Chapter 346: Champion (2)

Gazes poured down from the heights of Heaven. From above came a tangle of feelings: worry, displeasure, hope, and unease. Every emotion that living minds could carry seemed to move inside those looks.

All the gods gazed down upon Ketal. The gaze of a single god was enough to crush a mortal outright, yet here, dozens of such gazes converged, their combined weight fixed upon him like a celestial mountain. Even those called Heroes would have buckled under that weight. Ketal’s body trembled, not from fear or pressure, but from something far greater. It was joy that ruled him—raw, overwhelming, and absolute.

“Ah...,” he breathed.

The Hall of the Gods was watching him. The beings who oversee the world from above, who protect it, and who love their children, those ones called gods, were looking at him alone. His skull felt hot with gratitude. The world tilted. He set strength into legs that wanted to give.

“You are pleased,” Kalosia murmured, as if they had expected nothing else.

Ketal drew a steady breath. The high gods looked down upon him. If that was so, then the first thing he owed them was a proper greeting. He straightened his posture and offered respect as he spoke.

“It is an honor to meet you, gods,” he said. “I am Ketal, barbarian of the White Snowfield.”

He smiled and inclined his head.

“I look forward to working together for a long time.”

It was a gesture of politeness, the simple sanity of ordinary courtesy—something any person would offer. Yet above, the gathered divinities stirred. Confusion flickered through the light, a subtle ripple of doubt spreading across its brilliance.

“What’s going on?” Ketal asked Kalosia under his breath.

“Many of them are seeing you for the first time,” Kalosia replied. “They have heard of a monster, and now that monster behaves like a reasonable being and lowers his head a little. It is disorienting.”

Kalosia kept their tone calm, but even they had felt a vertigo when Ketal bowed. A being who could stand against the Demon King had bent, even slightly, toward the Hall of the Gods. It unsettled them. If they felt that much, then the others would feel it more. Kalosia addressed the heavens.

“By now, you must have realized what the being called Ketal truly is. In that case, there is no need for further words,” Kalosia said.

“Oh, we’re not going to talk?” Ketal said, disappointed. “I wanted to speak with each of the gods.”

“There is no time,” Kalosia answered. “We do not know when the Demon King will break the seal.”

“You are in a hurry,” Ketal said. “Very well. I will speak to each of you after I climb to Heaven myself.”

Kalosia smiled faintly at his regret. “As you wish. Then we begin. Prepare yourself.”

“No ritual?” he said. “No circles or offerings?”

“Rituals are for vessels that might break,” they said. “They are a safety valve. You will not need one.”

“I see,” Ketal said.

He stepped forward to stand before the gods’ collective gaze. Worry, fear, and hope moved like tides. Kalosia’s voice fell into a low cadence.

“Begin.”

The air sank. The voices of the gods rose and wove together into a single chord.

“We are the rulers of Heaven, for we are part of the order itself.”

Space shivered. From the far side of the opened way, power pushed through like a blade through silk. Holy power gathered and concentrated, the pure inverse of Hell’s demonic energy. Light coalesced into a single will and fell.

A pillar dropped from the sky and struck Ketal. Night ruled the world, but the heavens burned brighter than any noon. The pillar carried a source more brilliant than the sun itself. If the gods had not held the beam in a perfect grip, a continent would have shattered under that one act.

The earth shook. Even newborns could have known that the world was moving.

“Ah!” someone cried.

“O gods!” another sobbed.

Across the land, people knelt with their heads bowed and eyes closed, hands clasped tightly in prayer. They followed the command that had spread with the warning. When the pillar descended, no one was to look up. Those who dared to raise their eyes would see only for an instant before their bodies burned away, leaving nothing but ash.

So they bowed and kept their eyes closed. However, Helia did not. She sat upright where she was and watched the light.

“What am I seeing?” she whispered.

A breath of laughter escaped her. She carried a god’s blood. She was the only one on the Mortal Realm who bore the Sun God’s holy blood, sent down for a day like this. The Sun God had told her she could look.

She saw the pillar descending from Heaven—a force vast enough to bore through the world without effort. Its brilliance was something no eyes should have been able to behold. One truth settled in her heart: nothing in the Mortal Realm could contain what she witnessed. Not even a god or a demon could have borne its weight.

If there existed a being who could hold such a thing, there would be only one kind. It would be someone who had come from a place the gods did not know, someone who loved this world called fantasy more than life itself. The pillar engulfed Ketal until he vanished in the light.

“Is this truly safe?” asked a quiet voice beside Kalosia. The God of the Sword, Elia, frowned.

“I know his strength,” Elia continued. “But I cannot see how anyone could endure the full weight of the gods’ authorities.”

Even if someone stood at the Demon King’s tier, this density should have broken them. Even Ketal should not have been able to stand.

