Father of All Devils vs. Great Serpent (End)

If said numerically, then the Great Serpent before me had a coefficient of energy above 100 for sure... after the serpentization was finished, its power exploded tremendously, and its energy reserved the ones that got the most significant boost.

In the end, the Abominations were always a pain in the ass to deal with.

Still, after Architect redirected half of the energy, I devoured from the creature towards the Planar Core of the Baator, which was greedily absorbing all of that energy while getting continuously more substantial, and the strain on me got was lower.

Right now, the Baator was getting increased energy density, and this was good because I soon enough planned to evolve the entire plane into a Universe.

The only thing I needed for that was the Universal Root or the Universal Seed, but those things were exceedingly rare to find.

But they were not necessary; I could also do it old fashioned way, but that would take too much time; thus, I was not really fond of the orthodox method because the unorthodox one was many times faster.

Not caring about my body and state right now, I continued to devour the Great Serpent as much as possible while at the same time, I was struggling with the Ruination energy, which had already wrecked the Great Serpent beyond recognition.

Previously the Great Serpent looked like an imposing basilisk, with vibrant green scales and an overall beautiful appearance.

Still, right now, one part of its body was mummified flesh while the second was missing because it was destroyed by the Ruination energy.

Seeing the head of the Great Serpent jerking to the side, I instantly sent an entire wave of the Dark Light Chains to stop off from whatever it was planning.

At the same time, I directly took control over the Runiantion energy, conjuring a small ball of it, and shot it towards the head of the Great Serpent.

Of course, not without the price of my right hand, which was wrecked beyond recognition as half of it was disintegrated by the Runination energy; fortunately, I was able to stop the spreading of it with my Arcane Crest Imperial of End and Ruin.

When the ball of the Ruination energy shot toward the Great Serpent's head, it pierced through the skull of the enormous snake-like abomination like nothing, instantly finishing off the poor thing, not so poor, but it was finally killed.

After it was killed, I just let the Ruination energy in its corpse be because I had already played enough with it, not talking about the scolding that I was about to receive from my wives, who saw my dangerous stunt of controlling the Ruination directly.

Probably only Hela wouldn't say much because such suicidal stunts usually made her all horny, but Vena and Fia would haunt me for the next decade about this, probably even a century.

Though I was still using The End to devour what could be devoured from the Great Serpent because this was the perfect opportunity to increase my power as much as possible for the incoming confrontation with the Hivemind, which in truth, I didn't even plan to fight directly.

But most importantly, the time when I would need to deal with Mercurius was already approaching because the Tarot told me that the man was attempting to control the artifact's consciousness by force and using some obscure ritual, and evidently, he was on the right track.

So one pressing matter was popping up, just like mushrooms after rain, and it was becoming really, like really annoying not to have a moment of peace.

[The Demonic-God Force has been increased by 0,5.]

[The Demonic-God Force has been increased by 0,6.]

[The Demonic-God Force has been increased by 0,4.]

[The Demonic-God Force has been increased by 0,3.]

[The Demonic-God Force has been increased by 0,4.]

[The Demonic-God Force has been increased by 0,2.]

[The Demonic-God Force has been increased by 0,5.]

[The Demonic-God Force has been increased by 0,1.]

When I finished devouring the entire Great Serpent, my Demonic-God Force coefficient stood proudly at 7,0 as the final increasement was from the previous 4,0 to a staggering 7,0, which was an astounding result.

Even my arm has returned to the previous pristine result; mine destroyed armor, which could probably be thrown away or sued for scraps... clearly the Ruination energy destroyed large parts of it and it has already become unusable.

Shame it was peak Empyrean-Grade Artifact; pretty rare at that too.

The Great Serpent or its corpse was already nowhere to be seen. What could be devoured was devoured, and the remaining parts, together with the mummified ones, were turned into oblivion by the Ruination energy, followed by a huge explosion, which destroyed several near by planes.

"Done is done."

I clapped happily at the result because with this; the Ancient Eternal Star Region was officially brought to its knees.

Of course, aside from the big three, there should be some other Tier 12 experts, but their status was relatively unknown and there were rumors that they had departed to search for opportunities in the Endless Void.

Clearly, seeing that they have hit their development cap in the Astral Boundary Universe, they left. Such was the thought process of countless Tier 12 experts in many Universes, especially those weaker ones or poorer.

If the Universe was poor or weak, there was no room for the Tier 12 powerhouses to grow further, so they didn't really have much choice aside from entering the Endless Void in the pursuit of resources and room for improvement.

Only a few people would remain, either those who feared the enter the Endless Void, those who wanted to play petty tyrants or those who were satisfied with what they had or just couldn't advance to Tier 13 even if they had everything necessary due to other reasons.