80th Move | Cannibalism

In the beginning, the Underworld was a realm of pure Essence and, subsequently, magicules. It was a World without any light, without any matter, without anything except for Essence, magicules, and Spiritrons. The realm was far from the fiery landscape it was known for in the modern age. When the first seven Primordials were introduced to the domain, they were taken aback by the chaotic alien realm.

Everything was different about this new place, this new, extremely chaotic home that the Creator had given them. It made sense since Essence didn't interact with much of the fundamental atomic forces like the two Nuclear Forces. Thus, things like planets, mountains, and stars didn't exist. Instead, the Underworld was a sea of turbulent currents of Essence that traveled from one end of the World to the other.

Not only that, but due to the sheer amount of Essence in this dimension, magicules constantly popped into existence, causing physics to be all over the place.

Instead of adapting to this new realm, the Primordial Demons decided that they shall copy the Creator. They stilled some of the currents, creating a region of space where there was order.

Discovering that they're much stronger in the Underworld thanks to reality being more fluid, the Primordials decided to move beyond a simple region of space and terraformed a large portion of the Underworld to reflect the place where they had been created.

And so, there was light— particles of Essence are arranged into 'subatomic particles' that mimic the property of photons. And so there were matter— particles of these pseudo subatomic particles formed into larger pseudo atoms. And so there were celestial bodies— by constantly forcing pseudo atoms together using magic, the Primordials formed planets and stars.

And so... there were life— autocatalytic chemical systems made from pseudo atoms that would normally be impossible to form if not for the efforts of the Primordials.

The Primordials created their own garden of order within the turbulent sea of Essence.

For a time, the region of the Underworld where the Primordials reigned reflected Realspace, the only difference that differentiated the realm from the one Veldanava resided in was the weaker different soulless lifeforms that roamed the place.

Then, after a few million years, the first demons came into existence.

The first proto-demons that Veldanava didn't have a hand in making appeared nothing like the Primordials. They were never humanoid, as they were made from the environment of the Underworld itself.

Outside of the orderly garden, the place closely resembled the atmosphere of a gas giant: there was turbulence everywhere, Essence moved from one end of the World to the other in speedy titanic currents, and energy was all too free thanks to the constant appearance of magicules. Since most of the free Essence was shaped into currents, there existed differences in density between areas of currents and non-currents, thus, creating convection cells.

Convection cells are a phenomenon that occurs when there are differences in density within a volume of fluid, in this case, Essence. An example of a convection cell that existed on Earth would be the Water Cycle. Due to the sheer size of the space outside of the influence of the Primordials, there were countless individual convection cells that existed between different currents.

It wasn't known when exactly the first proto-demon came into existence, only that when multiple of these convection cells merged together, complexity began. Through congregating millions of these convection cells, a type of lifeform made from these cells emerged.

They were the first of their kind.

In the beginning, the Primordials didn't notice these lifeforms because of how simple they are, relative to them anyway. They lived inside their own garden, watching as these convection cells meandered about before dissolving when they passed through the threshold of the Primordial's orderly garden.

As these convention cell congregates grew more and more complex, they began to grow smarter.

Eventually, when the proto-demons managed to become complex enough to think their first thought, they evolved. These proto-demons became what would become known as Lesser Demons, the lowest rank of modern demons.

Finally, the natural-born demon was able to survive within the Primordial's orderly garden, and just like an overeager child who knows nothing about the world and its horrors, the Lesser Demons set out to conquer this new 'alien' world that always seemed hostile to them.

They were repelled with ease. It was a complete extinction as all Lesser Demons were exterminated by the Primordials simply because, just like popping a bubble with a single touch, it was just so easy.

Veldanava reprimanded the Primordials for this act of superfluous violence. Thus, when the next Lesser Demon came into existence, the Primordials decided to leave it alone and allow it to wander their garden.

So it became their policy: so long as they weren't attacked, the Primordials would stay neutral and content to observe the demons.

The Primordials then discovered how the demons tended to eat each other.

Normally, cannibalism isn't really common in nature as such acts make reproduction and the creation of civilizations far more difficult. Even in solitary animals like polar bears, there exists a certain level of cooperation with a member of the same species in the interest of sexual reproduction.

