Lucifer dropped through the air.

He did not use Zephyr’s Grace to slow down. He plummeted past the upper tiers of Zephyria with the wind screaming in his ears.

Below him, the massive open courtyards of the lower city were a chaotic mess of flashing purple magic, golden shields, and deafening roars.

The colossal tentacles of the Abyssal Dreadnought had breached the pitch-black Void-shield! They acted as massive fleshy boarding tubes.

Thousands of heavy-class Abyssal monsters, hulking Brutes and jagged-armored Knights, were pouring out of the tentacles directly into the lower deployment bays.

Lucifer hit the ground.

He did not land gracefully. He slammed into the black stone pavement of the central plaza like a meteor.

The physical impact of his Level 50 Warlord core cracking the bedrock sent a shockwave through the immediate area.

It knocked a dozen Abyssal Knights off their feet.

"Nice of you to drop in, Boss," a dry breathless voice called out.

High Ranger Celeste was standing on top of a shattered supply wagon ten yards away. Her scarred face was covered in purple demon blood and soot.

She fired three aether-tipped arrows in a blindingly fast volley and pinned a massive charging Brute to a stone pillar before it could swing its club.

"Couldn’t let you have all the fun, Celeste," Lucifer replied smoothly as he stood up and drew his ruby-red longsword. The Blade of Ruin pulsed eagerly in his iron gauntlet. "Status report."

"It’s a mess," Celeste grunted. She seamlessly drew her twin curved daggers as a Crawler leaped at her from a ruined archway.

She sidestepped and gutted the beast mid-air. "The tentacles are pumping them in faster than the mortals can chop them up.

The Royal Guards are holding the inner barricades, but they’re terrified. They thought we left the demons on the ground."

"They’ll get over it," Lucifer stated coldly. "Where is the main breach?"

"Sector Four. Directly above the Aether-Forge intake vents," Celeste pointed her bloody dagger toward a massive hole in the black stone ceiling of the plaza.

Thick corrosive purple sludge was raining down through the hole and dissolving the cobblestones.

The largest of the dreadnought’s tentacles had burrowed straight through the upper decks and was actively trying to drill its way down into the Void-Core Reactor room.

"Vexia is down there," Celeste warned with her dark eyes wide. "She sealed the blast doors, but they are melting them."

"Hold the plaza," Lucifer commanded.

He did not run. He activated Void Step.

Lucifer vanished in a flash of black light.

He materialized flawlessly directly inside Sector Four and stood on the heavy metal grating of the catwalk overlooking the Aether-Forge’s main intake vents.

The heat was intense. The air smelled of burning iron and acidic rot.

The heavy reinforced blast doors leading down to the reactor were glowing a sickly bright orange. A massive towering Abyssal Commander, a Level 60 elite forged of dark matter and pulsing green runes, was repeatedly slamming a colossal acid-dripping warhammer against the melting metal.

[System: Elite Hostile Engaged.]

[Entity: Abyssal Commander (Level 60)]

"Open the door, little bat!" the Commander roared and its voice was a guttural wet distortion of the common tongue. "The Void-Devourer wants his engine!"

"He can have the engine when he learns to knock, you oversized rotting toad."

Vexia’s muffled furious shriek echoed from the other side of the melting doors.

Lucifer smirked. The Sanguine Princess was terrified, but her aristocratic pride absolutely refused to let her die quietly.

Lucifer did not announce his presence. He did not monologue.

He raised his right hand. The Gauntlet of the Void King crackled with fierce pitch-black lightning.

"Gravity Crush," Lucifer whispered.

He targeted the space directly behind the Abyssal Commander’s knees.

The localized singularity snapped into existence! The intense gravity violently yanked the massive demon backward.

The Commander roared in surprise with its heavy dark matter boots losing traction on the metal grating. It stumbled.

Its massive warhammer missed the blast doors and smashed a dent into the catwalk railing.

Lucifer moved instantly!

