The salt spray of the Pacific bit into the air, but the atmosphere around the southern tip of Chile was far from natural. Atlas held a high-ranking Djinn—one of the Nine Evils—by the throat.
The Djinn sneered, a grotesque expression of demonic defiance. He gathered a glob of dark, corrosive phlegm and spat it directly at Atlas's face.
Atlas didn't flinch.
He didn't even move.
The spit, mid-flight, suddenly halted. It blurred, tracing its arc backward until it flowed back into the Djinn's mouth.
The demon choked, his eyes bulging as he was forced to swallow his own spite.
"I'll ask again," Atlas's voice was a gravelly baritone,"Is this the coordinate for the Avalon?"
The Djinn tried to scream, but the sounds were stolen before they hit the air.
He blinked, confused.
'The 41st parallel... near the Chiloé archipelago...' the thought flickered through his mind.
Amon stepped forward from the shifting gray fog, his crystal monocle glinting with a predatory light. He adjusted his top hat and offered a thin, sharp smile.
"Thank you for the directions, friend. Your subconscious is much more talkative than your tongue."
Amon placed a gloved hand on Atlas's shoulder.
"Hold on tight. I've never been fond of the scenic route."
In a heartbeat, the world folded.
Utilizing the Door Pathway authority of a Sequence 0, the space between them and their destination vanished.
They traversed 100 kilometers in a literal blink, reappearing on a crowded beach.
The contrast was jarring.
While the rest of the world was fracturing under the weight of the Scenarios, here, hundreds of people were lounging under umbrellas, children were building sandcastles, and the scent of suntan oil filled the air.
Amon looked at the crowds and let out a soft, amused sigh.
"No matter which universes these people are from, one thing remains consistent: the factory setting for humanity is 'willful ignorance.' The Apocalypse is knocking at the door, and they're worried about their tan."
Atlas nodded, his youthful face etched with a weary solemnity.
"We should evacuate them. They won't survive the feedback when I pull the island out."
Amon snapped his fingers with a casual thrum.
In a soundless boom, every civilian on the beach disappeared, redirected to a safe zone in the Chilean interior. The beach was suddenly, eerily silent.
"It's efficient having a dual-pathway god on the team," Atlas remarked.
"You heroes are too conservative," Amon replied, yawning. "Preserving and cultivating one power is a noble pursuit. Djinns have begun their ascension through the Pathways, trading their humanity for the efficiency. If only I could receive a 'Gift' or an 'Authority' from your world..."
Atlas stepped toward the shoreline, his feet sinking into the wet sand. He raised his hands, and the temporal distortion around him became a physical weight.
Atlas wasn't just regressing time; he was regressing the "State" of the coordinates.
Avalon, the headquarters of the Moses Ascetic Order, was a place hidden between reality and the spirit realm, a fortress of numbers and reenactments.
Atlas forced the "Hidden" back into the "Initial."
The Chilean coast groaned.
The air shattered like glass as the shimmering mist of Avalon overlapped with the physical world.
The apple grove appeared first—trees bearing golden fruit that hummed with mystical frequency. In the center, the Warlock's Spire rose like a jagged needle, its surface composed of billions of shifting, flickering numbers that formed the bricks and mortar of the structure.
"Well," Amon noted, stepping onto the newly manifested soil. "It looks like the Djinns will need a few more centuries to match the brute force of a Hero's Authority."
The floating numbers began to vibrate, attempting to pull Avalon back into the Spirit World.
"Not this time," Amon whispered.
The infiltration began from every cardinal direction.
Amon moved toward the Spire, his movements a blur of spatial jumps.
He was met by Chairman Torriope, an Angel of the Mystery Pryer pathway. Torriope's body was a mass of complex information, a walking library of forbidden knowledge that sought to infect the minds of anyone who looked at him.
"You are an Error in the calculation," Torriope's voice echoed like a modem screeching.
Amon looked at his wrist, where a sleek, black smartwatch hummed with the divine energy of the God of Steam and Machinery.
Amon gave [New Life] he stole in the battle with Mother Tree of Desire to Torriope's massive informational body.
Then he gave away corrupted ravings of the Chaos Sea to him.
[Function 'The Information Shredder' of your smartwatch is activated!]