The demons can not perform sexual reproduction, as they are born from the Underworld itself. This impotence has caused each demon to be hyper-individualistic, since there exists no incentive for cooperation the chance for betrayal is near certain. Moreover, whatever remains of chance for cooperation is annihilated when it is very quickly discovered the strength of a demon was in how many other demons they ate.

With the goal of every demon to be a new Primordial, enough that they would replicate the colors of the Primordials, these factors compounded together to create an extremely violent race where the sole reason they still existed was due to reproduction being independent of the demons themselves.

The Primordial's orderly garden became their fighting ground. The seven wanted to act, yet their Creator's words stilled their hands.

That was until the First Hellfire was alight.

It wasn't known who started the First Hellfire. It was thought that perhaps one of the Archdemons did in an attempt to become a new Primordial. But it didn't matter: the entirety of the Underworld was like dry kindling, and this flicker of hellfire made by a nameless unknown demon was the spark that ignited it all.

Imagine everything on fire, that was what happened to the underworld. The ground burned, the air burned, and nothing was spared—

The Underworld was burning— all burned in that fiery hellfire.

The World that the Primordial Demons made was burning, and in order to prevent any further damage, the Primordial Demons reshaped the entire place into a configuration that would halt the spread of the hellfire. The Primordials couldn't really put out those already existing hellfire, so they simply isolated them. They placed them inside the furthest reaches of the Underworld, what became tentatively called: the Abyss.

Thus, was the origin of how the Underworld gained its hellish look. The Primordials realized this configuration of their garden had the highest resistance against hellfire.

Even after billions of years, those First Hellfires would still exist. Due to how effective the Hellfire was at erasing other demons, it was only natural for the demonic race to start looking for ways to weaponize them. And they were successful, but the hellfire wielded by demons is a far cry from the First Hellfire as being burned by their own flames is very counter-intuitive.

[White Flare] was Testarossa's [Apocalypse Realized: Star of Destruction]. It is an Ultimate-class magic spell that surpasses nuclear magic as a whole. Although being nowhere near as powerful or has as large of an effective area as Jeanne's magnum opus, [White Flare] is made specifically for dealing with souls given that it ignites the purest form of hellfire— the First Hellfire that still burns in pockets deep within the Underworld— within the palm of the caster.

Normally, such a thing wouldn't be possible, but only with an Ultimate Skill specialized in 'hell' was Testarossa finally able to manipulate the First Hellfire and incorporate it into a magic spell.

As the White Primordial cast that Ultimate-class magic, the Conceptual Core of the Purple Primordial burned with a glowing, white flame. Hellfire, when it radiates photons, comes in a rainbow of different colors. However, only the First Hellfire is white in color. Thus, it's also less commonly called 'Palefyre'.

Jeanne could do nothing but stare at the remains of Kathy's body, still skewered onto Testarossa's arm.

Jeanne's arms went limp, and her golden gauntlet powered down. She could only watch as Kathy was killed in front of her eyes, and since the System was ending and it took Primordials centuries to come back— it was a permanent death.

The Yellow Primordial's face was a still mask of shock: her mouth was open, her jaw muscles felt foreign, her posture slacked, and her mind wasn't able to 'connect' with her eyes as Jeanne continued to stare at Kathy's remains.

She... broke a promise. Those words appear alien to Jeanne's vocabulary.

She broke a promise.

Mobius, while superintelligent and can predict most things, isn't Laplace's demon. A source of entertainment being gone was only a part of Jeanne's anger. No, her real anger was the breaking of a contract.

To the Yellow Primordial, a contract isn't as important as say, a promise. But it's still important enough that Jeanne would skin them alive before murdering the one who killed her contractor.

However, the simple keeping of a promise is to Jeanne what God is to her namesake, Jeanne D'arc. It is the very core of Jeanne's identity, it is what Violet could call her 'Drive'. So to have broken a promise would mean the complete invalidation of her own Drive.

It wouldn't even be inaccurate to call it 'holy' to Jeanne.

"Hmph. What a waste."

A voice spoke, but Jeanne's mind wasn't there to register the words spoken by that voice. The Yellow Primordial could only focus on the fact that a promise she had given was broken. Inside Jeanne's mind, she replayed that scene of Kathy's Conceptual Core burning again and again.

She... truly has lost everything, hasn't she?

Her contract had been broken, and now she's broken a promise.

