Ascension of the Dark Seraph

'What happened?'

Lucivar questioned, his mind clear and hazy at the same time.

Clear because he now knew that with Master Tobias' death, evil would never catch up to him again. And hazy since he couldn't properly form a full thought inside his mind. All that kept on repeating inside his head was the word 'kill'.

'It hurts.'

Savagely, Lucivar reached for his chest with his hand.

Not even a minute ago, he heard a painful, astral scream that shook his entire being.

It was Seraphiel's voice.

Despite how different her voice was due to the pain she was experiencing, he could somehow recognize her voice. Lucivar could feel it. Her presence was rapidly disappearing inside of him, devoured by the very darkness he had been feeding all this time in his ascension.

Unlike before, when her presence was hidden, it was different this time.

She was really being devoured, killed, and erased from inside him.

Once she breathed her last breath, once the stubborn ray of light that kept on resisting the darkness was snuffed out like a candle being blown out, Lucivar could feel an insurmountable surge of power swelling from within.

It overwhelmed him in an instant, causing the blast that flattened the area earlier.

And the second after, Lucivar could feel an emptiness in his chest.

Like, there was a piece of him that was also killed alongside Seraphiel.

Now, there was only hollowness and pain.

A phantom pain lingered where his heart should be.

But at the same time, he felt like he was a new man, a new person, one that had completed—the final transformation. Just like a cocoon becoming a butterfly, he had broken free of his form self for good, reborn not only different but greater—and above all, stronger.

'Power… I can feel it coursing inside my veins.'

Lucivar raised his hand skyward, inspecting it as if he could see the change if he looked closely enough.

He clenched it into a fist a couple of times, feeling the raw strength he possessed.

Just an hour ago, he was hoping that he could overcome his bottleneck and grow stronger.

Against the opposing avatars, he doesn't feel like he is ready to take them on.

But this… now… with this power, he was confident that nothing could stop him anymore.

Mortals, Demi-Gods, or even Gods, there was no need for him to be afraid.

Lucivar's past self would certainly treat it as a joke if someone told him that in a matter of a few months, he would transform from a family man who could only find happiness from scraps of attention that his family gave him to an entity with the power of multiple Gods.

It was supposed to be impossible.

But life was funny that way, and he was now the Blessed Oracle backed by five evil Gods.

Upon recalling how he was not too long ago, how pathetic he was for clinging to goodness and masking his agony with hollow smiles, a smile crossed his lips. Lucivar found himself laughing—at the thought as he now realized a change of mind was all he needed.

Change your thoughts and you change your world.

Lucivar now realized that the saying was absolutely correct.

Now, he was laughing at the power he had achieved from simply changing his world.

"Happy with how you turned out to be?" Master Tobias' voice rang again, forcing Lucivar to look ahead, to look at him. "I've created the path, and you reap the rewards. All the power you gained was thanks to me. Show a little gratitude, won't you?"

Hearing this, Lucivar smirked, eyes flashing with madness.

"In that case, thank you," Lucivar bowed a little, playfully as if giving Master Tobias the sight—that he wanted to see. Then, he straightened his back again, "And as my deepest gratitude for helping me reach this state, I'll show you mercy. After all, for what I've planned for this world, death right now is mercy compared to living through my world."

"Your world doesn't scare me," Master Tobias replied. "Why would I be scared of my creation?"

Crack!

Lucivar's body exploded with power again, cracking the ground underneath his feet.

He was about to attack again, but stopped when he saw the colorful divine energies around him.

First, he fixated his eyes on the emerald light.

A kind of power that he recognized almost instantly, as he was closest to Loki, the most.

Slowly, almost like it was alive, the emerald divine energy writhed before him, twisting and coiling like a serpent. It slithered in the air, circling his face as if intent on obscuring his very identity. With every breath, the energy thickened, condensing from vaporous wisps into a liquid sheen.

Droplets of emerald fell to the ground with a hiss, staining the earth as though venom had been spilled.

Then, as if fulfilling a design older than time, the liquid drew together, hardening against skin.

It kept going until it became a mask—pale green, smooth, and utterly featureless.

The only shape carved into it was slitted eyes, narrow and serpentine.

Behind the eerie façade, Lucivar's own eyes changed, burning bright emerald—with a predatory glow that cut through the veil of the mask itself. And from the side, one could see the mask was embedded into the skin, becoming one with his face.

No sooner had the mask settled than the bronze divine energy stirred.

Unlike the fluid elegance of the emerald, this one was violent, rash, and merciless.

It coiled around his arm in blistering currents, searing his flesh wherever it touched.

