AN: Yesterday I woke up with a hell of a stinging eye and once that cleared my vision was blurry, which didn't go away for hours. I basically spent the whole day setting up and going to an emergency eye test. Turns out I have an eye infection in both eyes. Nothing serious, and I have some prescription antibacterial eye drops now (that I have to put in once every 2 hours which fuckin' sucks). My eyesight is a lot clearer today, so enjoy! :D
***
Lone watched as a very unhappy Arch Devil whom he was familiar with stepped out of a flaming portal some distance from him and those around him far off in the sky.
"A word of forewarning to you all," Lone said. "I have to talk to him alone. I have him bound by something very powerful that cannot be broken. We must and will talk privately. It's the only way I can summon him without it being a violation of the rules that bind him to me. If you can somehow spy on the conversation, feel free, though if you want to stop others from doing so, including yourself, that will earn you favour with me. You may all be quite unhappy by what I've done. I understand. However, any who try not to do as I've asked will be hunted down and killed by the ones who will. The ones who do choose to kill that thing for me once I'm done, you may be wondering why you would ever do that for little old me. Everyone who does so and helps me will be given full access to study the device I have created and I will answer most questions related to it without resistance."
Divine Hourglass's smile widened. "I can appreciate a man who uses everything to his advantage. Very well. Consider my aid granted willingly. From the cracks within spacetime that I can feel, as young Immortus here claimed, an Omni Devil is on its way here- ah, make that two. Come now. Leave him to talk to... Tidsear Òg, was it?"
The Arch Devil in question snarled in the distance hatefully upon having clearly heard his name being invoked.
"I and Divine Persistence will fight back one of the Omni Devils. I will remove the time lock on the members of the Council of Elders and have them enter the plane of hell that lovely fellow rules over to destroy it. The rest of you, work together to fight off the other Omni Devil. Offer a word of dissent and I will reverse your timeline in its entirety. If you know not what that means, find the wisdom within yourself to not discover it via trial and error right now," Divine Hourglass warned. "You would much rather die to an Omni Devil than experience that, trust me."
Everyone present shared silent looks between themselves, and Lone could tell that everyone was scared, even the supposed oldest person present Divine Eternal, Divine Tethered, and also the many demigods that didn't even have faces to express with, and the beings he had no idea of their origin, all of them seemed far more concerned with his threat than they did with the two Omni Devils.
This simple looking human was a terrifying existence to them, it would seem.
The next moment, he and the rest of the Divines were gone and everyone who had been present in the background below the rank of Divinity disappeared, likely having been ferried off to safety by someone, probably Grand Guildmaster Sarah.
Lone was alone now, and he kept his eyes trained on the Arch Devil slowly walking through the sky towards him.
He felt faint. He was running on fumes. He really need to sleep right now. He sighed and summoned a seat, ignoring the hellish scene all around him. He practically collapsed into it just as Arch Devil Zel had reached him.
The demonic man with charcoal skin and raging facial hair made of violet flames stood in front of him without any of his normal decorum or presented grace.
"How?" Zel asked. "How did you deceive my dice? I have rolled countless times to determine if you would use my name and take upon the burden of doing so, every time they always rolled three ones without fail."
Lone gave him an exhausted smile. "I have four Primals trapped within my soul. I made a deal with one of them to alter my memories, seal them away, and make sure you would never learn about my real plan, though, mind you, this wasn't my real plan, but a part of it was brainwashing myself into thinking I should never use your true name. All I knew was that if I ever met a group of Divines, I needed to enact the 'real plan', whatever that was."
He took a deep breathe. It was satisfying. "What do your dice say about your survival chances today?"
"I don't know. I don't want to roll them," Zel answered with fury in his voice. "This is it, then? Tricked by a mere mortal? What was it, Lone, where did I go wrong?"
Lone laughed. "By thinking you could ever use me to do your dirty work, but seriously? By showing how reliant you were on those magical dice of yours, after all, I didn't need to trick you, I only needed to trick the dice. They determined your actions, not you yourself."
Zel's entire body was shaking madly as if he was trying his best to unleash his full demonic aura to crush Lone into paste but the contract prevented him from doing so.
The mighty seventh king of all demonkin was powerless and oh how that made Lone feel so incredibly powerful. "Your stopwatch and dice, will you give them to me? You are basically guaranteed to die today. Would it not be fitting for the one who bested you to ensure your memory lives on by using your beloved artefacts?"
Zel reached into thin air and a small purple portal of hell flames appeared, from which his pulled out the stopwatch Lone had only heard be described by Sofia. He held it and looked at it remorsefully. He then clenched his hand and destroyed the thing.
The next moment he reached into the front left pocket of his trousers and pulled out the dice. He clenched his fist again, turning the dice to dust.
He then stared into Lone's soul. "This is my answer."
Lone was a bit shocked by that, but he was also overjoyed. For him to have done that instead of trying to bargain all but ensured the Arch Devil was certain he would die today.
As if to confirm that, Zel's body began to slowly crumble. "They've destroyed my plane of hell... How did you know about th- No, it doesn't matter now. My final question. Are you prepared to deal with the fallout of so many Divine, demigods, and everything in between, dying today, as well as the anger caused by humiliating two Omni Devils into retreating?"
Lone gathered the strength to stand and met Arch Devil Zel's fiery gaze of hatred with a gaze of victory and resolution. "I beat you, didn't I? Let them try to get revenge. I'm all too happy to add even more grand tales of triumph to my epic."
Arch Devil Zel didn't respond to that and just silently maintained eye-contact with Lone as his body withered away, turning into dust that scattered with the wind.
