread.
Meanwhile, Belzebuth was unaware he'd already drawn the gaze of kings.
He didn't sense them.
Didn't care.
His mind swirled with grief, rage, and desperation.
Ayane, Takeru, Miranda—
Where were they?
His emotions rippled across Genesis like a storm trying to remember itself. One second wrathful, the next broken. Then numb.
And through it all, his power—wild and ancient—kept climbing.
The kings had barely begun coordinating their assault when a sudden fluctuation in energy shattered their focus.
Belzebuth vanished.
One moment he stood amidst the rubble and death—an avatar of chaos—and the next, he was gone.
"Did he… teleport?" Astaroth gasped.
"Impossible," snapped Kragmor "No one has that level of spatial mastery at this stage of awakening—"
"He did." Zerathos confirmed, pale. "I lost his trace entirely."
The battlefield froze for a beat.
None of them spoke the thought they all shared:
If he can vanish at will, they may never be able to kill him.
But then, before fear could take root too deeply, space twisted again.
He returned.
But wasn't here to fight them.
He was searching.
Just before his disappearance, Belzebuth had found her.
Ayane.
Or what remained of her within the Seraphel form.
She stood in the midst of forty soldiers, glowing faintly like a divine wraith—her pearlescent scales traced with silver, four arachnoid limbs unfurled from her back, crowned by radiant wings. Her golden eyes were distant. Her crescent horns shimmered like fallen moonlight.
But it was her.
Alive.
That single fact made Belzebuth pause. Then his heart shattered anew—grief and guilt bleeding together.
She was never meant for this war.
And her brother, Takeru, was still nowhere to be found.
The soldiers never stood a chance. He cut them down as if they didn't exist. Not even rage moved his blade—just sorrow.
Then, without a word, he moved to Ayane's side.
She didn't flinch. She didn't speak. Her eyes were vacant, lost in instinct.
She's not herself…
He knocked her unconscious, caught her gently, and vanished once more—reappearing in the long-forgotten chamber beneath the hills, where they once met the seer.
There, with hands still trembling, he fashioned a resting place and laid her down.
Only once her breathing steadied did he allow himself to return.
The kings had barely begun debating their next move when Belzebuth returned—this time without the Seraphel female.
"He hid her," Zerathos muttered. Noticing that Belzebuth returned alone, and the female Seraphel was nowhere to be found.
"Then he intends to protect her," Thalmaris said grimly.
"Why come back at all?" Kragmor asked, bewildered.
"Because he's not finished," Astaroth growled. "He's still searching."
There was no time to waste.
"We have to kill him. Now."
Astaroth didn't wait. He launched a wave of black sword energy straight toward Belzebuth's back.
It struck.
But there was no reaction.
Belzebuth didn't flinch.
He continued searching—eyes flicking from ruin to ruin, name after name whispering across his tongue like a mantra: Takeru… Miranda… anyone.
The kings attacked again—this time together. Divine spells, high-rank martial techniques, sacred artifacts.
Nothing worked.
At best, they left bruises.
At worst… they didn't leave a scratch.
Astaroth Umbraen gritted his teeth and reached beneath his cloak, withdrawing a long, cloth-wrapped object. The moment it was exposed to the open air, the ground itself seemed to recoil.
Zerathos turned sharply. "You're actually going to use that?"
Astaroth's face was drawn. "We have no choice if we want to survive."
Unwrapped in his hands was a weapon unlike any other—the Spear of Noxis, last relic of the fallen god of the Umbraen. A divine artifact still tainted with its maker's lingering will.
Its obsidian shaft pulsed with invisible power. The spearhead, forged from a mineral unknown to this world, radiated malice and hunger. Anyone who stared too long at it would feel their consciousness drawn into a void of whispers and shadow.
Even holding it required sacrifice.
Wielding it… meant pain.
Zerathos inhaled. "If you're the core wielder, it'll drain you more than anyone. Are you sure?"
Astaroth gave a grim smile. "It's better to be drained than dead."
The kings fell silent.
Their attacks had failed. Belzebuth hadn't even acknowledged them. He simply kept moving—searching the battlefield like a man trying to dig out hope from ash.
He didn't lash out. He didn't retaliate.
That… made him more terrifying.
The kings ceased their assault and began to act. Astaroth dropped to one knee and planted the spear in the earth. The moment it touched the ground, the air turned heavy. The other kings instinctively looked away, but they could feel it—the divine hunger.
Astaroth's face went pale as the spear leached energy from him. Trembling, he began the chant to awaken its power.
The other kings followed suit, linking their mana flows into the artifact, their own strength siphoned rapidly into its core.
Zerathos flinched. "It's draining too fast—!"
"It won't matter," Astaroth muttered, sweat beading on his brow. "It only needs one strike."
As the weapon pulsed with unbearable power, the kings stepped back. Astaroth rose, teeth clenched, and hurled the spear with all his might—an arc of darkness screaming toward Belzebuth like a god's condemnation.
As Belzebuth tore through rubble and ruin, still calling out the names of those he'd lost, something shifted.
A presence.
Dark as the Abyss itself.
His instincts screamed.
He looked up—too late.
The spear was already upon him.
Time seemed to halt.
