Chapter : 1589

  "Iron," Lucifer sneered. "So crude. So heavy. You cling to the earth, Roy Ferrum. You cling to the dirt. That is why you will never reach the sky."

  He squeezed. The iron dragon's head shattered into dust.

  But Roy was relentless. While Lucifer destroyed one, the other two struck. Gog punched Lucifer from the side. Magog raked him with claws of lightning. Roy himself charged, his own sword glowing with the concentrated power of his bloodline.

  For a minute, just a minute, it looked like a fight. Roy was a whirlwind of violence. He was everywhere at once, using his spirits to flank, using his steel to bind, using his own body to strike. He was fighting with a level of skill and power that defied logic. He was holding his own against a Devil King.

  Sparks flew. The ground cracked. Roy landed a blow on Lucifer's shoulder, his sword screeching against the white armor. He managed to push the Devil back a step.

  Roy gritted his teeth, sweat pouring down his face. He is strong. Stronger than anything I have faced. But he is arrogant. He is playing. If I can catch him... if I can combine Gog's gravity with Magog's speed...

  He prepared his ultimate technique, gathering every ounce of his mana for a final, decisive strike.

  Lucifer stopped. He caught Roy's sword blade between two fingers. He looked at the straining Arch Duke, and the smile dropped from his face. It was replaced by a look of chilling, genuine pity.

  "Oh, Roy," Lucifer said softly. "You really thought you were fighting, didn't you? You thought this was a duel."

  Lucifer flicked his wrist. Roy's sword, a blade forged from star-metal and tempered in dragon fire, snapped like a dry twig. The force of the flick sent Roy sliding backward across the courtyard, his boots carving deep trenches in the stone.

  "I have seen enough," Lucifer said. "Your spirit is commendable. Your power is... quaint. But I am bored now. And I have a schedule to keep."

  He reached into the folds of his white cloak. He didn't pull out a weapon. He pulled out a jagged, pulsating rock. It was the size of a fist, black as the void, and throbbing with a sickly green vein of light. It looked like a tumor cut from the heart of the world.

  Roy froze. His instincts, honed over fifty years of war, screamed at him. Danger. Absolute danger. Run.

  "Do you know what this is?" Lucifer asked, holding the rock up. "Of course you don't. Your ancestors were smart enough to bury the records of it. This is the Lodestone of the Abyss. It is older than your kingdom. Older than your family. It was forged in the deepest pit of Hell, specifically for people like you."

  "What does it do?" Roy growled, signaling Gog and Magog to prepare for a suicidal charge.

  "It doesn't kill," Lucifer said. "That would be too simple. It corrects. You Ferrums... you think you own the metal. You think you command the magnetism of the earth. You think it is your birthright."

  Lucifer’s eyes glowed purple. "This stone... it reminds the metal that it belongs to no one. It inverts the laws. It turns attraction to repulsion. It turns strength to rust."

  "No..." Roy whispered, realizing the implication.

  "Goodbye, Lion," Lucifer said.

  He crushed the Lodestone.

  HUMMMMM.

  A sound like a dying whale resonated through the air. A wave of distortion ripple out from the stone, passing through everything.

  The effect was immediate and horrifying.

  Roy felt a snap inside his chest. It wasn't a bone breaking. It was the connection. The deep, spiritual tether that linked his soul to the element of metal, the connection that allowed him to use his Void Power... it was severed. Violently.

  "My... my blood..." Roy gasped.

  The river of liquid steel that surrounded him instantly lost its cohesion. It didn't just fall; it crumbled. The metal turned grey, then brown, then dissolved into a cloud of red rust dust that blew away in the wind. His armor, the black adamantine plate that was indestructible, groaned. It rusted in seconds, turning brittle and flaking off his body, leaving him standing in his tunic.

  But the worst was the spirits.

  Gog, the mountain titan, let out a sound of confusion. His stone body began to crack. The magnetic field that held his massive form together was gone. He crumbled. Tons of rock rained down, burying the courtyard.

