Global Gods : Skill-Resonance Awakened-Chapter 368: Ch : A Lead

The air in the Council Chamber of the Spire of Sins was thick enough to choke a lesser god. Seven thrones of obsidian formed a circle, yet only one seemed to anchor the reality of the room.

Deimos, the Lord of Discord, sat with his chin resting on a fist made, his eyes fixed on a hovering projection of the Demonic Realm.

"Deimos, we must face the reality of our failure," Maledictus rasped, her voice like dry leaves skittering over a grave.

She gestured toward a mountain of reports, parchments made of flayed skin and scrolls of soul-ink, brought by their frantic scouts.

"Finding Lom has moved beyond difficult, and into the realm of the impossible. He doesn’t just hide; he has submerged himself in the cover of the Pearl of Calamity. Without him surfacing into the demonic realm, tracing him is like trying to find a drop of ink in a black ocean."

"You are right, Maledictus," Deimos said. On the surface, his voice was as calm as a frozen lake, but beneath that veneer, a tectonic anger was grinding his soul to dust. "The Pearl is absolute. But Lom is a creature of greed, and greed always leaves a scent. We have a lead."

"A lead?" Phobos leaned forward, his twin pits of eyes flickering. The thought was a shared spark among the lords.

"The disappearance of the High Guard," Deimos said. He flicked his fingers, and the projection changed. A list of names began to scroll through the air, each one glowing with a sickly red light.

"In just these last few days, nearly two hundred top-tier Demon Gods, warriors who have stood for eons, have vanished into thin air. At first, I assumed they were deserters, cowards fleeing the shadow of war. But when I scrutinized the roster, the pattern emerged."

He pointed to a name at the top of the list: Marlok.

"Marlok," Maledictus whispered, her hood shifting. "He was the first of the Vanguard to agree to the slaughter of the Gods during the old Era. His bloodlust was a law unto itself. He wouldn’t run from a fight. He would run toward it, laughing."

"Exactly," Deimos gritted out. "These demons are not cowards. Their vanished signatures are not the result of flight; they are the result of an Inward Migration."

"You all know the hidden properties of the Pearl. On the outside, it is a mere orb, but internally, it possesses an Elastic Infinitude. It expands and collapses its internal dimensions according to the desire of its owner. Lom is doing something I once considered doing a million years ago."

The other lords went deathly still. Even Beelzebub, whose hunger was a constant background noise, fell silent.

"What?" he whispered, though the answer was already curdling in his gut. "What is that rat playing at?"

"The Pearl holds absolute authority over space," Deimos explained, his voice dropping to a low, haunting register. "A million years ago, I realized that the internal capacity of the relic was effectively infinite. I formulated a plan to migrate the entire demonic population, every soul, every city, every drop of blood, into the Pearl of Calamity. I intended to keep the Pearl by my side at all times."

"But why?" Ichor, the Lord of Blood, asked, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "What is the advantage of turning our race into a pocket-dimension colony?"

Deimos chuckled, a dry, mirthless sound. "Ichor, your logic is always hampered by your simplicity. Our power is not like the Light of the Gods. They manage multiverses and harvest Faith. Faith is a constant stream; as long as the mortals breathe and pray, the Gods grow fat. But we? We rely on Sin. We rely on the friction of the soul."

"For me to grow," Deimos continued, "two beings must clash. Discord must be sown. But the potency of that power is subject to the Law of Proximity. The discord that happens in the Capital empowers me a hundredfold more than a war in a distant multiverse."

"The closer the Sin is to my heart, the more concentrated the essence. I wanted the demons inside the Pearl so that every act of murder, every lie, and every scream would happen within centimeters of my soul-core. We would have become a lot more powerful."

"Then why didn’t you do it?" Ichor asked, his eyes wide. "We had already won the war. The Gods were dead. Why did you hide the Pearl in the vault instead of ascending to that level?"

Deimos’s expression shifted. For a fleeting second, the Lord of Discord looked... small. "I was stopped."

The admission was like a physical blow to the Council.

"I don’t know who, or what it was," Deimos whispered, clutching his forehead. "I only remember the pressure. It was infinite. It didn’t speak a word, but in that weight, I understood the mandate: The Pearl is a tool of balance, not a vessel of godhood. I was ordered to hide it. I was so terrified that I locked it in the Absolute Vault and never spoke of the plan again. I let you all believe I did it out of grief for my fallen servant."

"I knew it," Ichor muttered, leaning back. "I knew you weren’t weak-willed enough to let a million-year opportunity go just for a driver." 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

"So," Maledictus said, bringing the conversation back to the present, "you believe Lom has kidnapped these missing Demon Gods to stop us from absorbing the sin within the Pearl?"

"It is the only logical conclusion," Deimos said. "He is building his own private Abyss inside that orb. And since this is our only lead, we must track the spatial leak that occurs when the Pearl devours a being."

"Deimos... I have another question," Maledictus said, her curiosity turning into a cold dread. "That entity... the one who stopped you a million years ago with Infinite Pressure.... why is it letting Lom do as he pleases? Why is the Balance being ignored now?"

A heavy, suffocating silence descended. A minute passed. Then ten. The lords sat in the dark, contemplating every possibility.