Lucifer maintained the gravity well.

The colossal walls of bubbling green magma hissed and spat. They were desperate to crash back into the center of the crater.

But the Warlord’s Level 50 Archmage core, channeled through the Gauntlet of the Void King, was an absolute unyielding pillar of spatial force.

Elara and Celeste did not hesitate.

The Valkyrie and the High Ranger sprinted down the steep rocky slope. They plunged directly into the parted sea of liquid fire.

They moved with terrifying speed and arrived at the bottom of the fifty-foot-wide clearing in seconds.

They stood before the massive heavy iron door set flush into the black bedrock. The glowing gold runes covering the metal pulsed faintly and were entirely unaffected by the apocalyptic heat surrounding them.

"It’s a Royal Seal," Celeste shouted up. Her voice echoed strangely in the gravity cylinder. She ran her gloved fingers over the complex locking mechanism.

"It requires the King’s bloodline signature to open. Or a specialized siege ram."

"I am the siege ram," Lucifer stated smoothly.

He did not walk down the slope. He stayed on the shoreline and kept his right arm raised to hold the lava back. He used his left hand.

Lucifer drew the Blade of Ruin. The ruby-red light flared brilliantly.

He did not swing the sword. He channeled a fraction of his Void Arcanist mana and aimed a precise microscopic pulse of Spatial Rend directly at the center of the iron door!

CRACK!

The spatial distortion hit the heavy iron. It did not blast the door open, it literally deleted the locking mechanism! The glowing gold runes shattered into useless sparks.

"Open it," Lucifer commanded.

Elara grabbed the massive iron ring handle. The Twilight Sovereign’s enhanced physical strength easily hauled the heavy door upward. She ripped it open with a loud grinding screech of rusted hinges.

A rush of cold perfectly preserved air blew out of the dark shaft.

"The vault is open," Elara reported and peered into the gloom. A spiraling stone staircase led deep into the earth.

"Get in," Lucifer ordered.

Elara and Celeste jumped into the shaft and disappeared into the dark.

Lucifer did not wait. He let go of the gravity spell!

The Gauntlet of the Void King stopped crackling with black lightning. The invisible pillar of pressure vanished.

The towering walls of green magma instantly collapsed inward!

Lucifer activated Void Step a microsecond before the lava crashed together!

He vanished from the shoreline. He teleported perfectly into the dark shaft and landed heavily on the stone stairs right beside Elara and Celeste.

Above them, the heavy iron door slammed shut automatically. This was followed by the deafening muffled roar of thousands of tons of liquid fire burying the entrance!

They were sealed inside.

"That was close," Celeste breathed. She clicked a small luminescent crystal on her shoulder strap to provide light.

"It was calculated," Lucifer corrected her smoothly.

He walked past them and took the point. They descended the spiraling stone stairs rapidly. The air grew stale and smelled of old dust and heavily concentrated magic.

They reached the bottom of the staircase and stepped into the Royal Vault.

It was not a sprawling armory like the Cathedral’s vault. It was a small perfectly square room built of solid seamless white marble. There were no weapons. There were no chests of gold.

In the exact center of the room sat a single simple pedestal of petrified wyrmwood.

Resting on the pedestal was the objective! 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

It was a crown. But it was not made of gold or jewels. It was forged from a single continuous piece of dark unpolished iron. It looked incredibly crude, heavy, and unremarkable.

But to Lucifer’s Void Arcanist sight, the artifact was blinding.

The Crown did not radiate holy magic or dark matter. It radiated absolute unwavering planetary law. It felt like standing next to the gravitational core of the earth itself.

[System: Mythic Artifact Discovered.]

[Item: Crown of the First King (World-Anchor)]

[Status: Dormant. Awaiting Attunement.]

[Description: Enforces the physical laws of the mortal plane. Projects an absolute planetary barrier when fueled by a sufficient mana source.]

"The World-Anchor," Elara whispered and stepped cautiously toward the pedestal. Even as a Tier 5 entity, she could feel the immense grounding weight of the artifact pressing against her core. "It doesn’t look like much."

"It predates vanity," Lucifer said smoothly.

He walked up to the pedestal. He reached out with his bare left hand and grabbed the Crown.

The moment his fingers touched the cold iron, a massive silent shockwave of pure stabilizing energy exploded outward.

It washed over Lucifer, Elara, and Celeste, passed straight through the white marble walls, and rushed up to the surface.

"I have it," Lucifer announced and turned away from the pedestal. He did not put the crown on his head. He stored it safely inside his Dimensional Vault. "The grid is secured. Let’s go home."

But the system interface did not confirm the extraction.

Instead, it flashed a blinding purple warning!

[System Alert: Spatial Breach Detected!]

[Location: Royal Vault (Current Location)]

[Warning: Mythic-Tier Hostiles Teleporting into Sector.]

The air inside the small white marble room suddenly grew freezing cold. The familiar suffocating stench of burning sulfur and rotting meat flooded the enclosed space.

Lucifer’s void-swirling eyes narrowed sharply.

Directly in front of the stone staircase, blocking their only exit, the space tore open.

Three massive purple rifts materialized simultaneously.

"They tracked the anchor’s resonance" Celeste yelled and drew her twin curved daggers. In the confined space of the vault, her longbow was useless.

