In the small room where minutes ago seven people were standing, only Matt had remained. Everyone else had escaped to the other side of the boundary until a way out was opened.

Deep down Matt was aware of all the people in the city who would die anyway, but still an ache in his heart stopped him from escaping the battle.

"Soldier, we are going to pull you out." The voice of a man took over his head; silver lights started devouring his existence.

The next moment he opened his eye, he was in a different room with General Armstrong at the center maintaining some sort of magic.

"I pulled all seven of them out, but Aria can’t enter yet."

Matt looked at his hands; his mind couldn’t process what had happened. Next to him, all of his squad were on the ground, unconscious.

"General, what is happening in there?" He had to know the responsibility was on his shoulders to carry.

The woman from before finally moved in front of her. "The Blood Angel is killing every human in there, and not by his magic; he is using his own hands to tear them apart."

"But... Why?"

"I have a guess, and I hope I’m very wron..."

A new portal opened in the room, and General Alexandria came out of it; her clothes and skin were covered in blood and human flesh.

"Alexanderia?" The other woman rushed to her side. "What the hell happened?"

"Iri... Marian, I don..."

"It’s ok, it’s ok..." Marian took her into a tight hug. "In less than an hour, it’s going to be over."

Marian cursed herself; all the time she had put all the fault on herself. Her magic was best at detecting, yet all this time she hadn’t noticed the parasite inside of her. If she could help him resolve it with a better route, maybe things wouldn’t need to go to such extremes.

"Lady Marian, we should get ready for another impact." Someone called her from across the room; Marian signed others to take care of Alexanderia and joined other generals that were setting up the shield.

As her magic’s flow changed into General Armstrong’s body, she asked, "How many more strikes before she can finish it?"

"Two at most."

General Armstrong received it from four other people, making another set of shields around the invisible walls of the festival; it only blocked the impacts from Aria’s magic. Even with all of their magic combined, earthquakes had already destroyed three cities around the earth.

His hatred grew more and more toward the goddess squad; none of them cared about earth. From time to time they caused destruction on earth, but this one was a new boundary that they had crossed.

While creating the shields, his mind wandered about the future on how to stop such events from happening.

Meanwhile inside the festival, Ray’s body moved on its own. People tried to escape, scream to make him go away, and pray to gods that wouldn’t save them, and they were all pointless.

With each motion another soul fell by his hands; he gave them quick deaths, a strike to the head, and they couldn’t feel anything afterwards. Blood dripped from his hands and robe, mixing with his own wounds; anywhere he went, a trail of blood remained on earth.

With no feeling about his action, Ray continued to kill any living human under the dome while his focus was on three separate matters.

First, the Orb and Horseman were being absorbed into one another, with the two magics combined; whatever came out should be at least 9.

Second, Jade burned too much magic just to escape from Scarlet; each second that passed, Scarlet was dragging more and more of her energy until she got into the festival. Ray doubted that she had any magic left to fight.

And at last, the biggest threat still tried to break into the festival. Many things about her power level were unknown to the public; the only thing that Ray knew about her was that her age was around 10000 years old, and even on Mars, people were scared to cross paths with her.

With another quick strike, the whole ground became quiet; the only sounds were blood dripping from his hand and drops of blood hitting the ground, reaching the girl. All over the area was covered with corpses; some didn’t have their heads, some too damaged to be recognized as humans. He had done it quickly, not gently.

"12 thousand people in 20 minutes..." Ray murmured to himself; now the risk of his plan was at hand.

No matter how much he planned, his real enemy was in his head; even the best plans could have been countered rather easily, and its powers seemed to be so ancient that mortals couldn’t face them. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

If Ray wanted to survive, he had to first gain his powers back even for some time and then find a way to separate his mind from the parasite. Wherever he looked, nothing had the ability to give them back without a deadly sacrifice, and now with nothing to lose, Ray was ready to do the sacrifice needed.

Opening his hands to the sky above, he started to pray an old sentence:

"The one that no one has the dare to call its name, the one that light and darkness are afraid of, Devil of Fear and Hunger."

Ray sensed millions of gazes moving all at the same time on him; devils and angels from across the universe knew the name but none had the dare to call it.

By calling its name, Ray had given it permission to control his body; if the devil wanted, it could turn into a mindless thrall.

Scenes of a woman with 12 hands made out of corpses invaded his mind; his senses were breaking just being touched by such an existence.

"I sacrifice my future and all these souls; in return I want my powers for ten days..." Ray didn’t know if he was talking or thinking, or maybe the Devil itself was talking through his mind and body.

The Devil started to smirk; a new set of teeth appeared on its neck, and another, and more, and more millions of mouths smiled at Ray with hunger.