After Ten Millennia in Hell

Satan grimaced and stomped on the ground, still gripping his pitch-black sword.

The darkness shook wildly and spread out radially.

He raised his sword high and targeted the demon king's head.

'I have to kill him quickly.'

He was swept with anxiety—something had gone wrong. He didn't have time to think about sweet revenge or whatever.

'Just why?'

He couldn't help but question what had happened. Stuff about not knowing who the demon king was after all Satan had been through and that Satan should have made the Demonic Energy stat zero…

'Bull.'

Satan had not been careless; he had lost miserably to the demon king exactly because he had been careless back in Hell. He had been watching with his arms crossed, not because he was being careless but because he had truly won.

[Shit! Shit! Shit!]

He'd made sure the demon king couldn't use the Ten Thousand Demon Core, and he'd also blocked his hundreds of Authorities. He had not been able to completely eliminate the demon king's demonic energy due to the very thin connection between his soul and body, but the remaining demonic energy had been a negligible amount.

'There was nothing else I could have possibly done.'

The demon king had been nothing more than a beast with its limbs and teeth ripped off. Satan had thought that he could take some time to enjoy his sweet revenge after all the thorough preparations he had made.

Considering all the suffering he'd gone through at Oh Kang-Woo's hands, wasn't it okay to take some time to vent?

'Can I not even do that?'

Satan swung his sword while clenching his teeth.

Crack!

The demon king's body was split in half…

But only for a short while.

Gurgle.

The black mucus leaking from the demon king began devouring the surrounding darkness, and his body was instantly restored.

Satan kept cutting away.

Arms, legs, head, legs again…

He cut through the demon king's body again and again, but it kept restoring itself.

[Extinction.]

The Authority of Extinction could make everything it touched disintegrate. In terms of lethality, it was one of the strongest Authorities. This Authority, which could even kill a prince of Hell, spread through Wrath, Satan's Hell Armament. Sword energies poured down like rainfall.

Crackle!!

The demon king was cut to pieces. His body turned into mush after coming into contact with Satan's Authority, and then it scattered. The black blood splattered in all directions, Kang-Woo's internal organs and muscles littering the ground.

'He is dead.'

It was an amount of damage that not even the demon king should be able to survive. The sword energies infused with the Authority of Extinction completely disintegrated the demon king.

[…]

Satan remained silent—he'd won.

The demon king had been hit with the Authority of Extinction, an attack he wouldn't have been able to survive even at his peak with no defense. He didn't even have the Ten Thousand Demon Core at the moment, so there was no need to think twice.

'But…'

Satan trembled. He felt a foreboding, a strange incongruity, as if he were looking at a play that had gone wrong.

"Did all of your suffering give you PTSD?"

[…!!]

The voice came from right next to him. Satan's eyes widened, and he swung his sword again.

Crackle!!

The demon king's body disintegrated to the cellular level again while it was in the middle of regenerating itself.

[Huff, huff…]

Satan's breathing became heavier. His ominous sensation was spot-on—the demon king hadn't died yet.

'How?'

He was confused. He couldn't understand how the demon king was able to devour the Demonic Origin without the Ten Thousand Demon Core. He couldn't understand how the demon king had survived the Authority of Extinction despite disintegrating.

'It makes no sense.'

Satan felt like he was about to lose his mind. Even if the demon king was a monster-like being, it made no sense—it went beyond logic. Satan gulped and gripped his sword.

[How in the—]

"You see…"

He heard that voice again and reflexively swung Wrath. The demon king's head was cut in half, his brain splattering everywhere.

"You shouldn't have chosen this place."

Only the demon king's mouth moved on his split head.

Satan's expression paled. Someone being able to talk when their head was split in half instilled a fear that was hard for even a prince of Hell to handle.

[Mon…ster,] Satan cried out when he saw the demon king gradually regenerate.

The demon king's regeneration continued despite his head being split open and his body being torn to pieces.

If that didn't make him a monster, then what else could he be called?

"If you wanted to kill me, you should've trapped me in a place without any demonic energy."

Kang-Woo smiled while extending his hand. Mucus filled with sharp teeth flowed out of his hand and devoured the darkness surrounding them. His torn-apart body quickly regenerated.

Satan had made a fatal error. Leading the demon king to the Demonic Origin, to the corpse of the Demon God, had been a terrible decision. It had made adjusting Kang-Woo's stats and sealing the Ten Thousand Demon Core pointless.

'This place is…'

Kang-Woo licked his lip. His heart was beating fast, and an intense thirst dominated his body. He licked his lips.

'… Overflowing with food.'

The space was full of demonic energy—no, the space itself was made of demonic energy. It was so perfect that it was almost as if Satan had prepared a banquet for him.

'Shiiiet, it's a goddamn buffet.'

On top of helping him grow through the Demon Cult, Satan was also serving him such an amazing banquet. Kang-Woo honestly wondered if Satan had actually been an ally all along.

"You're the only one I can count on, my bro!"

Kang-Woo lightly leaped, instantly approaching Satan, and patted his shoulder.

Satan quickly swung his sword, and Kang-Woo's body scattered again.

[Y-you… son of a…]

Satan trembled as he glared at Kang-Woo. The trap he'd set up for the demon king had ended up helping the demon king.

'Impossible.'

The Demonic Origin wasn't made of normal demonic energy. It was the fragmented corpse of the Demon God, and its demonic energy contained Divinity. It had taken Satan a thousand years to absorb that special demonic energy.