Her mind recalled that first promise she's ever made— 'forgive God'.

The last thing she holds dear— the simple keeping of a promise— was gone.

It was like a person's everything being taken away from them.

All that's left, all that Jeanne, all that Jaune has left, is a pitch-black boiling rage. It was a rage that has been brewing ever since the death of her ******* oh so long ago. It had been stewing for a long time, and it was always bubbling just below the surface within Jeanne's subconscious.

It was always held in place with chains— the act of keeping promises was the only thing holding her back.

But now...

Now, there were no more chains to hold them back.

Sludges of inky blackness dripped down from somewhere. It colored the sky, blocking out the stars, and it pooled on the earth, covering it in a layer of nothingness. Eventually, everything was consumed by that inky blackness— all save for Testarossa.

All the Yellow Primordial could feel... all that she could sense... all that she could focus on was the White Primordial.

Everything else aside from Testarossa disappeared from Jeanne's mind.

With an odd sense of calmness, completely contrasting with just how much rage was boiling inside her, Jeanne stood up. The chains that were binding her legs broke easily as though they were strings.

Jeanne merely stared at Testarossa with a dead expression. The Yellow Primordial's jaws didn't even fully come up as her mouth stilled into a flattened 'o' shape. It was as if she was a shell-shocked soldier.

Testarossa was about to say something before Jeanne rose up like a freshly reanimated corpse.

The blonde demon's eyes were empty, like the patriarch of a royal dynasty looking at her after seeing how his entire family was butchered in front of him, just waiting to die. She looked just like the ruler of Silberia moments before Blanc had him tortured, except drenched in even more despair.

It... unsettled the White Primordial for a brief few moments. For Jeanne to have such expressions, Testarossa almost second-guessed her decision about murdering Kathy, before that doubt was crushed.

Her Authority gave her a command, and she shall obey them.

Testarossa opened her mouth to speak—

"You know, I've always struggled with reasons to see tomorrow," Jeanne spoke in a tone that does not belong in an area that has just experienced death. If ignoring the context, one could almost imagine Jeanne was having a chat with a stranger.

Jeanne then took in a deep breath— and grinned. She grinned widely.

Her right hand came up to cover her mouth, her other gauntlet hand started fidgeting like a grad student who stumbled upon a question they just don't know right before the time's up.

"It's—" Jeanne's right foot started tapping, "— Truly, I've struggled with it. But then, I clung to the concept of 'keeping promises' as a way to pass the days. Then I met Scientia and changes started happening. But now that's gone, I went back to a promise."

Jeanne's hands then came together in a loud clap. The grin on her face became wide, so wide that the Yellow Primordial was straining her facial muscles in an attempt to put on as wide of a smile as possible.

"And now it's gone... thanks to you."

There was so much hate and rage within those two empty eyes that Testarossa had unconsciously taken a step back. Those eyes reminded the White Primordial uncomfortably of Her Authority's eyes.

"I will eat you."

Flickers of nuclear flame materialized around Jeanne.

"I will eat all of you, your very identity so that you couldn't possibly come back even if the System does survive that long."

Jeanne was set alight.

She was consumed by fire.

She was covered by a coat of the same fire that burns deep within the stars. The forest, for dozens of kilometers around Jeanne, was just set alight. Everything was burning, everything that could burn was set alight, and those that couldn't were either just melting or even vaporized.

The gauntlet that was on her left hand started to slag before melting into a runny liquid that dripped down Jeanne's now nude frame, clothes having been burned off.

<< —Sufficient desire met. The individual known as 'Jeanne' has acquired Ultimate Skill [Phoenix, Lord of Dawn]>>

Those flames turned golden. Then, the flames shifted into shapes— long strands of fire that then weaved themselves into a set of knight armor.

In mere seconds, all the vegetation in the immediate vicinity of the two Primordials was turned into nothingness by the wildfire. Not even ashes remain as the heat in those fires was hot enough to reignite those ashes.

Quickly, the earth for miles around became a field of brightly glowing lava. Jeanne was radiating so much energy that she was hovering because the ground directly underneath her feet boiled away, having been vaporized by the sheer heat.

Even Testarossa was starting to sweat before those droplets of bodily fluid boiled away explosively.

Jeanne was shining like a second sun as the White Primordial had to cover her eyes.