Lone then felt it long before being told by the system. His contract with Zel had been annulled on account of one of the two participants no longer existing.
He flopped down into his chair and he could only barely see that the sky was returning to normal when he lost consciousness. His last thought before everything went dark was, 'I hope Soph's okay...'
***
Lone opened his eyes and before even registering where he was, he telepathically reached out, 'Soph! Are you okay?'
'Mmm... I'm fine. Well, not fine, but, uh, well. You can fix me and Kyuubi later. There's a Divine in front of you,' she replied in a soft voice that sounded strained as if she was in a lot of pain.
He sighed in relief. The worst hadn't come to pass. He was surprised that Kyuubi also needed medical attention, but he trusted her when she said they were fine, meaning their lives weren't in danger. If they weren't dead or dying, then he could, indeed, fix them later.
He looked around carefully. He was in an ordinary-looking room atop a rather comfortable bed. At his bedside in a wooden chair was Divine Hourglass reading a book rather joyfully.
"Good morning. I suspect you will ask so I shall tell you that you have been unconscious for 37 hours and 26 minutes. I have been protecting you. Divine Persistence and Divine Eternal have been handling the political ramifications of your accomplishment while Divine Tethered has been using her vast resources and unique talents - not skills, to avoid any misunderstanding - to ensure no one but those who were present know or will ever know that you were behind this." He put his book down into his lap and smiled. "Any questions?"
He opened his mouth and then winced as an unbearable pain raced through his soul.
'Ignore that,' Darkness suddenly said. 'You shouldn't have maintained eye contact with the devil for so long, Loney-boy. The sneaky fellow was trying to orchestrate his revival through your soul. Death and I have it under control, however.'
A trace of concern flashed through Divine Hourglass's face. "Are you okay?"
Lone slowly nodded. "I'm... fine. Questions, right?"
He collected himself. He wasn't unaccustomed to enduring pain. Soul pain was easily the most brutal of pains but he could manage. "Who all died and what happened with the Omni Devils, exactly?"
"16 Divines, 11 demigods, and half a dozen unique individuals with similar power to a Divine perished before I and Divine Persistence could assist with the second Omni Devil. Most of them simply could not handle the weight of witnessing and being so close to an existence so far above their own, even if it was being heavily restricting by Altros's, the temporal, and the demonic laws. Of the 16 members of the Council of Elders I threatened to convince them to destroy the Arch Devil's personal hellish plane, only 13 returned, most of which awakened during their mission," The Academy's headmaster stated emotionlessly.
"As for the Omni Devils, Divine Persistence fought back the first one, covering me as I strengthened the spacetime barrier between our plane and the hellish ones within the Crimson Foxkin Clan. It was enough to force the beast back to its home. We repeated the process with the second one, though it took more time as even with Divine Eternal and the other notable powerhouses present there, they cannot amount to the worth of Divine Persistence. It had materialised far more and was feeding off of the death of our allies. Still, we succeeded," he explained. "I have a question of my own, if you don't mind?"
Lone slowly nodded. "Shoot."
"How is it that you now have an affinity to space magic and time magic, with affinities rivalling my own? I have ideas, but I trust your word will be more reliable than my conjecture," the Divine asked.
Lone frowned, still trying to ignore the pain in his soul. "I haven't checked my notification log since before I built the... thing. Did you use any time or space magic on me?"
"Yes, twice. I used space magic on you to ensure you had privacy with the Arch Devil. Even if you were okay with others trying to eavesdrop, I thought it wise to ensure that did not happen, and you did say doing so would earn me some favour with you. I later used time magic on you to ensure you recovered quickly, but you woke up far sooner than I expected," Divine Hourglass answered. "I am almost certain you are a summoned hero given what you did. Does your unique skill relate to this?"
'He doesn't know? Grand Guildmaster Sarah should know about my eight unique skills if she's looked into my silver plate exam, and Divine Tethered knows about Basic Regeneration, but neither of them blabbed?' His trust in those two powerhouses increased greatly upon realising that.
"Any magic that gets used on me, I earn its affinity at 100%. I don't know what you saw when I was forging, but that's how I was able to add so many perfect magical affinities to the mix," Lone said, obscuring the truth.
Divine Hourglass sighed. "What an absurdly powerful unique skill. The owner is all but destined to become the best mage to have ever existed. There are many more things that I am curious about, young Immortus, but I, sadly, am not in the position of power here."
He reached into nothing and pulled out two sheets of paper. "This is the list of those whom you owe a chance to study what it is you created. They have been told that you will ensure they have that chance within the next hundred years from the moment of your waking, so starting from today. You can choose whatever order you wish and no one is allowed to study it for more than a year, or they risk being killed by everyone else on the list."
Lone took the list and read it over carefully.
"And this, young Immortus, is a list of benefits that will be afforded to you should you accept my offer to become my and Divine Eternal's joint disciple. There are also alternatives should that not be appealing to you but should you still wish to learn from the two of us," Divine Hourglass explained and passed the note to Lone.
The Divine then got up, picking up his book at the same time. He smiled and then said, "I'll leave you to your devices. Allow me to say one thing, however. No matter what secrets you have, what kind of person you are, how just or evil you are, I am on your side in all things. You need not trust my character, but do have faith in my greed for the new school of magic you have fathered."
The man walked out of the room leaving Lone a bit lost for words. "I fathered what now?"
***
A/N: And that is the end of the climax of book 3. I hope you enjoyed it. It'll be a couple of wrap up chapters before we roll right into book 4! :D