Reincarnated in a novel: I am the villain!-Chapter 316: Azazel

The clash was completely silent.

When the absolute destruction of Damien’s 8th-Order Eclipse Core met the absolute decay of a 9th-Order Demigod, the physical world simply ceased to function.

Sound waves were erased. The surrounding black ice didn’t shatter; it sublimated directly into nothingness.

Damien’s [Eclipse Sever] bit deep into the center of the Rotting King’s chest.

For a single, triumphant microsecond, it worked. The twilight-purple energy, fused with the unyielding Golden Dragon Aura, cut through the impenetrable grey robes of dead souls.

It carved through the shifting, rotting flesh of the five-hundred-foot monstrosity, driving straight toward the pulsating 9th-Order core.

"We have him!" Theron roared from the ice below, pushing his Midnight Domain to its absolute limit to keep the giant’s arms pinned.

But a 9th-Order Demigod was not a beast to be slain with mere force. They were physical embodiments of the world’s Laws.

The Rotting King looked down at the white crystal blade buried in his chest. His countless weeping faces didn’t scream in agony. They smiled.

"A valiant effort, little King," the Rotting King’s voice reverberated directly into Damien’s skull.

"But you do not understand the nature of rot. Rot is not just destruction. It is the natural cycle of all things."

The twilight-purple energy of Damien’s strike suddenly began to dim.

Damien’s eyes widened in horror. The raw, 8th-Order mana he had poured into the Pantheon Sword was aging. The Rotting King’s Domain was imposing the concept of decay onto Damien’s magic itself, turning his flawless attack into brittle, useless grey ash.

Before Damien’s eyes, the massive, gaping wound in the Demigod’s chest stitched itself back together.

The Rotting King simply rewrote his own physical existence, rotting away the damage as if it had never occurred.

’He didn’t even burn any life force to heal that,’ Damien realized, a chill running down his spine that had nothing to do with the frozen hell around him.

’My absolute best strike... it’s just a drop of rain in his ocean.’

"Now, die."

The Rotting King flexed his chest.

BOOM!

A repulsive wave of concentrated decay exploded outward. Damien was violently ejected from the giant’s torso.

He spun through the air, using [Phantom Speed] to forcefully correct his trajectory and land heavily on the black ice next to his father, his boots carving deep trenches as he skidded backward.

"He’s too dense!" Damien yelled over the roaring necrotic winds, his breath misting.

"Physical damage doesn’t stick! He just rots the concept of the wound!"

"Then we carve him down faster than he can rewrite it!" Theron shouted back, his grey eyes blazing with the starry black light of the Voss patriarch.

He stepped up beside his son, his Void-corrupted right arm violently pulsing with dark mana.

Despite the overwhelming despair of facing a Demigod, the Voss family moved flawlessly. They were predators, and predators did not stop biting until the prey stopped moving.

High above, Isabelle screamed as she pushed her demonic bloodline to the absolute brink. "Gravity Law: Crushing Star!"

The purple singularity beneath the Rotting King’s feet intensified, dragging the five-hundred-foot giant down to one knee. The sheer gravitational pull was so absolute that the Demigod’s kneecap shattered the bedrock of Layer 9.

"Blind him, Elizabeth!" Theron roared.

"I am!" Elizabeth shrieked, her silver hair whipping wildly as blood leaked from her eyes.

"World of the Blood Petal!"

The blinding storm of red rose petals thickened around the Demigod’s faces, completely severing his cosmic senses and plunging his vision into an endless kaleidoscope of illusions.

With the Demigod pinned and blinded, Damien and Theron became a blur of absolute violence.

They didn’t aim for single, massive execution strikes anymore.

They used hit-and-run tactics, darting around the giant’s flailing arms. Theron used the [Midnight Domain] to summon massive spears of concentrated shadow, impaling the Rotting King’s joints.

Damien utilized his [Phantom Speed], blinking into existence to deliver rapid, surgical cuts with the Pantheon Sword before vanishing back into the shadows.

Time continued to pass, and they fought a perfect, flawless battle. Every time the Rotting King tried to cast a spell,

Theron interrupted his mana flow. Every time he tried to step forward, Isabelle crushed him down. Every time he tried to focus his gaze, Elizabeth blinded him.

They were carving the Demigod to pieces.

But as Damien landed on a floating glacier, his chest heaving and his Eclipse Core burning hot with exertion, he saw the terrifying truth.

It didn’t matter.

The severed limbs grew back. The impaled joints liquefied and reformed. The Rotting King wasn’t tiring. He wasn’t even fighting them seriously.