Not wanting to be in the presence of such uncomfortable heat anymore, Testarossa used [Belial | Hellfire Manipulation] and fired off a concentrated bolt of hellfire that moved at speeds near that of light.

It was a [Hell Snipe].

Hellfire can be said to be the most efficient anti-spirit attack. The only reason hellfire wasn't more common was that normal matter is the antithesis of it. However, this negative was removed entirely by Testarossa's [Belial], meaning that Testarossa can be viewed as the worst possible opponent for a fully spiritual lifeform. Even True Dragons would hesitate if they learn what Testarossa is capable of.

The hellfire bolt shot forward through the heat and the normal matter and landed a hit on her opponent's left forearm.

The hellfire did its work, burning through the flesh, bone, and spirit, and causing the arm to fall off.

Testarossa waited for Jeanne's cries of pain, but only received silence.

An eerie silence.

A spiritual lifeform being hit with hellfire is even more painful than what normal humans would experience when they're being burned with actual fire. Since there are no nerves that could possibly be burned away, a spiritual lifeform will constantly feel the hellfire until it either dies or cuts the burning sections of its spirit out, like a trapped animal cutting off its limbs to save itself.

Thus, to hear Jeanne being absolutely silent as the hellfire slowly treads up her arm and to her shoulder was something that genuinely disturbed Testarossa.

How much willpower does she have?! Her rattled mind asked.

Testarossa had been burned by hellfire before, so she personally knew just how painful it was, though nowhere near the pain from that poison. Accordingly, to see someone face tank it and not utter a single sound...

It was plainly impossible. Frankly unthinkable.

Then, an even more impossible event happened as something emerged out of Jeanne's still-burning stump of an arm.

The first thing that came to Testarossa's mind was that it was monstrous. It fitted more on a True Dragon than anything resembling the human form.

It was a large, abnormally shaped 'thing' that vaguely resembled a hand. For all the White Primordial knew, it could just as easily be the claws of an eagle or the paw of a bear.

It was made purely of the fire that existed during the first few moments of creation. It could even be called a picture of birth, shaped into a 'thing', a long and monstrous-looking 'thing'.

Then, that 'thing' moved.

It shot forward like a burning spear as if to grab onto Testarossa.

It moved with a speed that eclipsed most objects in the universe, nearing the White Primordial in the blink of an eye.

Instinctively, Testarossa teleported into the air and out of the reach of the 'thing'—

—Only to be met face-to-face with a burning Jeanne.

Before Testarossa could react, Jeanne launched a punch with her only remaining hand that sent Testarossa careening toward the molten ground like a white bullet.

Instead of hitting anything solid, Testarossa smashed deep into a lake of liquid rock, the heat coming from Jeanne was hot enough to melt the earth into having a viscosity similar to that of water.

Jeanne then lowered herself, hovering a few meters above the molten lake like a sea bird waiting patiently above the ocean for its prey. She looked around herself, waiting for Testarossa to drop her stealth magic and—

Several streams of hellfire focused so tightly that they looked more like thin laser beams shot out of the lake of molten lava, all of them aiming at Jeanne and all of them hit.

Over half of Jeanne's body burned away from that barrage, yet nonetheless, she was unfazed. Jeanne stared wordlessly as Testarossa rose up from the lake like a submarine with a look of pure shock and bewilderment.

Testarossa just couldn't comprehend how Jeanne was still able to make coherent thoughts with that much of herself burned away with hellfire, much less function or even fight. Describing Jeanne as a floating torso with a single right hand was completely accurate.

As Testarossa continued to look stunned, several more 'things' came out of Jeanne's burning wound.

Two of the largest 'things' quickly grew to the size of apartment buildings. Then, the Yellow Primordial flapped them around like wings.

They were wings. Wings that have a temperature much hotter than even the sun.

Jeanne now looked more akin to a mass of nuclear fire, a star, with things that resembled hands poking out, like a rolled-up hedgehog except all the quills have been replaced by hands.

The wings then grew even hotter, and certain points within it started to shine brighter than others.

Then, hundreds of rays of degenerate superheavy unstable atoms each possessing hundreds of electron shells shot forth from those bright points on the pair of wings, raining down upon Testarossa like water droplets during a spring shower.