He activated Zephyr’s Grace and closed the fifty-foot gap in a fraction of a second.

He did not swing the Blade of Ruin at the heavily armored chest. He aimed for the joint.

The ruby-red sword sliced cleanly through the thick purple muscle behind the demon’s knee and completely severed the leg.

The Abyssal Commander shrieked and collapsed heavily onto the metal grating. The sheer physical mass of the Level 60 beast dented the catwalk.

It thrashed wildly and tried to swing its massive warhammer at Lucifer from the ground.

Lucifer stepped smoothly inside the arc of the weapon.

He raised his iron boot and stomped down hard on the demon’s wrist and pinned the arm to the grating! He raised his longsword high.

"Tell Baal he’s trespassing," Lucifer stated coldly.

He drove the True Damage blade straight down through the center of the Commander’s helmet.

He pierced the brain and pinned the demon’s head to the metal floor.

The monster convulsed once, then dissolved rapidly into a pile of smoking purple ash.

[System: Elite Boss Eliminated!]

[Experience Gain Suspended: Mortal Level Cap Reached.]

Lucifer ripped his sword free and sheathed it.

He walked up to the glowing half-melted blast doors and knocked heavily on the metal with his iron gauntlet.

"Open it, Vexia," Lucifer ordered.

There was a brief pause. Then, the heavy locking mechanisms groaned loudly. The doors slid apart and revealed the Sanguine Princess.

Vexia looked awful. Her crimson silk dress was stained with sweat and soot.

She was panting heavily with her pale hands glowing with intense concentrated blood magic as she maintained the Sanguine Grid.

She looked at the pile of purple ash on the catwalk, then up at Lucifer.

"You took your time," Vexia huffed and crossed her arms defensively. Her red bat wings twitched. "I had it handled. I was just waiting for the door to melt so I could blood-spike him."

"Of course you were," Lucifer replied smoothly and ignored the obvious lie. He looked past her into the massive humming cavern of the Aether-Forge. "Is the reactor stable?"

"It’s stable, but the physical drag is massive," Dwarf King Thrain yelled from the master console and did not take his eyes off the glowing blue runes.

"The Dreadnought is literally anchored to our shield. The Void-Core is burning double the mana just to keep us from being dragged backward into the atmosphere."

"He wants to use Zephyria as a battering ram," Lucifer explained quietly and his void eyes narrowed.

"He wants to ride our momentum to smash through the Pearl Gates of Heaven, and then he’s going to detonate his ship to crack our reactor and take the city for himself."

Vexia’s red eyes widened. "That’s... incredibly ambitious for a giant rotting space slug."

"Baal isn’t a slug. He’s a Demon King," Lucifer said softly. "And he’s smart. But he made a mistake."

"What mistake?" Vexia asked.

"He parked his ship in my airspace," Lucifer stated coldly.

He turned away from the blast doors and looked up through the jagged hole the tentacle had bored into the ceiling of the lower plaza.

He could see the massive dark underbelly of the Abyssal Dreadnought hovering just outside the Void-shield connected by the thick fleshy boarding tubes.

"Vexia," Lucifer commanded. "I need you on the surface. Celeste is managing the mortal infantry in the lower courtyards, but they are getting overwhelmed by the heavy Brutes.

The Paladin-Mechs are too big for the narrow streets. I need you to thin the herd."

"Me? On the front lines?" Vexia scoffed and hovered slightly off the ground. "I am an Architect, Warlord, not a frontline grunt. I don’t do trench warfare."

"You do what I tell you to do," Lucifer corrected her smoothly with his voice dropping an octave. The heavy crushing weight of the Sovereign’s Eclipse aura pushed against her briefly.

Vexia flinched and her fangs bared in an instinctual defensive snarl. But the system contract held firm. She bowed her head slightly.

"Fine," Vexia muttered, clearly annoyed. "But I’m going to ruin my shoes."

"You don’t wear shoes," Lucifer pointed out dryly and looked at her bare feet.

