Imp to Demon King: A Journey of Conquest

Half an hour ago.

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The western reaches stretched before them like a golden sea, endless dunes rippling beneath the merciless sun. Luna's emerald hair whipped in the scorching winds as she crouched beside Garduck atop a weathered sandstone outcrop, her green eyes scanning the horizon where heat mirages danced like phantoms.

"There," Garduck growled, his silver hair gleaming despite the desert's oppressive glare. His green eyes narrowed as he pointed toward the southern expanse. "Ra's army."

What they witnessed defied mortal comprehension. Across the dunes marched legions that stretched beyond the horizon—mummified warriors whose golden armor caught the light like a thousand suns, war-sphinxes the size of buildings whose riddles whispered death on the wind, and hieroglyphs that walked as living symbols, each step rewriting reality beneath their feet. Above them all, perched atop his materialised pyramid, Ra himself blazed like a second sun, his falcon head crowned with the solar disk that turned the sky into molten gold.

Luna's breath caught in her throat. "There are millions of them."

"Scared, little serpent?" Set's mocking voice cut through her awe as the chaos god materialised beside them, his red eyes gleaming with malicious delight. His canine features twisted into a savage grin. "Perhaps you should have stayed in Adam's shadow where it's safe."

"Enough," Apep's ancient voice rumbled like an earthquake. The primordial serpent's massive coils shifted in the sand, each scale older than civilisation itself. "We have a task."

Njord, the Norse sea god, stood with water still dripping from his beard despite the desert heat. "The formation looks disciplined. Ra has turned war into art."

Garduck's massive frame tensed, muscles coiling like steel cables beneath his skin. His demonic strength thrummed through him, begging for release. "Remember the goal. Hit them hard, thin their numbers, make them angry and sloppy, then retreat to Atlantis before they organise a proper response."

Luna's lips curled into a predatory smile, revealing fangs that gleamed like emeralds. "I can work with angry and sloppy."

"Then let's remind these 'gods of order' what chaos looks like," Set snarled, shadow and sand swirling around his form.

They struck like a hurricane.

Luna descended first, her demonic essence erupting into serpentine flames that painted the sky emerald. The first of her fiery snakes, each one the size of a warship, crashed into the Egyptian front lines like living meteors. Mummified warriors disintegrated as her flames devoured their ancient wrappings, their golden armor melting like candle wax.

"Burn, you walking corpses!" she shrieked, weaving between the massive war-sphinxes. One turned its leonine head toward her, its human face contorting as it prepared to speak a riddle that would unmake her very existence.

"What walks on—" it began.

Luna's serpent of flame wrapped around its throat, cutting off the deadly words. "Here's a riddle for you," she snarled, her green eyes blazing. "What burns hotter than the sun and gives no mercy to the dead?"

The war-sphinx's stone flesh began to crack and crumble as her fire ate through the divine essence fueling it. Its death-scream echoed across the battlefield, but Luna was already moving, her flames spreading like wildfire through the ranks of the undead.

Garduck landed among another phalanx of war-sphinxes with the force of a falling star, the impact creating a crater twenty meters wide. Sand and stone exploded outward as his colossal strength shattered their formation. The nearest sphinx, its body a fusion of human torso and lion's frame, raised a massive paw to crush him.

Garduck caught it barehanded.

"Show me this 'divine order' you're so proud of!" he roared, his muscles bulging as he lifted the creature—easily the size of a house—above his head. With a grunt of effort, he hurled it into its companions, the impact sending shock waves through the sand that toppled entire formations.

A second sphinx lunged at his back, but Garduck spun, his fist connecting with its human face in a blow that could have leveled mountains. The creature's head exploded in a shower of stone and divine ichor, its body crashing backwards into the ranks of mummified soldiers.

"Come on then!" Garduck bellowed, grabbing another sphinx by its hind legs and using it as a weapon against its brothers. "Is this the best Egypt's gods can offer?"

Set unleashed storms of chaos, reality bending and twisting around him like a fever dream. Where his power touched, sand became glass, then shadow, then nothing at all. A battalion of hieroglyphs—living symbols that could rewrite the laws of physics—tried to surround him, their golden forms blazing with divine script.

"Order seeks to contain chaos," Set laughed, his red eyes gleaming with malevolent joy. "But chaos is eternal, while order is merely a fleeting dream!"

The hieroglyphs began to write new laws of reality around him, their symbols burning in the air: gravity pulls upward, fire burns cold, Set cannot exist.

But Set's laughter only grew louder. "Did you forget, little symbols? I am the god who will kill Osiris! I am the storm that brings drought! Your 'laws' are suggestions, and I decline to follow them!"

His chaos erupted outward, turning the hieroglyphs' own power against them. Their carefully crafted symbols twisted into contradictions, their meaning becoming paradox. One by one, they began to unravel, their golden forms dissolving into meaningless scribbles in the sand.

Njord called forth impossible tides from the underground rivers that flowed beneath the desert. Water erupted from the sand like geysers, turning solid ground into treacherous quicksand that swallowed entire companies of mummified warriors. The Norse sea god's voice boomed across the battlefield as he summoned phantom ships from the water—ghostly vessels that sailed through sand as easily as sea.

"The ocean remembers all shores," Njord declared, his beard flowing like kelp in an underwater current. "Even those buried beneath the desert!"

His phantom fleet crashed into the Egyptian ranks, their ethereal hulls passing through armor and flesh to strike directly at the souls within. Mummified generals, who had commanded armies in life, found themselves drowning in memories of distant shores they had never seen.

Apep's ancient coils crushed entire battalions, each movement of the world-serpent remaking the battlefield. Where his scales touched the earth, the sand turned black and oily, becoming a primordial sea that predated creation itself. The darkness spread like a plague, and from it rose creatures of the void—things that had existed before light, before order, before the first gods learned to dream.

"I am the darkness between stars," Apep hissed, his voice carrying the weight of eons. "I am the chaos that existed before Ra's first sunrise. You may have forgotten me, Sun God, but I have not forgotten you!"

For a moment, it seemed their assault might succeed. The Egyptian front lines wavered, their perfect formations breaking as chaos and destruction carved bloody paths through their ranks. Luna's flames painted the sky with emerald death, Garduck's fists shattered stone and bone alike, and the chaos gods unleashed forces that predated civilisation itself.

But then the Egyptian pantheon struck back, and the tide of battle turned with the inexorable force of destiny.

Osiris rose from his throne of judgment, his mummified form radiating the absolute authority of death itself. He raised his crook and flail, and spoke a single word that echoed across the battlefield like the closing of a tomb: "Rise."