“I did not object because I trust you,” Elia said. “But this is dangerous.”

“Dangerous,” Kalosia repeated, and they laughed softly, as if they had heard an amusing story. “You underestimate him.”

“I think you overestimate him,” Elia said.

“You will see,” Kalosia replied.

“We will,” Elia said, and yet their eyes did not rest easy. They intended to intervene the moment the danger crossed a line.

They watched and waited, and then understanding dawned. The pillar began to contract, its vast light drawing inward, sinking into Ketal like water absorbed by sand. Power was being pulled into him. As the radiance narrowed, his outline slowly returned, each curve and edge emerging from the brilliance by degrees.

“Huh?” Elia said.

Ketal was smiling. There was no burden in that expression, no strain, no wild surge of joy. He was simply happy, calm, and unshaken—and that was all.

“Wait,” said another god. “Look.”

One by one, they realized it. For Ketal, there was no bottom. More precisely, their power could not find it. Kalosia spoke in a hush laced with awe.

“No matter how splendid a painting is, it is still a flat picture.”

In terms of space, their authorities were panels of ink on a wall. To Ketal, that was all they were. The room could be filled with dozens of fine paintings, and nothing would change.

He was in another dimension entirely. The other gods recognized the truth, and shock rippled through them. Doubt followed, rising to deny what their senses told them. Yet even as disbelief spread, the might of the Hall of the Gods continued to pour unceasingly into Ketal. At last, the final shard of light thinned and sank into him.

Silence held. Kalosia asked, “How do you feel?”

“Good,” Ketal said.

His voice trembled a little with excitement, but it sounded like himself. That small fact chilled the gods more than the pillar had. The gods’ strength had not changed him in any visible way.

“Thank you, gods,” Ketal said, still smiling. “You have trusted me. Now it is time for me to show you what that trust will earn.”

He closed his hand around the axe.

***

Back in Hell, the ruins where the Demon King’s castle had once stood lay silent and empty. Half the structure had collapsed, and every ranked demon had already been burned as an offering. Those few who survived had fled into the shadows, hiding wherever darkness would take them. For a fortress that had once blazed with infernal splendor, the wreckage now seemed small, stripped of its former majesty.

Just then, space cracked. Fractures raced out across the air, and a hand punched through. The hand clawed the rent wider. A man of midnight black forced the world open and stepped out. His voice was calm.

“Well done,” he said. “God of Seals. You held me for four days. Be satisfied and die.”

He was the Demon King. He had broken the seal made with the God of Seals’ life in only four days and returned.

“Then,” he said.

Power gathered to him at once. During the four days of his absence, the gods would not have stood idle. They would have descended one by one to the Mortal Realm. They would have prepared a ring of snares around the place where he had been bound.

“Come, gods,” he said. “I am here.”

It was a kingly declaration, fit for the lord of malice. However, no answer came back. Hell remained quiet. For the first time, his eyes moved and tightened.

“What is this?” he said.

The gods could not have remained idle while he was sealed. Such negligence would have made the God of Seals’ sacrifice meaningless. They had to have made preparations. Yet now, nothing stirred in this place.

“Are they waiting on the Mortal Realm?” he wondered.

He denied it at once. If the gods fought him on the Mortal Realm, half the world would burn again as it had in the old Divine-Demonic War. The gods existed to protect the Mortal Realm. They had no reason to choose that battlefield.

Yet he couldn’t find a single god in Hell. He reached outward with his senses, and in a single breath, the whole of Hell unfolded within him. Amid that vast stillness, he noticed one thing.

“Something is coming,” he said.

Something with holy power moved toward him. He almost scoffed. The holy power felt mediocre, hardly worth a notice. He had needed to expand his senses just to catch it. At best, it belonged to a single devout believer.

“No,” he said a moment later.

He had been wrong. The holy power felt small, but inside that single light, many authorities moved together in a tight braid.

The Demon King’s face twisted. “It cannot be.”

The presence stepped into view.

“We meet again, Demon King,” Ketal said, smiling. A corona shimmered above his head. The Demon King spoke through his teeth.

“The holy power inside you,” he said. “The gods have given you their power.”

“I must have received quite a lot,” Ketal said. “No one has ever sensed the Abomination inside me, but you can taste the holy power I took in at once. It is a fine gift.”

“Gods,” the Demon King roared. “You have fallen this far. In the final hour, you do not face me yourselves. You put your strength in an outsider.”

“That is how it is,” Ketal said. “My apologies, Demon King.”

The Demon King exhaled a sound like a blade. Ketal ignored the scorn, stepped forward with a bright grin, and lifted his axe.

“Then let us enjoy ourselves.”

The Demon King threw a punch, and Ketal met it head-on. Axe and fist collided, and the sound that followed rang through the world like a struck bell.