It was Jeanne mimicking a powerful nuclear magic known as [Armageddon Array] using [Phoenix]. Though never used in Realspace, it was thought [Armageddon Array] had the ability to strip a planet of its crust with ease.

And now all that power was focused on Testarossa.

"—!"

Right when those rays of degenerate matter were about to hit, just when they illuminated Testarossa's shell-shocked face, the demon's body was overlaid with an image of hell itself.

The rays bursting with radiation were neutralized by [Belial | Hellish Connection].

[Hellish Connection] is the penultimate defensive subskill of Ultimate Skill [Belial]. It's a dimensional manipulation skill that'll displace any damage into the Underworld, preventing harm to the user.

The only individual who Testarossa knows can pierce this defense is Her Authority, which was only because she could overpower and shut down the dimensional displacement.

Just as the first barrage was weathered, a second came not a single second after, forcing Testarossa to maintain [Belial | Hellish Connection].

After the second one, a third came like the carts behind a train. That was when Testarossa realized that Jeanne could keep up with this longer than she could hold [Belial | Hellish Connection].

"Shit—!"

The instant that the third barrage ceased, Testarossa moved so quickly that to a human, it would appear as if she had simply teleported. Moving behind Jeanne, cloaked in stealth magic, Testarossa will end this by shooting a [Hell Snipe] directly into Jeanne's skull.

Left palm facing the bundle of nuclear fire, the White Primordial was just about to launch another [Hell Snipe] before noticing how, Jeanne, clad in an armor of fire, was already staring at Testarossa with her lifeless eyes.

The next thing that came to Testarossa's mind was the sudden scorching heat caused by infrared radiation that was now surrounding her body. A microsecond later, Testarossa was able to discern how the sudden increase in temperature was the result of numerous fiery appendages from Jeanne that now surrounded her, plentiful enough to ensure every part of her body was illuminated by light.

Her surprise attack had been foiled. It was as if Jeanne had known beforehand what Testarossa was going to do.

For a tiny moment in time, Testarossa mused how it was probably because she'd already used this move against Jeanne, multiple times even before the battle with Kathy.

The Yellow Primordial had learned.

"[Phoenix | Dawn of Creation]!"

Admittedly, it would be deadly for the Primordial Demon to be hit, but that's not an issue.

"[Belial | Hellish Connection]"

Feelings of confidence settled inside Testarossa's mind. This wasn't anywhere near as deadly as Jeanne's magnum opus. After all, the magnetic field that Jeanne used to manipulate those fiery appendages was nowhere near strong enough to birefringent space.

The edge of the plasma flames closed in... and passed through the Ultimate Skill.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Even with the defensive subskill up, all the White Primordial knew was blistering pain and searing heat as the 'things' collapsed into her body.

Despite it not being made out of hellfire, the heat and the radiation coming out of it were if not equal, at least approaching the pain of being burned with hellfire. It was enough to drain all other thoughts from Testarossa's mind as she was cooked.

The fire was all around her and, through the holes in her body, inside her as well. She was being burned inside out simultaneously.

Even still, the pain was only a fraction of what Kathy had caused her, so Testarossa could still think clearly. Using this clarity, the White Primordial sensed how the feelings from the tips of her fingers and toes were disappearing.

If the body of a single bacteria was heated to the same temperature Testarossa was experiencing, a continent the size of Afro-Eurasia would become uninhabitable. Thankfully, Jeanne was thoughtful enough to isolate the energy so that it only sterilizes areas within a radius of several kilometers.

Her body— a body belonging to a Devil Lord— skipped the process of sublimation and directly underwent what's known as a 'phase transition' into the Hagedorn state, a state of matter even more energetic than quark-gluon plasma. In such a state, only theories related to Quantum Chromodynamics could describe what's happening as the density of hadrons is so high they can no longer be considered as individual particles, but instead, form into a type of 'soup' of quarks and gluons that behave as a single entity.

In other words, the temperature around Testarossoa was so hot that her material body— a solid state— that the White Primordial uses to interact with the physical world reached a boiling point and was being converted into quark matter.

Her spirit was being burned on a metaphysical level. Her body, the one gifted to her by Her Authority, was made out of Scarletite. Normally this would offer an extensive amount of protection against radiation, as proven when it stood up against Jeanne's antimatter barrage. However, something is causing the Scarletite atoms also to experience premature radioactive decay.

