Dozens of indescribable evil walked the airs of Teoltcan.

  Its backdrop was enveloped in darkness of the void untold, and His steps illuminated the ground from the white fire that blazed beneath His feet.

  His face, and indented ‘smile’ of flesh were wide beyond human anatomy.

  The Devil King Oscarion was having the best day in centuries.

  He was almost halfway done with His contract. And He had savoured the process of killing humans beyond words could even begin to describe.

  Every wail of desperation and angry prayers directed against Him nourished his mind, and cleared the fog that clouded over his mind and gave him the clarity and euphoria of divine proportions.

  Personally, he preferred the older human souls, given the amount of depth that they gave to the flavour of the souls. And there were plenty of them amongst the piles of human corpses piling up on the streets.

  Additionally, every soul, with their memories, knowledge, passion and experience were all equally delectable as they seasoned themselves with fear and horror.

  Unfortunately, even He would be unable to preserve more than a couple million of these fragmented souls for magical use, especially given the lack of preparation that He had descended with.

  However, He felt great now, so why would He pass up such an opportunity?

  It seemed strange that the Queen didn’t quite activate any of these little pests clinging to those human souls throughout his extermination, but who was He to judge? If She wanted to wrap up a nice gift and place it at His feet, it would be almost rude to ignore the present.

  Not even that slow, edged void invading the back of His mind would be able to distract the Archangel from such a feast…

  ???

  The Fae Queen realised Her mistake far too late.

  She had let that damned Archsage of fire loose, and pressured this cockroach of an earth mage for far too long.

  She was hoping to take one of Her opponents out and buy more time, but the dragons were clearly a hindrance beyond what She could handle for the time being.

  And She sensed an attack forming, a thousand meters up in the skies of the ruins.

  Even from here, She could peer into the disgusting way that the spirit realm was lending mana to this impending attack.

  Given that She was split apart far too thin, it seemed unlikely that She would be able to tank the hit in Her current form.

  And it would take more than a week for Her to reform to Her full form, meaning that She would be forfeiting Her divine Kingdom to these pests.

  And it also meant that Their grip would once again tighten.

  She shuddered at the thought.

  Centuries of work, gone overnight.

  She would not allow that.

  Every version of Herself, spread thin throughout the ruins, teleported away to the arrays of pillars over the city.

  Retreat from the barriers that the Commission had already undoubtedly set up, would be impossible. It was bound to have been crafted from a Djinn or some other method that ensured Her demise.

  She would have to take the incoming hit.

  And survive it.

  The figures, each one a replica of Mr. Tona, took out the same, singular, shining gold coin from Her pocket.

  This particular coin was an ancient one, predating even much of the Royal lineages.

  It was imbued with a little bit of the Queen’s soul, and could be summoned simultaneously by all simulacrums. However, aside from this, and its ancient background, there was nothing else that could be said to be remarkable about this coin.

  With a single ancient command, all of Her mutilated bodies disappeared into thin air.

  And at that exact moment across the ruins, the remaining 62 copies of the Fae Queen flipped the coin simultaneously.

  The dragons circling around the battlefield took the chance to take a few last swipes at the clones. But they were met with a barrier stronger than what She should have been able to conjure.

  This was a ritual.

  Archsage Andrew, noting this display, glanced up, and immediately paled. The exact face you are forced to make when you realise that your colleague was about to kill you.

  The archsage simply reached into his pockets, broke a wooden stick, and with a blip in space, disappeared into thin air along with his dragons, commanding the forming golems for the last time to attack the clones with all they have.

  All around the settling concrete dust of the ruins, and the explosions of rat-golems across this rubble, the coin rose in the air and landed back onto the dorsum of Her hands.

  Stolen story; please report.

  And immediately, half of the clones disappeared into thin air.

  Without pause, the coins whirled once more into the air like a machine.

  And another half disappeared within the second.

  Another half.

  And finally, down to two dispassionate copies of The Queen.

  With the last coin flip, only a single Queen was left standing.

  And it seemed that She was just in time to be greeted by Archsage Livia’s farewell, as the world lit up all around Her.

  ???

  ‘Lightening’, the basic spell, was something available to someone as inept at magic as Aurelius.

  As one of the most basic derivation spells, it worked through the ‘friction’ generated in the controlled collision of mana.

  As a very effective, though intense spell, the careful manipulation of mana required for such a precise feat with something as fickle as electricity was something that could only be created to a small effect as a mage with a single layer ‘circular’ soul.

  However, at the second ‘physical’ soul layer, fire mages gained access to a form of matter known as plasma.

  By controlling the temperature of the fires they burn to an extreme degree, they are able to create flames at a temperature wherein the air itself starts to burn.

  The heat itself affects molecules at the atomic level, creating an ocean of electrons to flow freely within the matter. And becomes one of the best electrical conductors in the known universe.

  This alone would be insufficient to improve a ‘lightning’ spell’s area of effect, but does give a clear guide for the spell to hit in a form akin to a ‘beam’ of electricity.

