Reincarnated in a novel: I am the villain!-Chapter 303: Woke Up?

"Layer 7," Damien grinned savagely beneath the shadow of his coat, stepping in front of Isabelle. "Let’s see what you’ve got."

He gripped the hilt of the Pantheon Sword.

His newly forged Eclipse Core hummed in his chest, a perfect, seamless fusion of the Golden Dragon Aura and the Hollow King’s Shadow. He was at the 8th Order now.

He was ready to carve his way through the Primordial Wilds.

Down in the boiling black mud of the chasm, the Ancient Void-Crawler, a two-hundred-foot monstrosity of weeping eyes and jagged carapace reared its massive head.

It unhinged a jaw lined with a thousand rusted teeth, preparing to devour the two specks of fresh meat that had just entered its domain.

Damien bent his knees, ready to launch forward.

And then, the Abyss broke.

KRRRR-RUMBLE.

It wasn’t an earthquake after all, earthquakes originated from the ground. This vibration came from everywhere.

It rattled the marrow in Damien’s bones and made the ambient mana of the 6th Layer shriek in agony.

Down below, the Ancient Void-Crawler froze.

The primordial malice radiating from the beast vanished instantly.

Its hundreds of weeping eyes snapped upward, looking past Damien, looking toward the "sky" of Layer 6.

The creature let out a sound Damien had never heard from a monster of that caliber. It was a high-pitched, warbling screech.

It was the sound of pure, unadulterated terror.

The Tier 8 equivalent beast thrashed wildly, turning its massive body around and frantically burrowing upward into the walls of the chasm, desperately trying to climb into Layer 6.

"Master!" Isabelle gasped, her demon instincts flaring so violently her horns elongated.

"Look up!"

Damien retracted his stance and looked toward the sky above Argentum.

The artificial, neon-lit clouds that usually covered the Chrome Core were gone. In their place, the very fabric of space was tearing apart.

Massive, jagged black scars were ripping through the atmosphere.

They looked like bleeding wounds in the canvas of reality, leaking a thick, suffocating pressure that was so dense it caused the neon billboards in the city miles away to explode in showers of sparks.

"Spatial fractures," Damien whispered, his twilight-purple eyes narrowing as his 8th Order senses analyzed the tears.

"Something or Someone is hitting the dimensional boundary from below. Hitting it hard enough to break through the layers."

Suddenly, a blinding white light erupted above the center of the Chrome Core.

It wasn’t a holographic projection this time.

Hovering at the very apex of the sky, standing amidst the bleeding black scars, was the physical body of the Platinum Prince.

The Demigod of Layer 6 looked nothing like the bored, half-lidded immortal who had sat on a silver throne playing blackjack a few hours ago.

His pale, flawless face was carved from absolute ice. His white, pupil-less eyes were blazing like supernovas, tracking the expanding spatial tears with a sharp, lethal focus.

His Demi-God pressure rolled off him in physical waves, trying to suppress the cracking sky.

The Prince raised a single, perfectly manicured hand.

He looked down, his blinding gaze piercing through the smog, through the city, locking directly onto the chasm where Damien and Isabelle stood.

"Oh, Sh*t," Damien muttered, recognizing the shift in mana.

Space folded.

VWOOP.

The stench of the bleeding chasm vanished. The suffocating pressure of the Primordial Wilds disappeared.

Before Damien and Isabelle could move, the universe around them seemed to reposition them.

When Damien’s vision cleared a millisecond later, his boots were no longer standing on petrified bone and mud.

They were instead resting on a floor of polished, seamless platinum.

He hadn’t dropped his guard. The Pantheon Sword was still drawn, its white blade humming hungrily.

"Stand down, ’Zero’," a voice echoed, cold and absolute.

"Your blade is useless against what is coming."

Damien slowly lowered the sword, taking in his surroundings.

They were back in the apex of the Platinum Spire, the Demigod’s private meeting room. But they weren’t the only ones who had been forcibly summoned.

To his left, a familiar metallic thud echoed. Ziriork, the Ferro-Ogre, was sprawled on the pristine floor. He was still holding a golden ledger and a fountain pen, having clearly been yanked right out of his executive chair at the Black Thread Exchange. Ink was dripping onto the platinum floor.

"B-Boss?" Ziriork stammered, looking around wildly.

On the other side of the room, four other figures were picking themselves up, radiating anger and confusion.

Duke Aurum (Gold), his bloated, golden-plated body heaving. Duke Argent (Silver), the liquid-metal shapeshifter, hissing as he reformed his arms. Duke Ferro (Iron), venting steam from his rusted gears.

And a new, jagged entity made of refracting crystal, the replacement for the disgraced Diamond Faction.

"What is the meaning of this?!" Duke Aurum roared, his golden skin flashing.

"Prince or not, you cannot just rip us from our sanctums! I was in the middle of a—!"

"Silence."

The word wasn’t spoken loudly, but the Demi-God pressure behind it slammed into the Dukes like a physical wall.

Duke Aurum choked on his words, his knees buckling under the weight.

At the head of the massive silver table sat the Platinum Prince.

He rested his chin on his steepled fingers.

The eternal boredom that usually defined his existence was entirely eradicated, replaced by a grim, chilling severity.

He looked at the gathered Dukes, then at Ziriork, and finally, his glowing white eyes settled on Damien. He took note of the seamless Eclipse Aura draped over Damien’s shoulders.

"You broke your ceiling quickly, human," the Prince noted, his tone devoid of its usual amusement. "8th Order. Impressive. But unfortunately, your timing is abysmal."

Damien sheathed the Pantheon Sword with a sharp clack.

He walked to the table and pulled out a chair for Isabelle, before taking the one next to it.

"I was just about to leave your Layer, Your Highness," Damien said smoothly, resting his elbows on the platinum table.

"You gave me a passage token to Layer 7. Yet here I am."

"You are here because if you had jumped into that chasm, you would have been trampled to death within the hour," the Platinum Prince replied coldly.

The Demigod waved his hand. The center of the table dissolved, projecting a massive, three-dimensional holographic map of the lower layers of the Abyss.

Layer 7. Layer 8. Layer 9.

"The tremors..." Duke Argent whispered, staring at the map. "The sky is scarring. What is happening down there?"

The Platinum Prince leaned forward, his glowing eyes casting harsh shadows across the room.

"My divine senses just pierced the barrier to the Primordial Wilds," the Prince stated, his voice a low rumble of impending doom.

"You cannot go to Layer 7, Zero. None of you can. Because the beasts of Layer 7 are no longer there."

Damien’s eyes narrowed, recalling the massive Void-Crawler desperately trying to climb out of the pit.

"Where are they?" Damien asked.

"They are coming here," the Platinum Prince said.

He tapped the holographic map. A massive, churning sea of red dots appeared, rushing upward from the depths like a tidal wave of blood.

"It is not an invasion. It is a stampede," the Demigod explained, a flicker of genuine apprehension crossing his flawless face. "Ancient intelligent demons. Primordial horrors. Apex predators of the 8th and 9th Order. Millions of them."

The Prince looked at the terrified faces of the Dukes, and then at Damien’s calm, unreadable mask.

"The entire lower ecosystem of the Abyss is fleeing upward," the Prince whispered. "Because something in Layer 9 has woken up. And it is chasing them out of hell."