  Chapter : 1590

  Magog, the storm dragon, shrieked. The dimensional tether that anchored him to this plane required a specific magnetic resonance. The Lodestone had scrambled it. The dragon flickered, distorted like a bad image, and then was forcefully ejected from reality.

  Roy fell to his knees. He grabbed his chest, heaving. The backlash of having two Sovereign spirits ripped away and his own core power severed was catastrophic. It felt like his veins were being pulled out of his body. He coughed, and a spray of bright red blood splattered onto the rusted dust of his armor.

  "You..." Roy wheezed, trying to stand, trying to summon even a single dagger. But there was nothing. The metal in the ground was silent. The iron in his blood was just iron. He was no longer a Void User. He was just an old man.

  Lucifer walked over to him. The Lodestone in his hand crumbled into dust, its job done.

  "Look at you," Lucifer said, standing over the fallen Arch Duke. "Stripped of your toys. Where is your pride now, Ferrum? Where is your 'Steel Blood'? It seems you are just meat and bone like the rest of them."

  Roy looked up, blood dripping from his chin. His eyes were dim, the golden light of his spirit extinguished, but the cold fire of his will remained. He didn't speak of his son. He wouldn't give this creature the satisfaction of knowing his legacy survived. He wouldn't paint a target on Lloyd's back with his dying breath. He simply stared, his gaze a silent, unyielding wall of hatred.

  Lucifer laughed. He reached down and grabbed Roy by the throat, lifting him into the air with one hand as if he were a ragdoll. Roy dangled helplessly, his feet kicking the air, his hands scrabbling uselessly against the Devil King's wrist.

  "Defiant silence?" Lucifer mocked, tilting his head. "How boring. I expected begging. I expected you to bargain for the lives of your family. But I suppose a Lion doesn't know how to beg."

  He tightened his grip. Roy gagged, the cartilage in his neck creaking under the impossible pressure. His vision began to swim, black spots dancing at the edges of the purple sky.

  "It is a pity," Lucifer whispered, bringing his flawless face close to the dying Arch Duke. "You were the strongest human of this age. You built a fortress of steel and will. But you forgot the most important lesson of the cosmos, Roy Ferrum: Steel melts. Stone crumbles. Only Pride is eternal."

  Lucifer raised his free hand. His fingers straightened, the tips glowing with a razor-sharp, amethyst energy. He aimed directly at Roy's heart.

  "I will not leave you to rot, Lion," Lucifer said, his voice void of mercy. "I will not leave you to watch your world burn. I am granting you the mercy of oblivion. I am erasing you here and now."

  The courtyard of the Ferrum Estate was no longer a place of military precision or architectural beauty. It was a graveyard of crushed stone and rusted metal. The purple sun beat down on the devastation, casting long, sickly shadows that seemed to writhe on the ground. The silence was absolute, broken only by the ragged, wet breathing of Arch Duke Roy Ferrum.

  Roy was on his knees. It was a position he had never held in his entire life, not before a king, not before an emperor, and certainly not before an enemy. But his body gave him no choice. The Lodestone of the Abyss had done its work too well. The connection to the earth, the connection to the metal in his blood, the connection to his Sovereign spirits—it was all gone. It felt as if his nervous system had been ripped out and replaced with jagged shards of glass. Every breath sent a spike of agony through his chest, where his spiritual veins had shattered.

  He looked up. His vision was blurry, swimming with red spots, but he could see the white figure approaching.

  Lucifer, the Devil King of Pride, did not run. He did not charge. He walked. It was a leisurely stroll, the kind a man takes through his own garden on a Sunday morning. His white boots stepped over the piles of crushed flesh and the flaking red rust of armor that used to be the elite guards of House Ferrum. He stepped past the twisted, rusted corpse of the Captain, whose brave heart had finally given out under the crushing pressure. He didn't look down. He looked only at Roy.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Chapter : 1591

  "Do you know how long I have waited for this?" Lucifer asked. His voice was calm, conversational, yet it boomed in the confined space of the courtyard like thunder rolling in a valley. "Not for you, specifically, Roy. You are just... the current tenant. I have waited for the end of the Line of Iron."