It was as if her body was made out of a superheavy unstable element with 900 electrons given how radioactive her body is right in this instance.

[Phoenix] was an Ultimate Skill that specialized in manipulating the 'fire' that existed 10^-32 seconds after the birth of the universe. More specifically, the Electroweak force— the combined Electromagnetic and Weak Nuclear Forces. Since in the present day the combined force has split into two, Ultimate Skill [Phoenix] allows the user to control the Electromagnetic and Weak Nuclear Forces.

Jeanne usually expresses this ability by hastening the radioactive decay of atoms conjured up by magicules and manipulating that matter into the shape of fires and wings through controlled magnetic fields. However, in this instance, the Primordial hastened the half-life of atoms within Testarossa's body down to nanoseconds.

This means the time it takes for half of the atoms in Testarossa's body to decay is reduced to nanoseconds.

It was a two-frontal assault, one from the outside and another from the inside.

Once the fire was gone, all that was left of Devil Lord Testarossa was a radioactive glowing husk of an individual. Her once smooth, alabaster skin was replaced with burnt flesh that glowed brightly against the backdrop of the molten lake with extremely strong radiation. The flesh on the tips of her finger was gone, revealing the blackened bone underneath in contrast to the glowing flesh.

Powerless after having to experience a concentrated dosage of radiation comparable to standing in the path of a gamma-ray burst, Testarossa fell from the sky.

"Why... did... it... not... work...?" Testarossa mumbled as she fell, her mind was on how [Belial | Hellish Connection] didn't block out that attack.

The heat that was inside Jeanne's magnum opus was much hotter than what the Yellow Primordial's Ultimate Skill had been able to produce!

So how...? She was a Devil Lord! Jeanne was a Demon Peer and her Ultimate Skill shouldn't have been able to ignore [Belial] so easily!

Since lava is much denser than water when Testarossa's burnt body hit the glowing yellow lake. It was as if she had hit the surface of a tub of half-melted candy cane. Jeanne slowly neared the White Primordial's fallen form, hovering a dozen feet away and merely observing.

Jeanne didn't even flinch from being so close to the heavily irradiated body of Testarossa despite it being a hundred thousand times more contaminated than Chornobyl.

Unlike in the movies, when something containing water were to touch the lava, there would be a steam explosion as the heat from the lava quickly vaporized and expanded the water volume by a factor of 1700. However, the persistent innate resistance of a Devil Lord is preventing that from happening. This means that Testarossa is merely floating above the lake of lava, just waiting for her execution at the hands of her fellow Primordial.

With a sense of morbid poetry, Jeanne then used her remaining hand to rip open Testarossa's rib cage one rib at a time, all the while the latter of whom merely let out a painful groan, too tired to fight back.

"Scarletite body, huh?" Jeanne spoke for the first time after acquiring an Ultimate Skill. Staring down upon the barely conscious husk of Testarossa, the Yellow Primordial noted how the opened rib cage looked like the skin of a peeled blood orange, presenting its sweet, juicy flesh for the world to see and for ease of consumption.

She should finish this quickly. The radiation is already causing Testarossa's spirit to dissolve.

"You know, I've never really thought about this," Jeanne, hovering slightly above the husk, used her right hand to seize her prize, "but I guess being summoned by the most scientifically inclined person changed me a bit." With a single hard tug, Jeanne ripped out the still-beating 'flesh', "this organ, this 'heart', is a semi-spiritual thing that is supposed to represent the Nucleic Heart of a spirit after they possess a body. But, that's so human. Why is it that whenever we higher-rank demons— a purely spiritual race— possess a body we make it so human-like? Why did Veldanava make us into the image of what the late Director would call 'evolved apes'?"

The body that once held the Primordial Demon known as Testarossa reverted back into a crimson slag of melted Scarletite. The slag's mass was much smaller than before thanks to the trio of radioactive decay caused by [Phoenix].

To the Yellow Primordial, it almost looked like hard candy that had been melted before cooling with how glossy the metal was.

Jeanne stared at the body, then at the still-beating spiritual heart of Testarossa.