  It would require the control at the level of a sage, or of several devils, to clearly manipulate the electrons floating within this ocean.

  Adding the capacity for the Archsage to bind concepts with wind magic, the following feat could be achieved.

  The heat became unbearable within the storms of mana and air. Ozone evaporates any trace of life within a 100 meters of the spell.

  Then, air burns, releasing a primary burst of blinding light across the atmosphere, as two balls of burning air form side by side next to a single intricate piece of bone floating in the night skies.

  It is then increasingly injected with mana, creating a heat that practically melts the barriers of realms together.

  These balls of fire, of course, are spinning at an incredible rate, feeding a voracious storm of air within itself and creating further frictions of mana within itself.

  Then they collide.

  ???

  All the strands of floating golden strings are pulled taut, and dust stopped in their tracks, as an invisible force trapped the entire city in a paralysing amber of static.

  The rat-golems stopped moving, for a fuse in their brains had shattered. And their glowing rings now flickered like broken lightbulbs.

  Electricity arced across the rubble, creating flashes in the darkness.

  The Fae Queen had finished fusing, and braced Herself for what was to come.

  The heavens itself stood still in that moment, the curtain of night torn apart with a single proclamation of doom.

  Time slowed down as the night shattered in a billion pieces.

  And a tree, created of divine punishment descended upon the city.

  Each branch of blinding light, individually thicker than buildings, split into hundreds, then to thousands to thinner tentacles of energy as it hit the grounds of Tlacualtzin.

  The celestial strike illuminated the mountain ranges all around the city, and boiled the river to ash within a microsecond.

  All remaining vegetation, living creatures, and identifiable rubble immediately crumbled to nothing under even the suggestion of the strike.

  The strings of mana guided the strikes down onto every corner of the city, and dissolved holes into the ground itself, which in itself caused the waves of electricity to rebound and perpetuate about its surroundings.

  In this display of divine judgement, the Tower of Trust stood, its foundation melting under the encroachment of the heat and electricity.

  But it would seem that the strikes merely rode its surface to create ripples of magma across its vicinity.

  As for the hotel, it managed to handle this godly barrage for a mere 3 seconds before its wards gave out.

  The rebound from the corporealisation was enough to send cracks through its foundation, and it would have collapsed naturally if it were not for the fact that it was struck squarely by one of these stray branches.

  The building simply started to melt into a puddle of lava, its exterior becoming a mush within the moment of the strike.

  However, the most horrifying fact about this field of electricity would be the fact that this was but a side effect of the main intended outcomes of the spell.

  To dissipate the soul of the Fae Queen.

  Archsage Livia, with the depths of understanding she had over fire and wind magic, had crafted a truly godlike spell.

  The same storm would simultaneously break through the barriers of realms.

  The same tempest of lightning was raining down upon the spirit realm with equal intensity.

  And when it struck the Fae Queen, every single tendrils of electricity that had escaped the physical realm would locate Her from the spirit realm, and strike simultaneously.

  Such was the power of binding. And the Fae Queen, even with Her divinity, would not be capable of dodging lightning. How could you travel faster than the speed of light?

  If Archsage Livia was lucky, the strikes would even fall in range of the Fae Queen’s divine kingdom and Her simulacrum would simultaneously be destroyed in the process.

  The Fae Queen would not be able to reform in time to avoid becoming sealed.

  And it would mean that the Commission would gain the single most powerful Djinn the world had ever seen.

  ???

  In the onslaught, the Fae Queen stood in the middle of it all, wearing the skin of a battered, old man.

  Her thoughts would keep her company in the seconds to come and pass.

  These strikes… were vicious…

  ???

  “AH-” Varian screamed, portalling into the hotel room, broken charm in hand.

  The three other liches were already waiting, staves at the ready as they stared intently towards the writing boy in front of them.

  Aurelius’s hands had completely fused with the orb, the skin stretched to its limits to cover its intricate exterior.

  The engravings from beneath this skin seemed to emit an eerie green glow as Aurelius’s flesh wormed and twisted along its surface.

  Varian had been struck by one of the rat-golems as he was teleporting, sustaining a minor injury to his hands.

  He was missing half of it.

  With concentration, he started to regrow it desperately.

  He would not be able to last a second in the oncoming onslaught conjured by that insane commission woman!

  As flesh mended themselves over the regrowing bones, his heart tightened harder and harder.

  One of the other liches noticed far too late, and tried to help him, reaching out their hand and mana to close that damn wound.

  But it seemed that the process took a second too long.

  And as the world shook, Varian could not do anything but… sigh.

  ???

  Aurelius was almost blinded by the initial descent of lightning, his screams drowned by the shower of illumination that melted through the walls of the hotel itself.

  And he would have died.

  He should have died.

  But in front of his eyes stood a strange figure.

  An evil figure beyond words.

  An entity that leaked screams from its shadows.

  It was the King of Temptation,

  The God of Daemons,

  Contractor,

  Devil King, Oscarion.