When Tang rose a thousand meters into the sky, the sulfurous smell grew faint, but the dry heat scorching his skin only intensified as he climbed.
It was as though he really were drawing close to that second sun.
Even the clamor around his ears grew distant as he ascended.
He did not look back. He trusted that someone would hold off everything behind him and focused only on the sky ahead, making out the lava pouring from beneath that pitch-black sun—
As the Balor descended like a creature breaking out of its shell, that embryonic sun still shone with scarlet patches, as though life continued to stir within it.
Suddenly, a scarlet slit slowly opened in the darkness.
The sun had unmistakably become an eye, surveying the earth with a molten pupil. The flowing magma seemed to form its tears, which condensed into scarlet Spinagons halfway through their fall.
The fiery red devils filled the sky in an instant, gripping long forks fashioned from bone. They circled with piercing cries, like a fiery cloud suspended in the sunlight, forming a wall to bar the intruders.
It was as though the rebel god seated high upon the throne of the Nine Hells had issued an irrevocable command to the devils gathered within the sun.
He could not permit anyone—not even a bothersome speck of dust—to approach the foundation of the ritual.
Even with [Invulnerability] protecting it, every slightest possibility had to be eliminated.
The god's watchful gaze became an obstacle to Tang's continued ascent. Bella raised her prism, trying to clear an upward passage with psionics, but the Spinagon legion numbered in the tens of thousands, far beyond anything a single prism could shift.
They spread their broad bat wings, their densely packed, thornlike spikes aimed straight at the ascending