  Lucifer stopped ten feet away. He clasped his hands behind his back, his crimson cape fluttering in a wind that didn't exist.

  "Your ancestors were very creative," Lucifer mused, tilting his head to the side. "They didn't just kill my kind. Killing is natural. Lions kill. Wolves kill. But your ancestors... they captured. They bound. They tortured."

  Roy tried to summon a weapon. He tried to pull a dagger from the iron filings in the dust. He concentrated his will, the will that had broken armies and commanded gods. Nothing happened. His fingers twitched, but the metal remained dead. He coughed, and blood splattered onto his rusted breastplate.

  "I see you trying," Lucifer said with a smile that didn't reach his amethyst eyes. "It is like watching a fish flop on the sand. It remembers the water, but the water is gone. You are dry, Roy Ferrum. You are empty."

  Lucifer took another step. The pressure radiating from him increased. It wasn't just physical gravity; it was spiritual despair. It pushed Roy's face toward the dirt. Roy fought it. He locked his neck muscles, refusing to bow his head. He would die, he knew that now. The calculation was simple. He had no power, no allies, and he was facing a being that defied the laws of reality. But he would die looking the Devil in the eye.

  "We have long memories in the Seventh Circle," Lucifer continued. "I remember the screams of my brother when your great-grandfather forged him into a shield. I remember the smell of burning ichor in the dungeons of this very castle. You built your legacy on our pain. You called it 'honor.' You called it 'duty.' We called it a debt."

  Lucifer unclasped his hands. He raised his right arm, palm facing the sky. The shadows in the courtyard seemed to lengthen, drawn toward him like water down a drain.

  "And today," Lucifer whispered, "the debt is called in. Today, the Line of Iron ends. Not in a glorious battle. Not in a war. But here, in the dirt, like a sick dog."

  Roy stared at him. He wanted to speak. He wanted to say something defiant. He wanted to tell this monster that his son would burn the Abyss to ash. But his throat was full of blood, and he knew that words were useless. He thought of Lloyd. He thought of the boy who had once been a disappointment, the boy who had become a miracle. He thought of the salt fields, the soap empire, the strange, brilliant machines.

  I will not see it, Roy thought, a single tear of pure regret mixing with the blood on his face. I will not see him become the King.

  "Any last words?" Lucifer asked, looking bored. "Make them entertaining. I have had a long trip."

  Roy spat a mouthful of blood at the Devil's pristine white boots. It fell short, landing in the dust.

  "Pathetic," Lucifer sighed.

  The Devil King turned his hand over. The darkness that had gathered in his palm condensed. It didn't form a fireball or a bolt of lightning. It formed a spear. It was about six feet long, made of pure, oscillating nothingness. It was blacker than black, a tear in the fabric of the world. It hummed with a sound that made Roy's teeth ache. It was a weapon designed not just to kill the body, but to consume the soul, to erase the very concept of the victim from the cycle of reincarnation.

  "This is the Spear of Nihil," Lucifer explained, hefting the weapon as if testing its balance. "It does not wound. It erases. When this strikes your heart, Roy Ferrum, you will not go to the afterlife. You will simply... cease. Your history, your legacy, your soul... gone."

  He pulled his arm back. The movement was slow, deliberate, maximizing the terror.

  "Goodbye, Lion," Lucifer said.

  The world seemed to slow down. Roy saw the muscles in Lucifer's arm tense. He saw the black spear vibrate. He took a breath, holding it, preparing for the end. He didn't close his eyes.

  But the spear didn't fly through empty air.