The obsidian weapon pierced his chest cleanly, exiting through his back in a blur of cold silence. It passed through him as if he were smoke—yet left devastation in its wake.
Belzebuth staggered.
His body trembled.
A hole now gaped where his heart once beat—raw and red, rimmed with crystalline frost from the godly essence still echoing within the spear's wound.
He coughed violently. Blood splattered the ground. More poured from the hole in his chest. But then… it stopped.
The bleeding ceased.
The body held.
His legs didn't buckle. His eyes didn't dim.
He simply stood there—frozen in a moment between life and death.
The kings were stunned.
"Did… it miss?" one whispered.
"No…" Astaroth said. "It hit dead center."
Then why…?
What they could not see—what none of them understood—was that Belzebuth's body had reacted on instinct.
A bloodline reflex buried deep in his soul.
Time itself had slowed within him.
Not halted entirely—but reduced to a crawl.
One heartbeat every ten thousand seconds.
Enough to keep his soul anchored. Enough to keep him standing.
But not without cost.
Decay would come—slowly, quietly. If the time-freeze wasn't stabilized, he would begin to rot from the inside out. Thirty years, at most, if not supplemented with life energy.
Yet in that moment, there was no awareness of such things.
Only agony.
"RROOOAAAARRRR!"
His scream tore through the battlefield like a rupture in the world.
It was a roar of pain, yes—but also rage, confusion… and betrayal.
Why?
Why had this happened?
Why had his people been slaughtered?
Why was he still alive… with no heart in his chest?
The kings recoiled.
"What… is this thing?!" shouted Volcanis, pale.
"Nothing should survive that spear!"
"He didn't even fall…"
"It should have collapsed his body, destroyed him from the inside!"
But the monster before them simply stood—bleeding no longer, rage boiling hotter by the second.
"W-What are we supposed to do now?" stammered Kragmor, King of Terranos, sweat dripping down his neck.
"He doesn't die… he doesn't fall… What is he?" whispered volcanis.
"I have one option," said Thalmaris Cyanthus at last, voice grim. "But it's not without risk."
The others turned sharply. "What is it?" Astaroth asked.
"There's an ancient sealing technique passed down in my clan," Thalmaris said. "It was designed to bind divine beings—gods, even. But it's incomplete. Unstable. If it fails…"
He didn't need to finish.
"…then we're dead," Astaroth said, expression like granite. "So be it. What do you need?"
Thalmaris nodded. "I have the materials. I'll need the elders of my clan to assist in casting it. As for the rest of you—immobilize that monster for at least a few seconds. And whatever you do, stay clear when the seal activates. Anyone within two meters will be consumed."
The kings exchanged solemn glances.
"That's manageable," said Volcanis, fists clenched. "Let's begin."
This time, they didn't strike recklessly.
They circled Belzebuth at a distance, weaving the threads of their respective domains into a net of converging pressure, waiting for Thalmaris' signal.
Belzebuth, for his part, had sensed the surge in arcane buildup. His instincts warned him. He lunged toward Thalmaris—
—but was intercepted mid-flight.
The kings acted with precision now, buying time with every second they could steal from the monster's wrath.
Then—
"NOW!" Thalmaris roared.
In perfect synchronization, the kings snapped the formation into place.
A luminous net of celestial energy slammed around Belzebuth, anchoring him to the earth. He let out a guttural snarl, struggling violently against the bindings—but the seal had already begun to crystallize.
A blinding flash exploded outward.
Then silence.
And when it cleared—there he stood.
Frozen.
Encased within a jagged sarcophagus of pale, divine ice. Layer upon layer of spell-woven frost, humming with ancient power. Even from a distance, the kings could feel its hunger—the cold so pure, so absolute, it could kill a lesser being in a heartbeat.
"Will it… kill him?" Volcanis asked, almost whispering.
"Don't jinx it!" the others snapped in unison.
But fate had already heard him.
Before their very eyes, a thin, almost imperceptible crack appeared near Belzebuth's chest.
A single hairline fracture.
The kings stared at it in horror.
"You—!" Zerathos turned to Volcanis, eyes wide. "You had to say something!"
"It's spreading…" Thalmaris muttered, eyes narrowed. "Slowly, but… steadily. At this rate, we have maybe a year before it breaks."
Panic began to creep in again.
"If this seal fails, we're finished," Astaroth said through clenched teeth.
Volcanis raised a trembling hand. "What if… we reinforce it? Layer it with another?"
Everyone turned to Thalmaris again.
He considered the idea. Slowly, he nodded.
"It's possible. But it'll cost us. Casting a secondary seal of this level will take a month to prepare. And even then, it's a temporary fix. Sooner or later, that thing will wake."
A long silence followed.
In the background, the sealed tomb shimmered with cold light… and pulsed once, faintly, like a heartbeat that refused to die.
What none of them realized…
Was that even now—frozen, silenced, entombed—Belzebuth was still changing.
From his body, a radiant life force continued to flow.
Born from the purging of absorbed souls, it seeped quietly across Genesis—into the air, the rivers, the roots of trees. It bathed the living, lengthened their lifespans, strengthened their flesh, and whispered forgotten power back into the blood of man and beast alike.
They thought they had sealed a threat.
But what they had done… was reshape the world.