Chapter 365: King of Demons

Arthur

Arthur really hated Elandra. In fact, in his 72 trillion years of life, there probably wasn’t anyone he’d ever hated more.

Sadly, however, there wasn’t much he could do about her.

Born in one of the demon universes, he’d risen to power on the basis of his Law of Devour. But, more important, he’d risen to power through the use of his mind.

Back when he’d been a mortal, he’d always been part of a group, always hiding behind the large shadow of a seemingly stronger demon, using his knowledge of emotions and the seven sins to manipulate fights to his side’s advantage, slowly rising to the top by eating cast away leftovers until his main pawn was no longer useful. Then he’d manipulate a well matched fight, which would result in the deaths of everyone but him, before advancing like crazy from the resulting feast and joining a new group.

Even after becoming a god he’d continued the same process, putting another seemingly more powerful god forward as his lord while secretly ruling over the entire demon race. He’d been the King of Demons, the absolute ruler of an entire race that had spread to multiple universes, and almost no one knew.

He’d even managed to enter the Prime Material by taking advantage of an undead invasion led by some of the same undead elder gods he was now fighting alongside, and he’d been poised for a better life than entering into a balanced triumvirate with an idiotic human and a racist messenger.

He’d underestimated the power and intelligence of the Prime Material’s monster gods, however, and his identity had been found out by a chaos dragon and phoenix couple after they’d killed his primary pawn.

Sure, he’d killed and eaten the chaos dragon, and the phoenix had burned her soul to escape, dying in the process without being able to tell anyone about him, but he’d underestimated the pure power of the chaos dragon and he’d started to advance to become an elder god under the senses of most of the gods of the Prime Material.

He’d lost his ability to truly hide his power. And he hadn’t been able to steal and then eat the corpse of the Radiant Behemoth as a result.

Sure, he’d been able to hide his history, hide the true extent of his planning ability, which eventually allowed him to eat Quandra.

But it had all been for naught.

Elandra and her clone had been waiting for him. Then they’d combined, revealing her true power at his weakest moment, and put him under the effects of a slave seal he couldn’t do anything about.

Now, without any other options, he had to do whatever she said.

He couldn’t commit suicide, as she’d ordered against that. He had to protect her with all his power and abilities, as she’d ordered him to do with those exact words. And, if she died, he died, so manipulating a situation where he was powerless to stop someone else from killing her was off the table as well.

He still had his mind. He still had his new strength. But now everything he had was all in service of her, and he had to do stupid things like attacking the Endless Stormlord directly, the one man in the multiverse who had a body that could match his own.

Primordius was an abomination, and only the threat of Arthur and Quandra fighting him together, along with the fact the undead could directly invade his home universe, had kept him in check.

And Arthur wasn’t an idiot. Even with the man having lost and then immediately regrown a hand, it was obvious the human sovereign was still holding back. He wouldn’t be fighting in such a hells be damned calm manner otherwise. The man’s main class was a variant of Berserker for fucks sake.

So, it seemed he and everyone else had vastly underestimated the oldest human.

They were all just lucky the Heavenly Spark Soul King was such a dangerous talent that Primordius wanted to risk acting weak to have a chance to kill him.

But, even while fighting Arthur and the four undead elder gods, the Endless Stormlord still managed to move the fight away from the portal to the Prime Material and toward the portal to his home universe, away from Elandra’s ability to directly interfere with the fight. And there wasn’t much Arthur or the four undead elder gods could do about it.

Maybe if the other two elder gods came back.

***

Xerkses

Xerkses, the Mummy Lord, couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Everywhere he looked, on every planet, there were piles of ash. Everywhere he looked, on every planet, there were abandoned structures, the only moving creatures the living cattle for making new undead. And, everywhere he looked, on every planet, there was almost no sign of the energy of undeath.

It was like something had gone through all the undead Territories and sucked up all the undeath energy, killing all the undead in the process, and it was very, very worrying.

He’d heard about the new weapon of the so called Heavenly Spark Soul King, the lightning that fead on undeath energy to empower itself. But he’d never personally seen its aftermath, and it was chilling.

Then, without warning, lightning of a type he’d never sensed before, feeling to his senses completely anathema to his very being, hit him in the back and began to crawl over the bandages which wrapped his body.

“Interesting. Elder gods really are far more powerful than gods.”

Still struggling with the lightning, Xerkses turned to his left and saw an illusionary clone of who he believed was the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s partner, the so called Mistress of Oaths and Deception. And then he felt his connection with his last remaining believers, the uncountable souls inside the Highest Shade’s soulbound afterlife, cut off, depriving him of his extra stats from faith and destroying his three divine roles, weakening him by over 50%.

The lightning then ate him completely, and there was nothing he could do about it.

***

Lovinar

Not all undead were created monstrosities of death. A small population, the ruling population, had always been made of natural born undead of the six higher races, included among them Lovinar’s own Nightwalkers.

Sure, upon reaching adulthood, every member of those races would have to turn at least one living being into an undead slave to be considered a true member of society, so the morals of normal living beings might consider every single one of them worthy of death. But the Heavenly Spark Soul King wasn’t normal. He hadn’t just considered killing everyone. He’d actually done so.

And Lovinar, the Supreme Lord of the Nightwalkers, really, really wanted to kill him for it.

Instead, however, while he’d made the mistake of separating from the other elder gods, the Heavenly Spark Soul King and his wife ended his life, hitting him with that weird lightning out of nowhere and then severing his connection with his remaining believers.

They didn’t even capture his soul, an elder god soul filled with knowledge and the secrets to three middle grade True Laws. No, they fed all that made him him to that lightning, and it grew even more powerful, though somehow the Heavenly Spark Soul King still had full control over his creation.

***

Nastorix

Nastorix, the Prime Lich, unlike the other three undead elder gods he was fighting with, had a deeper connection with Xerkses and Lovinar, so he felt as they died in succession. And, to him, it was obvious who had killed them.

Primordius’s humans had another elder god, and, while that other elder god had stopped Primordius from returning to the Prime Material, she was still human. And, while the Heavenly Spark Soul King and his special lightning had almost certainly been responsible for killing all the other undead, there was no way a mortal could kill two elder gods, especially not that quickly.

In fact, given what Nastorix knew about Primordius from his former life as one of the man’s commanding officers back when they’d both been mortal, it was his guess that the special lightning the Heavenly Spark Soul King used was actually either stolen from or given to the young monster by Primordius himself.

Humans were all controlled by Primordius, and had been for a long, long time. So, while it was possible the mortal Heavenly Spark Soul King might be able to escape the Endless Stormlord’s control for a while—his weakness allowing him to travel to universes his grandfather would require great effort to actually break into—it was not possible for another elder god.

Primordius was too smart for that, too cunning.

So, it was that elder goddess who had killed Xerkses and Lovinar, and Nastorix and his allies had to be careful, as they were all playing in the Stormlord’s hands.

While fighting, he quickly sent a message to the three other undead elder gods and then, after thinking about it for a bit, he decided not to risk telling the demon elder god fighting Primordius like his very life depended on it.

Demons, after all, weren’t much better than humans.