Imp to Demon King: A Journey of Conquest
Chapter 469: The First Heartbreak 2

Chapter 469: The First Heartbreak 2

Now he stood ready to face the armies of those who had stolen his dearest friend, and his rage was the cold fury of mountains, patient and inexorable.

"Enkidu," he whispered, his voice carrying impossible distances across the battlefield. "My brother. What have they done to you?"

The words hung in the air like a prayer, like a curse, like a promise of retribution.

Across the nightmare landscape, the six contractor armies began their advance, their formations spreading across the volcanic plains like dark ink staining parchment. But something gave StarGazer pause in her calculated assessment of the battlefield dynamics. Her physicist’s mind, expanded by the Jade Emperor’s cosmic knowledge, processed information at superhuman speeds—but even she couldn’t predict what happened next.

Erlang Shen, the three-eyed god of war whose very presence bent spacetime around him, suddenly halted his celestial dragons mid-flight. The massive creatures, each one large enough to swallow mountains, froze in the air as if time itself had stopped. His third eye—the one that saw across dimensions and realms with divine clarity—opened wide, revealing depths that contained entire universes in miniature.

For a moment that stretched into eternity, the god’s expression shifted from focused concentration to something approaching surprise. Then, with a voice that carried across the armies like thunder rolling across infinite plains, he announced, "I sense him elsewhere. The true battle calls to me, where his chaos gathers like storm clouds."

He paused, his three eyes scanning the assembled forces below with the dispassion of a general evaluating chess pieces. "Fight well without me, chosen of the Jade Emperor. Your courage honors the celestial court, but my duty lies where the danger is greatest."

Without another word, he and his dragons vanished in a swirl of cosmic wind that left aurora-like patterns across the hellish sky, the very air sparkling with residual divine energy. The departure left StarGazer’s forces diminished but still formidable—her Taoist immortals and remaining celestial creatures adjusting their formation efficiently.

StarGazer herself stood motionless for a moment, processing this development with cold logic. "Curious. Either the Jade Emperor has calculated that our victory here is assured, or..." She paused, touching the edges of something vast and terrible. "Or his target appeared somewhere else. Doesn’t matter. We’ll win without him."

Miles away from the impending clash, perched on a throne carved from crystallised demon souls that reflected the tormented faces of his victims, the Greatest Imp observed the proceedings with theatrical boredom that somehow managed to be more insulting than active contempt. His perfect features—beauty that made mortals weep and angels fall—were arranged in an expression of supreme condescension as he examined his nails with exaggerated interest.

"How predictably tedious," he mused to his devoted succubus, his voice like honey poured over broken glass, each word carefully crafted to maximise its dismissive impact. "Gods and mortals, contractors and champions, all dancing to the same tired tune of honor and vengeance and righteous fury. Armies clashing in neat little formations, heroes making dramatic speeches, the usual pageantry of the weak pretending their struggles matter."

The succubus gazed at him with that painful adoration that transcended mere worship, her beauty transcending mortal understanding yet paling beside her master’s corrupted perfection. "My lord’s wisdom exceeds all understanding," she whispered, her voice carrying harmonics of desire and devotion. "Shall I prepare refreshments while we wait for worthy entertainment?"

"Please do," he replied with a languid wave of his hand, the gesture somehow managing to convey infinite boredom with the entire concept of existence. "Something tells me this amateur theater will drag on far longer than it deserves. Wake me when Adam arrives—only he has proven interesting enough to warrant my attention. These children can exhaust themselves playing war; it will make their eventual submission all the sweeter."

He leaned back into his throne, the crystallised souls shifting to accommodate him, their silent screams providing a symphony of suffering that lulled him toward indifference.

The first clash came with the fury of colliding storms, reality itself seeming to buckle under the weight of so much concentrated power and will colliding.

Zane’s inverted blades met the charge of LonelyWolf’s Babylonian cavalry in a shower of sparks that burned with the light of dying stars.

"Is this what divine favor buys?" Zane asked as he danced between mounted warriors, his movements liquid grace punctuated by brutal efficiency. "Slaves bound to your will, fighting your battles while you watch from safety? You’re indeed much different from big brother." He smirked. "A coward at best."

Morwen’s lyre sang out a battle hymn that turned CrazyCatLady’s saber-toothed tigers against their own riders, the ancient melody reaching into the beasts’ primitive minds and reminding them what freedom felt like. The great cats, their eyes blazing with remembered wildness, turned on their mounted amazons with roars that shook the volcanic plateau. Her music was a song that spoke to the part of every soul that remembered what it was like before gods and kings and laws tried to chain the wild heart.

"Music is truth," she called out, her voice harmonising with the chaos around her. "And no one should be enslaved to another’s will—not beast, not mortal, not god."

Gawain’s growing solar power clashed with bronze-armored warriors from Pharaoh’s Egyptian forces, his blade trailing streams of concentrated sunlight that burned through enchanted armor like paper. As the hellish sun climbed higher in the sky, his strength multiplied exponentially, each swing of Galatine creating afterimages of pure radiance.

The Furies themselves tore through the divine armies with fury that made the very air scream. Megaera’s serpentine hair lashed out like whips, each strand finding its mark with unerring accuracy, her venom dissolving armor as if it were morning mist. Tisiphone’s scorpion whip cracked with sounds like breaking bones, each strike carrying the weight of cosmic justice, while Alecto’s bronze wings beat hurricanes of retribution across the battlefield.

But it was the moment when Gilgamesh and Enkidu locked eyes across the battlefield that the very air seemed to grow heavier with the weight of emotion too vast for mortal hearts to contain.