A hiss escaped Lucivar's mouth as he gritted his teeth while the divine heat split his skin open—wounds blooming and bleeding freely, only to seal in the next instant as though his body itself was reforged into something greater.

Once it reached his hand, the seething energy formed into liquid and then burned upward.

It was shaping itself into a weapon—long, glistening, and alive with power.

A black blade took form, its edges lined with golden veins, as though molten fire had been trapped in it by the maker. Then, impossibly, the blade split apart, parting into two serrated halves like a monstrous maw ready to devour what was placed ahead.

Clang!

Clang!

Like an unrestrained animal, it clamped down once, twice, gnashing hungrily before snapping closed.

Oddly, it then sealed into the shape of a sword once more.

From the hilt, crimson sand seeped forth—from the hourglass engraved on its hilt, snaking around his hand until it bound flesh to steel. The grains clung tight, alive and unyielding, making the black sword a part of him.

Irremovable, unless one severed the hand that wielded it.

But even when one tries, there is doubt that the crimson sand would allow it to happen easily.

Even this was not the end.

From behind, a new force stirred—the royal purple divine energy.

Tamtu's energy.

Unlike the others, it was restless, unbound, moving with the grace of something ancient and sentient.

It slithered across his back, and then his chest, flowing in and out of him with unnerving intimacy—as though he were the ocean and it the tide. Then it converged on his chest, forcing its way deep into his very core.

A vertical sliver appeared—liquid at first, shimmering with abyssal light before it solidified into a black line etched into the very center of his chest, right above his solar plexus. The line pulsed once, then tore itself open with a disturbing, watery sound.

It revealed a single, monstrous eye.

An abyssal purple eye with a black sclera, the gaze of a leviathan that did not belong to this world.

Unnervingly, it looked left and right, almost as if it was trying to decipher where it was.

Every glance bent space itself, forcing reality to recoil from its presence.

Master Tobias watched this transformation with wide-open eyes.

All of these things materializing from each divine energy, each God, was a Divine Armament.

It was a piece of God's power that pushed beyond mortal limitation.

Lucivar stood transformed—face hidden behind a serpent's mask, arm chained to a living blade that was eager to devour everything, and chest marked with an unblinking abyssal eye. His simultaneous ascension to the Third Divine Elevation summoned Three Divine Armaments.

Each was born from power and was now taking their rightful place upon him.

Under the charge of these newfound powers, Lucivar stared at Master Tobias blankly.

And then, as soon as a smirk crept to his face, the world shifted again.

Boom!!

Master Tobias reacted the instant the black blade came for him.

Commanding the blood attribute, blood surged from his veins and hardened into a shield before him, crimson walls glistening with the might of a Paragon-rank Hybrid. Against the strike of a Hybrid—like Lucivar, a mere Chrysalis-rank Hybrid, it should have been more than enough.

His blood shield should be enough to block any attack a Chrysalis-rank Hybrid could cough out.

After all, the gulf between the two ranks was absolute.

An ocean that no fledgling could hope to cross.

It was especially true the higher the rank was.

A Paragon-rank Hybrid and a Chrysalis-rank Hybrid were comparable to an adult fighting a baby.

But even then, the moment steel met blood, his jaw clenched.

Clang!

Master Tobias could see the black sword burning against the blood shield, its edge searing through layer after layer, not with raw force but with something deeper—something that unraveled his shield from the inside.

Perhaps even energy has hierarchy, and his energy was fearful of the bronze divine energy.

Swoosh!

The whistling sound of wind assaulted his ears.

Master Tobias' eyes flicked sideways, gauging his position—the ground was sliding past beneath his formal shoes, a dangerous momentum building. 'I have to stop this first and restart the battle. I'm only going to be on the defense at this rate.'

Making his choice in a heartbeat—he flexed his core and shoved Lucivar away.

In the next instant, he tilted his body and shifted the shield aside, parrying the hungry blade.

At the same time, he stretched his feet downward to catch the earth.

But his brow furrowed.

His feet sank straight through the ground as if the soil had turned to smoke.

His body had no anchor, no weight, no presence.

'What?!'

In that heartbeat of dissonance, Master Tobias turned back to Lucivar only to be met by the serpent-slit emerald glow of Lucivar's eyes. His face was covered by the mask, the Divine Armament, but it was clear from his eyes that he was smiling.

At that moment, recognition crashed into Master Tobias.

Loki.

He didn't know when, but the trickster's power of the mask had already snared him.

Everything he was seeing right now—it was an illusion.

Despite how real everything seemed to his senses, it was truly just an illusion.

"So, this is the power of a God… Incredible."