Chapter 73: Angst Lord Ray

(I know this looks drastic but eh, this is what my head came up with.)

"Intruders? Who dares to disturb the king's rest?" Baal, the only humanoid Demon God Pillars stood and looked at the portal opened within the temple made of marble.

Other pillars became agitated and their eyes glowed, ready to kill the intruders but a lifted palm ordered them to stand down.

Ray was still exhausted and recuperating from his previous changes. His eyes was closed but the four eyes on his chest darted toward the portal.

"Tanya, Char, everyone…" He muttered with tiredness in his voice while cursing the inept clone.

Shouldn't choose that clone from the divergent timeline where his emotions were different. Should have just chosen a past self or future self but they take more energy to create and have adverse effects on the timeline.

"Ray! What happened to you?" Tanya and everyone literally rushed to check Ray but everyone was repelled by the heavy malevolent aura hanging around him which made them involuntarily felt disgusted by his presence, the presence of human sins they as creatures with sins never wanted to admit or acknowledge.

The only one that remained unaffected was, unsurprisingly, Alma. She appeared in front of him and slapped his face with a powerful force that generated a shockwave but his newfound durability made him remain unaffected.

"I hope you are aware of what you have done to yourself, Ray." Alma stared at him with disappointment and pity. "There are no shortcuts to power. There never was but an illusion that brings toward downfall."

"Wouldn't do something I have no control over, Alma." Ray didn't mind the slap as he smiled and said. "Look at the bright side, I am now truly achieving the power I dreamed and coveted."

Instead of looking proud at Ray's achievement, her disappointment and pity grew stronger as she looked at the child that walked down the wrong path.

"Is this truly what you perceive as your correct path?" Alma stared at the two pairs of eyes that had its own consciousness, staring back at her with an illusory smirk.

"Are you really unable to see your own mistake?"

Instead of replying, Ray's head hung low as the pulsing tattoo reminisced of a vein and root, pulsing more erratically.

"Shut up." Ray muttered. His hands clenched as his body tensed, trying to hold back something within himself.

"Shut up? You want me to shut up and watch you go down the path you will only regret in the end!"

"You want me to shut up and just watch you walk down the path of your own destruction!" Alma pulled the tattered shirt Ray wore and lifted him up to look at his eyes that he hid away.

She can see the eyes of denial. He knew but refused to acknowledge it. He decided to dwell in his own delusion.

"What had happened to you, Ray?" Alma's voice softens to the voice of a caring mother, consoling a child.

"You weren't like this before. You were a bright and brilliant child, destined to achieve great things in the future. Yet, what caused you to be this reckless and desperate?"

"Shut U̴̙̐̂͜P̷͚͓͛̚!" Ray shouted with a demonic voice, creating a barrier that expanded from his throne and pushed Alma away from him.

None of you understood my pain! I should be the protagonist of this story! Everything should have gone as I planned! Yet! I was toyed with by that BASTARD! My power stripped away from me! My life was nothing more than an entertainment for a sick BASTARD that can kill me at any moment! Nothing that I do will ever go my way because he was toying with me! My life! My everything!"

Ray's voice returns to normal but those eyes on his chest are twitching in glee. Their restraints are getting loose and soon able to take over their host and fulfill his wish he desperately wanted to achieve. So is their nature, daemon born from the desire of humans.

"Tch! Not good. His inner demon is overpowering his mind!" Alma saw the sign which was present in every cultivator including herself.

The inner demon. Manifestation of a cultivator's inner struggle, negative emotions, obsession and fear which attack the practitioner at the critical moment of their breakthrough where their mental state and willpower is at the lowest.

"It must be his recent breakthrough." Alma analyzed Ray state and found him to have gone past the boundary of Godhood.

Looking at his current strength. If he were to succumb, he would become a Demon God, a powerful one that even herself will lose.

The Demon God Pillars all shook in joy, awaiting the rebirth of their king. To finally become like them and replace Goetia which slaving them like carthorse at multiple singularities for a useless task of bringing salvation to a useless species that wouldn't appreciate their great work at all.

The malevolent aura becomes denser as each moment passes as it becomes miasma, spreading around him with the corruptive power of All the World's Evil.

Alma was forced to retreat and helplessly watch as Ray succumbed to his inner demon and the literal Daemon on his chest.

Each second trickles like years.

The vein spread all across his body and glowed bright red. His body remains unchanged for most part except his eyes and addition of 'Crown'. His sclera turns black and his pupil turns glowing red.

Instead of proper horn as Beast should possess to signify their existence. What appeared on Ray's head is a sacred looking crown, the Crown of Wisdom, yet in pieces, defiled by corruption, held together by a mystical force and floating on his head like a halo as a pitch black sphere floats in the middle of the pieces of crown.

"It's time for celebration. The time of crowning has come. He is the one who masters all. The birth of the new King of Demon God." Baal kneeled and lifted his arms high in voice filled with reverence.

———

Meanwhile, on the dimension outside of the Temple of Time, Ars Paulina.

The clone deliberately left a spatial crack which was made by his portal opening to the Temple of Time, allowing what happened inside to leak out, causing the Counter Force to scramble in high alert and various other old fossils to emerge from their 'tomb' in adherence of the threat of Beast looming over the world.

Not just any Beast but a mutated Beast which is a combination of Beast of Pity and Beast of Retribution.

A Beast does not destroy humanity out of hate but love, misplaced love because their thought processes are different from humans thus incapable of seeing the values the same as human.