  Chapter : 1592

  From the periphery of Roy's vision, from the ruined edge of the servant's quarters, something moved. It moved fast. It wasn't the speed of a warrior or a mage. It was the desperate, impossible speed of someone who had abandoned all regard for their own survival.

  A small figure blurred across the courtyard. It was running against the crushing pressure of the Devil King, running through the aura that had flattened elite knights into paste. It was running with a scream that tore through the silence.

  It wasn't a soldier. It wasn't a lord. It was a maid.

  Jasmin.

  Jasmin had been watching from the shadows of the ruined kitchen doorway. She was trembling. Her body felt heavy, as if she were wearing a suit of lead. The fear was a cold hand gripping her heart, squeezing until she couldn't breathe. She had seen the guards die. She had seen the Titan Gog crumble. She had seen the Arch Duke, the strongest man in the world, brought to his knees.

  Every instinct in her body screamed at her to run. To hide. To curl up in a ball and pray that the monster in white didn't notice her. She was just a handmaiden. She washed clothes. She delivered messages. She wasn't a fighter. She wasn't a hero.

  But then she looked at Arch Duke Roy.

  He wasn't just her master's father. He was the symbol of the house she served. He was the shield that protected the North. And he was Lloyd's father.

  Lloyd.

  The name echoed in her mind. Master Lloyd. The man who had saved her from obscurity. The man who had saved Risa. The man who had treated her like a person, not a servant. The man who had taken her into a white void and taught her that she was strong.

  I am the Diamond Queen, she thought. The words were faint, drowned out by the roar of Lucifer's pressure.

  She remembered the training. She remembered the endless hours in the time-dilated pocket dimension. Lloyd throwing rocks at her. Lloyd throwing knives at her. Lloyd shouting at her to focus, to harden, to become unbreakable.

  "You are not soft, Jasmin," Lloyd had told her. "You think you are glass because people told you to be transparent. But you are carbon. Apply enough pressure, and you don't break. You become a diamond."

  She saw Lucifer raise the black spear. She felt the death in it. She knew, with absolute certainty, that if that spear hit Roy, Lloyd would be broken. He would lose his father. He would be alone.

  Jasmin couldn't let Lloyd be alone.

  The fear didn't vanish. It was still there, screaming. But something else rose up to meet it. Loyalty. Gratitude. Love.

  She moved.

  The pressure of the Devil King hit her like a physical wall. It felt like walking into a hurricane wind. Her bones creaked. Her nose began to bleed. But she forced one foot in front of the other. She pushed.

  "MASTER ROY!" she screamed.

  It was a battle cry that cracked her voice. It drew Lucifer's eyes for a fraction of a second. The Devil looked annoyed, like someone hearing a mosquito buzz.

  Jasmin didn't care. She was running now. She was sprinting across the broken stones. She saw the spear leave Lucifer's hand. It moved fast, a blur of darkness.

  She threw herself. She didn't attack. She didn't try to dodge. She leaped into the air, placing her small body directly in the path of the annihilation.

  "SPIRIT ACTIVATION!" she roared, her voice raw. "DIAMOND QUEEN: ABSOLUTE GUARD!"

  Time seemed to freeze. From the core of her chest, a blinding white light erupted. It wasn't magic; it was her soul manifesting. Her skin, her clothes, her hair—everything transmuted in an instant.

  Flesh turned to crystal. Blood turned to light. In the blink of an eye, the terrified handmaiden vanished. In her place, suspended in the air between the Devil King and the Arch Duke, was a statue.

  It was a statue of a woman made of flawless, transparent diamond. It was beautiful. It sparkled under the purple sun, refracting the sickly light into a thousand rainbows. It was the hardest substance in the world, reinforced by the desperate will of a girl who refused to let her family die.

  The Diamond Queen didn't have a weapon. She had her arms wide open, in a pose of protection. She was a shield.

  The Spear of Nihil, the weapon of a god, struck the center of the diamond chest.

  CRACK-BOOM.