Amon made Torriope's Information collapse towards a point, squeezing it together, compressing and Sealing it into a dark spherical ball.
"I've always preferred analog solutions for digital problems," Amon chuckled.
The smartwatch emitted a pulse of "Null-Information" gravity.
"H-how...01001000 01101111 01110111..!"
Torriope screamed as his informatized body—his very soul—was caught in the "Shredder." The billions of numbers that made up his existence were pulled apart, deleted, and recycled into raw energy. Within seconds, the Angel was gone, leaving only a glowing, crystalline Sage Characteristic in Amon's palm.
"I'm just the worst enemy for you."
While Amon cleaned the Spire, Red Angel Medici breached the "Dark Side" of Avalon.
The tunnels were a nightmare.
Medici walked through corridors lined with infant corpses—catalysts for a horrific ritual linked to the Great Mother. The scent of stagnant fertility and rot was overwhelming.
"Filth," Medici spat, his purple flames incinerating everything he touched.
He was intercepted by Seids, a High-Sequence Warlock wielding some Sealed Artifact.The artifact, a swirling mass of chaotic colors, the asymmetrical black and gold mask. Seids put it on his face.
At the same time, out of thin air, appeared a large longsword. It was obviously too big for his slim body. But, to everyone's surprise, Seids's arms, legs, head grew enourmously big, matching the size of the long sword.
It looked like a toothpick.
"You will burn in the madness of your own history!" Seids roared, the sword adjusted to his wielder's size.
[Item Information]
===
Name: Durandal
Rank: Pinnacle-grade
…
Status: Unsealed.
Description: A sword that never dulled, never broke, and never betrayed its wielder.
Durandal is a legendary blade born not from forging alone, but from oath and inevitability.
*Note: Said to be unbreakable
===
The legendary Sword of Roland from French epos.
"I've lived in a volcano of madness for a thousand years, kid," Medici sneered.
Suddenly, a white-hot sword of apocalypse cleaved through the darkness.
Jung Heewon landed beside Medici, her Judge of Apocalypse status flaring like a sun.
['Hour of Judgement' is active!]
"Medici, don't rush! We'll handle the Warlock!" Heewon commanded.
Behind them, Jain and Setryn moved like ghosts.
"First Paris, now a Chilean basement," Jain complained, her hands busy dismantling the infant-corpse catalysts. "Looks like people are obsessed with getting themselves killed sooner rather than later."
Setryn, impersonating a high-ranking "Pillar," sent out false orders through the Order's numeric communication network, causing the remaining Warlocks to attack their own defensive artifacts.
"Hurry up!" Jung Heewon yelled, her eyes reflecting the flickering red of the Star Stream's system messages.
"Shut up! You just told me not to rush!" Medici snarled, blocking gigantic Durandal of Seids.
The air in the dark side of Avalon groaned under the weight of conflicting authorities.
Seids, now a ten-meter-tall colossus of distorted proportions, swung the legendary Durandal. The blade carved a crescent of absolute destruction through the tunnel, pulverizing the stone pillars and infant-corpse catalysts alike.
"My grandma swings the sword better," Medici's voice rasped. It was a [Provocation]. The words carried a repugnant aura that clawed at Seids's already fraying sanity, intensified by the warlock's own path toward madness. "That mask is too big for your head, and that sword is too heavy for your soul."
Seids roared, the Solomon's Mask glowing with a sickly black-gold light.
Medici lunged forward, intending to close the distance with [Flame Transformation], but as he moved, space folded. Instead of reaching Seids, he found himself accelerating back toward his starting point. He was trapped in a geometric loop.
"Distortion? How nostalgic," Medici sneered. His three mouths laughed in a terrifying, discordant harmony. "But you're forgetting who I am. I don't follow rules. I Conquer them."
Medici didn't try to break the loop. Instead, he reached out his hand and gripped the very air.
He grabbed a jagged piece of rebar protruding from the ceiling. Under his touch, the rusted metal turned iron-black and began to glow with a violent, pure violet flame. The mundane object became a spear of destruction that could pierce the heavens.
"Heewon! Clear the flank!" Medici commanded.
Jung Heewon didn't waste breath.
"Die!" she screamed.