Yet, for Ray. He defies the norm by becoming a True Daemon first and Crowned as the Beast later. His existence is that of a Beast yet shares little resemblance to their existence.

In this timeline of Chaldea, blaring red sirens filled the entire facility. Staff and servants scrambled to prepare for the inevitable battle yet again for the preservation of humanity.

"SHEBA detected a new singular- No, this is the Saint Graph of a Beast! Beast I and another unidentified Beast bearing the Sin of Retribution!"

"Beast I! Goetia? Isn't Goetia defeated in the Grand Temple of Time singularity?"

"Yes, this is not the time to think. We must act quickly! The Beast is maturing at an insane rate never seen before. As if it has an unlimited supply of energy."

"Captain Nemo had prepared the Storm Border. We will be ready to launch in ten- No. Five, five more minutes."

"Energy output observed had exceeded Third Planetary Class previously recorded and still climbing at record speed!"

"With estimation, it will exceed the previous highest recorded energy output reading of ORT from the Seventh Lostbelt in another ten minutes!"

"Impossible! Not even the incineration of human history can gather that much energy. Something is very suspicious with this."

"That Beast is absorbing the energy of the Universe itself. Its reach spanned across dimensions and timeline across all parallel worlds. Such a feat is only possible with…"

"Kaleidoscope."

A pin drop silence ensued in the command room.

"This so-called endless mana provided by Magic didn't appear out of nowhere but actually draining the boundless yet finite energy of the Universe. If let to continue, the Beast will doom the Universe, the countless timeline and parallel worlds as none of them could be sustained any longer."

"A-Anti-Universe threat… Senpai…"

"That's impossible! This threat exceeds even the Primordial One, Chaos?!"

———

"Ars Nova"

Upon deploying the sub-ability in Rings of Solomon authority, bands of light gathered above him, the halo of light, siphoned from Heaven's Feel and Kaleidoscope, draining away the very energy that sustains the universe itself and doomed the entire Nasuverse to collapse, leaving only an empty husk behind.

Counter Force airdropping Heroic Spirits, Grand Servants and Counter Guardians. Anything, anything that Alaya and Gaia can get their hands on were thrown into the Temple of Time.

Yet, it was an act of futility.

"Nega-Summon"

"Begone, pest." He spoke with disinterest as his eyes laid at the ring of light exceeding the size of even the world itself as it continued to grow and countless more timelines and worlds crumbled into dead husk.

Then he looked at the gathering of 'his' women. 'He' wished no harm to them, thus he must follow according to 'his' wish.

"Begone from this world, this Universe, as it will soon be destroyed." With a wave of his hand, a portal opened which led them to another Universe entirely.

Irritatingly and unsurprisingly, they didn't accept the offer and attacked instead. Fools, did they forget their souls are under 'his' command and he can seal them away. Which he did.

Everyone except Alma because she isn't soulbounded and rather is just familiar. Even then, what can one person do against him? Everyone else is forced to retreat into their weapon or tool and unable to do anything but helplessly watch the event unfold.

This is the worst case scenario for Alma.

Ray possessed plenty of power but lacked the knowledge and experience to wield it. The Inner Demon that possessed him now however, could use his maximum potential as the Inner Demon is ultimately a part of the person itself, created and born from their unconscious mind. They are always superior than the person itself because they are aware of the true potential hidden in the person and are able to draw it out perfectly.

———

Heroic Spirit, Grand Servants, Counter Guardians. All had been tried to be summoned by Alaya and Gaia but he who saw the very past, present and future with his eyes would intercept any of those attempts and crush the summoning with Nega-Summon.

They become desperate and their only choice is the Ultimate One. Strongest lifeforms of a planet around the solar system. An ancient treaty between the Moon and Earth.

Thus Crimson Moon was summoned with full support of Gaia. Or at the very least a being that resemble closest to him. Archetype: Earth was summoned, the prototype of the intended protector of Gaia.

Her summoning was given a boost by Gaia itself and also Alaya who are desperate at this point, to give her the needed strength to defeat Ray.

Noble phantasm, magecraft, anything created or derived from those are incapable of even harming him. Thus Archetype: Earth, or Princess Arc are the best counter and have the best chance to kill Ray where even Grand Servants couldn't.

She cracked her fingers and neck while eyeing the cause of her summoning. She activate her Marble Phantasm where Temple of Time is being overwritten with Millennium Castle.

"I wonder who are you for the Counter Force to be this desperate to summon me to take care of you." Princess Arc asked with curiosity as her eyes scanned the surroundings and saw Demon God Pillars, possessed Ray and Alma.

Ray merely glanced at the vain struggle of the Counter Force and dismissed her as just another pest in his way. A pest that needs to be exterminated.

"Deploying authority. Ars Almadel Salomonis." Ray invoked the authority and poured the amount of energy he harvested from one dimension and poured it into the attack.

It was more hundred times stronger than what Goetia used as the attack annihilated the majority of the Temple of Time and engulfed both Princess Arc and Alma.

"Perish and begone, obstacles of my great task." Ray spoke before his attention returned to the band of light rings that keep growing bigger and now already as big as Earth.

He still has more than 80% of the timeline and parallel worlds to harvest. After that, he will continue and find another world to devour until his power grows strong enough to kill Ray Elliot.

—————

(Obviously not the end yet because someone has to slap some sense back into his head.)