"You are persistent," the Rotting King’s voice boomed, echoing with a sudden, bone-chilling boredom. "Like flies biting a corpse. But the Master’s arrival can no longer be delayed."

The Rotting King stopped flailing. He stopped trying to swat them away.

The Demigod raised his massive, grey hands, completely ignoring the shadow spears piercing his shoulders and the gravity crushing his knees.

He pointed them at the massive, jagged Void Gate hovering at the back of the battlefield.

"I offer the foundation of this world," the Rotting King chanted, his voice resonating with ancient, forbidden Authority.

The dimension of Layer 9 screamed.

The glowing green leylines of the Abyss. the very veins of the planet that Damien had seen the Demigod ripping from the earth suddenly flared with blinding intensity.

The Rotting King sucked them dry, channeling the entire remaining life force of the 9th Layer directly into the Void Gate.

"He’s abandoning his defense!" Theron yelled, rushing forward. "Stop him!"

"No! Dad, wait!" Damien reached out, his Sensory Intent screaming in absolute, primal terror. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

It was too late.

To complete the ritual, the Rotting King unleashed his true, unfiltered 9th-Order Domain he instead expanded his absolute presence.

VWOOOOM.

The pressure was incomprehensible. It was a wave of pure, conceptual rot that instantly overwrote the laws of physics.

Isabelle’s gravity singularity shattered like cheap glass. The backlash hit her instantly; she coughed up a massive mouthful of black blood and plummeted from the sky, crashing into the ice.

Elizabeth’s illusion of blood petals instantly withered into grey ash. The Empress of Deceit cried out, collapsing to her knees as her mana core was forcefully suppressed.

Theron, who had charged the closest, was hit by the physical wall of the expanding Domain.

The shadows he wielded were instantly vaporized. The blow threw him backward, sending him skipping across the ice like a skipped stone until he smashed into the base of a frozen mountain.

Damien was forced to his hands and knees, his [King’s Mantle] violently flickering as he haemorrhaged his internal stamina just to keep his skin from rotting off his bones.

The battlefield was instantly cleared. The resistance was broken simply by the Demigod flexing his true weight.

With the flies swatted away, the Rotting King poured the last drop of the dimension’s energy into the ritual.

KRA-RIIIIIP.

The sound of the universe tearing apart deafened them.

The massive, jagged Void Gate behind the Rotting King didn’t just open. It stabilized. The chaotic, swirling black mist within the gate cleared, creating a perfect, permanent window into the Void.

And from that window, an aura bled into the Abyss.

It was a Red Aura.

It was the exact same color Damien had seen radiating from Emperor Thraka, the same color that had fueled the cultists on the surface. But the density of this aura was infinitely, horrifyingly greater.

The moment that red light touched the black ice of Layer 9, the ice didn’t melt. It ceased to exist.

Damien couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. The sheer, passive weight of the entity standing on the other side of that gate was paralyzing his nervous system.

Even with his 8th-Order Eclipse Core, his soul instinctively recognized its absolute inferior status and demanded he prostrate himself.

Isabelle, lying in the snow a few feet away, began to weep uncontrollably, her demon blood completely terrified into submission.

DING. DING. DING.

Damien’s System interface exploded, flooding his vision with flashing, blood-red warnings that he hadn’t seen since the invasion of the Academy.

[CRITICAL ALERT: EXTREME DIVINE INTERFERENCE.]

[THE RITUAL IS COMPLETE.]

[THE FIRST PILLAR DESCENDS.]

[Survival Chance: 0.0001%]

Through the massive, stabilized Void Gate, a figure appeared in the blinding red light.

It wasn’t a towering monster of tentacles and teeth. It was humanoid. A man with long, flowing crimson hair, clad in an immaculate, dark military uniform that seemed to swallow the light around it.

He took a single step forward.

An immaculate black boot crossed the threshold of the gate, stepping onto the soil of the Abyss.

The bedrock of Layer 9 groaned in agony, unable to support the metaphysical weight of his existence.

A deep, rumbling laughter echoed from the gate, vibrating not in the air, but directly inside the souls of the Voss family.

"The door is open," the voice spoke, casual, aristocratic, and dripping with the promise of absolute annihilation.

Damien’s cross-shaped pupils dilated in absolute horror. He realized, with bone-chilling certainty, that his 8th-Order strength and his millions of Destiny Points were nothing but pocket change against this entity.

Azazel, the Heavenly Demon Lord, had finally arrived.