"No," Lucifer stated coldly and drew his ruby-red longsword. "They tracked me."

Three towering figures stepped out of the rifts.

They were not standard Abyssal Brutes or Gargoyles. They were Doom-Bringers!

The elite guard of the Demon King.

They were twelve feet tall. They were clad in massive spiked plate armor forged from pure solidified dark matter.

Their helmets were featureless black visors that glowed with a single horizontal slit of burning purple fire. They did not carry standard weapons.

They wielded massive two-handed executioner swords that dripped with highly corrosive necrotic acid.

[System Warning: Elite Boss Encounter!]

[Entities: Doom-Bringers (Level 65 - Mythic Vanguard)]

[Quantity: 3]

[Status: Absolute Hostility.]

"The Desolator sends his regards, Warlord," a deep mechanical multi-layered voice echoed from the central Doom-Bringer. The sound vibrated the white marble walls. "He wants his rock back. And he wants your head."

Lucifer did not flinch.

He analyzed the tactical situation instantly. The room was perfectly square and roughly forty by forty feet. The ceiling was low.

It was the worst possible environment for his build. He could not use Event Horizon or the Star-Shatter Cannon without blowing himself and his commanders up.

He could not use Void Step effectively because the Doom-Bringers’ dark matter armor passively jammed spatial teleportation within a fifty-foot radius.

It was going to be a pure brutal melee brawl in a phone booth.

"Celeste. Take the left flank. Hamstring them," Lucifer commanded smoothly with his voice completely devoid of panic. "Elara. The right."

"Understood," Elara hissed with her Twilight wings flaring. The iridescent dark armor shifted seamlessly as she spun her violet-flaming spear.

The three Doom-Bringers charged!

They moved with terrifying unnatural speed for their massive size. They did not roar. They swung their colossal executioner swords in synchronized horizontal arcs and aimed to cut the entire room in half.

"Down!" Lucifer barked.

The Warlord dropped to one knee. Elara and Celeste ducked instantly. The massive acid-dripping swords whistled inches over their heads and sliced a deep smoking groove into the white marble walls behind them.

Lucifer did not wait for them to recover their swing.

He surged upward and drove his ruby-red blade directly into the chest plate of the center Doom-Bringer!

CLANG!

The True Damage enchantment flared violently, but the blade only bit an inch deep into the dark matter armor.

The Mythic-tier defense of the Level 65 demons was incredibly dense. It heavily resisted even absolute damage.

The Doom-Bringer grunted and ignored the wound. It brought its massive heavy boot down and attempted to crush Lucifer.

Lucifer raised his right arm and caught the stomp with the Gauntlet of the Void King!

The impact shook the entire vault! The floor beneath Lucifer cracked, but his Level 50 physical strength held the massive demon’s leg in place. Black lightning crackled furiously between his knuckles and the demon’s boot.

"Elara! Now!" Lucifer shouted.

On the right flank, the Twilight Sovereign moved.

Elara did not attack the Doom-Bringer Lucifer was holding. She engaged the demon on the right. She parried a massive overhead strike with her shield. The dark matter armor absorbed the concussive force.

She spun and slid under the demon’s guard. She did not thrust her spear at the chest. She aimed for the joints.

The violet-flaming tip of her celestial spear found the tiny gap between the Doom-Bringer’s knee armor. She drove the weapon deep and instantly purified the necrotic tissue inside the joint!

The demon stumbled with its right leg failing completely.

On the left flank, Celeste was moving like a ghost. The High Ranger used the Warlord’s speed buff to dart around the third Doom-Bringer.

The massive monster swung wildly and shattered the marble pedestal in the center of the room, but it could not track her.

Celeste vaulted off the wall and landed directly on the demon’s broad back. She drove both of her enchanted silver daggers deep into the gaps of its neck armor! She severed the primary necrotic nerve clusters.

The demon roared in static and thrashed wildly.

"They are too heavily armored!" Celeste yelled and held onto the bucking monster. "We can’t kill them fast enough before they regenerate!"

She was right. The deep wounds Elara and Celeste inflicted were already beginning to seal with thick purple Abyssal magic. The demons possessed massive high-tier regeneration.

Lucifer shoved the center Doom-Bringer’s leg away and threw the massive beast off balance.

"They regenerate because their cores are linked to the Abyss," Lucifer stated coldly. "We sever the link."

He did not swing his sword again. He sheathed the Blade of Ruin.

Lucifer raised both hands. The void in his eyes spun wildly and consumed the ambient light in the small room.

"Gravity Crush," Lucifer roared.

He did not target the demons. He targeted the three purple rifts they had used to enter the vault. The portals were still hovering near the staircase and acting as open conduits feeding the Doom-Bringers raw Abyssal energy.

Three microscopic black holes materialized directly inside the center of the three rifts!

The intense gravity violently grabbed the spatial fabric of the portals and crushed them inward! The purple light shrieked and collapsed into three tiny brilliant sparks before vanishing completely.

The supply line was cut.

The three Doom-Bringers instantly staggered. The glowing purple fire in their visors dimmed. The rapid regeneration on their wounds ceased completely.

"Now," Lucifer commanded smoothly and drew his sword again. "Break them."