A torrent of chaotic fire erupted from her blade, clashing with the "Words of Order" Seids was frantically chanting. The warlock tried to use [Magnification] to enhance his barriers, but Heewon's Chaos attribute specifically targeted the rigid order of the Moses Ascetic Order.
"Re-directed!" Seids shrieked, the mask's hollow eye socket flashing.
The white flames were distorted, turning back toward Heewon.
"Not likely," a cold voice whispered.
Medici had used [Flame Transformation], but not to move his body. He transformed the violet flames on his spear into a stream of living fire, bypassing the 'Circular Path' rule by moving through the Spirit World.
He appeared directly above Seids's giant shoulder.
"You're just a footnote," Medici growled.
[King of Angels is manifesting his Mythical Creature Form!]
"Jain don't look!" Setryn screamed.
The Red Angel's body unraveled.
He became a six-meter-tall Calamity Giant. An iron-black metal skeleton engulfed in majestic, azure-tinged violet flames. The temperature in the tunnel spiked to a level that turned the stone floor into magma.
Seids swung Durandal in a desperate horizontal arc. The legendary blade hit Medici's ribs with the force of a falling mountain.
CLANG.
The sound was a death knell.
"Do you think it was really necessary for us to come? They'll destroy it even without our help!" Jain complained.
Durandal didn't break—it was unbreakable—but the shockwave was absorbed by Medici's [Galvanization]. His body had become the very symbolism of "Steel." Medici wondered if the steel of King of Angels could match the Steel Authority of Heynckes now.
"My turn," Medici said.
Medici's Fiery Eyes scanned the giant warlock. Through the distortion of Solomon's Mask, he saw it—the point where the mask's logic met the warlock's flesh. A single, pulsing thread of probability.
Medici lunged.
His fist, carrying the [Strength Concentration] of his phantom army, slammed into Seids's chest.
CRACK.
The air itself released a sound like a whip-crack as the pressure wave flattened everything within a hundred meters. The building began collapsing. Medici's fire Infused. He pumped azure-violet flames directly into Seids's lungs through the impact point.
"[Internal Detonation]," Medici whispered.
Seids stumbled back, his internal organs turning to ash.
Every time Seids tried to cast a Fairy Tale spell to become non-existent, Medici's [Weakness Investigation] found the conceptual flaw in the story before it could even manifest.
He frantically tried to use [Exploit] to jump into the Mirror World to escape the heat.
"Don't let him leave!" Heewon yelled, her sword glowing with Chaos.
Medici clicked his fingers.
Hundreds of ravens made of compressed violet fire erupted from Medici's wings.
They tracked.
As Seids tried to phase out of reality, the ravens detonated simultaneously, their property pinning the warlock's soul to his physical form.
"You call yourself a warlock?" Medici mocked, walking through the fire, his iron-black armor stained with the blood.
"I am... the Truth..." Seids gasped, his gigantized body leaking streams of glowing, digital-like blood where the Spear of Destruction and the Sword of Judgement had met.
Seids, blinded and burning, swung Durandal wildly.
"The Truth is," Medici said, his voice dropping to a terrifying bass that made the tunnel walls crumble, "you're fired."
In a move of absolute madness, Seids didn't try to defend. He gripped the Grade 0 Sealed Artifact: "Destined Madness"—the silver flask covered in rotating black and white eyes— out of his inventory and slammed it against his own forehead.
He was trying to Informatize it.
He sought to bypass the Sequence 2 "Sage" ritual by directly absorbing the mystical information of an artifact that had once belonged to an Angel. He wanted to force an advancement mid-combat, to turn his very existence into a pure torrent of information that Medici could not "Cull."
Medici raised his hand.
The rubble of the destroyed pillars and the discarded infant catalysts began to shift. Under the command of the Conqueror, the debris transformed.
Dozens of 4-meter-tall puppets, charred with an iron hue and speckled in dark-red blood, rose from the ground. They were wreathed in Medici's violet flames, their eyes glowing with his borrowed will.
"Kill him," Medici commanded.
The stone soldiers lunged at the gigantized Seids, climbing his body like ants on a beetle. They used their own bodies as [Flame Bombs], detonating against Seids's weak points.
Jung Heewon watched the spectacle with a mix of awe and disgust.
