Death... and me



Mephisto wondered if his plan had been leaked. "How did they find it? No, it doesn't make any sense. Only three Devils knew about it, and none of us would have let our lips slip. None of us would gain anything from it." Mephisto continued to ponder. "Could it be something happened in the Heavens?"

He quickly turned to his subordinate and gave his orders. "Investigate! Find our spies in the Angels' Realm and see what is happening."

"Yes!" The subordinate quickly nodded and left. Still, he found it would be quite hard since it was pretty much impossible to put a spy in the Heavens. The reason for that was obvious. The Angels were just too united for the sake of their races. Even Mephisto could probably count on his hands the number of spies he actually had in there, and that's because they were not angels.

The other Elder Devils did the same until the room was left with only them there, waiting. Kanpishi then looked at Mephisto with other doubts. "Mephisto, what do we do now? If the angels are truly retreating, the Temporal path will be open for use again. I don't know about this plan to eliminate the Archangels, but we definitely can put up a defense against the Realm of Gods' armies."

Mephisto wasn't really in the mood to consider that. "Forget it for now! We will immediately start the attack and try to bring down as many Archangels as possible before they go away!"

Abaddon shook his head. "No can do."

"What did you say?" Mephisto was taken aback. "Are you talking back at me?"

"Hmph!" Abaddon couldn't care less. "You don't have the Underworld Relic anymore. I know you are stronger than me, but not by much. Also, I'm not talking back at you. I'm just not going to join in a sure-to-fail attempt."

Echidna agreed with Abaddon. "Mephisto, first calm down and think about it. Our armies here in the Realm of Gods are still all located at the battlefronts. For your initial plan to work, we would first have to bring the Soul Devil to life. Only after that would we be able to divert our armies to this objective of yours."

Ahriman nodded. "Besides, think about your own strategy. Tell me, are your forces already in a position to initiate this attack of yours? It doesn't matter how I look at it. We simply are not ready to initiate this attack, especially now that the angels are all gathering back at the Temporal Path Entrance to return to Heavens. If anything, their defense will be the highest you could think of."

Asmodeus was also in accord with everyone else. "Our only advantage at the moment is Rui's Underworld Relic. But then again, do you think that will be enough to take the enemies down in this situation where we are not ready? I'll tell you what will happen if we return our armies to the Temporal Path now. The Realm of Gods' forces will immediately storm forward, taking away many of our continents here in our territory. All of that while eating our forces as they retreat to attack the Temporal Path Entrance. In the end, we will find ourselves pincered between the Realm of Gods and Angels forces."

"This..." Mephisto had to admit they were right. He quickly tried to calm down and decided to accept the other Elder Devils' answers. "You were right. I was being too rushed here. It's just that we had this plan in place for so long that seeing it crumble this easily made me lose my patience."

Suddenly, a Thoughts Transmission Talisman in Mephisto's possession activated. "Hum? This talisman..."

That was a talisman shared between him and Rui, the Light Devil, with the Underworld Relic. He quickly put the talisman on his forehead and allowed the message to reach his mind. "So that's why..."

As Rui was still pretending to be allied with the Angels, he obviously had access to a lot more information near the Temporal Path Entrance than the others. 

It turned out that all the angels suddenly lost their will to fight. No, to be more specific, they didn't even understand why they agreed to come to the Underworld in the first place. After inquiring about the issue, Rui found out that it was happening all over the Heavens.

The angels, who before lived for the sake of the Angel Realm and nothing more, now seemed to wake up. 

The top experts of the three Higher Realms always knew that something wasn't right with the angels. The angels weren't like that before. They had their own greed and selfish thoughts like any other race. Sure, they were a lot more constrained than the cultivators and devils in this regard, but definitely not as immune as they were until a moment ago.

Now, it seemed like this absolute loyalty to the Heavens was lost, and it was happening everywhere. Knowing that staying in the Underworld was a terrible idea for beings of light like themselves, they all panicked and immediately rushed back to the Temporal Path. That was especially so for the Archangels. With their power, they immediately understood that they were being controlled somehow. They were the very first to go back to the temporal path to guide everyone's return. Rui warned Mephisto that the Archangels were holding the fort together and that attacking now would be a very, very bad idea.

As to how that happened, obviously, it was the Spatial Soul Spectral Oscillation Liquid's effect! The Holamenor Clan might be constrained due to the things that happened in the heavens, but they weren't small. As Spiegel and Waremis returned to the Clan, they summoned everyone and started distributing the Liquid. Obviously, they also released a few drops of the Liquid in their own Clan. A single drop was enough, but they wanted to be sure, at least in their own ranks.

Among the members who got the vials of Spatial Soul Spectral Oscillation Liquid, there were some specific ones that had very clear destinations. One group was going to the Realm of Gods, while the other was going to the Underworld!