"It’s the principle of the thing," Vexia retorted. She launched herself past him and flew up through the hole in the ceiling toward the chaotic battle above.

Lucifer smirked slightly and shook his head. He tapped his comms rune and connected to the upper atmosphere.

"Elara," Lucifer called out.

"I am here, Lucifer," the Twilight Sovereign replied instantly. The sound of howling wind and shrieking dragons echoed through the link.

"The Wyrms are engaging the Dreadnought’s aerial escorts. Isolde is furious. She is freezing their Gargoyles by the thousands."

"Keep the sky clear," Lucifer ordered. "I am going over to the Dreadnought. I need to sever the tentacles manually from the source, or Thrain’s reactor is going to burn out."

"You are boarding a Demon King’s fortress alone?" Elara asked with her voice tightening with sudden intense concern.

"Lucifer, Baal is a Level 80 Primordial. If he catches you inside his own domain, the Void-Weave won’t protect you."

"He won’t catch me," Lucifer said smoothly and drew the Blade of Ruin. "I’m going to catch him."

He activated Zephyr’s Grace.

Lucifer blurred up through the hole in the ceiling and launched himself back into the chaotic blood-soaked plaza of the lower city.

He did not stop to help Celeste or Vexia. He sprinted directly toward the massive pulsing fleshy wall of the largest boarding tentacle.

He did not run around it. He ran straight into it!

He raised his longsword and sliced a massive vertical gash into the side of the thick Abyssal muscle. Corrosive purple blood sprayed everywhere, but his dark armor absorbed the damage.

Lucifer stepped inside the hollow pulsing tube of the tentacle.

It was horrific. The interior was lined with jagged bone spurs and glowing green veins. It reeked of rotting meat.

"Gravity Crush," Lucifer whispered.

He targeted the space directly in front of him and created a localized gravity well that violently pulled him forward. It sucked him up the tube at terrifying speed.

He was essentially using the monster’s own boarding mechanism as an elevator.

He shot upward, passed through the gap in Zephyria’s Void-shield, and breached the outer hull of the Abyssal Dreadnought.

Lucifer erupted from the top of the tentacle and landed heavily on the cold jagged black obsidian deck of the Demon King’s flying fortress.

The air here was suffocatingly dense and thick with pure unfiltered Abyssal magic.

The sky was not the starry cosmos; it was completely blocked by the massive towering spires and horrific biological architecture of Baal’s ship.

Lucifer stood up slowly.

The deck was not empty.

A massive imposing figure stood thirty feet away and waited for him.

It was not a mindless beast. It was an angel!

Or, at least, it used to be.

The figure was ten feet tall and clad in heavy pristine white marble armor that was cracked and seeping sickly green light.

It possessed six massive wings, but the feathers were entirely burned away and left skeletal black-iron pinions. Its face was hidden behind a smooth golden mask that wept continuous streams of black blood.

[System Warning: Corrupted Entity Detected!]

[Name: Archangel Uriel (Level 70 - Fallen Seraph)]

[Status: Resurrected. Bound to the Void-Devourer.]

Lucifer frowned. He did not recognize the entity, but he recognized the classification. An Archangel was the absolute pinnacle of the Celestial Hegemony’s military.

For the Abyss to possess one, they must have captured and tortured it for centuries.

"You trespass on the Devourer’s ship, mortal," Uriel’s voice echoed. It was a beautiful resonant melodic voice that had been violently distorted like a choir singing through a mouthful of broken glass.

The corrupted Archangel drew a massive double-bladed glaive that burned with a horrifying mix of holy light and necrotic rot.

"I am the gatekeeper of the dark," Uriel declared and pointed the glaive at Lucifer. "I will strip your soul and feed it to the engine."

Lucifer did not raise his sword. He did not prepare to fight.

He simply tapped his comms rune.

"Elara," Lucifer said quietly with his void eyes locked onto the corrupted angel. "I think you need to come up here. I found a friend of yours."