He raised his spear, the [Spear of Destruction] manifesting. It was no longer a piece of rebar; it was a conceptual weapon that carried the "Certain Death" of a Reaper and the "War" of a Conqueror.
"Heewon! On three!"
[Giant Story 'Season of Light And Darkness' begins its storytelling!]
She snapped, her blade turning into a pillar of white light. Her sword seemed to contain the powers of the third tail flicker of Apocalypse Dragon.
The two symbols of War and Chaos moved in unison.
Medici roared. Heewon screamed.
The air around Seids suddenly turned into digital static. The stone slabs of Avalon's palace rooftop began to dissolve into strings of "0" and "1".
His body turned transparent, a statue composed of countless starlight particles. But then, the "Destined Madness" reacted. The billions of fragments of ancient knowledge inside the flask—ravings of the Fourth Epoch, the forbidden names of the Cosmos—flooded into Seids's mind.
Seids's head Revisioned.
His humanity was deleted.
His physical form collapsed into a pure Information Torrent. What emerged from the static was a nightmare of the Hermit Pathway: an Informational Serpent.
It was a massive, translucent eel-like creature composed of scrolling complex symbols and mystical words. Thousands of cold, eyelash-less eyes opened all over its "skin," each one reflecting a different, terrifying piece of knowledge.
Medici burned every informational attack that flew at him.
[Giant Story 'Torch That Swallowed Myth' has begun its storytelling!]
Sound of the distant train that could melt anything away on its path resounded.
Judge of Apocalypse tried to suppress informational storm with her own stories. But it wasn't enough.
Jung Heewon staggered, her [Hour of Judgement] flickering. Her mind was suddenly flooded with the blueprints of the Warlock's Spire, the chemical composition of infant fat, and the 365-digit code to Avalon. The "Storm" was trying to stun her, to turn her mind into a part of the Serpent's collection.
The Serpent opened its maw, and instead of a roar, a stream of Materialized Knowledge erupted. It was a torrent of symbols that sought to assimilate Medici's violet flames into "Part of the Serpent's Information."
Medici, now in his 6-meter-tall Calamity Giant form, stood his ground. He raised his hand, the iron-black skeleton wreathed in azure-violet fire, and sneered at the monster.
Suddenly, the whole of Avalon shook.
"What the hell is happening outside?!" Jain dodged the stream of information.
***
Alger Wilson stood on the ship.
Opposite him stood a high-ranking Warlock of the Moses Ascetic Order, his face obscured by the Face of the Arcane. The mechanical left-half of the mask whirred with gears and rivets, its crystal lens glowing with a terrifying, structural-disintegrating light.
"You should have stayed in the ocean, Mr. Hanged Man," the Warlock hissed. He raised his hand, and a beam of white light erupted from the mask's eye guard.
The beam struck the air, causing the molecular structure of the atmosphere to unravel. But Alger didn't move.
Two shadowed heads—one youthful and fresh, the other withered and elderly—sprouted from Alger's shoulders. Simultaneously, his physical form blurred. He split. Three distinct bodies wreathed in writhing flesh and liquid shadow materialized, surrounding the Warlock.
"You crazy warlock," Alger's three voices spoke in a jarring, overlapping harmony.
The Warlock panicked, attempting to imbue the surrounding rubble with souls to create mechanical golems. But Alger was faster.
Alger released three souls simultaneously—one from each head.
Alger's original head released a Sequence 4: Iron-blooded Knight. A wall of bluish-white flames erupted, incinerating the Warlock's soul-imbued constructs.
Second head summoned a Sequence 4: Manipulator. A wave of mental stagnation washed over the Warlock, disrupting his focus on the mask.
Elderly called forth a Sequence 4: Secrets Sorcerer. Space was sealed. There was no escape.
Alger manifested a Black Greatsword wreathed in the powers of Degeneration. He stepped through the Shadow World, appearing behind the Warlock.
The blade descended. It corroded the Warlock's soul and the mechanical logic of the mask. The Warlock shrieked as his body dissolved into a Flesh Rug, his existence harvested to replenish Alger's divine vitality.
Nearby, the Demoness of Gold attempted to slip through the shadows, her presence a shimmering, seductive lure. She looked at Alger with eyes that promised salvation from his eternal "Hangman's" burden.