Bringing her right hand close to her face, Jeanne's nose twitched at the godawful smell coming from the spiritual heart. In truth, a normal human wouldn't smell anything since the organ that was in Jeanne's hand is more spiritual than physical. Thus, it couldn't accurately say that she 'smelled' it as a normal human would with a normal flower.

"Ugh," Cringing slightly, the Primordial Demon took in a deep breath before chomping down onto the heart.

To an outsider, it sounded like a person chomping into a juicy peeled, orange.

Three wet noises of chomping echoed above the cooling lava lake later and Jeanne finally swallowed the entire thing. It took three bites.

Jeanne had to grit her teeth to not regurgitate the thing from her stomach.

"That tasted like shit." The Primordial could feel herself digesting, amalgamating, mixing, incorporating, consolidating, absorbing— all of those words were accurate to a degree, but none could fully describe what was happening, as there's never been a previous occurrence where a Primordial ate another Primordial.

It's like trying to describe sounds to a deaf person: you can use metaphors but they couldn't truly understand without experiencing it themselves.

<<New Ultimate Skill acquired [Belial]>>

<<Numerous other Unique, Extra, and Common Skills acquired>>

After the process of ingestion was completed, Jeanne felt her own power jump to levels that were alien to her.

<<Notice, the Primordial Demon known as 'Jeanne' has fulfilled energy requirement for a Harvest Festival with consumption of 'Testarossa'>>

"What?!" Just as the Yellow Primordial screamed out, the flames from [Phoenix] that surrounded her form faded from existence like a fire that burned itself out.

Jeanne looked up to the sky in shock. It didn't even occur to her that eating Testarossa's spirit might cause her to super-evolve into a Demon Lord.

<<The Human Souls requirement has been bypassed>>

"No! Fuck you! Not here, not now!"

<<The Primordial Demon known as 'Jeanne' will now begin their ascension into Lord status>>

Jeanne raised her left arm to wave angrily at the Voice of the World—

Oh wait, that's gone huh?

Realizing that she was still floating in the air as a body without its two legs and a left arm, Jeanne quickly used some of the souls that she'd collected over the eons to regrow her legs. One of the ways for a demon to repair their physical body after a skirmish is to consume the exact material their physical body was made out of. In essence, this means that a demon possessing a wooden doll would consume wood to repair itself.

Quickly replacing her body with a set of magically conjured clothing, just as the Yellow Primordial was about to regenerate her left arm—

<<Ascension to Demon Lord status... successful>>

—She was hit with an extreme sense of fatigue.

"NO! Fuck you!" Jeanne bit her tongue to stay awake. "You're not going to keep me down!"

<<Demon Peer, evolve into Devil Lord...>>

<<Evolution successful, Demon Peer has evolved into Devil Lord>>

Like being shot, Jeanne collapsed onto the surface of the cooling lava lake. Using her remaining arm as a crutch, Jeanne tried to hold her body up high so as little of her skin was touching the fiery lake.

"God... damn... you! I WILL NOT Become... unconscious!"

<<New Ultimate Skill acquired: [Belial]. New Skills [Void Rejection], [Universal Perception], [Parallel Overlap], [Multidimensional Movement]>>

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

The weight of evolving and Jeanne's will to stay conscious are clashing against each other like two sides in a war of tug-of-rope.

Something latching onto Jeanne's stump served as a temporary distraction to the desire to sleep.

Looking to her left side, Jeanne found the slag of Scarletite that used to serve as Testarossa's body has now reshaped itself into that of an arm and is slowly integrating itself with the Primordial's body.

Crimson Steel, Scarletite, and Hihi'irokane all refer to the same mythical metal. The apparent 'strongest metal'. They have the unique property of only responding to the magical power of their owner and will ignore all others who attempt to wield them.

Looking down at the arm that was reacting to her every command as she flexed it, Jeanne realized since she ate Testarossa, the lump of Scarletite now recognized her as the owner. The whole thing looked exactly like her old arm, except it was dyed a bloody crimson with many long grooves that ran down the metal surface. What's more, the Scarletite no longer glowed with Cherenkov radiation.

<<Ultimate Skill [Belial], combined with Ultimate [Phoenix] into [Khorne, God of Blood]>>

"Shiiiiiiiiiittttttt...."

It was the integration between two Ultimate Skills that finally sent Jeanne over the edge. The Demon collapsed onto the surface of the now extremely viscous lake of cooling lava.