Even if the demon king had the Authority of Predation…

'There is no way he could have eaten it so easily.'

[Just how…?]

No, the demon king shouldn't have been able to eat it.

[How are you able to eat the Demonic Origin?!] Satan angrily shouted.

Satan swung Wrath at random. Like a storm, the black sword energies wiped out everything around him. The darkness fluctuated.

Kang-Woo's regenerating body disintegrated yet again.

[Huff, huff, huff.]

Satan swung his sword like a madman. He didn't want to accept reality and wanted to think it was just a nightmare.

"I just could."

The pieces of the demon king's flesh gathered together.

Satan could see the demon king snickering.

[You just… could?]

It was nonsense.

Kang-Woo shrugged.

"No, for real. I was just able to eat it."

His exceptional skill in controlling demonic energy was likely part of it, as well as his overpowered Authority of Predation, but besides that…

"Honestly, I don't know either."

Although it had a grandiose name like Demonic Origin, he was able to eat it all too easily.

It was as if… it had been his from the beginning.

[…]

"Your preparations were better than I'd expected. I mean, I knew it was a trap, but… you exceeded my expectations."

Kang-Woo had never expected Satan to extract the soul out of his body and trap him in a space of reality mixed with illusions—with the majority of his power sealed, on top of that. He had honestly panicked a little when he saw that all his stats had been reduced to 1 and he couldn't use his Ten Thousand Demon Core.

"But…"

Kang-Woo laughed and raised his hand.

Crunch, crunch.

The black mucus that had scattered grew bigger. As space itself was devoured by the Authority of Predation, colossal amounts of demonic energy flowed into him.

This demonic energy was different from regular demonic energy. It wasn't like the demonic energy in the deep end of the Ten Thousand Demon Core either.

'This is…'

The deepest layer of the Ten Thousand Demon Core, where Kang-Woo had not been able to pull demonic energy out of yet…

'The Abyss.'

It was similar to the demonic energy of the place where that giant eye was asleep. The power contained within the demonic energy itself was in a league of its own.

"You were just unlucky."

Unlucky…

Was there a better way to describe the situation?

It wasn't perfect, but Satan had put off a lot of effort into this trap.

If it had worked, Kang-Woo's dead subordinates would have devoured him. But…

Rumble!!

The space made of demonic energy was distorted.

Riiing.

[The nightmare of the 'Primordial Darkness' is crumbling!]

A message appeared.

To be precise, it wasn't crumbling. It was being thoroughly eaten.

[A-Aaaahh.]

A desperate exclamation left Satan's mouth. He could feel the breakdown of the nightmare space as everything was returning to normal. The space of reality mixed with illusions was turning back into reality, and Satan wasn't dumb enough to not realize what that meant.

[The 'Divinity' interfering with the system has disappeared.]

[Restoring level and all stats to their former values.]

"I guess we're back."

Kang-Woo got up and smirked. He saw a black sphere about thirty meters in diameter in the middle of a giant cave surrounded by ice.

"This is your main body, huh?"

Kang-Woo placed his hand on the black sphere, sent his demonic energy into it, and checked what it was.

'Satan fused himself with the Demon God's corpse.'

He saw Satan inside the Demonic Origin and could finally understand why Satan was so confident within the nightmare. Unlike other princes of Hell, Satan had given up on restoring his body. Instead, he'd fused his soul with the Demonic Origin.

Meaning…

'That was his home ground.'

Satan was stronger than any other demon within that nightmare because he'd mixed his soul into it.

[A-Arrgghh.]

The huge black sphere grunted.

[Why, why, whyyyyyy!!!]

A desperate and agonizing scream spread through the cave.

It was only natural. He'd fused his soul with the Demonic Origin more than a thousand years ago to accept its power, fusing so much that he had given up his physical form for it. However, everything he'd built up until now had crumbled all too easily in the demon king's hands.

[I was… unlucky? Unlucky, you say?!]

He had put a lot of thought into the plan, but to think that the reason why it failed was that he was 'unlucky'…

[Urgh… Sniff.]

His sorrow overflowed.

After losing to the demon king and falling to Earth, he'd dreamt of his revival for over a thousand years. But then, the demon king had suddenly appeared and, while claiming to be him, had framed him for crimes he hadn't committed.

He had held back his rage and thought he'd finally been able to succeed in his revenge, but instead of revenge, he had ended up offering him a feast.

[Why… why are you doing this to me…?]

If there was a God, he wanted to ask him that.

[Waaaah. What… what did I do so wrong…?]

If, at least, he'd suffered a loss worthy of a prince of Hell… he wouldn't have been too sad.

[I am… fucking Satan… not some… worthless demon… I am Satan…]

He was the Prince of Wrath—the strongest prince of Hell after Bael.

[Waaaaaaaaah.]

His tears of sorrow did not stop.

Step, step.

Kang-Woo slowly walked toward him and looked up at the black sphere.

"So… if I eat this, I can devour the Demonic Origin and Satan's soul at the same time," he mumbled.

He made a satisfied smile and nodded as he spread his hand toward the black sphere. The Ten Thousand Demon Core had returned, so a huge amount of demonic energy surged from his body. As that black mucus gathered together, a mouth big enough to devour the thirty-meter black sphere appeared.

[N-No…! S-Stop!! Please stop!!]

"Thank you, Lord Satan, for giving me my daily bread."

Crunch!

The giant mouth devoured the black sphere whole.

'I guess this is what they call a "buy one, get one free." '