"Let me go, Mr. Hanged Man," she purred, her voice a silk thread of Instigation. "You have a mission. Why waste time on a woman who only wants to survive?"
Alger's elderly head turned toward her, but before he could react, a blur of silver light slammed into the ground in front of the Demoness.
Atlas stood there, his eyes cold and ancient.
"Mr. Error warned us," Atlas said, his voice regressing her charm-filled air back into neutral oxygen. "A Demoness's word is like a script with no ending—meaningless. You attacked Amon in Seoul. Did you think your movements will be left unnoticed?"
"A brat?" The Demoness of Gold sneered, her fingers elongating into claws . "I'll carve your 'Nine Stars' into pieces."
She lunged, but Atlas simply raised a hand. [Chronos's Resentment] flared. The Demoness found her movements slowing as her "Momentary History" regressed.
***
At the center of Avalon's crumbling Spire, Amon adjusted his monocle. He put Sage characteristics of the Chairman into his inventory.
He smiled.
"Long time no see, Judith."
He was staring at a woman who looked like an oil painting come to life: Judith, the Demoness of Gray. She stood in an old-fashioned gray dress, her crystalline blue eyes fixed on the God of Error.
"How is your Mother? Did she recover well after the mess in Seoul? Or is she still nursing her ego?" Amon chuckled.
Judith's red lips curled into a thin, moist line.
"Why are you here, Amon?"
"Hm... Why am I doing this?" Amon tilted his head, his smile widening. "Where is the Dimensional Entropy, Judith? We know you stole it from the Essence of the Strait underground while I was busy fighting. Is it here? In this sinking trash heap?"
Judith's composure broke for a fraction of a second—a micro-expression Amon's Superior Observation caught instantly.
"You know what? I've changed my mind," Judith said, her voice turning into a freezing gale. "We won't let you leave."
From the reflections in the golden apple trees and the shadows of the Spire, three figures stepped out: The Demoness of Silver, The Demoness of Scarlet, and Demoness of Yellow.
But they weren't alone. A massive, five-meter-tall Magenta Dragon descended from the clouds, her amber vertical pupils burning with the power of a Sequence 2 Sage.
"You killed the Chairman!" Retia Austin roared, her dragon form wreathed in scrolls of materialized information.
"He was a redundancy in the system," a calm voice replied.
Bernadetteand Cattleya appeared, flanking Amon. Bernadette's chestnut hair danced in the wind of the cracking barrier, her eyes deep as the ocean.
"One Sage and four Catastrophes," Amon yawned. "Hardly a fair trade for my time. But I suppose I can manage."
"Leave the Vice-Chairman to us," Cattleya said.
Retia Austin didn't wait. She pulled out an ancient, yellowish-brown sheepskin book: the Post-Apocalyptic Scripture.
[Incarnation 'Retia Austin' is writing a Prophecy!]
The air turned heavy with the weight of an inevitable end. But the prophecy never landed. Somewhere in the distance, a silver-haired boy eating ice cream looked up at the sky.
[Someone has countered the Prophecy!]
The script in the book blurred and changed into a poem about a duckling. Retia stared at the book in shock.
"I wanted to steal that," Amon mocked, pouting his lips.
He waved his hand teleporting Retia with Bernadette and Cattleya away.
Judith realized the situation was spiraling. She didn't look at Amon; she looked at the ring on her finger—a band of twisted, pulsating veins.
"Mother," Judith whispered.
A sound like a thousand women screaming in labor and a thousand graves opening at once tore through Avalon. The sky over Chile didn't just turn red; it turned into a bruised, organic purple.
Amon tried to Seal her away, but it was too late.
'Tsk.'
[Warning! Warning!]
[True God 'Primordial Demoness' is preparing to descend!]
At that exact moment, the rooftop where Medici and Heewon were fighting exploded. The Informational Serpent (Seids) lunged toward the descending presence of the Demoness, its thousands of eyes weeping digital static.
"Cull him before She gets here!" Medici roared, his Calamity Giant form igniting into a supernova of violet fire.
The earthquake leveled the Spire. Avalon was no longer a land of ideals; it was the epicenter of apocalypse.